ENTITY 06: EXCESS REALITY SQUAD

Art by D4rk

This elite special ops unit is trained to contain hyper-real objects and persons. The world is mostly fake, so any object that is 70% real or more can cause extreme damage to the fabric of the universe. In the presence of these hyper-real objects, fictional concepts begin to break down. The fundamental storytelling instinct that humans use in order to understand and interpret the universe begins to disintegrate. Reality Exposure begins to set in.

In the first stage of Reality Exposure, subjects begin losing their understanding of basic fictional concepts - like The Economy, or Nationality. 

In advanced stages they no longer understand more important concepts like Truth, Beauty, Love, or Human Connection. 

In the terminal stage, they completely lose the concept of the "Human Being". They are no longer a Human - just a collection of organs, flesh and brain matter. The exposure continues until finally they lose even that. They become nothing but molecules, randomly vibrating through space. 

Physically, nothing changes. But no-one who looks at them would recognise them as a human at all.

Art by mulo

The excess reality squad is formed from moderately high-reality individuals, taken from their families and trained from birth. Persons chosen for the squad must be at least 50% real, allowing them to withstand exposure to high-reality objects for longer than the average citizen. They wear gasmasks and hazmat suits customised with bold, colourful, over-the-top designs that represent dominant cultural concepts, to reduce the impact of reality exposure. They use sensors to detect areas of dangerously high reality and shut them down.

They also have the duty of tracking Wei and other high-reality individuals. These individuals pay little attention to low-reality weapons or bullets, and so the squad keeps a cache of high-reality weaponry on hand in case any of these individuals ever need to be neutralised. Their best weapon is an antique flintlock pistol with 3 remaining bullets - at 65%, 72%, and 81% reality. Other relics include an old pocketwatch (79%), a copy of the oxford dictionary (82%) and their prized possession, a battered stop sign (89%). 

Any of these objects would theoretically be capable of dealing incredible damage if it hit a low-reality person. However, holding them for a prolonged period would cause terminal dissasociation to even the toughest squad member, so they're only used in the most dire circumstances. Until they are needed, they are kept in obsidian containment boxes lined with pulp fiction.

Art by mulo

ENTITY 06: EXCESS REALITY SQUAD

Danger: Medium.

Number Appearing: 3-5.

AC: 16. HD: 3.
Attacks: Surreal Rifles (d8). Reality-warp Grenades (d12 blast). Gravity Cannon (d6, intensifies the gravity of whatever it's pointed at. Target gets 2 - 6 times heavier depending on setting). 20% chance of carrying d4 Truth Stabilisers (See below). 40% chance of transporting a contained High Reality Object or Person.

Surreal Rifles

The squad uses specially prepared bullets or grenades that lower the reality field of anything they hit. If used against a high-reality entity, they lower the entity's reality field enough for it to be injured. If the bullets hit anything with a normal reality threshold (like a human) the damage is catastrophic. Roll on this table when you're hit by one.

1. The wound warps into abstract shapes which vibrate, dripping with ichor.
2. One of your limbs slowly begins dripping away like candlewax and forming abstract patterns in the dirt.
3. Your body warps to form a gigantic hole around the area hit by the bullet. Strangely, you are still able to function with the hole in your body.
4. Your mind begins to bleed into other dimensions. The difference between the past, the present and the future begins to blur for you. You are not sure whether this is actually happening, or if it's a premonition, or a memory of the past.
5. The wound begins to form writhing twisted animal-creatres which split off from you and skitter away.
6. The amount of space you take up begins to fluctuate. One moment you are enormous, you fill the room. The next moment you are tiny.
7. You become stretched out on the Z-Axis, like your body is a piece of taffy that has been violently pulled upwards.
8. You find it hard to interface with physical objects. You jitter in and out of the floor, no-clipping like a video-game glitch.
9. You begin to lose sense of your own personhood. You think you are the other people in the room. You take actions as if you are them.
10. Your body in the area of the wound slowly turns inside-out. You are still able to function somehow.

Truth Stabilisers

Tripods with a bristling machine-egg of wires and nodules on top. They vibrate and hum softly, emitting a dark violet corona. These machines stabilise existence by setting what is "True" in a 20ft area. They enforce basic rules of reality (For example, gravity points towards the earth). These are incredibly expensive and only used rarely in the most catastrophic reality breaks. 

A skilled technician (or a PC who passes a difficult skill check) can alter the settings to change basic rules of reality in a 20ft area. For example, you could reverse gravity within 20 feet. This can have ruinous effects, especially when weilded by an untrained person. They take about 10 minutes to set up in an area. 

Here are some ideas for basic truths that you could change with a truth stabiliser. All effects only reach 20 feet. 

1. The force and power of gravity is 9.807 m/s² on earth.
2. Gravity points towards the earth.
3. Human bodies are made of flesh, blood, and water. 
4. Art is not alive. Inanimate objects do not move or have sentient thought.
5. Solid objects cannot pass through each other. 
6. Light travels at 299 792 458 m/s. 
7. It is impossible to make a thermodynamic process that is perfectly efficient (ie, a perpetual motion machine). 
8. Free will is an illusion. 
9. Humans must breathe air to survive.
10. An object in motion stays in motion. An object at rest stays at rest. 

The more powerful the basic truth you attempt to change, the more power the Truth Stabiliser will need to function. Great truths would need an entire dedicated power plant to break for a sustained period of time. When misused, Truth Stabilisers can easily malfunction and warp reality out of control.

Some theories suggest that the basic physical laws of Earth are maintained by a giant Truth Stabiliser, somewhere deep below the tectonic plates.