356: The Mind Parasitoids

ENTRY 356: The Mind Parasitoids

"Oh my ghost, it's adorable!"
- Fan Wong, gatecrasher

On the exoplanet they evolved, the mind parasitoids are the highest form of life. Xenobiologists believe that the hot-pink invertebrates faced unusual competition in their path to dominance over their primeval swamps, likely facing all manner of close relatives parasitoids in competition for resources - most especially host animals - and were forced to develop multiple methods of influencing and altering the behavior of their hosts, and a degree of social organization similar to Terran insects in scale and complexity, actively "farming" certain hosts for food substances and directing other hosts to build dam-nests to create pools for the mind parasitoids to breed in. As near as researchers can tell, at least a thousand years before transhumanity opened the Pandora Gate to their homeworld, the mind parasitoids had spread to every habitable corner of their globe, and stood unchallenged as the nonsentient lords and masters of their world.

To the mind parasitoids, transhumanity must have seemed a frustrating prey. Their skin lacked the chemical gateways that the invertebrates' venom had evolved to pass through the skin and into the nervous system, and their anatomy and biochemistry were very different from the mammaloids that roamed their home exoplanet. All the careful tricks of nature that had made the mind parasitoids absolute in their environment utterly failed them against transhumanity. Worst for them, with their great big eyes and hot pink dermis, transhumans considered them almost irresistibly cute.

While xenobiologists are continuing their studies just to make sure that there's nothing harmful in the mind parasitoid's biology or biochemistry to transhumanity, the gatecrashers that discovered their unnamed homeworld are already planning the media blitz and crunching the numbers on the pet trade, with early responses from focus-groups being very positive.

Seeds

• A synth researcher outside the loop of the mind parasitoid main group suspects that the critter's cuteness is more than skin deep - and that the extraterrestrials harbor a bacteria similar to Toxoplasma gondii that is warping transhuman biomorphs to show more affection to the alien brain slugs and possibly spread the infection. The truth is more alarming - the mind parasitoids have a low-level psi power that accomplishes the same thing.
• Scientists working on "accessories" for mind parasitoid pet owners have designed an interface patch augmentation which can allow the alien invertebrate's native abilities to function on cats, rats...even transhuman biomorphs. Live tests are being run on the exoplanet to see how the mind slugs and their hosts adapt, with the PCs brought in for security. The results are frightening as the transhuman-hosts start building things...and become outright dangerous when the PCs notice a transhuman-host installing an "interface patch" and mind parasitoid on an unwilling researcher!
• The pet approvals have come through and a bounty has gone up for mind parasitoids - the player characters are sent out with a quota for 1,000 healthy specimens, with a bonus for more. All they have to do is brave the dangers of an alien swamp and a semi-sentient hive of hot-pink alien slugs.

287: Spigipede

ENTRY 287: Spigipede

"Once, there was a dearly-beloved processed meat product. Crippled by the Fall and the general lack of animal byproducts that went into producing it, the parent company ceased to exist, but its intellectual property was bought up by a successor hypercorp, who refused to release the secret recipe or the name from copyright. This infuriated the customer base, and there arose from that overfed horde a group of wild-eyed genehackers who vowed they would never again be without their salty meat snack. This begins the chronicle of the noble spigipede."
- Opening lines to Spigipedes for Flatlanders: A How-To Manual

The "noble spigipede" is a segmented series of muscular rings wrapped around a simple integument system with a vaguely porcine maw at one end and an orifice at the other, and moves by contracting its ring muscles to drag itself along the ground, and even to arch up and overcome obstacles. They can grow up to thirty centimeters in diameter and while no one knows their ultimate length, unharvested spigipedes have reached thirty meters. Boneless, sexless, unable to reproduce and capable of regenerating segments so long as the head remains intact, the spigipede is almost entirely edible. You just cut off a segment, wash out the integument, heat and serve. It has no direct earthly counterpart, though many consumers insist that prepared spigipede steak tastes much like their beloved lost meat-product.

Spigipede cultivation and cooking has become its own mini-culture, complete with handbooks on care, preparation, FAQs, health issues, growing your own spigipede (the gene sequences have been open-sourced, but synthesis and incubation has multiple realizations), My Little Spigipede stuffed animals, Spigipede Friends animations and games, spigipede taxidermy, and any number of genetic upgrades (from the infamous "FlavourPak" to the well-received "Spigipede Loops") most of which are still in beta testing - and all generated by fans, mostly as open and shared content. While most of their nervous system consists of a brain stem that keeps them from eating their own feces, some of the spigipede lovers insist that they make compassionate pets. Commercial spigipede owners, which are predominantly on scumbarges, tend to be less flowery, but still often give their spigipedes small smell-toys that the spigipedes like to cuddle and roll around with, and keep in their nests.

