(With thanks for the original word to RedDan, who might I add has absolutely
no idea what I needed it for, and I had absolutely no urge to explain to him
why I needed it when I asked for his permission to use it, so just bear that in
mind, OK?)
One of the problems that Vaputech's
Division of Ethereal Engineering (Motto: "What happens to a dream
deferred?" "I don't know,
Timmy... let's find out!") has always had with the Marches is
that most things there don't explode properly.
This is not to say that the Marches are
free of explosions, of course.
Explosions occur there all the time.
The problem is that they aren't useful explosions; in fact, most
of them seem to be little more than a particularly energetic and dramatic
backdrop to the action. Pretty to look
at, in other words, but coming up a bit short in the property damage
department. As for importing explosives...
well, trying to get a physical item into a state where it can interact
meaningfully with a nonphysical locale usually takes so long that by the time
you're done (assuming that you succeed), it's invariably too late anyway.
Alas, while it would be fair to say
that Vaputech's staff has a disproportionate amount of gibbering madmen among
its numbers, it must be unfortunately conceded that many of them are smart gibbering
madmen. One of them eventually had the
bright idea that, in the Marches, there was actually no reason why the phrase
'an explosive idea' couldn't be literally true. From there it was simply a matter of setting up the appropriate
surveying, mining and refining facilities in the Marches.
"Trinitrotolumeme" (it's a pun, not an actual description of the stuff's molecular structure) is essentially composed of ideas given tangible form, if that makes any sense when you're talking about the Marches. These ideas - essentially, clichés - are individually acquired and Dream-shaped into a form convenient for transport, then brought to Vaputech's special refineries in the Marches; there, they are separated, sorted out and worked into a dark gray putty that is shaped into standardized bars. Every standard bar of this explosive causes 1d6 points of Mind Hits to everything within range - and 'within range' in this case is defined as 'in the same Domain or dreamscape' - when detonated. That's bad. What's worse is that any Discord generated by this will be of a type dictated by the explosive (Vaputech's Department of Occupational Safety [motto: "No. We do exist. Really. We've got a letterhead and everything. See?"] emphatically recommends against mixing two or more types of Trinitrotolumeme, especially when it's done in the presence of a member of Vaputech's Department of Occupational Safety ). What's worst of all is that, should the master of a particular Domain should be dispersed by the damage, the Domain will permanently take on a negative Feature as a result, of a type consistent with the type of Trinitrotolumeme used, with one exception: Domains with the Doomed Feature whose master is so dispersed tend to rapidly acquire the Blown To Hell And Back Feature instead.
This item is a fairly serious
problem. It was probably inevitable
that Vaputech would devise a method by which materials indigenous to the
ethereal plane could be made explosive; what was not inevitable (but highly
regrettable) was that the method would actually be practical. Trinitrotolumeme is not difficult to make
and is highly reliable. However,
thankfully the cliché "Fast.
Cheap. Good. Pick any two" remains True even in the
Marches: it takes thousands of individual cliches to make up even one standard
unit of the stuff, so the bottleneck for production remains getting the raw
material to the refineries in the first place.
Needless to say, both the Host and... well, most of the ethereal plane,
really... makes it a point to disrupt the process as often and as vehemently as
is practical, or possibly even a bit more than that.
Cost: 6 points per standard bar. Minimum.