Knocker King/Knockerraid
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Archived MAGI transmission
To: Zig Warden's Office <classified>
Subject: Jastronome Gerrard
Alright guys. No surprise, you're getting another super-powered prisoner from our end. Normally I'd just list what foci and ley-lines you need to keep this guy away from. Anything to keep him normalized.
The problem is the guy's already de-powered. We've had him in observational, hero-supervised lock down for a week like we do every other prisoner we process through here, to see what makes their powers tick and what methods you need to take to lock them down.
But this Gerrard guy doesn't have an ounce in him.
Better start from the beginning.
About 3 months ago DATA started losing low-level researchers. Not that they were going missing. It's that the spark just went out of them. They'd come to work and not have a single twist of inspiration or motivation in them. Yeah, I know. Sounds like any corporate drone.
But DATA employs and headhunts some of the best and brightest new minds to create weapons-grade defensive gear for the Rikti front-lines, among other things. When one of their people stops being inventive, it's a major red flag. These people are picked BECAUSE they're a wellspring of information and innovation. People like this aren't just supposed to turn into wage-slaves over night.
Take Patrick Himmel for instance. Brilliant guy, says his boss. Had some amazing ideas about 4 dimensional processor arrays that could possibly leave even biological based units like Arachnos in the dust in terms of pure brute power. Wet-ware grade power in pure silicon. It was seriously existential work. Something about quantum processors and Up Down sequencers. Not my bag, but his boss tells me Himmel would of done this work for FREE, just for the chance to actualize it.
Two weeks before we captured Gerrard, Himmel comes into work and sits his resignation down on his bosses desk. Says he's resigning. Says he's given up on this crazy idea of his and heading into practical work in the corporate sector. Says he's going to help them revise existing circuit layouts and get his head strait, time to grow up and out of research.
Himmel's boss said this was a 180 from how this guy normally was. He was normally one of those out there nerd-geeks who lived in their own little world, played with their own little universes in their minds. Seriously deep stuff. The boss says that light wasn't there the day Himmel turned in his resignation. Like someone had ripped it out of him. Pulled a bit of his soul out and there wasn't anything left there to fill it.
The boss blamed it on over-work and the pressure the New Rikti invasions were putting on DATA to produce working prototypes for the front lines. He told MAGI personnel they were losing people left and right because of it and he was really desperate to see what they could do to stop the hemorrhaging of personnel.
MAGI was called in to see if there was a curse in play or something. An entire department doesn't up and quit on what, for some, is a dream job position. But that was what was happening, and the higher ups in the Hero Corps were getting nervous.
Little stuff like this tends to get big quickly.
Of course, they were right. MAGI and GIFT psychics combed over the personnel that had recently resigned. They all had their own reasons....but every one of the mentalists said that there was something missing out of them. Something we don't really have a word for other than ambition....or drive. Maybe imagination. It was gone. The word they used was "fled the mortal shell".
They thought there might be a mental vampire in the department, though they'd never heard of a mental-leech that ate the hopes and dreams of scientists before.
This is where Gerrard comes in. He must of heard talk about this around the office water-cooler. He was working in DATA as a, get this, researcher. GIFT eventually found out he'd personally talked to and gotten into research debates with every single one of the personnel that was quitting DATA. This guy was brutal. He'd done research and publish findings that would of sunk, or at least humiliated each and everyone of these bright young stars of the departments. A researcher low-blow right to the ego.
But that doesn't normally take the soul out of a person. MAGI and GIFT pegged Gerrard as some sort of mental sink for creativity. Pulling it out of people with a good amount of it and absorbing it to fuel his own.
They went to nab this guy Gerrard on a friday and here's the real kicker.
No one who was in on the strike-force really remembers what HAPPENED.
Gerrard must of been ready for us...because there was a hell of a fight. We know that much from the aftermath and cleanup. He must be some sort of Omega level mentalist. Not even the Heros in on the bust really remember everything that happened. A few of them think the Clockwork were in on Gerrard's scheme. It would explain the holes in the ceiling, the scattered gears and blasted metal that were left once Gerrard was face down in the pavement and in metal shackles.
That's the really weird part. The shackles I mean. Normally we're using gravity restraints and earth-consuming curses to nail someone down to capture them, and here's this wild mentalist face down shivering like a baby in these plain metal shackles.
No ones even really sure why we had them on the guy. Just that he wasn't moving much, and that's all that mattered right then.
But now that we've HAD him, not even he really seems to understand what's going on. He knows his name, and thats -it-. It's like this guy hasn't been clocked into his own head for the past twenty years of his life. He remembers being a kid....he kinda remembers getting out of college, and then it's all a blank. Thinks he might of been a pilot before all this. Something about loving to fly.
But he's not giving off any of the usual mental activity of a mentalist. He's not registering on any of the gear you guys use to assess super-level offenders. He's telling the truth when he says he doesn't know why we found so much robotic scrap at the scene of the fight to subdue him. He's telling the truth when he says he doesn't even remember the FIGHT...and that fight took out half of the DATA research lab on floor three.
He's a blank now.
Something is really wrong with this guy
Keep your eye on him.
And whatever you do...and this is important. Really important. The entire point of the letter. The info I give you on every Zig prisoner we suspect of being a magic-based problem. I -know- it's important, I know it's the key, and I don't know why. (Which -really- worries me, let me tell you. I have mental wards in places I didn't know I had until I had them put up)
Don't take those shackles off him. Whatever you do. They're cold iron. Brittle as hell, and any super should be able to snap them in an instant. Whatever it is, we're pretty sure those brittle shackles are all that's keeping Gerrard from reactivating whatever he did back there in DATA.
We're pretty sure they're all that's keeping him contained...and we need it to stay like that until we have an idea of what the hell is going on with whatever he was doing.
I'll send you more word if we get some research worth posting to you
Regards,
Azuria
Transmission Ends
