The Entropy Effect

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We have detected a level 4 reality failure at 54.97565° N, -1.610546° E.

Local Entropy levels have now reached 43 and are climbing. Echelon 1 through 3 reality anomalies are now occurring spontaneously, suspected Echelon 4 event occurrence. Reality Fracture believed imminent.

All reality repair teams in the area respond immediately. This is not a drill. All reality repair teams in the area respond immediately.

Multiple Cassandra series Entropy Stalkers have been dispatched from mother ship via Astral Gates to co-ordinate emergency reality repair attempts. Reality fracture believed imminent. This is not a drill.

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What is “The Entropy Effect” RPG?

The Entropy Effect, or TEE for short, is a modern era, sci-fi, horror tabletop RPG which deals with the fluid nature of reality and the idea that reality can be 'bent' or changed in strange and often disturbing ways by forces beyond our control.

The player characters in TEE are “Entropy Stalkers”, the products of alien genetic technology, sent to Earth to hunt down the escaped products of other alien genetic tampering and to repair reality where it has been damaged or warped. Wherever reality begins to warp and strange, inexplicable events begin to occur, Entropy Stalkers will be found, sooner or later, trying to return the world to it's natural order.

A Secret History

In addition to the history we know, or may learn about in schools, universities or books, there is another, secret, history which ties our world and the worlds beyond our solar system,and indeed beyond our reality, together.

This secret history is, in part, the history of an alien race called the Gubulon, a star-fairing race of nomadic wanderers who achieved interstellar travel while mankind was still travelling by horse and sail.

Why the Gubulon wander through the galaxy on vast hive ships is a matter of some conjecture and is not dealt with here, suffice to say that they do and that they posses advanced technology and interstellar space travel. In addition to their high technology, the Gubulon also possess impressive psychic powers, harnessed by their ancestors long before the species took to the stars.

Some time ago the Gubulon began an ill fated series of genetic experimentations in the field of psychic-genetic research during which they attempted, successfully, to isolate the genetic sequences that gave them psychic powers. Combining this knowledge with their knowledge of gene-splicing and genetic engineering they made the mistake of trying to develop the psychic abilities of certain animal species taken from planets they had encountered on their journey. This leg of the experiment was a disaster, and one that would tie the history of Earth and the Gubulon together for generations to come.

Not possessed of the higher reasoning capabilities and control that is the mark of sapient species such as humans and the Gubulon, the animal species that the Gubulon experimented on were unable to control the psychic powers they were given as a result of the Gubulon genetic tampering. What happened next, was something the Gubulon had not foreseen (Ironically, given that at least a portion of the Gubulon species are precognatives). The uncontrolled psychic energy that bleed off from the experimental animals began to warp the fabric of reality and of space-time itself. Strange events that bent, or in some cases even broke, the laws of psychics began to occur wherever these animals gathered or were held for long periods. As the evidence gathered that indicated the uncontrolled psychic energy was damaging reality, a warning to discontinue the experiments spread across the Gubulon fleet – far flung across the galaxy as it was. On board one vessel, a vessel that was passing through a remote part of the spiral arm of he Milky way, the order was given to destroy all the experiential samples at once.

As the captive animals were systematically destroyed, those that were yet to meet their fate panicked, and the elevated levels of emotional agitation caused a massive spike in the amount of uncontrolled psychic energy released in one moment.

The resulting entropy event was catastrophic. It punched a whole through reality that crippled the ship and ripped it apart, flinging it's component parts through space and through alternative dimensions in the first ever recorded level 5 Entropy event.

At first the Gubulon believed there were no survivors of the destroyed hive-ship, but slowly they began to realise their error. A nearby planet, the third from it's sun, and inhabited by a sapient race on the verge of space flight, began to show worrying signs of strange reality bending events that mirrored those experienced in the Gubulon labs prior to the catastrophic reality failure. Without a doubt some of the experimental subjects had inexplicably survived and were now at large on the planet. Worse still, a single transponder signal from the planet's surface rang out across the stars – parts of the destroyed hive ship must also have reached the alien world of Sol 3, or as it was most commonly known by it's own inhabitants “Earth”.

