ENTRY 054: Second Meditation
Transhumans interact with the universe through feedback
loops; the classical human form is built around responses to sensory input,
every physical action swiftly followed by a rush of sensation—the location of
limbs, pain, temperature, stress. This is in part why acclimating to a new
morph is so difficult for many transhumans: their mental conception of self,
even their general responses to new data, is geared toward things they take for
granted like height, number and length of limb, balance of gravity, what will
hurt and what will not. A flat, resleeved into the three-meter tall form of an Olympian, still identifies with their old form—they instinctively stoop, miss
reaching for objects because they misjudge the length of their arms, and do not
exert their strength correctly; they do not recognize their face in the mirror,
the sound of their own voice, miss the twinge of old wounds and roughness of
old calluses that vatborn morphs lack.
Software patches help considerably with initial integration,
but for those who fail to adapt to their morph quickly enough, there are
integration therapy techniques like Second Meditation, which emphasizes
feedback loops with special sensors that respond to allow the user to visualize
(or, if lacking sight, in other ways realize in their mind) their actions, so
that the user relies less on the software patches to adjust their ingrained
physical concept of self, and instead with repetition in a conducive learning
system adapts their thinking to their new form in a more natural and organic
fashion. Most Second Meditation activities resemble simple exercises, or even
that the individual is resting when concentrating on becoming aware of and
controlling entirely internal processes, but the user is actively engaged with
the feedback from their sensors, trying to bring their action in line with the
ideal response pattern for their morph.
Mechanics
Second Meditation is a psychosurgery procedure (Eclipse Phase, pp.231-2) designed to ameliorate
the penalties from a failed Integration Test (Eclipse Phase, p.272).
SECOND MEDITATION
Timeframe: 1 day
+ 1 per 30 full points of MoF (or 30 days for a Critical Failure)
PM: +0
SV: 0
Second Meditation facilitates integration with a new morph,
reducing the penalties associated with a failed Integration Test. The subject’s
penalty to physical actions is reduced by half (from -10 to -5 for Failure or
Severe Failure, -30 to -15 for Critical Failure).
Seed
- Midnomengrupp, a small psychosurgery hypercorp out of Extropia has begun testing an experimental Third Meditation technique for transhumans facing severe and heretofore insurmountable failure to integrate with their morphs. The technique basically resleeves the ego into their existing morph (allowing a new Integration Test), but more slowly and with additional feedback techniques (providing a +20 bonus to the Integration Test). What they need from the PCs are some test subjects that they can try the technique on—whether they are willing or not.
- A criminal resleeved into a Fury combat morph is having integration issues, and needs the PCs to act as her bodyguards as she goes through Second Meditation for a couple days.
Caught another typo. Left out the "h" in with in the paragraph above the seeds.
ReplyDeleteFixed.
DeleteWant to make sure I understand the timeframe for Second Meditation. If you fail your Integration test (let's say you roll a 75 out of 43) then you need one day plus 1 day per 30 points of MoF (in this case two days since 75-43 = 32). So long as I have this right, how would you ever get thirty days of treatment? I think that's a typo, but wanted to clarify.
ReplyDeleteEditing for clarity as we speak, the 30 days is for when you suffer a Critical Failure. The basic idea is that Second Meditation needs to take less time to complete than the period the character would suffer penalties (otherwise, what's the point?); since the Critical Failure imparts a permanent penalty, 30 days is just an arbitrary cap.
Delete