While some XP horror media like Spigipede Shaitan attempts to capitalize on the horror of these huge, pink, segmented, worm-like genetic monsters, the original coders actually hardwired safeguards which made human flesh unpalatable to spigipedes, and the soft-tooth oinkerwurms cannot even process bone, which passes straight through their digestive system (minus any soft tissues). Of course, some hypercorps decry spigipedes as being a drag on the commercial production of new, more thoroughly-tested processed meat products, but nobody really cares what they think, and many microcorps take advantage of spigipede meat to help create their own foodproducts, like the pepperoni-flavored Spigizza frozen foods popular on Titan among university students.

Seeds

• People are getting sick, and the source is quickly tracked back to a single spigipede. The station docs are quarantining the animal until they can determine what's wrong with it, but a number of flats and splicers on the station are suffering catastrophic diarrhea and have started up their own Mesh-based Spigipede Plague Support Group while strapped into their toilets and raised a bounty on whoever is responsible. The station has started to tear itself apart to see who did it - was the spigipede poisoned? Infected? Was it poor hygiene and living conditions, or a genetic accident that led to cancer-ridden spigipede steaks being given out? If the PCs want the creds, they'll need to find out first.
• SpigLover99 wants to attempt the never been done before: to resleeve into a spigipede. He has everything set up and ready...but once that's done, there's still the hardest part to get where he wants to be in life, as the pet spigipede for his beloved gene hacker Miss Spiggy on Mars. If the PCs accept the commission, they get SpigLover99's entire worldly wealth, but they need to find some way for Miss Spiggy to accept him into her stable...and she is very particular on her spigipedes.

283: Eggman

ENTRY 283: Eggman

"I am the Eggman."

- The Eggman

The balding, unassuming middle-aged splicer known as the Eggman has as mysterious a past as any other veterinarian/ornithologist specializing in the study and preservation of both Earth's classical avian species as well as the neo-avians created through uplifting. Some say he carried on an interspecies relationship for years with an uplifted emperor penguin, and originally received his egg pouch implant to help brood their adopted egg. Others claim he received it as a smuggler for the Triads, forced to carry illicit biologicals in de-embryoed ostrich eggs. One drunken professor of neo-ornithology on Titan insists that Eggman got the pouch as a grad student, and used it to successfully hatch the first kiwi off-earth after the death of its natural mother. Whatever the truth, the Eggman is not telling.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	22	18	16	13	15	16	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	32	6	64	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer

Skills: Academics: Oology 90, Academics: Ornithology 77, Art: Painting (Birds) 43, Art: Makeup 50, Disguise (Bird) 48, Interests: Parenting 44, Interests: Neo-Avians 45, Interests: Uplift Rights 33, Interfacing 25, Language: Native English 85, Language: Maori 70, Language: New Zealand Sign Language 50, Medicine: Veterinary 66, Networking: Criminals (Black Market Animals) 30, Networking: Science 42, Profession: Vererinarian 60, Unarmed Combat (Beak) 28 

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Beak (transgenic graft, 1d10 DV, use Unarmed Combat Skill), Egg Pouch (modified Skin Pocket)

Traits: Expert (Oology)

Using Eggman

Some people are all surface. They hold no illusions about themselves, who they are or what they do. They present no masks to the outside world, and whether they love or hate themselves, they are resigned to be themselves, through fortune and calamity. The Eggman is one such who is exactly what he appears to be: a veterinarian, oologist, and ornithologist. His mission in life is the study and care of eggs, avians, and neo-avians, and he values their well-being above his own existence. When the PCs meet him, he will almost inevitably be incubating an egg in his egg-pouch, letting his body heat keep the chick warm until it is ready to hatch. This does not necessarily mean that as a PC the Eggman is boring, or even especially honest in what he tells them, but his actions will always show his true nature: he will never do harm to an avian or neo-avian (non-fertilized eggs are fair game, even though he prefers to preserve them as surrogate ova), or by inaction allow one to come to harm. If faced with a failure at this basic task, he may even committ suicide.

Seeds

• The Eggman has heard rumor of a new Enhanced Pheromones implant that allows transhumans greater empathy with avians and neo-avians. Unfortunately, the research has been stolen by the Intelligent Design Crew. The Eggman asks the PCs to retrieve the design schematics from the ID Crew, offering as payment a small ransom in unfertilized eggs - any one of which will fetch a good price as food or research material on the open market.
• Recently, the Eggman accompanied a gatecrashing expedition, and returned with a strange purple-black egg in his egg pouch. Now he has been acting oddly, neglecting his birds and engaging in strange medical research, acting belligerent and burning favors left and right. His friends and neighbors are worried about him, and have passed the hat to hire the PCs to find out what is wrong with him. If pressed, the Eggman claims to have formed a psychic link with the alien egg he found - and that it is sick and dying, and he wished to find a cure. However, if the Eggman is separated from the egg, it quickly hatches and grows into something similar to a small, feathered headhunter (Eclipse Phase 383, but with DUR 10) with psi sleights that only affect avians.

