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Thread: Question regarding the Founders

  1. #1
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    Question Question regarding the Founders

    looking for some opinions here.

    Citing Odo providing a sample of himself for Dr. Bashir, can a Founder, given enough time to prepare, generate enough mass to extrude gel from itself to simulate a body that when hit with a phaser, will resemble a Founder that was turned to ash?

  2. #2
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    I would think not. Basically Odo was giving the equivalent of a blood sample, not doubling his mass and severing it. Founders seem to ignore the conservation of mass and energy, but I would rule that at this sort of level it must remain a single entity. That is, it could become a 300 pound gorilla, but not a 150 pound guy with a duplicate. That's just taking it to ridiculous extremes. Trek tricorders are extremely sophisticated and would be able to distinguish just how much matter was there before being destroyed, and exactly what the composition was. You'd be better off looking at the TNG episode where the Romulan spy disguised herself as a Vulcan ambassador and faked her death by transporter accident, but even there Crusher was able to determine the truth by single-bit errors in the replicated tissue.

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    Thanks Owen, puts a kibosh on my idea for a plot twist, but not a huge one.

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    They just have to have access to a replicator and do some jiggery-pokery with a transporter. Not everyone has the script immunity and E-D's computers, like Crusher.

  5. #5
    I'd say it really depends on the phaser setting, how much they're expecting to find in the 'body' (Changeling-Martok exploded after getting hit fifty times, remember) and how much mass a Founder requires to continue to 'live.' When one of the Hundred are found they're seem to be pretty small, so it's possible that a Founder might be able to detach from any dead tissue and get away. I think it would make the most sense for that to work if the Founder is next to a grate or access tube to disappear into.

    EDIT: I don't think that a chunk of living Founder having oozed out of dead Founder tissue is something that would remain undiscovered after a forensic examination of the Founder's 'corpse,' though.
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    What i wanted to do was take the adventure "Ghosts of the past" from the LUG Planetary Adventures book, change the villains from Romulans to the Dominion, and have DR Tolas be a changeling instead of a disguised Romulans & when he kills T'suus, Vaporize the body, and have ashen remains of Founder Goo left in her place, to make the PC's believe that T'suus was a Founder. Most of the Adventure takes place in an abandoned complex on Minos

  7. #7
    Backing up for a second, how does T'suus recognize he's not Andorian if he doesn't get the skin infection?
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  8. #8
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    She would not necessarily discover he is not an Andorian, but would notice some inconsistencies in his research. Perhaps questioning why he is so fixated on weapons. Growing suspicious, T'suus investigates further, perhaps tripping Tolas up with questions regarding Andoria. Feeling that she is getting too close , Tolas murders her and would try to implicate her as a changeling to cover himself. especially when a Dominion Battlecruiser arrives.

    Alternatively, it could be Commander Bartok that gets too close as they are both focused on the same goals, and he not T'suus is murdered.

    Thoughts?

  9. #9
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    If the phaser was set to vapourise, there wouldn't be any ash left. At most, there would be some cellular residue burned into the deck and/or bulkhead. See the TNG episode Aquiel for an example. In my campaign, the players refer to the vapurise setting as the "Don't leave a body" setting, with good reason.

  10. #10
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    BTW that's setting 8 and above for a phaser and setting 5 and 6 for a disruptor. Any setting of 12 (vaporizing/exploding) and above on a phaser will leave virtually nothing of a humaniod sized target.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Karg View Post
    She would not necessarily discover he is not an Andorian, but would notice some inconsistencies in his research. Perhaps questioning why he is so fixated on weapons. Growing suspicious, T'suus investigates further, perhaps tripping Tolas up with questions regarding Andoria. Feeling that she is getting too close , Tolas murders her and would try to implicate her as a changeling to cover himself. especially when a Dominion Battlecruiser arrives.

    Alternatively, it could be Commander Bartok that gets too close as they are both focused on the same goals, and he not T'suus is murdered.

    Thoughts?
    Well, here's the thing—the Founder can cover up the death of any of them for a short time by assuming their appearance. It's a big, spooky facility, and they're split up turning on systems or searching for the Device. If the Founder brings one of their cool hijacking devices (like the one from 'The Adversary') to take over the Minosian robot control systems, they might also be able to spoof a conversation with a dead team member over the comm. Maybe they could also use the ubiquitous holoprojectors to create sightings of dead crewmembers that the PCs can never catch up with.

    Now that I think about it, this might be more like Ten Little Indians in that the NPCs are slowly killed off by the Founder as they get closer to the Omega Device, who is waiting for a predetermined time for pickup of themselves and the device once the signal is sent—remember, they have long-distance transporters that can operate over a range of light-years, too. Their mission might actually be to put a transponder inside the whole facility for a Jem'Hadar dreadnaught to beam into a cargo bay.
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  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King View Post
    Well, here's the thing—the Founder can cover up the death of any of them for a short time by assuming their appearance. It's a big, spooky facility, and they're split up turning on systems or searching for the Device. If the Founder brings one of their cool hijacking devices (like the one from 'The Adversary') to take over the Minosian robot control systems, they might also be able to spoof a conversation with a dead team member over the comm. Maybe they could also use the ubiquitous holoprojectors to create sightings of dead crewmembers that the PCs can never catch up with.

    Now that I think about it, this might be more like Ten Little Indians in that the NPCs are slowly killed off by the Founder as they get closer to the Omega Device, who is waiting for a predetermined time for pickup of themselves and the device once the signal is sent—remember, they have long-distance transporters that can operate over a range of light-years, too. Their mission might actually be to put a transponder inside the whole facility for a Jem'Hadar dreadnaught to beam into a cargo bay.
    I completely forgot about that episode. This make for a much better adventure.

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