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Electrochemistry
Go to party planet. Love and be loved by drugs.
Cool for high-fliers, party enthusiasts, cops who need lightning.
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Electrochemistry is the animal within you, the beast longing to be unleashed to indulge and enjoy. It enables you to take drugs with fewer negative side-effects. It also enables you to better investigate lurid matters -— if you need to understand a chemical breakdown, or talk to someone blasted out of their mind, or understand sexual dynamics, Electrochemistry is there to guide you.
At high levels, Electrochemistry makes you a man of unrestrained pleasure -— an unrepentant lothario who leers at people with a bottle of speed and a plastic bendy straw in either hand. But with a low Electrochemistry, you'll be too innocent to be effective. Without a working knowledge of drugs and sex, the city will be difficult to understand.
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Endurance
Take the blows. Don't let the world kill you.
Cool for fighters who can take a hit, lookouts who don't sleep, human batteries.
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Endurance is your metabolism and circulatory system. It improves your Health —- one of the two health pools in the game. It enables you to survive being a cop. Who cares if you can't aim a gun, if you can take a few bullets? Why be afraid of drugs that hurt your health if you're a very, very healthy man?
At high levels, Endurance enables you to take a few knocks to the head, enjoy a greater quantity of drugs, and shake off a few cardiac arrests —- it makes you a powerful man, who looks down on the weaklings who can't keep up. However, cops with low Endurance are likely to struggle. The body is frail already, and the flesh of a cop will often be tested. And if it doesn't pass, it dies.
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Half Light
Let the body take control. Threaten people.
Cool for high-strung investigators, shoot-now-ask-questions-later cops, surprise haters.
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Half Light is your fight-or-flight response. It enables you to sense the way situations are about to turn. It injects palpable fear into your heart —- fear that urges you to act before it's too late to act ever again, fear that makes you frighten others. It is the aggression that lets you squeeze every last drop of information out of a witness.
At high levels, Half Light makes you ultra-attuned to the world. It is perpetual fear —- of your own shadow, of someone else's name or scent. You'll be ready, always, to pounce and physically interrogate passers-by. At low levels, however, you'll find your survival instinct is lacking. And your methods limp-wristed. Those who respect violence will not respect you.
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Pain Threshold
Shrug off the pain. They'll have to hurt you more.
Cool for unstoppable fighters, guys who won't die, masochists.
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Pain Threshold ignores damage so you can push on, bloodied and crawling, to the bitterest end. It enables you to negate damage you would otherwise take. Even mental pain —- heartache and loneliness. In fact, these things can become a thrill you seek out and perversely revel in.
At high levels, Pain Threshold turns in on itself in a seriously unhealthy way, with full-on self-destructive behaviour. With a low Pain Threshold, however, you will suffer too easily. Even a slap from a teenager will make you whine and complain.
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Physical Instrument
Flex powerful muscles. Enjoy healthy organs.
Cool for muscle men, bare-knuckle brawlers, gym teachers.
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Physical Instrument is not only your muscles and your skeleton -— it is your ability to use them effectively. It enables you to do push-ups, sit-ups, knock-out punches and 360-degree spin-kicks. It's a one size fits all solution to thriving and surviving in a physical world.
At high levels, Physical Instrument breaks doors, chains, and bones, and it makes you laugh at the namby-pansies who can't. You'll be manned-up, encouraging others to curl iron until they're manned-up too. At low levels, however, you'll have a hard time arresting anyone who isn't infirm or already dead. Indeed, engaging in physical confrontations could leave you in either state.
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Shivers
Raise the hair on your neck. Tune in to the city.
Cool for city lovers, the wisest of the street wise, the genuinely supranatural.
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Shivers come when the temperature drops and you become more keenly aware of your surroundings. It enables you to hear the city itself, to truly belong to the streets. It is a supranatural ability; old wrongs play out in present time, scenes across the city happen in front of you. But who is speaking to you?
At high levels, Shivers may make you seem mad to the outside world -— as you listen to the city, you don't listen to others. Your superiors may begin to worry. With a low Shivers, though, you will seldom hear the city speaking to you -— and if you cannot hear it, how can you ever save it?