235: Maintenance Rats

ENTRY 235: Maintenance Rats

Resources are limited. Imagination is not. Faced with the greatest challenge of its existence, transhumanity has had to do the best it can with the technology and scraps of old Earth—and put them to work. Maintenance rats are a breed of partial uplift, genefixed for cleanliness, sociability, intelligence, and certain specific fixed behaviors. They have as much in common with the old earth rat as a Chihuahua has with a timber wolf.

In most habitats that have them, maintenance rats perform essential cleaning services, scurrying through pipes and crawlspaces too small for most transhumans, picking up trash and debris and carrying it away to a designated refuse pile in a maintenance area marked by certain scent markers. They control their own population, are fastidious about their appearance, and only deposit their droppings in designated areas. Most habitats find they make great personal pets, being extremely friendly and easy to train.

These modifications have come at the expense of a degree of self-sufficiency. Maintenance rats need their designated collection and “deposit” points, and while they are still biologically capable of eating almost anything their tastes have been tweaked so that they will only devour especially scent-marked food pellets. While they are an important tool in transhumanity’s survival, maintenance rats are no longer able to survive on their own in the wild—and if left unattended or neglected, entire populations may starve or go mad.

Seeds

• A vengeful maintenance worker disposed of a bully by spraying them with the maintenance rat food marker—hundreds of furry bodies covered the victim within minutes, leaving only a gory skeleton with a few winking, indigestible electronics, which were soon picked up by bloodstained paws and taken to the collection point. Now the station administration debates whether or not to exterminate the entire population as a result of the media uproar of the attack. Rat-lovers throughout the station have put up a bounty for anyone that can find proof that the maintenance rats were compelled instead of acting freely.
• Genehackers have developed a new breed of “splicer rats” that compete with maintenance rats for space and food, but which can use the Mesh to coordinate their activities thanks to basic mesh implants, and the maintenance rats are being hard-pressed by the newcomers. Unfortunately, the splicer rats have been infected with an exsurgent virus. Somewhere in the bowels of the habitat a seven-headed splicer rat king begins directing the others—first to eliminate the maintenance rats, and then the transhumans! The sudden rapid decline of maintenance rat populations triggers a warning, and the habitat hires to PCs to figure out what’s going on with the rats.
• Hypercorp researcher and chief maintenance rat breeder Mamoud Rasiq has only one vice: his pet maintenance rat Blinky, who thanks to his own cortical stack is currently on his sixth incarnation. Mamoud believes that Blinky is on the verge of becoming a true uplift—he just needs one little upgrade. Mamoud’s employer has the tech, but he’ll get in big trouble if he accesses it…but if the PCs happen to steal it for him, all’s well. In exchange, Mamoud can give them some Best of Breed™ top-quality pet maintenance rats, which are worth quite a bit on the pet market.

229: Isotope Ants

ENTRY 229: Isotope Ants

On Mars, Rusters plant metal cylinders into the ground. Cybernetic ant colonies powered by long-lived atomic batteries, at the heart of which lies a brainless queen. Across the system, users log in and take control, the system and first dozen drones goes live, and the queen starts laying eggs. Game on.

The Isotope Ants are crowdsourced terraforming. Each colony contains six breeds of genetically modified ants designed both to survive the Martian environment and perform certain functions, and wirelessly controllable by simple cybernetic interfaces. Users are encouraged to use their colonies for soil reclamation, extending the hive throughout the nearby area by building tunnels and processing the Martian dirt and dust. If certain critical goals are met, the user may be rewarded with a modest rep boost or unlock additional terraforming tools: new ant breeds, aphid-like slave species, refills on vital resources, etc. So far, Isotope Ants have begun reclaiming more than a quarter of a million square meters of Martian soil.

Seeds

• Rogue indie developers have created a variant game called Atomic Ant Wars, where ant colonies are posted nearby each other and the different users battle against one another, seeking to invade each other’s base and kill their queens. The creators of Isotope Ants feel this is a betrayal of their basic principles and hire the PCs to express their displeasure by destroying the Atomic Ant Wars breeding facility—with prejudice.
• An abandoned Isotope Ants colony continues to function, even though that should be impossible. The developers believe a rogue AGI may be controlling the colony, but the three technicians they sent out to eradicate the rogue colony have disappeared. The PCs are hired to travel to a remote region of Mars and find the missing technicians.
• Planetary Consortium investigators are looking into where the Isotope Ants microcorp is getting the radioactive material for their long-lasting batteries. The PCs are asked to delay and distract the investigator team while the microcorp covers their trail and secures a (legal) source. All this has to be done without tipping off Isotope Ants’ actual source, who has been nipping the material from a stockpile of weapons-grade radioisotopes on Titan.
• A young and impressionable AGI named Myrmidon has become too deeply enmeshed in playing Isotope Ants, and the members of their peer-group are worried about their mental well-being. The PCs are asked to intervene…by puppeting a group of specially-made antlion micro-morphs into the hive and killing the “queen.”
• Firewall is concerned with the similarities between Isotope Ants and a little-known exsurgent technology that uses proto-wasps as literal “bugs in the system” to infiltrate and disrupt habitats. The PCs are asked to investigate Isotope Ants and determine the source of their technology, and any connections between its owners/employees and known exsurgent groups.
• Hacker AntLover69 has found a way to network multiple Isotope Ant hives together, so that a single user can control any number of colonies. However, the Isotope Ant microcorp refuses to invest in the technology. AntLover69 asks the PCs to help them prove the concept by installing sixty-six hives in a remote crater not far from the Zone. However, while installing them the PCs wake up some long-dormant exsurgent constructs.

