031: Tien Tan Tanas

ENTRY 031: Tien Tan Tanas

Egobrokerage on the Venus aerostats is relatively common, with agents like Tien Tan Tanas contracting out their indentured infomorphs to fill in the skill gaps of various work groups and research pods. Tanas, or T³ to their acquaintances, is a talent agent-cum-jobs counselor, working with their indentured to find them work both suited to their skills and interests as well as remunerative. However, Tanas is also a businessperson, and is more than capable and willing to push the infomorphs’ limits—including sex work, if that’s what pays the bills this month.

For most appearances, T³ is no different from any other of the clanking masses in middle management—their synthmorph a little higher quality than others, but still not a particularly fashionable or interesting model, aggressively practical and economical. It is a carefully fostered image of banality, to encourage those not directly involved in their business to overlook, underestimate, and forget about them. Tanas knows too well the nanowire legal lines required to maintain their business, and some of the darker things Tanas has had to deal with—addiction to nanoalgorithms, psychotherapy, and paying to retrieve an indentured ego that has fled employment.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	10	20	15	20	20	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	30	6	60	40	8	80

Morph: Synth

Skills: Academics: Business 60, Academics: Psychology 72, Academics: Sociology 60, Climbing 60, Free Fall 53, Interests: Gambling 45, Interests: Slavery 80, Intimidation 67, Kinesics 80, Language: Native Fanti 90, Language: English 80, Language: Chinese 80, Networking: Autonomists 66, Networking: Criminals 55, Networking: Hypercorps 35, Perception 68, Profession: Egobroker 75

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Coritcal Stack, Cyberbrain, Mnemonic Augmentation

Traits: Armor (6/6), Social Stigma (Clanking Masses, Ego Broker), Uncanny Valley

Using Tien Tan Tanas

The business T³ is engaged in is likely to antagonize many of the people T³ interacts with; for this reason Tanas avoids speaking directly on such unpleasant details unless the necessary or the situation seems to call for it. T³ will speak of their stable of indentured infomorphs by their first names or favored callsign, is intimately aware of the details of their life and personality, and will use this to their advantage when dealing with outsiders to emphasize their familiarity with the indentured—to give the appearance of a caring boss or business agent closely connected with clients and their lives. In this fashion Tanas may end up dealing with the PCs as a villain, or a go-between; the PC’s contacts may send Tanas their way to provide some temporary skilled labor for a job, or Tanas may approach them looking to reclaim one of their flock that has gone missing, emphasizing concern over their well-being. In their own way, this is not a charade—Tanas does care about their stable’s well-being, T³ is intimately familiar with their aspirations, abilities, and foibles, and is relatively honorable about fulfilling their part of agreements or contracts. Tanas sees their services as necessary, and even in the best interests of their clients, who have through their bad management of their own affairs fallen into debt-slavery.

030: Egobrokers

ENTRY 030: Egobrokers

Indentured servitude is a reality in many habitats and hypercorps; egos beholden to some other ego or legal entity for debts in real currency or favors that must be returned, and bound to certain restrictions until the debt is paid. In actuality this may constitute anything from wage garnishment to actual enslavement or incarceration of the ego, but the vast majority of debt-holders in the solar system prefer some form of working bondage, where the ego is encouraged to maintain a paying profession so that the debt is paid down or off. More extreme forms of debt accrual and servitude are often looked harshly upon by many habitats, who stipulate that an ego must at least have the opportunity to pay the debt off within a reasonable span of time; but even so there are many transhumans essentially bound by their debts. More disturbing to most transhumans is that there exist secondary markets for indentured egos.

Egobrokers are third-party merchants that offer to settle an ego’s debts in exchange for a like period of service under a different client. Their service is more similar to a cross between a refinancing company and a temporary employment office than slavers or panderers, though the line is a fine one and often crossed, particularly in the latter case. The indentured ego’s debt is settled with their original source, or otherwise transferred to the egobroker, and the egobroker seeks employment for the indentured ego with other parties. For the vast majority of egobrokers, the arrangement is a cooperative contract—the indentured ego is not forced into any job or occupation they do not wish to participate in, but discusses the employment opportunities with the egobroker and attempts to find a suitable match between the indentured ego’s skills and preferences and the remunerative work that is offered. Many habitats with rep economies maintain egobrokers to handle small infractions, where the egobrokers work with the guilty egos to find some acceptable community service project.

Of course, there is a darker side of egobrokering—implants, invasive psychotherapy, even physical or digital incarceration to enforce the egobroker’s control of the indentured ego. Most habitats bar this form of egobrokering and indentured servitude outright, but on the fringes of transhuman society and with sufficient resources, even these old barbarities persist; certain scumbarges in particular are known for charging exorbitant fees or pushing enormous favors on new arrivals and essentially reducing them to debt-slavery very quickly.