A half dozen hive-ships responded and arrived in the Sol-System, hiding on the dark side of the various astronomical bodies there and sending a few intrepid teams down to the planets surface to try and deal with the situation, capturing or killing the escaped experimental subjects and trying to undo the damage done to the local reality matrix where they could. Their alien appearance however, made it imperative they try to remain hidden from the local inhabitants, who would react with fear and often violence to anything they didn't understand or which seemed sufficiently alien. The Gubulon were aware that their own appearance must seem monstrous to the indigenous species, just as the indigenous ape-like sapient species seemed frighteningly unfamiliar to them. Hence a new plan was concocted. The Gubulon would collect genetic material of the local species and would begin cloning them at once – splicing in some of their own genetic material and tinkering with their gene-code to create a species that would be almost indistinguishable from the native humans without close medical or genetic scrutiny. These clones they would then train to hunt the escaped experiential subjects and their offspring, and to repair reality as needed. Unlike the initial animal subjects, the higher functioning sapient minds of the humans would allow control over the psychic powers they would need to be implanted with to complete their tasks.

The plan was that as the new clones – to be known as “Entropy Stalkers”, were made ready, the use of Gubulon reality repair and hunter teams would be fazed out and replaced with Entropy Stalker teams that should blend in more easily with the indigenous sapient species.

By 1993 (Local dating) almost all Gubulon were removed from the planet Sol 3 and were replaced by human-clone Entropy Stalkers. More teams would continue to be added as needed and within 10 years over 100 teams of Entropy Stalkers were active on the planet. The attrition rate of Entropy -Stalkers was, however, climbing. This alarming turn of events seemed to have at least two separate root causes. The first was that some ES teams were falling foul of local dangers, from hostile civilian organisations or being killed in war zones, to top secret government programs that had mistaken the alien origins of the clones to indicate some malicious intent. Fortunately the majority of the indigenous population remained ignorant of the idea of alien clones amongst them, as both the Gubulon and the few governmental organisations to have uncovered their existence sought to keep their existence a secret. The second root cause was that the presence of the escaped experiential subjects was causing “Entropy Mutants”, warped forms of indigenous life, to appear and these were often hostile to both Entropy Stalkers and other indigenous life forms. This coupled with the fact that the sexually mature subjects had begun to spawn, meaning that despite the best efforts of the Entropy Stalkers, the numbers of dangerous reality-warping alien animals on Earth simply wasn't dropping quickly enough.

“Star Beast”

The name “Star Beast” has become the generic term for the genetically modified alien animals and their offspring. Originally a slang term used by first generation Entropy Stalkers (and initially one the Gubulon did not approve of) the term has stuck to the point that even the Gubulon have begun to use it in place of the older “Test Subject”.

Although the original experiments were carried out on a range of alien life forms, the ones that were being developed aboard the vessel in the Sol system that exploded were primarily of a specific life form taken from a planet many light years from here. The Star Beasts that are lose on Earth are therefore almost all of the same Xenoform. The creature's have a four stage life cycle from hatchling to fully mature adult, with each stage being larger and more physically powerful than the previous one. Although the original species were Oviparous (egg laying) and required both a male and female to create viable hatchlings, an early Entropy Event seems to have warped a signifiant number (perhaps as many as a quarter) of the first generation so that they actually give birth to pre-fertilised eggs without the need of a fertilizing male. This entropy mutation seems to have been passed on to most of the offspring of those Star Beast to have developed the mutation. The result of which is several generation of Star Beast that can self fertilize, thus increasing the number of young born on Earth.

Entropy

The Gubulon refer to uncontrolled psychic energy which is released into the world as “Entropy” because of it's tendency to cause random and chaotic events and reactions. This should not be confused with the way the term is used in Thermodynamics.

Entropy begins as psychic energy, but when released in an uncontrolled manor (such ass by a “Star Beast”) it can cause strange effects. These effects range from an increase in the number of odd coincidences, to inexplicable events that defy the laws of physics, depending on how much entropy is released or builds up in an area.