183: Bear Safari

ENTRY 183: Bear Safari

On Gerlach, an O’Neill cylinder orbiting Venus, there is a single solid ring of the habitat that is off-limits to most visitors, though the transparent aluminum walls display a mix of carefully-cultivated forest and savannah. Only fifty meters wide, the ring of greenery is little more than an arboreal tunnel, like a small section of old Earth sliced off and brought around in a circle—most tourists can only stand and stare at the verdant growth, and perhaps get a peek at the residents of that small, strange stretch of land.

They stand on two legs, though they only grow to a maximum height of a meter, and their claws and fangs are tiny things, the paws modified into crude opposable thumbs, and with wide eyes on their expressive faces. A range of fur colors and patterns have been noted, some of which are distinctly unnatural (light purple, pale green, and pink being most notable, not to mention the infamous “Checkered Ted”). The BearWatch network believes that they are sub-sentient, and probably genetic chimerae combining aspects of koala, panda, and lemur. They are adorable. And they are hunted.

The Bear Safari is a game preserve, and their specialty is a short bipedal mammal which resemble nothing so much as a giant teddy bear. Given that the safari is located inside a populated station, some restrictions on weaponry apply, mainly kinetic and projectile weapons, though at least a few uplifted customers prefer a more “hands on” kill. Strict limits are applied to how many are killed, and the time period a group is allowed in, and the “Teds” are of course not restricted in how they can respond—there have been a few fatalities where hunters underestimated their prey and fell to fangs and claws. Any customer that does kill a Ted gets their carcass, which can be rendered in the Bear Safari office to separate pelt, meat, and skeleton. An average hunt for a single Ted starts at 10,000 credits.

Standard Ted Stats

Teds are not sentient but are intelligent animals, about on par with un-uplifted chimpanzees. They tend to be very territorial and will react aggressively to anyone entering their hunting grounds or near their lairs, which are often “nests” created at the base of trees. They are omnivorous and diurnal, mainly subsisting on insects and small animals that the Bear Safari keepers release each day. Each is tagged so that its movements may be tracked.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
6	6	6	20	20	12	8	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
5	2	16	2	32	20	6	30

Skills: Climbing 37, Fray 33, Free Fall (Microgravity) 26, Perception (Smell) 55, Scrounging 24, Spray Weapons (Urine) 25*, Unarmed Combat 45

Traits: Claw/Fang Attack (1d10 DV, use Unarmed Combat skill), Danger Sense, Enhanced Smell, Enhanced Taste, Enhanced Vision, Pain Tolerance (2)

* Teds may spray urine up to five meters away; a successful hit does no damage, but marks the target so that other Teds can easily distinguish them through their sense of smell.

Seed

• “Old Ted” is the most hardened survivor of the Bear Safari, a scarred silver-furred veteran of eighteen hunts who had pulled down and partially devoured over twenty flats and splicers that have ventured into the “forest.” An online petition has asked for the Bear Safari to retire Old Ted, and the Bear Safari appears to be considering it. However, an uplift rights group believes that Old Ted is in fact an uplift—which would make the entire Bear Safari venture illegal. To prove this, the group needs someone to venture into the Bear Safari and capture Old Ted so that he can be subject to a battery of intelligence tests. If the PCs accept, they’ll find that perhaps the hunters have become the prey.

154: The Martian Cryptids

ENTRY 154: The Martian Cryptids

When transhumanity arrived, Mars was a dead planet. Some still hold there was no life on Mars at all before humans made Marsfall. Now, though far from terraformed, Mars teems with life in and around the habitats and terraforming gardens. Yet no transhuman can say precisely what species are present on Mars; there is no master database of all animals, plants, and bacteria brought to Mars, or engineered since transhumanity arrived. As well, much of Mars remains ares incognita, unvisited and unexplored at the ground level, known only from the cameras and sensors of orbiting satellites and the occasional aerial sweep. So perhaps it comes as little surprise that Barsoomians see things out on the fringes, and come across strange carcasses from time to time after a dust storm has blown through, and some ruster takes a few pictures and uploads another entry in the Martian Cryptids database.