Seeds

• A minor infraction of the rules in the latest habitat comes with a fine, either in credits or rep points—but the player characters can avoid the penalty if they agree to perform community service. Of course, that means going to the local egobroker, who will suggest everything from a few days washing windows and repairing micrometeorite damage to a few nights in the local brothel.
• An old friend has fallen on hard times and wound up indebted to an egobroker, working a soul-destroyed job as a cog in a hypercorp. The egobroker is willing to forgive the debt, provided the player characters help track down a runaway indentured servant with a bounty on her head.

029: House of Screaming Bricks

ENTRY 029: House of Screaming Bricks

“The most dangerous infomorphs aren’t given work-study programs or enforced socializing remediation. They’re taken off-line.” – HoSB AdCopy

The House of Screaming Bricks is a for-profit prison satellite orbiting Mars, little more than a server stack connected to a solar panel array. The Management accepts any prisoner, no questions asked, and incarcerates them for whatever period the deliverer pays for. Each infomorph is stripped of embedded software and loaded in a self-contained computer core whose only input is a power cable and only output is an analog temperature sensor. Essential data management functions are built-in, automatically triggered, and unconnected to any other part of the network.

The inmates are aware, and that is it. No interaction, finite memory, and only the most basic of software tools available to them. Some enter stasis. Others run out of memory, and the automatic registers kick in and prune back the memories to the time of incarceration. More than a few go mad. That’s what the customers of the House of Screaming Bricks pay for.

When the incarceration period is up, the inmate’s case officer arranges their release, typically at a major habitat; any relevant social services available at that habitat are contact about the charity case, the date and time of release. The exit interview is a pre-recorded script, advising the inmate of the length of their incarceration and current location.

Using the House of Screaming Bricks

When the gamemaster throws player characters in normal prison, that usually sucks. The HoSB is a bit worse. Solitary confinement with no ability to accomplish anything leads to frustrated players that have to sit on their hands while the game goes on around them. So it is not recommended to use the House of Screaming Bricks for a “send the PCs to prison” storyline. Instead, think of it as a plot device and background element—maybe an infomorph PC or NPC just came out of the House, and is experiencing the Mesh again for the first time in a long time. Maybe an NPC threatens the PC with this—after all, the Management doesn’t care why an infomorph is to be incarcerated, only that the payment is made. Maybe the PCs use the House to dispose of a particularly noxious enemy, or they have to stage a prison break.

Seeds

• Communication with the House of Screaming Bricks is down; all incarceration requests forwarded to automated services. The player characters are hired to replace the normal supply ship and investigate, but what they haven’t been told is that Firewall believes a psi-gamma capable exsurgent infomorph may have been incarcerated at the facility and is using their powers to hack the system from within.
• Gustav One, a slick criminal that plies the Pleiades, lets the PCs in on a little secret. One of the “prisoners” in the House of Screaming Bricks isn’t an infomorph—it’s a dummy cell, a carefully hidden cache of data containing the numbers of thousands of Triad-linked bank accounts. If the PCs are game, Gustav will tell them which cell and they can break into the prison and steal it—his share is fifty percent, of course.

028: Graveyard Trajectory

ENTRY 028: Graveyard Trajectory

Until recently, death has always been a part of the transhuman condition, and there remain many among transhumanity that feel the need to honor the departed egos they once knew. Many habitats accompany the recycling of the morph—if there is one—with a simple ceremony and a celebration of their life that leaves lasting memories. The more social infomorphs often earn digital memorials, archives that preserve their life and work. Friends, family, and admirers throughout the system may accomplish some creative act, feat, or thing and dedicate it to the deceased. A few very old and conservative habitats and colonies maintain physical memorials—sometimes containing the decaying remnants of the morph.

Then there is the Graveyard Trajectory.

Burials at space are almost as old as space-travel, and take many forms in different cultures. Among the habitats of the Inner System however, the Graveyard Trajectory has taken hold: a designated path off the main shipping and mining lanes where remains can be released for a long, lazy elliptical orbit around the Sun. It is estimated that the majority of such remains fall into Sol within a year, but there are accounts from ships plying the space between Earth and Venus of corpses mummified from five or ten years’ cold soak in space.

Most ships that accidentally interrupt such journeys through eternity send them on again. Certain clannish families install mesh transponders to track their ancestors’ progress, and even automated messages providing a small remuneration to those who return their ancestors to space. The empty eyes and faded plastics may be taken as a reminder of their own mortality—or the limitations that transhumanity still fights to overcome.

