Phantom Suit

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Summary:

• Allows the wearer to become ghost-like. They can pass through walls, ignore bullets, and teleport.
• Time dilates while phased out, granting the user the perception of increased reflexes.

The Phantom Suit is a full-body equipment that operates on similar principles to the Phantom Drive. It allows the user to phase in and out of reality, creating a ghost-like effect for those observing them.

The non-observation effect is not as pronounced as it is with ships using the Phantom Drive to travel. Wearers have the following abilities while their suit is active:

• “Phasing” Wearer turns quasi-real and ghost-like, becoming non-interactive for short periods of time. Effects from normal reality pass through the wearer and they become harder to detect. This is known as going “Out of Phase” or “Phased Out”. While Out of Phase, users can pass through walls, shields, and so forth.
• Teleportation Wearer becomes entirely non-real for a split second, then reappears within 50km of the original position. May be subject to Shunting. Wearers often experience a longer travel time than the observed universe and may see/experience unusual things during teleportation. Due to the unusual aspects of teleporting in this fashion, it can take a few moments to 'reacquaint' oneself with reality upon arrival. This makes it challenging, if not impossible, to use this form of teleportation in the middle of combat in an effective way.
• Shunting The wearer (intentionally or not) becomes partially phased into an object, and then is forcefully shoved out of it at great speed. Liquids and gasses are pushed aside.
• Time Dilation Time appears to move more quickly for those 'Phased In' than it does in the real world. While this offers little actual speed advantage, it does allow the wearer to observe the world “in slow motion” while 'Phased Out'. This also makes it challenging to remain 'Phased Out' for long periods of time.
• Wearers can adjust between Phased and Non-phased extremely quickly, allowing them to phase between steps or in response to an attack.

While Out-of-Phase, wearers have the following restrictions and/or complications:

• Can observe the non-phased world in a very limited way. The world becomes more gray scale and less defined. Sound is muffled and distant to the point of being mostly indeterminable.
• Unable to interact with the non-phased world.
  • Can 'feel' what is happening around them in the form of subtle tugs and sensations. A bullet feels like an uncomfortable pressure that runs through your body, but no actual harm is done.
  • Any weapon strikes made by the wearer pass through the opponent. It is not possible to 'unphase' a weapon inside of an opponent due to the suit/equipment's inherit safety measures. (See Shunting)
• Radio signals and other forms of communication are entirely unavailable.
• As with traversal via the Phantom Drive, wearers often see 'ghosts' when they are Out of Phase. These ghosts are images pulled from somewhere, at some point, in reality. They tend to have some relevance to the individual who is Out of Phase, with a preference towards events/objects/people by proximity. These images appear roughly as 'real' as actual objects during this time. Individuals with poor object permanence or psychotic disorders are highly recommended against using the Phantom Suit due to the difficulty of knowing what is real and what isn't.

Non-interactivity can be challenging for the wearer to adjust to. Their general position, inertia, etc, are preserved, but they are otherwise unable to interact with the world around them while 'phased out'. It takes months of training to be considered 'skilled' with the suit's use. 'Phasing in' while part of your body is in another object could result in loss of that body part (or death); for this reason the suit is designed to 'shunt' itself (and its occupant) in the direction where the suit is not inside an object.

Skilled operators can make use of this effect to quickly move in unexpected directions. Unskilled operators may find themselves breaking bones, landing flat on the floor, or worse. The suit has no concept of the user's safety beyond 'inside an object' and 'not inside an object' across its surface.

Phasing the suit is a full-body action. It is not possible to phase or unphase parts of the suit, nor would a section of the suit removed from the rest of the suit work. Any attempts to do so would remove the unphased part of the suit/body from the rest of the suit/body entirely. The same is true for any phase-enabled equipment the wearer may be carrying.

Close-combat weapons tend to be the preferred tool of Phantom Suit wearers. The weapons stay 'in phase' with the suit itself and, as such, are incapable of adversely affecting the preserved waveform that allows phasing to happen.

An object that 'safely' leaves the waveform behaves as normal. Spy equipment, explosives, and so forth work perfectly well with the Phantom Suit.

Shield project systems, gravitic systems, and more are largely incompatible with Phantom technology. Effective use of the Phantom Suit requires the user to rapidly phase and unphase from reality. Shield projectors and the like cannot create effective barriers while phased out, nor can the shield 'phase out' with the wearer.

Projectile and energy-based weapons are tricky to use with a Phantom Suit. It is possible to use them, but the act of firing a weapon causes the user's preserved waveform to collapse. This forcefully 'Phases In' the wearer. The suit then has to reconstruct the waveform due to the unexpected collapse, which can take several seconds. The projectiles themselves are still operating under the rules of the waveform, causing them to take longer to travel than normal and greatly reducing their power.

Thruster systems and the like are likewise incompatible with being Phased.

In all of the above cases, it is possible to have a suit equipped with all of these things, but none of them work with an active suit.

Whisper created this article on 2019/09/16 10:18.

🚧 This article is a work-in-progress. Is it not currently approved.