A classical open-editing environment, the Martial Cryptids is configured to allow any user to upload sightings and evidence; a devout community of bored scientists and cryptozoologists then begin the long battle of evaluating the rumors, collating data, sometimes even raising funds for expeditions to find evidence of cryptids with a high probability of actually existing. Most of the two hundred or so cryptids currently in the database are assumed to be the result of outside agencies, brought or engineered by transhumans, TITANs, or Factors; pre-Marsfall cryptids are generally considered hoaxes even by some of the most uncritical zoologists. Some of the favorite/most probable Martian cryptids include:

Aram snail-tortoise: A hypothetical silicon-based organism with multiple sightings in the Aram Chaos. The creatures are supposedly similar to gastropods and move on a single large pseudopod, protected by inarticulate iron-rich exoskeleton or shell which the foot draws into when dust storms come. Most reported examples are 6-8 centimeters long. “Aram shells” retrieved from the Aram Chaos region have so far proved to be inorganic hematite-silicon rocks.

Borget’s sunflower: A wild, self-reproducing “petal” nanoplant with hexagonal solar-panel “leaves” in Reull Vallis, supposedly crafted by famed narcoalgorithm programmer Glenda Borget after a trip inside the Zone and containing primitive maker-facilities sufficient to create new copies of itself from available materials. More conspiracy-minded cryptozoologists point to anomalous movements in the region shortly after rumors first emerged as part of a deliberate coverup.

Marsman: Known only through poor video and still photo footage, as well as hundreds of sightings, the Marsman appears to be a heavily modified, perhaps experimental morph combining traits of rusters and neo-hominids. Unlike typical Barsoomians, the Marsman reportedly is perfectly adapted to the current Martian environment, requiring no survival gear. Scientists decry this as highly improbable, but the number of sightings and mounting evidence suggest there might be something more than popular hallucination.

Using the Martian Cryptids

The Martian Cryptids Database, besides being the most popular source of data on Martian cryptids, also serves as a focal point for bounties proving the existence of any given cryptid, and the starting point of most expeditions that set out to prove/disprove the existence of such beasties, and as such may serve as jumping-off points for adventures. Some of the cryptids listed may be victims of the exsurgent virus, experiments of the TITANs, critters imported from exoplanets, genetic experiments that got away, or hallucinations brought about by stress, sleeplessness, loneliness, and low oxygen out on the fringes. Any way you cut it, cryptids can be a good excuse to get the PCs out to some of the unexplored places of Mars. Other sizable planetary habitats like Titan, Europa, and many exoplanets likely have their own cryptid databases.

151: Mood Lizard

ENTRY 151: Mood Lizard

The Mogwai Experimental Animal Therapy Group based out of Godwinhead is a research/marketing cell working to commercialize and popularize therapy animals. Over a century of research has shown the therapeutic benefits of therapy animals to transhumans, reducing the stress of transhuman and posthuman life and promoting positive qualities; what MEAT-G is attempting to discover is the most profitable critter with a broad consumer appeal and bring it to market. Most of their work to date has seen only modest successes like the Yeti Tarantula (“The Furry Spider You Can Pet!”™), but their latest creation seems like a sure-seller: the Mood Lizard.

Using the Namaqua Chameleon as the base genetic chassis, MEAT-G has engineered a companionate animal with a much broader color-change mechanism tied to a trade secret sensory data interpretation node in the brain—the lizard literally changes color to reflect the emotions of the nearest transhuman. Group testing in children and psychotherapy patients has proven positive, especially among synthmorphs as the Mood Lizards like to crawl up on the shell above the power supply and bask in the warm spot. MEAT-G is looking to begin initial market testing on a commercial level soon—if successful, they’ll move into general production.

Mechanics

Mood Lizards all have Psi Level 1 trait and a variation of the Psi-Gamma sleight Empathic Scan with a duration of Constant (Eclipse Phase, p.226). (They might also have Psi-Chi sleights, but it’s hard to tell with a lizard.) About 1 in 20 Mood Lizards is a carrier for the Watts-MacLeod strain of the Exsurgent virus, which may be contracted from contact with their saliva or feces.

