ENTRY 213: Demi Wannah
“We are as we make ourselves to be.”
- Tattoo on the back of Demi Wannah’s neck
Demi Wannah was born with no legs, just a pair of crippled
stumps. Her parents abandoned her, and the overburdened habitat she grew up in
during the Fall consigned her to an institution, where her legs were amputated,
she was sterilized, and her budding breasts burned off so that she would be
less of a burden. When she was old enough, she built herself some new legs, and
escaped.
The past is a datafile to Demi Wannah that she has archived
and left forgotten. Her attention is on the now, on her work—mostly freelancer
graphic design for local microcorps, and some custom design for synthmorph and
cyberlimbs. With the new lower torsos of her own design she walks, scuttles,
crawls, slithers, fucks, kicks, skips, jumps, and every other thing just as
anyone else does, and never takes it for granted. With her new “saucer”
augmentation, she even has limited flight via vectored thrust, though it makes
her airsick.
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COG
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COO
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INT
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REF
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SAV
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SOM
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WIL
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MOX
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20
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19
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14
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15
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12
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18
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21
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-
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INIT
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SPD
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LUC
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TT
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IR
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DUR
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WT
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DR
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5
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1
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42
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8
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84
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30
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6
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45
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Morph: Flat
Skills: Academic:
Bioengineering 60, Art: Architecture 40, Art: Graphic Design 45, Free Fall
(Microgravity) 30, Hardware: Robotics 36, Interests: Custom Implants 60,
Interests: DIY Augmentation 60, Interests: Unique Morphs 60, Language: Native
Portuguese 84, Language: English 50, Language: Spanish 66, Networking:
Hypercorps 30, Networking: Media 30, Perception 60, Profession: Graphic Designer
65, Protocol 33, Unarmed Combat (Subdual) 28
Implants: Access
Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Multi-Tasking (x4), ModularTorso*
Disadvantages: No
Cortical Stack
* Unique augmentation; Demi Wannah’s legs and lower torso
have been replaced with a modular slot that can be fitted into custom-designed
mobility systems based on synthmorph designs with different mobility rates and
augmentations. Among the lower torsos available to Demi include a bipedal
walker (4/16), arachnoid walker (4/24), thrust vector “saucer” (8/40), and
snake (4/16, 8/28 rolling).
Using Demi Wannah
Demi bears the scars of her past, and the handmade
augmentations that are her future. As a contact or an ally, she can provide the
PCs some custom augmentations or put them in contact with someone else that
can. As an antagonist, her early upbringing has affected her ability to form
close relationships and relate to other people—she has a tendency to steal and
betray people, imagining that they are going to steal and betray her. As a plot
hook, most actions will resolve either around Demi’s past or her work designing
custom synthmorph limbs.
Seed
- People start dying on the player’s habitat. After some sleuthing, their only common factor is their past with Demi—the doctors, nurses, and administrators who bureaucratically condemned and mutilated her. When the PCs confront her, she does not struggle or seek to explain. If they turn her in, they are given a small reward—and according to the consensus of the habitat, she will be given a public trial and anyone is allowed to speak for her. The PCs will be asked to attend as witnesses. If they do nothing, she will be mindwiped and the cost of the procedure and her re-education taken out of her belongings—she may even lose her morph entirely.
One thing I always struggle with in EP is augmented characters. What is their motivation to stay augmented instead of, say, simply resleeving? I understand resleeving is expensive, but even then, why not simply hop into a healing vat and regrow what was lost? If they like robotics enough to make that their motivation, why aren't they just in a synthmorph?
ReplyDeleteI'd love to hear your take on this.
Well, for resleeving you've got three main angles to consider. The first is simply cost and availability - it's been established that not every ego in EP can afford or be afforded a morph to get around in, so for some people resleeving is not an immediate option - one of those things they have to save up favors or creds for.
DeleteThe second comes down to personal preference and adaptability. Just because you have the capability to move your brain into a new morph doesn't mean everyone is going to do it; you can draw a bit of a comparison to body augmentation today, where just because you can get pierced ears or a tattoo or genital beading or breast implants doesn't mean its ubiquitous throughout a population. For some people this might be because of conservative outlooks or a psychological hang-up, fear of the loss of self, etc., but for a lot of people I imagine that they just identify very strongly with the skin they're in.
Third, and this isn't talked about quite as much in EP, boils down to social pressure and acceptance. Many people after the Fall are still tied up in identifying themselves with a particular group, ethnicity, nationality, etc., and within that group there's going to be a degree of conformity - what does it mean to be Vietnamese, say, if you're in a case and everyone else is a biomorph?
For Demi in particular, I was rather hoping to emphasize her credo "We are as we make ourselves to be." Erasing the physical scars of the past does not erase the past; it's a process she has to work through as to what parts of herself she needs to accept, discard, or improve, and it may be a lifelong process. She has suffered and been mutilated, but has she let that treatment define her, or has she moved on? It's too easy, I think, to assume that those who deviate from physical norm can be returned to mental and social normal by giving them cosmetic surgery. It is not appropriate to say that all women that get a double mastectomy should given breast implants - why? So they can pretend it never happened? But it did happen. Those events are part of their identity. Anyway, that's probably a lot more than you wanted to read on that. :P
I don't think people who don't want to read even play Eclipse Phase, let alone read 213 fan-written entries; so I wouldn't worry about that ;).
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