Encounter: Red Lantern, Green Lantern

You thought I meant the
other Green Lantern?
Get your head out of the gutter,
I don't even read American comics!

Paralysis is such a mundane affliction. I don't mean that it is incredibly devastating or that it doesn't end a battle easily. I mean, it doesn't really tell a story by itself like some other afflictions do, and that means the person who creates the encounter is burdened with *gasp* being creative. I know, I basically wholesale robbed a concept from a children's game, but hey, it might be interesting mechanical fodder in GURPS. Let's see what Red Lantern Green Lantern (Or, Arreljeeal for short) is all about.

Mechanics

So, red light green light is a simple game where you may walk when the light is green and must stop when the light is red, or you are punished. In this case, if you don't stop moving when you are told to stop, you will be forced to stop. Paralysis is a 30 point affliction in CER terms. Let's be weird, and give it the disadvantage Reduced Time Rate. It can only attempt to change the light color every two seconds. Could just require a concentrate maneuver instead, but don't wanna. Let's see what this looks like in CER terms right now. It is inanimate, and can literally not attack nor move. It has no motivations.

Attack Skill	0	Active Defense	-36
Affliction	30	Damage Resistance	0
Damage	0	Health	0
Fatigue Points	0	Hit Points	0
Move	-6	Will	0
Total Offensive Rating (OR)	24	Total Protective Rating (PR)	-36

Next, being a stop light, I want to give it a custom hit location list. Its two (ignore the picture) lanterns each have a DR of 1 and -5 to hit. The body has 10 DR and 0 to hit. It is homogeneous as well, giving a total DR value in CER of 12.

Attack Skill	0	Active Defense	-36
Affliction	30	Damage Resistance	12
Damage	0	Health	0
Fatigue Points	0	Hit Points	0
Move	-6	Will	0
Total Offensive Rating (OR)	24	Total Protective Rating (PR)	-24

Wow. Managed to make it have a really low CER. Hack Time! Let's take off the Reduced Time Rate, and give it low attack skill, which really doesn't mean "skill" in this case, more like a random circuit switch.

Attack Skill	-2	Active Defense	-16
Affliction	30	Damage Resistance	12
Damage	0	Health	0
Fatigue Points	0	Hit Points	0
Move	-6	Will	0
Total Offensive Rating (OR)	22	Total Protective Rating (PR)	-4

Ok, interesting. We have created a weird encounter that has a devastating affliction, but a pretty low CER. If we wanted to be silly, and yes, we are being silly, let's give it a non-zero dodge to get its point value up.

Attack Skill	-2	Active Defense	-8
Affliction	30	Damage Resistance	12
Damage	0	Health	0
Fatigue Points	0	Hit Points	0
Move	-6	Will	0
Total Offensive Rating (OR)	22	Total Protective Rating (PR)	4

This is actually decent, we have an encounter that works for low levels. Let's add Fragile (unnatural), and give full active defenses anyway.

Attack Skill	-2	Active Defense	0
Affliction	30	Damage Resistance	2
Damage	0	Health	0
Fatigue Points	0	Hit Points	0
Move	-6	Will	0
Total Offensive Rating (OR)	22	Total Protective Rating (PR)	2

Cool, I like this, let's put it together now.

ST: 10	HP: 10	Speed: 1
DX: 12	Will: 10	Move: 0
IQ: 0	Per: 0
HT: 10	FP: N/A	SM: -2
Dodge: 8	Parry: N/A	DR: 10 Body/1 Bulbs

Green Lantern (8): The instant paralysis effects of Red Light have halted. Everyone that safely halted before the red light may begin to move again. Targets that have stopped moving due to paralysis are still affected.
Red Lantern (8): 30 Yard Emanation. Nobody may move until it successfully uses Green Lantern, neither friend nor foe. If a difficult maneuver was performed right before a successful usage of red light where stopping might be difficult, the target must roll against a will based skill to stay still for each turn the red light lasts. EG: An acrobatic dodge would require rolling Will based Acrobatics to hold a painful and difficult pose, or a Full move might require a will based running skill to hold the exact same pose. Anyone within range who didn't see the light change instead rolls per based hearing (-3 for a quiet sound) for the tell-tale click of the light change, Danger Sense can allow a roll at full IQ to stop in all cases. Perfect Balance allows automatic success on awkward poses. Anyone who fails is paralyzed for 10xMargin of Failure seconds.
Traits: Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Doesn’t Sleep; Fragile (Unnatural); Injury Tolerance (Homogenous,No Blood); Sealed; Unhealing (Total); Vacuum Support.
Skills: Electronics Operation-8

All it ever does is alternate between red and green lantern when one is successfully struck. It will never try to attack because it is a completely mindless automaton.

Fluff

One Green Eye. One Red Eye. It winks over and over. A puzzled magician looks over the idol summoned by his ritual. Is it a gift from elsewhere? It never looks with both eyes, but opens one when it closes the other and repeats this over and over. There is no detectable traces of mana either, nor signs of life. Is it meant to be an idol at all? Reading the memory of the device by application of psychometry, the magician came to know that it was meant for the halting and procession of several carriages passing day in and day out. Apparently, the magic has died when transferring over, as is evident by the 0 to no mana being absorbed by the device, so the magician set himself to fixing the device to work as designed.

Proud of his work and the safety and prosperity it would be sure to bring, he began to summon more of these winking lanterns and enchanting them, spending the remainder of his days on a quest of civic duty and safety to all his fellow countryman.

Other Notes and Closing

This can be fluffed any which way you like it, but it is obviously an enchanted traffic light. Maybe it came from a time long ago; maybe it came from a different planet or an alternate dimension. Maybe it's just a common fixture in your modernish/steamish setting. Obviously, if it is a normal fixture, perhaps it paralyzes people that run lights so they can be ticketed easier. Maybe you can have some crazy magical courtroom hijinx when the lights glitch and cause an accident. Maybe if they come from another world, maybe it can drive a quest to find out what else might come from a world that has technology built up from natural principles instead of magic. Maybe an artificer would like to attempt to reverse engineer it.

If you want to make it more powerful, obviously, you can give it actual attacks, you could be incredibly devious and make it only affect the PCs. I'd recommend a changeup in that it doesn't stay on red for long periods of time then, and instead simply randomly tries to paralyze the pcs and have them roll as per the rules I already listed.

There could be some very powerful lateral thinking usages of a light that can inflict and cure paralysis. A doctor might use it for surgery so patients don't flail around, or to cure a quadriplegic patient. Delvers might heft it around in weird ways like the Horrid Skull in Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1. I think that there might need to be some definition of a power source so this doesn't work indefinitely in that case. Maybe it is charged by solar power? Maybe the skills to fix an abused light are far beyond the technical means of anyone in a TL3/TL4ish world?