Cauldron — Faction Information

[Foxglove]

Synopsis:

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Cauldron is a small group of researchers devoted towards making the parahuman a reality. Upon commission, they devise a way to give a client any physical augmentation, alteration or other plaything they would like to have, for a price, of course. They do not discriminate between lawful or unlawful, instead chosing to retain a position of elevated neutrality in which they are able to approach all sides if necessary. However, in actuality, the granting of superhuman abilities is merely a means to an end intended to exploit people of their resources and funnel them into a project that could revolutionize the nature of what it means to be human while Cauldron itself might just unwittingly play into the hands of a player much larger than them.

Notable Characters:

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	Teresa Martinez The mastermind behind Cauldron. Highly intelligent and gifted with an exceptional intuition, Teresa is the driving force behind Cauldron and the inventor of the Formula System employed by Cauldron in order to alter a client's body to develop the commissioned alterations. Story: The Doctor
	Adrian Wight Reclusive, skittish, and highly organized, Adrian is more of a coordinator and planner than a scientific pioneer. Still, being that he learned his trader under Teresa at the University of Cambridge, he is still able to follow the Doctor's thoughts and, if necessary, correct her. The two are good friends, despite the age difference of twenty years.
	"Contessa" Contessa is the name of an experiment conducted by the Doctor. Contessa is a cloned human whose growth process has been programmed to progress sixty four times faster than that of an average human, giving her a life expectancy of 1.3125 years. The purpose of this was to test the effectiveness of the Deus Formula, which, in normal humans, is supposed to prevent cell death by replenishing a cell's telomeres, effectively making the user biologically immortal. The results of the experiment are still in the works. However, the fact that Contessa hasn't progressed in the aging process past the biological age of twenty five indicates that the experiment is stable for now.

History:

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If there has ever been a god that steers everything in the universe, Teresa Martinez has never been one of his favourite playthings. Born into poverty on Crete, she grew up with the knowledge that one day, she would die to the knawing feeling that debilitated her as she tried to fall asleep on Crete. Wanting to spare their daughter such a fate, Teresa's parents paid a Junker that frequented the area sometimes in pursuit of the Artifact trade, giving him their figurative last penny in order to have him take their daughter somewhere safe.

Faithful to his word, the Junker took the girl and transported her to New London, where he unceremoneously dumped her at the space port. After all, the bargain had been about bringing her somewhere safe, and not about keeping an eye on her. Alone, the girl wandered around aimlessly, quickly getting the attention of authorities who were alerted to "a street child with tattered clothes who didn't speak a word of English". While a few people were wary of the fact that Teresa was evidently a Cretin, the chances of a girl getting condemned for the crimes of her people were relatively low, and thus Teresa was put into an orphanage, where she would remain until she would be able to live on her own.

It was clear soon enough that Teresa was an exceptionally gifted child. Learning the English language in the span of a little more then a single year, Teresa was able to attend school alongside her peers and was eventually put into a separate school where her abilities could be honed accordingly. Her intellect, however, was a double-edged sword, serving to isolate her from anyone her age, most of whom too put off by her hispanic appearance to approach her to begin with.

Given that there was nobody to distract her, Teresa continued pressing on, eventually ending up as a professor at the University of Cambridge as the leading figure in the fields of biology and engineering. While frequently criticized for her controversial ideas, Teresa managed to get something that was as close to actual respect she would ever get. Still, it felt like something was still missing. She had hit a ceiling, unable to progress further by simply being excellent.

On the 14th of July 824 A.S., Teresa and her assistant Adrian Wight were invited to an archeological exhibition on Planet Pygar in Omicron Theta. Given that it was the epicenter of Nomad infection that led to the Nomad War in 800 A.S., any new findings promised to disclose vital information into Nomad physiology that could be exploited in the fight against the alien menace.

During their stay, Teresa got in contact with an artifact that allowed a Nomad entity called the Simurgh to communicate with her. Sly and manipulative as the Nomads are, the Simurgh forcefully altered a small region of Teresa's brain, connecting the two of them before disappearing, leaving Teresa unconscious. The Simurgh knew that it didn't need to control Teresa in order for her to be useful. It had quickly understood that Teresa just was the kind of human that, given the means to be excellent, would use them for selfish means. Teresa, while furious about the invasion of her privacy, instead pledged to actively work against the Simurgh, intending to use the connection between the two against it.

