[DATA-ECHO: CORRUPTED] SUBJECT: Bestiary: The Echoes (Or, How to Be Hunted by a Memory)
Forget your rifle. You cannot kill a stain.
An Echo is not a creature and it’s not a ghost. It is a moment of extreme emotion — usually violence, terror, or loss — that has been permanently burned into a location. Think of it as a wound in time, replaying a moment of cosmic agony on an endless, screaming loop. The entire ruin of Atomic Wonderland is a deep, environmental Echo, a recording of the day the world broke .
You don’t fight an Echo. You witness it. And that’s the real danger.
The Threat: A Psychological Hazard
The danger of an Echo isn’t to your body; it’s to your mind. To be near one is to feel the raw, unfiltered emotion it’s made of. You’ll be picking your way through a ruin and suddenly be hit with a wave of overwhelming terror, a flash of blinding pain from a death that happened centuries ago, or a sense of loss so profound it can stop your heart. They are a psychological hazard, a glimpse into a wound that will never heal. The most powerful ones, like the Transient Echo at Atomic Wonderland, can shatter your sanity just by being seen.
The Hook: How to Survive a Witnessing
You don’t draw a weapon on a memory. The only way to survive an encounter with an Echo is to endure it.
When you encounter one, the roleplay is internal. It’s a test of your character’s will. Describe the flood of alien emotions. Write about the struggle to separate the Echo’s agony from your own. Do you collapse in terror? Do you push through, your mind scarred but your resolve hardened? Or do you let the memory bleed into you, taking a piece of its pain with you forever? The goal isn’t to win. It’s to survive the witnessing with your own consciousness intact.
[TRANSMISSION END]