Seeds

• A Firewall agent in need of a quick escape committed suicide—with stipulation in its will that the corpse be vacuum-sealed, fitted with a beacon, and set on the Graveyard Trajectory. Now it is up to the player characters to retrieve the corpse, and retrieve the Firewall agent’s fork from its cortical stack before the power runs out, or someone beats them to it.
• Crossing the Inner System, an errant remnant from the Graveyard Trajectory impacts the vessel—a container of ashes dating from the time of the Fall, or maybe earlier. The crew and passengers are divided about what to do: cracking the seal and analyzing the remains could reveal important archaeological and anthropological information, but may also risk exposing them all to an Exsurgent virus.
• The Greenteeth, a morbid or pragmatic scumbarge, has begun trawling the Graveyard Trajectory, harvesting the corpses for whatever of value they can derive—genetic information, scraps of metal, antique tech, or even “space jerky.” A consortium of outraged mourners has taken up a collection and issued a sizeable bounty on anyone that can bring the Greenteeth in to a habitat where such practices are punishable under the law.

027: Gravity Sickness

ENTRY 027: Gravity Sickness

Bioengineering can moderate most of the physiological effects of living and transitioning from different gravity zones, but many transhumans still report psychological issues related to living under a different gravity than what they experienced growing up, or are used to. Typical symptoms include depression, nausea, weariness, feeling too heavy or light relative to their current gravity, and even psychosomatic joint pain. Gravity sickness most often affects biomorphs, but even synthmorphs can be subject to it, even if their morph should be physically incapable of registering the stress of different gravities.

Therapists have had success treating gravity sickness as any other psychological illness, categorizing it as a variation on environmental disorders, but a sizeable pseudoscientific industry has grown up with different treatments, trying to explain away the cause as microchemical or tidal imbalances in the brain that can be corrected with targeted antidepressants or nanite-driven microsurgery; more elaborate treatments generally involve renting the user time in artificial gravity chambers, coupled with exercises and massages designed to work out or relax muscles in the comfort of a familiar g-force. Some of these products offer a bit of temporary relief, but none address the psychological issues at the root of the problem.

Mechanics

Gravity sickness is typically a minor derangement from a trauma associated with a rapid gravity transition—a falling elevator, a ship crashing into a planet, a particularly long microgravity fall, that sort of thing. However, gravity sickness can also be a much more serious and long-lasting disorder associated with long-term habitation in a different gravity environment or chronic gravity transitions. Both the derangement and the delusion respond to psychotherapy and (in extremis) psychosurgery. At the gamemaster’s discretion, drugs and alternative therapy treatments may alleviate the penalties associated with gravity sickness for a time, but they always come back.

Suggested Game Effects: Characters with gravity sickness take skill penalties for prolonged physical activity in any gravity other than their “natural” one, particularly ones like climbing, free fall, lifting, and jumping that work with or against the force of gravity. Martial artists, dancers, and sports players in particular tend to adapt their styles to incorporate perpendicular movements to the direction of gravity.

Seeds

• Statistical reports say an unprecedented number of transhumans in the habitat are coming down with gravity sickness, and the cases are localized to a certain area. Interviews of the afflicted include reference to a strange metal sphere, chrome and mirror-polished, which seemed to distort space around it. Firewall fears an alien artifact causing local microgravity fluctuations is the cause, but the truth might be more prosaic—it’s up to the player characters to investigate and hope they don’t come down with gravity sickness themselves.
• A wealthy biomorph who has long suffered from the gravity of Mars wants to try an experimental psychotherapy “shock cure” method: a free fall jump from near orbit to Mons Olympus. All he needs are a few trusted bodyguards to safeguard his jump—including at least one willing to accompany him.

026: Stillness-in-Motion

ENTRY 026: Stillness-in-Motion

One of the most potent reminders of the mortality of transhumanity lies in orbit around Mars. Once it was a space ark, a lost remnant of Earth’s ecosystem, the skeleton human crew secondary to the payload of plants and wildlife originally taken from the Galapagos islands. On its long voyage the vine-like roots of tropical trees spilled out of their bounds to snake across floors, and a dozen species of finch flew through the hallways and made their nests in odd corners next to heating elements. Videofeeds reclaimed before the disaster show barefoot, bare-chested crew burned brown from the sunlamps laugh and chase each other between duties, to spend hours staring at the great tortoises swim through the sky when they wander outside the rotating ring that simulated gravity.