Reality has a tendency to try and re-assert itself by dissipating entropy over time, but the presence of a “Star Beast” or certain entropy mutants can cause entropy to enter an area at a rate that exceeds the rate reality can dissipate it. If this continues for too long entropy can build up and an area can become increasingly subject to weird events. This is the cause of “hauntings”, poltergeist activity and preternatural occurrences and so on. Entropy Stalkers look out for reports of this kind of activity and investigate it, seeking to remove the cause and, where possible, undo the damage. If caught in time, the damage can be undone simply by removing the source of Entropy bleeding into the world at that point. If left too long, however, entropy stalkers with the psychic abilities of “Dissipate Entropy” or “Reality Repair” may be required to restore reality to it's normal state.

Entropy Stalkers

Entropy stalkers, having been cloned, trained and reared on a Gubulon vessel, have little contact with the Earth cultures they will eventually be deployed into until such time as they are deployed. What they know about Earth is learned from books, radio and television broadcasts. As such, many Entropy Stalkers will seem odd or eccentric to humans, at least initially. The longer an Entropy Stalker has been deployed on Earth the more they may be able to adjust their behaviour and personality to blend in, but the majority always seem, at best, a little eccentric.

Once ready to deploy, Entropy Stalkers are sent to Earth via stealth shuttles, or occasionally by Astral Gates and do not usually return to their star ships, they will probably never see their home ship again but are left on Earth permanently. A small percentage of Entropy Stalkers “Go Rogue” and cut contact with the Gubulon. This is rare, but it happens, and when it does, other Entropy Stalker's may be sent to destroy them, or at least to recover their equipment.

Hazards

Entropy Stalkers face a range of dangers and hazards during their quest to keep Earth's reality from collapsing, not least of which the entropic effects and weird occurrences they encounter, when reality begins to fail almost anything can happen. In addition to the entropic - often called “Supernatural” - events that the Entropy Stalkers will encounter, they face a number of enemies that present a range of difficulties and dangers.

Hostile Indigenous Peoples can be a major threat to the Entropy Stalkers and come in a range of varieties. From fearful locals who may see the strangers as a threat, especially if they learn of their alien nature, to the “Men in Black”. “Men in Black is a generic term given to certain top-secret government operatives who hunt out Entropy Stalkers in the mistaken belief they are a threat to mankind. Then there are the various warring or criminal factions the Entropy Stalker may encounter who may be an indirect threat. A number of Entropy Stalkers have been killed while operating in war zones, or in high crime areas where their investigative activities have been misconstrued by violent criminal gangs.

Entropy Mutants are among the most common enemies faced by entropy stalkers. While Star Beast tend to migrate after every metamorphosis into the next life stage, Entropy Mutants are usually indigenous life forms (animals and humans) that have been warped by entropy into something unnatural and often dangerous. Entropy mutants can often be “repaired” and returned to their original form by use of “Reality Repair” or “Dissipate entropy” and Entropy Stalkers are encouraged to do this where possible, where it is not possible, the mutants should be destroyed instead.

Entropy Entities Entropy entities are what happens when sufficient Entropy builds up in an area and then some how manifests a rudimentary intelligence or personality. Ghosts and Demons are examples of entropy entities. Entropy entities should always be destroyed.

Rogue Entropy Stalkers. Very occasionally an entropy stalker will go rogue, when this happens, other Entropy Stalkers will usually be sent to rectify the situation, pacifying or destroying the rogue. Some are captured and sent back to a Gubulon vessel and others are simply disarmed and left to live out their natural life on earth without their Gubulon made equipment or the support of their former alien masters. More often than not however, they are killed as the majority of rogues are dangerous.

Star Beast are the very cause of the problems on Earth, they are the source of he wild psychic energy that is leaking into the world and should be destroyed on sight. Star Beast of all 4 life stages can be found on Earth now as the original generation (a mixture of stage 1 and 2) have reached maturity or stage 4 while new generations have been born here. So far all attempts to “Reality Repair” a star beast have ended in failure, if one was to succeed, the animal could be returned to the Gubulon hive ships, in theory at least.

THE ENTROPY EFFECT

COMING IN OCTOBER 2017