Cauldron was founded to facilitate this goal: To kill the Simurgh. However, an endeavour like this needed resources. Considering her own skillset, it was relatively clear that the only thing of real value that Teresa could offer to people would be her expertise in biology and engineering. She had worked for Guildkeeper Cordelia Lyell of the Core in the past, having devised a rather crude way of preventing biological aging for her. People had always been fascinated with the idea of superpowers and Teresa was confident that, given enough time, she could make such things a reality for people who would be willing to pay for them.

The Formula System:

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	Cauldron Formulas are concoctions consisting of nanobots suspended in a plasmic fluid that are designed to be innoculated into a person's blood stream. Once inside a patient's body, they distribute across the entire body before they start their programmed work. The exact parameters of what they are supposed to do vary from Formula to Formula. However, they are designed to be self-suficient and self-replicating, drawing upon the person's dietary intake in order to derive the necessary components. They can be mixed with one another, though the results are always unpredictable and might not always be what one intended it to be.
Name:	Description:
Deus	The Deus Formula was developed as a comission for Guildkeeper Cordelia Lyell of the Core. The nanobots are programmed to restructure the patient's DNA to regenerate their own telomeres using telomerase, an enzyme that usually only occurs in cancerous cells and effectively makes them immortal and able to replicate infinitely. Once this has been completed, the nanobots assume a status of passive vigilence over the body, killing off cancerous cells. The result is the biological immortality of the patient, as well as the complete arrest of the aging process. It is therefore not recommended to innoculate Deus before the age of twenty one for men and twenty three for women.
Prometheus	Prometheus is currently just a concept. Supposing that the human mind works like a biological machine, it should be possible to manipulate this machine's 'memory' in order to add or delete properties. The Prometheus Formula's intention is to 'install' knowledge onto a human without the need for a lengthy learning process. It will likely still be months until a test can be conducted, given that the project also isn't high on the list of priorities.
Lazarus	One of the problems coming with the Formulas is that they are susceptible to damage or disruptions caused by diseases or viruses that can change important variables within the human body. Lazarus is the name of a Formula intended to supersede a human immune system, effectively replacing it. The Formula is also just a concept currently.

Project Skyhook:

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Originally proposed by Dr. Adrian Wight, Project Skyhook is the main project of Cauldron. Since the inception of the hyperspace jump technology, Dr. Wight has been working on a way to apply it practically to personnel transportation over long distances.

However, such a project is extremely costly. Hyperspace transport equipment and beacons, energy usage and other materials do not come cheap, and Teresa's only real skillset lies within science. Luckily, people have dreams, illusions and limitless aspirations that are rife to be exploited. To achieve them, people are willing to pay. A lot of things are possible if a skilled mind applies itself to them and the members of Cauldron are determined to advance Skyhook that they hope will one day make Cauldron omnipresent, making it that much easier to find and kill an illusive creature like the Simurgh.

Name:	Notes:
Beacon Technology	One of the major obstacles in the way of making Skyhook a reality is the divergence that appears when a hyperspace jump is conducted. Coordinates taken with survey modules tend to devolve over time and become more and more innacurate, and ships more often than not tend to appear dozens of clicks away from their originally surveyed location after just a month. For a long time, this problem has been a gargantuan roadblock, though with the advent of hyperspace beacons, the idea of coordinate-based transportation isn't necessarily the only option anymore. Not only are hyperspace beacons more accurate than surveyed coordinates, since they transmit a live-feed of coordinates to the recipient, they are also more easily employed than a surveyor, who would need a lot of time and another ship with fuel on hand. A Skyhook system based on hyperspace beacons would therefore allow Cauldron to transport people to anyone activating such a device with pinpoint accuracy - Though other parties would invariably notice such an activation, basically making the one using the beacon a figurative bonfire for anyone in the system. Current task would be to acquire a hyperspace beacon and repurpose it to be employed as a portable handheld device.
Hyperspace Technology	Not only the destination point, but also the origin point of the jump are problematic. Hyperspace jumps have always been costly, given the immense energy needs of the technology that necessitated it to be employed on big ships exclusively since only those had energy cores big enough to sustain the enormous strain. While it would theoretically be possible to simply use a cruiser-sized energy core to fuel a transportation device that could ferry humans, the costs would be enormous. Therefore, a way needs to be found that would serve to recude the energy consumption of a hyperspace device.

Closing Statements:

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Cauldron is a roleplay project of @Foxglove and is not intended to become official. The faction is in the Vagrant subforum because they are related and there is no diplomacy currently because Cauldron is intended to be a really grey organisation that'll work for and with anyone as long as that is the most advantageous course of action. Diplomacy will follow after a while, when relations to a few factions were established.

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