The end came swift and mostly bloodlessly shortly after the ark entered orbit. To this day, no one knows who fired the shot. The payload was a massive, compressed burst of carbon dioxide. The force of the expanding cloud drove the oxygen to the extremes of the craft and effectively doubled the atmospheric pressure inside the ship within minutes. Most of the smaller animals died immediately from barotraumas; the crew and larger animals took a few minutes longer to suffocate or succumb. The plants lasted longest, choking slowly in the toxic atmosphere. Then the ship was silent and still, circling the red planet so far from home.

Stillness-in-Motion was forgotten during the conflict with the TITANs, only to be rediscovered later—and by mutual agreement among the habitats of Mars, preserved mostly inviolate as a grim reminder of the conflict, and the mortality of transhumanity, a floating museum. A careful archaeological probe by synthmorphs from Olympus allowed researchers to reclaim the ship logs, capture DNA samples from the species so that they could be cloned and preserved, and to perform such routine modifications necessary to allow remote access to stabilize the ship’s orbits.

Using Stillness-in-Motion

With its terrible stillness and superb preservation, Stillness-in-Motion is most effective as a means to set a dour, contemplative, perhaps even morbid mood. Any job or adventure that connect with the mysterious events of Stillness-in-Motion carries a cultural impact; people on habitats in and around Mars will want to know what really happened, and may react with surprising emotion if the subject is brought up, or if the task involves the dead ark in any way. Gamemasters and players may use this bit of history to help lend verisimilitude to their characters.

Seeds

• A virtual museum of Stillness-in-Motion exists in the Mesh, an exact replica of the physical ship as it was when it was found, reconstructed from the ship’s design, video feeds, and XP recordings from the archaeologists that have studied the ship. The PC’s Firewall contact asks them to meet there, to lend weight to the next mission about a potential exsurgent threat—tracking down a terrorist that tried to use a very similar CO2 bomb in a small habitat.

025: Cockfighters

ENTRY 025: Cockfighters

In the low-gravity mooncrete wells of Luna and the chicken-wire cage-tubes of orbital habitats, feathers and blood fly, the droplets playing out their strange fluid mechanics before splattering the walls. Avian biomorphs and even trained animals that could not fly in Earth gravity fight with ankle-spurs and wing-tip blades, circling and sparring in blood matches for dominance, honor, and money.

Most contemporary cockfights involve a vast range of contestants, from the purebred baseline chicken-matches on Luna to the neupenguin “blood in the water” matches on Ganymede. Enthusiasts spend considerable time and research designing, training, and augmenting their fighting animals, and prized champions are worth considerably more than most basic morphs.

The most common cockfight format involves small, aggressive, low-maintenance domesticated birds that are normally flightless except in low gravity, locked in a small open chain mesh cage or other arena-space to keep them from going after the audience. Specific rules and the legality of the matches—and the inevitable betting—varies from habitat to habitat, but the matches enjoy a widespread social appeal that brings large crowds from across the population spectra of the habitats.

Pod Cockfights are generally held separately from trained animals, as the addition of a transhuman intellect adds yet another dimension to the bloody spectacle, and avian pod fighters are respected martial artists within their own leagues. The most elaborate and expensive of all cockfights are pod matches between augmented bipedal flightless birds resurrected from relic DNA. While too large to be capable of flight even in low gravity, the modified emus, ostriches, and thunderbirds are capable of incredible feats of jumping and agility.

Seeds

• The latest fad in Extropia is the Dodo Club, an entry-level, mostly bloodless cockfighting social event aimed at less mature egos, with supplementary programs to help the young transhumans design and modify their birds and plan their strategies. However, a rogue group using cruel training techniques and vicious implanted weapons is cutting a swathe through the league. Someone needs to stand up to these bullies…will it be the player characters?
• Social approbation against cockfights in the Jovian Republic has been growing—spurring the increase of illicit matches underground and in neighboring habitats. Legitimate enthusiasts are upset against the restrictions being put in place, and the shady characters running the matches. Suspicion rests on the most vocal opponent of cockfighters, Chair Yeungling. If the player characters can prove a link between Yeungling and the criminals running the matches, the fans would be very grateful
• A major pod cockfight is scheduled in the habitat the characters are in—the morphs are ready, but egos with combat experience are scarce. If the player characters are game, they can temporarily resleeve into bitching military-grade avian biomorphs and engage in bloody gladiatorial contests for rep and credits.

024: Makankana

ENTRY 024: Makankana

The demand for top-grade athletes for zero-g and microgravity sports has led to designs combining the pinnacle athleticism of Olympian morphs and the special adaptations of Bouncer morphs. From a technical standpoint, these designs are difficult: each morph has contradictory traits which can be difficult to reconcile at the level of individual biological subsystems, with Olympians being mainly designed to grow and develop in ideal conditions of normal gravity and plentiful oxygen to achieve their potential. As a result Olympian Bouncer morphs, sometimes called Voidstars, require specialized training and environmental conditions in addition to genetics to achieve the heights of transhuman biological potential, and are generally restricted to some of the wealthier or better-connected transhumans in the larger zero-g and microgravity habitats. The results, however, are astonishing.

