maskormenace | text; ID reads Trevor Zeitlan

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text; ID reads Trevor Zeitlan

Here's one for you. What do you call a man who is still three weeks from his doctorate when the multiverse kidnaps him? Mister.

In any case, hi, I'm Trevor; Mr. Zeitlan to some of you. I was recently employed to a posting at Xavier's, and as you can imagine there's not a whole lot of accessible material on my subject, which covers abilities of every kind. I'm putting together an encyclopedia of powers based on my extensive experience in my own world and what I learn here, but there's all sorts of teaching materials I'm having to fake as I go along. Incidentally, if anyone would like to help with that, I have afternoon office hours at the Institute, and you're welcome to drop in. I teach mornings.

Okay, so killing two birds with one stone, I have a couple of questions; if you could take a moment to reply to them, or just answer one, you'd help me out no end.

First of all, what was your first experience of using your power? Was it intentional or accidental? Any details about how you felt, or the consequences of using it would be helpful, as I'd like to use other people's experiences to build confidence in my students.

Second question is a little bit of fun, really: If you didn't have the powers given to you by the porter, which abilities would you like to have had instead?

[OOC: If anyone wants to handwave or plan classes/sessions, or teacher/teacher interactions with "Trevor", throw me a PM. These can be backdated to assumed CR if you like ("Trevor" comes off as knowledgeable, but there's an edge of creepiness to him that anyone could pick up on, and no, not just because he has giant eyebrows though that doesn't help his case one bit.]

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If I roll six sixes in a row I'm bloody well looking for whether the die is loaded, yeah.

And you'd be right to consider it. In this case, though, it isn't so straightforward, because DNA itself is such a complex sample of possibilities. You could say that the human genome itself has a tendency toward certain mutations - polydactyly, webbed toes, third nipples, to name a few - and the implication would be that the probability is more slanted toward changing in a certain way. Loaded, as you put it. Mathematicians call it stochastic convergence.

Well...I guess just what I want to know is whether there could be something in the environment that causes it.

There easily could be. Environmental factors can trigger mutation by deforming or disrupting DNA. Easily.
We didn't find any evidence of environmental factors in our study, but we hadn't been working on it for long. Besides, what happens in one world isn't necessarily the same in others. That said, the prevalence of genetic abilities in alternate universes would support the theory of convergent evolution--maybe sped up in some cases.
Do you think there are environmental factors here, or are you talking about personal experience?

Well, it wouldn't make any sense for there to be environmental factors HERE, would it? Since half of us come in with powers already anyway.

I did wonder! Maybe you knew something I didn't.

Where I'm from originally, though - there does seem to be something like that going on.

What sort of environmental factors are we talking?

Magic. The concentration of magic in my city meant that some of us ended up born with the ability to resist it, or see through it, or sense it.

From an evolutionary perspective, that's a very interesting parallel. With such a concentration were you able to measure any residual effect, like radiation?

Again, sorry, I don't really know what you're asking.

Well you say that there's a high concentration of magic in your city. That makes it seem like you can measure it somehow.

Oh...I don't know. I guess there might be a way to do it. But it's more that, you know, 300 years ago we only had some magicians, and then magicians started taking over the country and started using magic to run everything, and magic was everywhere, and people started being born with these abilities.

I understand. In that case there could be something in the air, sure, or it could as easily be that some genetic propensity attached to the non-magical gene has trickled through. It happens more often than you think, and it's definitely not random. I can explain it to you if you like. Do you know much about dogs, or horses?

Not really, no. I've seen them both before, if that's enough. Though never horses up close.

Let's just jump right into it. When we talk about genes, we have some which are dominant, and some which are recessive. That's the simple version. For the sake of argument, we'll say that the magic ability is dominant, one parent can have a magic or non magic baby. I get that this might not be the case, but for the sake of explaining the process, just stick with me. As with every science the truth is usually much more complex.
Anyway, now say that the original magic users, whoever they were, also possessed a gene for sensing magic, a recessive gene that was never expressed so passed on silently. We'd call that person a carrier, just like you would if they had a virus and didn't show the signs.
When two carriers - users or magic or not - then had children together, then those hidden genes - magic sensing - might finally express itself. The amount that you're seeing it happening would make sense with that kind of model, as generations intermingle. Someone who sensed magic would only need that one gene to come down to them from both their family lines, and have a parent or great grandparent or ancestral grandparent in common with each other.
As you breed for one thing - and I know we're talking about people here, but affluence does have its effect in our choice of partners - you inevitably get genes that come along for the ride, like for example spotted dogs that suffer from liver failure, or horses whose color is linked to the breed's propensity toward corneal detachment.
This whole thing much easier to explain with two different colored apples, just so you know.

Oh - but magic isn't genetic. It comes with study, and anyone can do it. Besides which, magicians aren't even allowed to have kids. To prevent dynasties like they had back in Italy.

Oh that's
In that case disregard everything I said.
Wanting to explain everything with science, right?
I guess we're back at magic influencing mutations, in the case of your magic sensing? Is that what you do, by the way?

No. It would have been useful if I did. Back home, magic couldn't hurt me, and here that's changed so that I can suppress others' powers, too. Anyway, it's not bad to want to explain everything with science, and I'm grateful that you're trying. It's a really interesting perspective to get.

Is that all you have? We call it power nullification.

Yeah? Sorry if it's unimpressive.

No, just unusual. Two or three is usually more common, I've found, unless you had them before. In my world it was one power each, end of.

Oh. Sorry, I thought that sounded sort of dismissive. Anyway, yeah, that's all I've got. It's all I really need, anyway - going out and being heroic isn't really my thing.

That's probably wise. It's more of a vocation anyway. I'm not much of a hero myself.

Aren't you new here?

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