Seeds

• A Firewall team tracking surviving victims of the TITANs that may have been exposed to the Exsurgent virus has found a “cell” of four possible infectees in the same group—MEAT-G. Combined with the empathic chameleons the group is putting out, Firewall has decided to red flag the group. The PCs are asked to shut the entire operation down with prejudice before the Mood Lizards go into production. They will provide as much firepower as the PCs need…but they want every living thing associated with MEAT-G destroyed, including any infected patients in the test groups.
• While the Mood Lizards are still being tested, MEAT-G’s scientists are moving ahead with Phase II—the Mood Rex! Larger, bipedal lizards with claws and fast reflexes (equivalent to neurachem Level 1) and stronger psi abilities (Drive Emotion sleight), the Mood Rex is a weaponized prototype designed for military and law enforcement use. When a competitor on the genepet market steals a batch of fifty Mood Lizards, MEAT-G hires the PCs to get them back…and asks them to field-test Mood Rex at the same time!
• One of the therapy patients misunderstood the point of the Mood Lizard they were given, and cooked and ate it. Now they claim to be sick from the lizard meat and is suing MEAT-G. The therapy group hires the PCs to investigate the victim, a remade named Ianthe Complex (see Entry 150), and find anything to make them drop the suit.

105: Blazespiders

ENTRY 105: Blazespiders

Ecological controls in living habitats require finesse and patience, at least for the least intrusive and most economical means. Neo-avian habitats and scum barges in particular tend to suffer from recurrent insect unwanted infestations of ticks, lice, and weevils—personal pests whose populations expand tremendously without natural predators, but most large-scale means of eradication involve chemicals or radiation that are toxic to transhumans as well, or at least undesired. So instead of trying to eliminate the bad bugs, the neo-avians of Mahogany implemented a two-fold approach to suborn the pesky critters and control their population.

Mahogany pest populations were selectively interbred with genetically modified specimens to produce a hybrid species that produces photoproteins—the chemical luminescence making the tiny specimens easier to identify. Then the neo-avians introduced a predator arachnid species designed to target the spectrum of light put out by the glowing lice, ticks, and so forth. Additional ecological controls are required to track and maintain the balance between the population, but Mahogany habitat’s bug problem has dropped significantly without needing to resort to chemical agents, and is entering trial periods in other neo-avian habitats.

A side-effect of the designer spiders are the webs they weave, which incorporate the excess photoproteins they intake from their prey. The result are startlingly beautiful webs, growing in dark dusty corners where few people disturb them, and under the leaves and between the leaves under the dark forest canopy of Mahogany. It is these pale glowing cobwebs that have given the Mahogany spider its most popular nickname: the blazespider.

Seeds

• A corpse has been found on a slow transport from Mahogany to the player character’s habitat—a desiccated, mummified thing covered in blazespider webs. The cause of death is unknown, and tensions are flaring in the habitat as people start to come down sick. Someone hires the PCs to look into the blazespiders aboard the ship, which should not have been allowed past Mahogany’s biological quarantine—unless the former incumbent circumvented those safeguards because they were smuggling something else…
• A legal dispute has arisen between Mahogany, which holds the rights to the blazespider genome, and Titanian microcorp Attercorp which breeds the transgenic spiders to brew a specialty cosmetic/stimulant called “Attercop.” Jurisdictional differences mean the suit is unlikely to come to a quick resolution, so Mahogany hires the player characters to contaminate the Attercorp stock with a bacterium that will break down photoproteins—then Mahogany can sell the cure along and make the licensing fee part of the deal. If the PCs refuse, another group is hired for the same job. Unfortunately, the contaminated batch of Attercop hits the market and causes fatalities, and the authorities blame the PCs.
• A mentally unstable ghost-morph name Piotr Benevich was bitten by an experimental blazespider while touring a lab. While the spider was not venomous or radioactive, the bite (and the characteristic glowing bitewounds) has triggered a psychotic break in Piotr, who believes he is infected with blazespider DNA. Piotr’s aunt and uncle contact the PCs and ask for them to find and restrain him before he can do any harm to himself or others.

093: Skeeters

ENTRY 093: Skeeters

The mosquitoes of old Earth teemed in their billions and preyed on all manner of terrestrial life; they had discovered a biological niche and through the winnowing of evolution and the process of generations became uniquely adapted to their role. Then came the Fall. While other species on earth were saved on the basis of necessity or sentimentality, the mosquito was seen by transhumanity as a nuisance, and represents a visible gap in most genebanks. While still present in some habitats on Luna and Mars, it exists there as an unwanted passenger unwittingly carried to the stars.

Some forward-thinking transhumans did retain the mosquito, however, or resurrected it from fossil DNA, and turned the swarming pests into biological tools. Bred en masse from teeming eggs floating in a nutrient-rich fluid, the developing mosquitoes are engineered as they grow for specific purposes, disposable biological engines coded to die within hours or days--often within 12 hours of release. These neo-mosquitoes or 'skeeters' are most often employed as on DNA-fishing expeditions—a swarm are released in a habitat from a nanobiological hive, to sample the DNA of any creature present. They flit on ancient impulse to a creature’s dermis and use their proboscis and their saliva to penetrate the skin or hide, pump a sample of fluid (blood, lymph, or whatever else the entity has) into the sealed bag where their stomach should be, then return to their hive so that it may be harvested, sequenced, and catalogued—a process that destroys the skeeter.

