Things from the Flood

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While the Forerunners could not find a cure for Flood infection, the Composer was designed to eliminate its effects by extracting a Flood victim's consciousness into digital form and then re-inserting it in an artificially-constructed body devoid of infection. However, the Forerunners never perfected this process and any imprinted bodies died soon after, [73] due to the Flood somehow resuming the infection in the new body. The Forerunners attempted to use various means to slow down this process, including a specially designed harness of mesh and wires, which would apparently counteract the infection. The victim would retain most or all of their mental faculties and self-control, although their body would continue to be mutated by the Flood. This countermeasure was only temporary, however, and the victim would eventually either decay and die or be fully subsumed by the Flood. Several Forerunners on Installation 07 were subjected to this countermeasure. [74] [75] You get to decide how your character leaves the game. So let’s just say its a fight that leads the Teen into getting one scar too many then you have some options on how to roleplay the aftermath. You have the option of having the PC found dead by their friends, or a sort-of rescued and taken to hospital with time enough to say goodbye but not pull through, or perhaps even a softer scenario where they survive but are so severely spooked that they and their family move out of the country. Australia is conducting an investigation of Brisbane’s development decisions after the Brisbane River overran its banks and flooded the country’s capital in 2011. Streets, downtown business districts, and bridges were destroyed. Water reached the third row of seats in the city’s rugby stadium. The flood waters were high enough at two meters (six feet) that bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) were spotted swimming up major streets.

This ultimate Flood form serves as the coordinating hive mind of the Flood. While they vary in size and complexity, at their height Graveminds can engulf entire worlds. Spores are minuscule airborne Flood forms that serve to spread infection and suffocate potential hosts who inhale them. Floods can also devastate an environment. The most vulnerable regions are those that experience frequent floods and those that have not flooded for many years. In the first case, the environment does not have time to recover between floods. In the second case, the environment may not be able to adapt to flood conditions.

Tropes in Things from the flood include:

The Flood are also vulnerable to temperatures on the other end of the spectrum. plasma weapons will easily burn through Flood tissue; the Forerunners incorporated directed-energy weapons into their Sentinels, indicating that they had determined high-enthalpy energy weapons to be the best 'basic countermeasure' available to fight the Flood. Known examples of Forerunner personal weaponry appear to be geared toward the disintegration of organic matter, [78] also reflecting the Flood's vulnerability to extremely high temperatures. The UNSC has taken advantage of this weakness as well, making heavy use of flamethrowers in their engagements with the Flood. Unlike in Halo: Combat Evolved, shooting one Pod infector will not result in the rest of the swarm exploding with it. However, Pod infectors are encountered in proportionally smaller numbers in comparison to Halo: Combat Evolved. The Flood grew exponentially, spreading from system to system with the intent to infect the Forerunner population, not to wage war with Forerunner battle groups which were poorly adapted to such strategy. As the Flood spread further, entire planetary biospheres were converted to Flood biomass. These planet-sized key minds, locuses of Gravemind intelligence that began to outcompete the Forerunners through raw computational might alone. [23] [24] The logic plague continued to take on more adaptive forms, defying all defenses the Forerunners devised and eventually spreading itself between AIs and data networks. As the Forerunners relied significantly on AI automation in combat, this severely hindered Forerunner military efforts against the Flood. Adding to these difficulties was the disturbing revelation that the Flood was capable of manipulating Precursor technology: towards the close of the war, the Flood began to appropriate Precursor megastructures such as the star roads, wielding the previously-inert strands to pummel Forerunner planets and naval forces. This ability was a result of the Flood's Precursor origins; being corrupted Precursors, they could tap into neural physics and activate Precursor artifacts. The proliferation of high-level key mind nodes also enabled the Flood to use the Precursors' neural physics-based superluminal transit, which in turn encumbered Forerunner slipspace travel. Towards the end of the infestation, Forerunners noted that space itself seemed to become hostile and unpleasant from mere perception, an artefact of Flood-based Neural Physics. [23] The Halos' firing [ edit ] Main article: Great Purification While baseline neurological assimilation is the same regardless of host species, the Flood infection process includes physiological transformations, which vary depending on the host and the Flood's present need for specialized combatants.

