Vlad Molotov - the legendary scientist

[chrisvenus]

Vlad Molotov was one of my first RP characters. I started RPing when I got to university and the oxford uni RPGSoc was running a large freeform game called Inferno, a steam-punk game. People told me about the game and one of the GMs (Tony Short) enthused at me a lot about it and I decided to play a member of house Taurus, the classic mad inventor achetype who bodge together the most fantastic items out of next to nothing. I can't remember why I decided to play a russian. I think it might be because vlad was a name I often used for just any old thing. But a russian he was, vlad was his name and in looking for a surname he became Vlad Molotov.

During the game I invented a lot of things. It ran for 15 sessions and I invited (or turnsheeted for inventing) at least two new things each week, usually more. Such classics included my time machine which i spent the whole game working on, My High Energy Magic Assisted Really Original and Innovative Device ( I think this was my steam generated powered by a few magic demon thingys) is the only one I can actually remember the full name of (they all had most silly acronyms, I remember there was a THROWUP as well).

Notable inventions that I remember

Lazers
These focused candle light or any other light source using parabolic mirrors and lenses. The mechanism would vary the intensity of the beam (using the lenses) at a suitable rate such that the energy pulses would set the target vibrating and ultimately blow it up (similar to resonance). I ended up destorying (I think) the Japanese fleet (or part of it) with orbital versions.

Virtue Tech
Virtue energy was the energy that infused everybody and reflected how nice (or nasty) they were. There were many uses for this, for a start if you hit people with positive energy and they were fundamentally negative then it hurt like hell. on the other hand if you hit somebody with the matching energy they felt very good. Entities (ie demons) were generally composed of negative energy and so smacking them with lots of positive energy would kill them. This is in fact what led to saturating the north pole with virtue energy when we needed to try to kill the 500m tall demons up there. Also a link between virtue energy and cricket ability was found so virtue energy could be used to improve your teams ability (which led Vlad to be a cricket coach for a year or two).

Time Machine
The time machine was my big scheme for the whole game. House Taurus had no money and clearly te best way to make money is to build a time machine. And then play the horses a lot. I got the basic premise working quite early on. I was able to create a bubble separate from the rest of the universe and then send it forward in time. When the machine was powered off it would snap back to the present. unfortunately I had heat problems that caused anything inside to cook.

Rather than solving this problem I just invented workarounds including writing sport reuslts on bits of stone or metal which would survive the heat in a way paper wouldn't. It wasn't that easy of course since the future was not determined. However, if I got the results 100 times I could find out the actual odds of the horses winning and compare them to the odds given by bookies and win the money. It was great.

I was always very conscious of not creating any paradoxes that could rip apart the fabric of space and time which is why I got particularly upset when another inventor, also working on a time machine, went back in time and one of his colleagues fred joan of Arc from the stake she was being burnt on.


There were a lot of other things invented but off the top of my head those are the ones I remember. Some of my inventions failed miserably, others ended up taking on a life of their own and terrorising the seas (the russian fleet was upgraded with entity enhanced steam engines).

The great thing about Vlad is the amount I enjoyed playing him. The mad scientist is something I dearly love being a bit of a scientist and not being tied down to real world physics. I used to write huge turnsheets, stretching at times to ten pages and often giving sarah (my ST) the most horrendous headaches as she tried to understand what the hell I was on about. However, she did a damn good job and I loved every minute of it. :)

I often thing about re-running a vlad like character in another game, I almost did it recently but the setting wasn't really right. I wonder how much affect I had on other characters too. I worked for anybody that asked me to, and didn't screw over many people. I had bitter rivals in my house and I had some good friends elsewhere. I was manipulative and selfish but when it came down to it I saved the world at least once and tried to save it from some of the other doomsday machines too.

And what happened to Vlad after the game? Well, his time machine was actually finished and perfected using some very ropey paradox inducing techniques (send time bubbles into future and get the plans for the machine from 40 years time, then I get 40 years up on my research, repeat until workable time machine is invented). It is possible I went on to start a time travel policing service, especially after getting in a lot of trouble from a bunch of time travel policemen (who it is possible were from an organisation I was going to set up). I might have just settled back and enjoyed myself as one of the most powerful members of the illuminati, I might have just retired to inventing and building with all the resources i then had at my disposal. Whatever happened Vlad lived happy ever after, I'm fairly sure of that. :)

Anyway, sorry to have bored you with those reminiscences, its just that inferno is one of my favourite freeforms I have played.