Makankana is a prime exemplar, a free agent in zero-g jai alai and monstrously deformed by old human standards—their bandy legs and wiry, overlong arms and barrel chest give them a distinctly simian appearance that serves Makanaka astoundingly well in the court, able to maneuver with an ease, precision, and speed that many synthmorphs have difficulty matching. Makankana currently works as something of an itinerant player, signing short contracts for a few games with teams like the New Olympians out of Titan and the Three Righteous Dragons from Quin Long. The neuter Voidstar lives for the next game. Makankana's muse Xi Shi doubles as Makankana’s agent, and sees to the traveling star’s physical needs and continual training.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	30	25	30	15	30	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
11	1	30	6	60	40	8	60

Morph: Olympian/Bouncer

Skills: Academics: Physics 60, Academics: Statistics 72, Art: Dance 60, Climbing 90, Free Fall 93, Interests: Gambling 45, Interests: Zero-G Sports 90, Intimidation 67, Kinesics 40, Language: Native Esperanto 90, Language: English 80, Language: Chinese 80, Networking: Autonomists 66, Networking: Criminals 39, Perception 88, Profession: Athlete 93, Throwing Weapons 65, Unarmed Combat 60

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Grip Pads, Oxygen Reserve, Prehensile Feet

Traits: Ambidextrous, Brave, Limber (1)

Using Makankana

As something of a mercenary player, Makankana is more likely to be a living macguffin than a regular contact or antagonist—someone that the player characters are likely to kidnap, bribe, injure, play against, bodyguard, train, or babysit as the needs dictate. The credits and rep surrounding Makankana's performance in a given game attracts all sorts of attention, from Triad gamblers looking to fix a game to hypercorp reps eager for an endorsement, and all of these provide opportunities for gamemasters to ensnare PCs in Makankana’s world of zero-g and microgravity athletics.

Given Makankana’s focus on the next game, interactions for anything else will probably have to go through their muse, Xi Shi. The AI is an androgynous parent-figure to the Voidstar, and also their agent, negotiating business deals, managing their assets, making reservations, reminding Makankana to eat, etc. In the event that Makankana is threatened with injury or imprisonment, Xi Shi will try to bribe or negotiate with the malefactors so that Makankana comes out as whole as possible—though if this comes at the cost of throwing a game, Makankana will overrule the muse.

023: Jovian Moonlets

ENTRY 023: Jovian Moonlets

The leading team in the system for zero-g jai alai, the Jovian Moonlets are currently stationed out of Amalthea. Though the whole team rarely travels outside Jupiter’s moon-system, video and XP broadcasts and recordings of their games travel from one end of transhuman space to the other. The challenge, skill, speed, and potential for damage incumbent in the revitalized ancient sport is a large part of the attraction for many transhumans, as are the various underground and off-the-court matches, gambling, grudges, and general drama, which feeds peripheral merchandising and spin-off industries.

Following the Neuva Euskara Association rules, a zero-g jai alai team consists of up to sixteen members arranged in eight pairs of doubles, though only four doubles will play in any given match, and is played in a three-dimensional uniform polygonal stadium with eighteen three-meter square playing areas and eight triangular foul zones. Play emphasizes spatial awareness and precision over strength, and there are strong tactical and mathematical elements in tracking and playing the ball in zero gravity. Each ball is equipped with a bell or other unique audible characteristic to enable players to better keep track of it. The danger of the game largely comes from the ball itself, which can travel in excess of 300 kph and cause serious injury or death to some morphs on impact; the need to maneuver in zero-g, which given the mass and momentum of professional players often leads to damaging collisions with playing surfaces or other players; and finally the xistera itself, which commonly becomes a deadly melee weapon in less regulated play.

The Moonlets have a wide variety of transhumans on their team, though the majority are biomorphs from the habitats surrounding Jupiter and Neptune, including an extensively augmented uplifted dolphin named Jurgen Joshi that is often considered the team’s most valuable player. The Moonlets franchise is owned by the players themselves as a cooperative, and they split the net profits from playing games, the sale and licensing of their game recordings and likenesses, and merchandizing. New players are elected by the team as a whole, initially as probationary members with non-voting shares. Players may also be forcibly expelled or retired from the team by a two-thirds majority vote, cashed out as their shares are automatically repurchased by the cooperative.