To facilitate melee combat, combat forms generate tentacles and claw-like structures, which protrude from the host's arms. Generally, a single arm develops into a clawed appendage, while the other retains the capacity to manipulate objects, such as firearms. The rapid growth of these structures tends to push aside and break apart the host's hands and forearms. Of the top of my head, I can think of a dozen gamer friends who’d love this RPG. I can think of one or two who’ll not take to it, though, and this latter group tends to get more enjoyment from the science of designing characters to score maximum mechanical game bonuses. Dams control the natural flood plains of lakes and rivers. Hydrologists may intentionally flood areas to prevent damage to the dam or increase the water supply for agriculture, industry, or consumer use. Floods occur naturally. They are part of the water cycle, and the environment is adapted to flooding. Wetlands along river banks, lakes, and estuaries absorb flood waters. Wetland vegetation, such as trees, grasses, and sedges, slow the speed of flood waters and more evenly distribute their energy. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the wetlands along the Mississippi River once stored at least 60 days of flood water. (Today, Mississippi wetlands store only 12 days of flood water. Most wetlands have been filled or drained.)When floodwaters recede, affected areas are often blanketed in silt and mud. This sediment can be full of nutrients, benefiting farmers and agribusinesses in the area. Famously fertile flood plains like the Mississippi River valley in the American Midwest, the Nile River valley in Egypt, and the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East have supported agriculture for thou sands of years. Yearly flooding has left millions of tons of nutrient-rich soil behind. Engineers may also intentionally flood areas to prevent the possibility of worse flooding. When heavy rains caused the Souris River to flood in 2011, for example, the water level nearly reached the top of the Alameda Reservoir in Oxbow, Saskatchewan, Canada. Faced with the prospect of catastrophic flooding if the entire dam broke, engineers chose to release huge amounts of water. The reservoir remained intact, but the release contributed to massive floods in both Saskatchewan and the U.S. city of Minot, North Dakota. If a player is wielding an energy sword or shotgun, a combat form may retreat. They will not do this if a player is wielding other weapons.

It’s not always possible to prevent floods, but it is often possible to minimize flood damage. Structures around rivers, lakes, and the sea can contain flood waters. Levees, runoff canals, and reservoirs can stop water from overflowing. Once a host of any organic/sentient species has been infected, they can develop into a combat form. Their skin is more textured due to the improved graphics engine, giving the Flood a more realistic and necrotic look. The faces of the human forms are also more readily recognizable. A lot of what was going on with the particle accelerators, or loops as they would be called, ended up being classified, but people living in the areas around them started reporting strange events. Creatures from different time periods appeared, robots were acting weird and all manner of events happened. Most of this could never be verified, and would remain in the realm of fodder for the tabloids at best. The loops were still seen as a force for good, something that would help advance humanity’s understanding of the world, and any reports of wrongdoings could easily be brushed off as if not outright fabrications then at least overexaggerations. The Flood Super Cell physically resembles both neuron and glial cells in structure, with a central cell body and many tendril-like, branching structures.Combat forms have more tentacles than before; they resemble spikes rather than flexible appendages. One of the many things I like about Things from the Flood is its native and elegant system to let GMs toggle up the threat and danger levels. When the core mechanic is merely a bunch of d6s with a single 6 being needed then it straightforward to layer over complexities. TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Rather than corpses reanimating themselves, a Pod infector will enter the body, then reanimate it, even if the form was just eliminated. The Flood's AI routines in Halo: Combat Evolved were originally intended to be "every bit as complicated as the Covenant", but full implementation was prevented by time constraints. [84]

For thousands of years, people have tried to prevent and control floods. Yu the Great, for example, is a legendary figure in Chinese history. Around 2100 B.C.E., Yu developed a way to control the devastating floods of the Yellow River. Yu studied data from previous Yellow River floods, noting where the flow was the strongest and flood plains were most vulnerable. Instead of damming the river, Yu dredged it—he and a team of engineers made river channels deeper to accommodate more water. Yu also oversaw the construction of numerous irrigation canals, which diverted the flow of the river’s mainstem during times of flooding. As flood water spreads, it carries disease. Flood victims can be left for weeks without clean water for drinking or hygiene. This can lead to outbreaks of deadly diseases like typhoid, malaria, hepatitis A, and cholera. This happened in 2000, as hundreds of people in Mozambique fled to refugee camps after the Limpopo River flooded their homes. They soon fell ill and died from cholera, which is spread by unsanitary conditions, and malaria, spread by mosquitoes that thrived on the swollen river banks. However, residents were not prepared for the additional flood from an entire lake. Located in nearby mountains, Lake Conemaugh was a reservoir created by the South Fork Dam. The lake was an exclusive retreat for members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which owned the dam. Lake Conemaugh contained 20 million tons of water. Halo Wars, campaign level Relic Approach: " Re'gish Wamik: "What if the infection defiles the relic?" " Each character is also given an iconic item, something that’s special to them and represents who they are. Someone who wants to be a bit of a trouble maker could very well have a skateboard they take good care of, while a vain character could always carry around a makeup kit, it’s really up to each player to decide what their iconic item is, but it can be used in an appropriate situation to give you a boost. Said makeup kit could for an example help with a charm roll, or the skateboard could help someone get away at high speed on a flat road.Key minds are nodes for the Flood's collective consciousness, ranging from mobile coordinating forms to compound minds spanning entire planets. [24] Juggernaut [ edit ] Main article: Flood Juggernaut