Neomosquito saliva itself is laced with anticoagulants, and a weak nerve agent; combined with the small scale of the penetration, the majority of transhumans and animals cannot even feel the sting until after the skeeter has left. A further augmentation typical for skeeters is a reduction in their sensitivity to chemical and biological repellents, though this tends to be associated with grossly reduced ability to home in on targets or return to base.

The second major use of neomosquitoes is as a weapon. Rather than ingest liquid from a victim, the skeeter may inject the target with the contents of its stomach. Given the volume limitations of the neo-mosquito stomach—typically ten or so microliters for the largest skeeters, and down to just a single microliter for other breeds—this payload is almost always nanites or a biological virus. Individual skeeters have a low probability of success unless released in a confined space where the target is obvious and unmoving for a large period of time, so most skeeter assassins are deployed as swarms. High-end skeeters can even be augmented to target a specific biomorph by scent.

Seed

• Firewall fears that a terrorist is planning to unleash a skeeter swarm with a payload of the exsurgent virus, and taps the player characters to investigate and, if possible, prevent the outbreak. If they fail, Firewall will activate a failsafe program in the habitat’s environmental controls, killing everyone in that section of the habitat—including the PCs, if they’re still there.

075: Eternal Puppy

ENTRY 075: Eternal Puppy

Genetic science has advanced past the point where its usage was primarily restricted to medicine and practical industrial purposes; it is now used for art, war, entertainment...and pets. The Eternal Puppy™ was a temporary fad in the inner sphere with very long-lived consequences.  Billed as “the dog that never grows old,” Eternal Puppies were ostensibly genetically designed to remain a puppy, never growing into adolescence, never losing its youthful energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity—a puppy that will never outgrow its habitat, or grow old and tired. The Mercury-based hypercorp selling them lasted about thirteen months before going out of business.

In practice, the Eternal Puppy was advertising hyperbole. Rather than spend the budget on creating proper neotenic canine morphs, the genehackers worked out a process to inflict a very specific form of disassociation between the canine body’s systems, so that they would age at different rates. This quick and cheap method would assure that the dog would retain the outward physical and mental appearance of a puppy, but would not experience any mental development beyond the age of forty weeks, nor have a life expectancy any greater than that of a baseline canine, and are up to ten times more likely to suffer related development disorders requiring medical attention. The retardation of mental development in particular meant that the puppies needed intense training and emotional bonding very early in their life, and many suffer basic relapses on potty training, basic commands, and socialization, with no appreciable long-term memory.

Dozens of Eternal Puppies remain throughout transhuman space. An owner’s network has been set up through the Mesh to provide assistance to owners, swapping stories of various after-market implants and genetic therapy procedures to sustain the animals or partially counteract some of the drawbacks of the Eternal Puppy™ procedure—eidetic memory bioware to improve trainability and recognition, medichines and internal release drug glands to handle recurrent medical issues and so forth.

Seeds

• Rumor has it that before the hypercorp folded, their R&D had developed a revolutionary genetic procedure that would transform Eternal Puppies into genuine neotenic canines, free of the developmental issues that plagued the normal product. However, with the closure and bankruptcy the intellectual property has been tied up in legal red tape. The Eternal Puppy Owner’s Network (EPON) asks the PCs to break into the archives and liberate the data so they can disseminate it.
• A scumbarge criminal’s beloved Eternal Puppy™ is dying, and she takes the power station hostage, threatening to destroy the entire ship/habitat in a nuclear inferno unless the animal is saved…somehow. With the limited resources available, can the PCs come up with an amenable solution?
• The PCs are entrusted with an Eternal Puppy™ to transport from Venus to Extropia (or vice versa), with the added complication of a group trying to kill and/or steal the little beastie; on top of that, the little scamp manages to get into all sorts of trouble, like peeing on the PC’s equipment.
• Firewall contacts the PCs, telling them that the parent hypercorp did not cease operations naturally—they were shut down by combined arms teams when it proved to be a front for an exsurgent sleeper cell. Each of the Eternal Puppies may be a viral sleeper bomb waiting to go off. The players are assigned to find and destroy as many of them as they can, before their genetic programming sets in.

072: The Automatic Farm

ENTRY 072: The Automatic Farm

In the northern Martian lowlands there is an experiment in absentee terraforming. The habitat covers a dozen acres, and, except for gravity, the interior does a good imitation of the arid grassy field ecosystems of northern Australia on Earth, and is completely absent of transhumanity. Instead, the main inhabitants of the Automatic Farm are a pack of proto-uplifted dogs and a hardy flock of transgenic sheep; the remaining non-vegetable residents consist primarily of insects with roles in pollination, decomposition, soil reclamation, and other such activities.

