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…