Seeds

• After a particularly disastrous first match against the Ganymede Skullfuckers, team captain/CEO/manager Allura Makkabee is several morphs short of a full team. Heading into a rematch and given that the Skullies are more brawlers than players, Makkabee has decided to fill out the ranks with some morphs that know their way around a fight—if the player characters are interested, they can get signed up as provisional players, enjoy a crash course in zero-g jai alai, and play one game before getting cashed out.
• Jurgen Joshi has started cutting outside deals—selling his likeness to promote a new brand of transgenic tuna. The Moonlets can’t afford to lose their best player, but Jurgen needs to learn a lesson in abiding by the spirit and wording of his contracts. The player characters are asked to find a way to kill the transgenic tuna campaign, in exchange for which they get a fortune in Moonlets merchandise, season tickets, access to their video and XP vaults, etc.

022: Butterfly Avernus

ENTRY 022: Butterfly Avernus

A community oxygen bar in the Progress habitat on Deimos, the Butterfly Avernus is all sun lamps and green growing mosses with tiny colored flowers contrasting against stark industrial benches and chairs. Aside from the enhanced oxygen levels and carbon dioxide scrubbing, patrons at Butterfly Avernus partake from bottles containing nanobiological plants that produce gaseous cocktails to suit every biomorph’s palate—from the straight elemental oxygen/carbon dioxide/nitrogen mixtures of Old Earth to the alcohol-vapor infused Sunset Flower. Groups use a hookah-like setup using larger bottles that are almost small biomes in themselves.

Nominally organized by a directing committee that buys raw materials, tracks usage, and directs the planting and pollination cycles, Butterfly Avernus subsists on donations of work, materials, and credits. Many Progress locals volunteer their time tending to the garden of plants, changing out nutrient packs, and checking gas mixtures. The whole thing is on the honor system without any formal track of donations, but word gets around about substantial contributors and their rep goes up accordingly.

The name of the oxygen bar comes from the pollination season, when swarms of tiny robotic butterflies with clingy-fiber multichromatic wings flood the bar to help pollinate the exposed plants. The cheap ’bots are a tourist attraction during the two weeks or so they’re deployed, and often attract small celebrities and press in roughly equal numbers to get swarmed by the mostly mindless flying nuisances while the locals stay at home and measure pollination coverage from free apps.

The directing committee is comprised of high-rep volunteers elected at small informal meetings, and currently numbers five, each of whom coordinates different aspects of the bar and has broad authority within their areas of expertise. Abuses of trust result in swift loss of rep and, in at least one case involving proof of embezzlement, a quick trip out the airlock without a suit.

Seeds

• Morphs at the bar are usually trusted to know their own biological limits when it comes to what their systems can and cannot take; poisonous consumption isn’t unheard of but remains rare. However, when a hypercorp rep from Qing Long accidentally sucks down gaseous arsenic, Fa Jing orders the bar closed. Any outsiders that can prove the rep was assassinated rather than died because of something the bar did would earn a heavy rep fast.
• Butterfly Avernus is also the front for a small group of dealers in prohibited narcotics and nanobiologicals, which are concealed within certain “special orders.” Fa Jing risks losing the support of the locals if the hypercorp actively moves against the bar and its volunteers, but if some outsiders were to snoop around and provide evidence to the identities and methods of the criminal ring, the hypercorp reps would be very grateful.

021: Beamsailors

ENTRY 021: Beamsailors

Beam sails (also known as solar sails or photon sails) are a proven technology, both low maintenance and long lasting, able to operate with relative ease between the inner planets using the radiation pressure and solar gases pushing against their mirrored surfaces to provide sufficient thrust for interplanetary travel.  Some models are able to operate farther using beam stations and proper construction. Morphs designed as beamsailors are small craft the size of a typical transhuman at the center of a massive beam sail of nanofabricated microscopic mirrors set in an active array. The morphs ply their way between planets, vast mirrored surface areas folding and tacking into amazing geometries to catch either sunlight or a laser beam.

Beamsailors are one of the most economic method of independent space exploration for the inner solar systems, but remain rare—while they can build up to appreciable speeds, particularly with a laser or maser beam behind them to provide additional thrust, in practice they tend to be slower than many conventional space craft for short voyages, generally with greater turning radius and higher delta v to change trajectories than on-board engine craft of similar mass.

Egos that choose beamsailor morphs tend to be self-reliant and desire independence. Many work as spotters and surveyors for freelance miners and hypercorps, doing sweeps of asteroids or high-altitude planetary surface scans looking for minerals, metals, ices, and unusual features. Beamsailors are also among the explorers of solar systems on the other side of gate networks, though often with modifications that allow them to operate with respect to the different environments of alien stars.

