The Book of Knots - Jags

Book of Knots - The Symposium
Name: Alien. Type Gray Whirl
PHY 09 STR 09 BLD 08 CON 10
REF 12 COR 14 REA 12 AGI 12
INT 13 RES 13 MEM 13 WIL 13
DP 6 Minor Major Critical
Wounds 2 6 12
74
To Hit 15-
To Be Hit -2
Armor none
Damage Special
The Grays are much like the Greens, but taller and a little stronger. They are the result of a
Green experiment in the early 70s that was supposed to produce a more “reliable” format. It
did––while only the most extreme humans can be converted into Greens, most people who are
reasonably selfish, proud, and a little smarter than normal can be successfully converted into
Grays.
To the outside world, Grays and Greens seem pretty similar (both are insane), but they find
each other repulsive as well.
Grays are especially offended by humans who display strong, honest emotion. They express
this offense as “curiosity” and seek to “explorer and examine” the “specimen.” They track
“vectors” who are “emoting” and abduct them when they are alone and vulnerable.
Gray’s experiments usually consist of exposing the subject to a very convincing hallucination
that adapts to the subject’s experiences to push his or her buttons––often reliving trauma or
abuse, or finding one’s self sudden back at the end of the last horrid relationship. The effect
is not unlike a horrible nightmare that is remembered in vivid detail when the subject is
released.
The experiment must be repeated several times, and subjects are usually quivering wrecks by
the end, usually choosing suicide over continued mental torture. Since they will not remember
the abduction, they are usually not clear on how to protect themselves (the Grays are
unwilling to risk exposure, so being surrounded by friends is a pretty good defense; checking
into a sleep clinic where one would experience 24-hour observation would work also).
In most cases, the subject is broken and is finally abducted and formatted. In some cases,
however, the experiment is surprisingly therapeutic, and the subject will not only overcome
the trauma (healing), but may even remember elements of the abduction or develop enough of
an understand of what is going on to take action against her tormentors.
In rare cases, those humans have developed strong psychic powers––something that horrifies
both the Grays and the Greens.
Caretaker-instructed humans
(Project Pagan agents)
operating on Chessboard Zero
in concert with the Rational
Actors on Chessboard One.
The Rational Actors have
developed a process where
(suitable) subjects’ Shadows
are strongly linked to their
casters (the real person
on Chessboard Zero) and
abducted for the process of
Extraction. To the subject this
feels like a real (well, surreal)
abduction but there is almost
never any evidence of it (as it
is really their Shadow that is
abducted on Chessboard One
or Two).
They are taken to the
Extraction Theater where
horrific procedures began
the process of “separating”
an Alien Whirl from the
subject’s Shadow. This
involves lurid half-memories
of mutation, of fleshy,
membranous cancers growing
up and bursting from one’s
stomach, of terrible devices
inserted into the flesh, and
other things (the implantation
and removal of eggs in female
subjects).
When Extraction is complete,
there is a new Alien Whirl
on Chessboard One, separate from its host. It is a fragile thing: it
will not live long. That is when the person is ready for “Phase 2 final
processing.” This is when the human arm of Pagan moves in and abducts
the subject back into reality. Real machines are used and physiological
and psychological techniques are employed to “open the subject’s mind
like a flower.” The Alien Shadow, on Chessboard One, then “inhabits
the host,” causing the physical body itself to mutate and the subject to
complete the final process: to become alienated.
These subjects (now appearing as mutations with expanded heads,
shrunken spines and spindly arms and legs—the blood vessels of the eye
burst to become a uniform black) are beings of perfect logic and a deep