251: Achamoth

ENTRY 251: Achamoth

“How much for you and your sister?”

- Achamoth on the prowl

Once upon a time, Achamoth was a human being—with a gender, a spouse, a life. Something went wrong. The details are fuzzy, green-tinged slices of memory that Achamoth always remembers slightly differently. Sometimes it acts transhuman, trying to blend in with the crowd, even interacting with people. Sometimes it forgets it isn’t transhuman, and doesn’t remember again until the screaming starts again. Even by exsurgent standards, Achamoth is disturbed, and almost completely uncontrollable except for a few ingrained trigger scents tied to primal states (cardamom: lust, garlic: rage, cinnamon: sleep, cumin: hunger).

Achamoth is an exsurgent prototype. Cosmetically transhuman from the outside, within that leathery, carapace-like exoskeletal shell oozes something closer to an undifferentiated slime colony, with a brain like Christmas-tree lights strung out throughout it’s two-meters-a-bit frame. Because Achamoth’s version of the exsurgent virus appears to be damaged or dormant, Firewall has not yet brought them in, but keeps track of the exsurgent prototype so that it can lead them to other exsurgent cells—even cleaning up after a few of its disastrous attempts to “blend in” with transhumanity.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
18	16	15	15	17	12	18	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	-	-	-	70	14	95

Morph: Splicer (Exsurgent Prototype)

Skills: Academics: Virology 65, Exotic Ranged Attack (spit) 48, Free Fall (Microgravity) 56, Infiltration (Blending In) 50, Interests: TITANs 75, Language: Native English 85, Language: Cantonese 70, Language: Mandarin 70, Language: Japanese 55, Networking: Exsurgent Cells 33, Networking: Firewall 25, Perception (Visual) 70, Persuasion (Negotiation) 67, Profession: Virologist 40, Unarmed Combat 45

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Carapace Armor, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Emotional Dampers, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Enhanced Vision, Nanoscopic Vision, Oxygen Reserve, Vacuum Sealing

Notes: Achamoth is filled with an amorphous green fluid in place of most of its internal organs, giving it inhuman durability. It can regurgitate this material as a Spit Attack (area effect) Toxin (Application: D, O; Onset Time: 1 Action Turn, Duration: 5 Action Turns, Effect: 1d10 ÷ 2 (round up) DV per Action Turn ).

Using Achamoth

Gamemasters should decide on their own whether Achamoth is truly the damaged, dangerous, and pathetic entity it appears to be, or whether the inhuman intelligence within that leathery shell is playing Firewall and the exsurgent cell network as it pursues its own goals—transformation back into human, for example, or revenge against the TITANs, or maybe a mass exsurgent infection to turn an entire habitat into creatures like itself. In any event, interacting with Achamoth will probably bring its Firewall “handlers”—an autonomous clique which is willing to kill other Firewall agents to preserve the secret of their particular asset.

Seed

• Trouble in paradise: a particularly gruesome murder of People’s Representative Lean Brundage and her wife Scarletta on the vacation-habitat of New Hawai’i in orbit around Mercury has triggered all sorts of alarms in the Firewall search engines, and led to them now being aware of Achamoth and the autonomous group watching and directing it. Believing that one or more members of that group have begun using Achamoth as their personal assassin, the PCs are hired to investigate the scene in New Hawai’i—and if possible, eliminate Achamoth and its rogue handler with extreme prejudice (“Fired. Out of an airlock. In the general direction of the sun.”)