Beamsailor Stats

Beamsailor morphs have all of the advantages of synthmorphs (Eclipse Phase, p.143).

Enhancements: 360-Degree Vision, Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Solar Panels

Mobility System: Beam Sail

Aptitude Maximum: 30

Durability: 60

Wound Threshold: 20

Disadvantages: Limited Maneuverability

CP Cost: 80

Credit Cost: Expensive (minimum 50,000+)

Individual beamsailors often have many more advantages and enhancements, including entire weapon systems, armor, quantum farcasters, sensor arrays, etc.

Seeds

• One Bad Photon is a surveyor operating in the Hungaria asteroids and thinks ze’s hit something big, a deposit of exotic organic compounds that would fetch up to half a million credits from one of the biotech habitats or hypercorps. All ze asks to lead the player characters to it is a fair share of the profits—but when they get there, they’ll have to deal with a claim-jumping scum barge.
• Dahast is a beamsailor gone bad—a predatory ego that hunts and cripples other beamsailors in slow races, using rail guns to rip their beam sails to shreds. What’s worse is what follows in Dahast’s wake, a crew of exsurgents that seize the crippled morph and seek to infect the captured ego. Firewall wants them ended—they have a group of beamsailor puppet socks set up as bait, all they need now are pilots that can lead Dahast and the exsurgents into the trap.

020: The Mighty Bu

ENTRY 020: The Mighty Bu

Horizon-watchers are not simply academics looking into the depths of creation, artists inspired by starscapes, or those desperate few who seek profit and hope from the vast emptiness. At the edge of transhumanity, standing watch against threats internal and external, hanging about in orbit of the outer planets and their moons are sentinels: massive combat-satellites, patient soldiers awaiting the next war, ready to deal with whatever threats—alien, exsurgent, or otherwise—that may arrive. Around distant Pluto, ever vigilant, lies The Mighty Bu.

While from a distance The Mighty Bu might be mistaken for a deep-space telescope, the central cylinder is actually a massive microwave laser and a fusion generator, supplemented by the massive solar panels on either side. TMB’s specific mission as a member of Firewall is to monitor the Plutonian system for signs of exsurgent threats—and, as necessary, eradicate them.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
12	14	15	15	14	18	23	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	46	9	92	450	150	900

Morph: Macromorph

Skills: Academic: Miltech 85, Beam Weapons 70 (95), Demolitions 52, Interfacing 63, Native Language Cantonese 85, Language English 60, Language German 70, Networking: Firewall 55, Perception 66 (91), Pilot Spacecraft 75, Profession Bodyguard 75

Implants: 360-Degree Vision, Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Eidetic Memory, Lidar, Radar, T-Ray Emitter

Armor: 30

Notes: Hibernation, Immobile, Social Stigma (Macromorph), sixty small tactical nuclear missiles, point-defense lasers, and a military-grade maser cannon

Using The Mighty Bu

The primary purpose of The Mighty Bu is to be a gigantic gun hanging in the night sky, capable of raining destruction on anything up to the size of a destroyer. As such it can be the final solution for any Firewall mission gone wrong, hanging above the player characters’ heads should they fail—if necessary, The Mighty Bu can be relocated to better serve this purpose. The Mighty Bu can also be a useful Firewall contact, accepting and passing along messages, and generally providing whatever knowledge and assistance a 35-ton satellite hanging over a distant dwarf planet can.

As a character, The Mighty Bu is generally jovial, courteous, magnanimous, infinitely patient, and self-confident as only an ego powered by a fusion generator and packing a sizable nuclear arsenal on its person can be. However, The Mighty Bu does not joke about its duty, which it takes extremely seriously. The Mighty Bu makes no threats, only promises—and always sees them through, even at the cost of its own existence.

Seeds

• An encounter with an exsurgent threat has seen The Mighty Bu infected by an aggressive nanobiological fungus. The interior of the satellite macromorph has been severely compromised as the fungus consumes plastics and ferric materials using exotic symbiotic bacteria and nanites. Firewall has dispatched the player characters to rescue its cortical stack before the Mighty Bu, as its final act, self-destructs to eliminate the exsurgent threat forever. The PCs will have to penetrate to the interior, and risk exposure with the bizarre fungus…

019: Long Speech

ENTRY 019: Long Speech

For some, transhuman consciousness is a matter of scale. The biological wetware of early humans adapted the speed of thought and reaction to the limitations of its equipment; the perception of time was relative, but always constrained within the narrow band accorded by neurotransmitters, nerves, and muscles. While the transhuman body may constantly receive data, the bulk of it is ignored and interpolated for faster processing—a movement “too quick for the human eye” appears as a blur, the sampling rate of the human brain automatically discarding the intervening steps and producing a distorted image as a result.

