Shard tune 2

Taliesinskye and Psychogecko are pretty on target. Though Kaiser’s power wouldn’t prevent him from growing armor -on- someone (which is essentially what he did when he trapped Lung in the pyramid of blades, only it was a more offensive use).

The Manton effect essentially says that for most capes that does something at point X, or originates at point X, that point X can’t be inside another person. Different capes are affected by this to different degrees or not at all.

Capes like Vista and Faultline are extreme cases of capes who are affected a great deal; Vista’s power affects an area, and it’s exponentially harder to use if there’s more people inside that area. This is mostly because her power is actually lots of little interconnected events, some of which are bound to fall inside people in the area. Faultline’s drawback is that she simply can’t affect another living thing with her power, period, likely because she’s extending her power into whoever or whatever she’s touching to sever molecular bonds and ‘cut’ them.

On the flip side of the coin, for capes with powers that wouldn’t work if they couldn’t reach inside other living things, the Manton effect doesn’t usually apply. Taylor’s one such case. If the Manton effect was as severe in her case as it was for Faultline, she wouldn’t be able to extend her power to the bugs’ minds (such as they are) to control them or get intimate details on their biology and locations… so she wouldn’t have a power at all. Panacea and Regent are other examples of this at work.

- WoG; Interlude 5