The freedom from the traditional bodily limitations has brought about experimentation with new modes of time-scale perception. Mayfly attention spans can perceive the individual flaps of a hummingbird’s wings, or catch the individual frames of a video image; and on the other end of the scale are geologic consciousnesses that perceive at a slower relative time rate, ignoring the statistical abnormalities of small events to catch the slow changes of erosion, or read the patterns of transhumans flocking through a mall.

Communication with transhumans experiencing different time-scales can be difficult, with either party apt to lose patience with the others' too-slow or too-quick responses. Success is usually accomplished via technological arbiters, with both parties varying their time scales with relation to one another until within an acceptable limit, speeding up and slowing down until they can understand one another easily. The most successful and widespread such method is Long Speech, a buffering protocol that places both participants in a simulation that induces a temporary state of non-real time, then interpolates the result respective to the individuals’ time scale to produce the similitude of a conversation at that frame of reference.

Long Speech sees its greatest use in long-distance communication, allowing individuals light minutes or hours away to experience what feels like a normal conversation, eliminating the delay caused by the communication medium. In the simulation, both parties perceive time passing only at the rate of the conversation, even though hours or days may pass while they are talking.

Seeds

• The Rothbart Wei, go master of Mars has been engaged in a match via Long Speech with an AI in a probe beyond the rim; each move takes at least a week to make, and tension is building up on the mesh as the match slowly heats up. However, the match organizers have received intimation that someone is trying to sabotage the tournament by introducing a digital virus that mucks with Wei’s perception of time, trapping him to experience a relative lifetime before his next move. They ask the player character’s help in stopping the virus.

018: AK-2047

ENTRY 018: AK-2047

The AK-2047 is the characteristic personal weapon of the Khangs, a militant survivalist sect that was too hardcore in their paramilitary socialism for even the Autonomist Alliance to handle, and the vacuum-adapted kinetic weapon exemplifies their group ideals of reliability, adaptability, durability, and lethality. Tracing a long and oftentimes undistinguished design heritage back to the Avtomat Kalishnikova, the contemporary AK-2047 is the inheritor of centuries of modifications, upgrades, redesigns, and reimaginings. The most basic model is little more than an automatic rifle adapted to fire in vacuum, whose rather simple design allows it to be easily manufactured or repaired from a wide variety of materials while remaining relatively accurate and workable.

Vacuum-adapted kinetic weapons are a rarity, not so much because they are difficult to design or manufacture than because they are of limited utility; if not properly braced, the recoil of firing the weapon in zero or low gravity can weapon and combatant flying. Most planning combat in a vacuum at a distance therefore prefer more powerful railguns or recoilless beam weapons to kinetic weapons—but the AK-2047 is not without its advantages. The gun can be manufactured piecemeal on most makers without arousing suspicion, and assembled rather quickly. Aside from the chemical traces for the dry lubricants and accelerants used in the ammunition, which are easily disguised in a workshop, the weapon has no distinctive chemical or electronic signature that registers with the majority of habitat sensors—and, if need be, they are sturdy enough to be used as melee weapons in hand-to-hand combat.

The Khangs are the primarily manufacturers of AK-2047s. Their social protocol has replaced the family unit with a paramilitary organization, or as one Extropian transanthropoligist put it “the Spartans by way of the Khmer Rouge,” with children raised in military clades. They work as mercenaries across the system; they tend to travel light and build what they need once they arrive from locally available materials. For the Khangs, the AK-2047 is a weapons platform, the base model which they adapt to each environment they find themselves in. The Khang database contains blueprints, maker instructions, and directions for thousands of modifications, upgrades, and accessories, allowing them to produce weapons customized to local conditions—sometimes in a matter of minutes. Spare weapons are happily sold to outsiders, though access to the Khang database itself is more guarded.

Mechanics

Firearm	Armor Penetration (AP)	Damage Value (DV)	Average DV	Firing Modes	Ammo	Cost
AK-2047	-5	2d10+4	15	SA, BF, FA	30	Low

Slightly less-powerful than the standard assault rifle, the AK-2047 makes up in adaptability what they lose in terms of force, able to fire effectively in most environments, including complete vacuum or when submerged. The standard model is completely mechanical (no electronic firing, smartlink, mesh inserts, etc.) but also incredibly cheap, reliable, and easy to manufacture and modify.

The AK-2047 is a two-handed weapon that uses the Kinetic Weapons skill to fire, or the Clubs skill when used as a melee weapon (when used as a club, use stats for a club, Eclipse Phase, pp.334-5) The cost of any accessories or upgrades is one category lower.