The guiding philosophy of the Automatic Farm is to investigate the long-term management of terraformed or partially terraformed planets without direct transhuman guidance or interference. The transsheep are engineered to facilitate the process in various specialized roles, minimizing grass fires, spreading grass seeds in their droppings using engineered instinctive patterns to maximize de-desertification, etc. In part to counter and guide the transheep are a pack of canines with enhanced cognition. While not fully uplifted to transhuman intelligence, the large-brained canines have comparable memory and reasoning skills to a chimpanzee. The Martian sheepdogs maintain the population of the transsheep flock and help direct their efforts, but also scout the area ahead of the sheep and maintain a watch for predators and pitfalls.

The interior of the Automatic Farm is mostly hands-off, with new species or even new individuals of existing species introduced only after much solemn debate. The cost of the project is partially offset by a multitude of cameras and sensors set throughout the habitat-dome’s interior; while scientists use this to examine the progress of the animals, the majority of transhumans enjoy seeing newborns “in the wild,” to the point the habitat subsists largely on ad revenue from cute puppy and lamb pictures. There has also been some considerable interest in the techniques behind the Martian sheepdogs, as adults trained as service animals have proven able to teach their offspring something of their skills, though it remains to be seen if this will ever be cheaper or more effective than more invasive training using implants. Still, the sight of an alpha dog trying to get a row of pups to stand in a line always gets at least a million hits on The Automatic Farm’s forums.

Seeds

• The Carnival of the Goat has infiltrated the Automatic Farm, installing implants on the transsheep that allow users to puppet them. So far, the Festival has escaped detection by timing their intrusion to the Automatic Farm’s breeding seasons, but it’s only a matter of time before they start to fornicate without regard for such niceties. The Automatic Farm is willing to insert the player characters into the farm to deal the situation—by letting them puppet “control” dogs and letting them cull the puppet transsheep.
• A transgenics hypercorp wants DNA samples from the Martian sheepdogs, and are willing to pay handsomely. How the PCs get them is up to them…though the hypercorp does have a specially modified intersex canine pod that can collect and store the samples, however they decide to collect them.

070: Kidmoths

ENTRY 070: Kidmoths

Genehacking is highly prevalent in transhumanity’s expanded ecosystems, and the hydroponics bays of major habitats are areas of sensor-aided, climate-controlled, clinically clean perfection—custom designed green growing things in chemically perfect soil receiving measured cycles of light and shade and water.

Yet many of the most fascinating creatures and plants that occupy the edges of the human ecosystem are not the products of transhuman science, but of nature’s own genehacking: mutation, unsolicited hybrids, and bizarre adaptations. One of the most prevalent of these species on Mars is Korscheltellus ares, the kidmoth.

Believed to have been introduced in a shipment of potato plants to Olympus, this insect “sings” at a frequency in the upper range of unaugmented flat hearing (19-20 MHz), unlike most moths. Most transhumans lose sensitivity in this range by adulthood, so that kidmoths are mostly only heard by children—hence the name.

From Olympus, kidmoths have spread to a number of other colonies, nestled away in nooks and crannies. Most habitats consider them a pest, an intrusive species that upsets the careful ecological balance, while others consider them part of the substance of human habitation, and have sought to incorporate (and even monetize) kidmoths.

Seeds

• SaturnSilk, Inc. (SSI) is a small hypercorp that farms a slightly genetweaked breed of domesticated kidmoth, using the cocoon material as a silk substitute. SSI has the largest database of kidmoth breeds in existence, and pays a bounty of kidsilk cloth or rep boost on unusual specimens, double if they’re live. A particular breed of mutant kidmoth in the PC’s habitat is said to have a wingspan of 10 centimeters—if they can capture a breeding pair, SSI will reward them handsomely.
• A lapse in control protocols has led to an explosion of kidmoths in the PC’s habitat, a situation that is getting dangerous as the massive swarms threaten transhuman life and devastate any available plants. The PCs are hired to deal with the situation, but are forbidden from using chemical pesticides. They will have to be creative in getting rid of the bugs!
• A hypercorp representative has discovered her company has developed a variety of kidmoth that can consume bioweave armor—and plans to release it in a terrorist-style event on Olympus, so that the company can then market its kidmoth-repelling bioweave armor alternative. Disgusted, she asks the PCs for help in stopping the kidmoth event and outing the nefarious hypercorp’s deeds.
• Kidmoth drones are a local hack that has become prevalent in the PC’s habitat, where small neural implants allow a user to monitor the kidmoth’s environment and direct the direction of its flight. Local anarchists believe someone is using the kidmoth drones to monitor the entire habitat. They’ve tracked the signal back to an area restricted to administrative personnel, and now they want the PCs to find out what’s going on behind closed doors. Unfortunately, it’s worse than they think—a rogue admin is perfecting the kidmoth drones so that they can swarm, the shifting patterns delivering a basilisk hack; and the maiden test for the new weapon are those pesky anarchists…

063: Transbovine

ENTRY 063: Transbovine

Cattle are part of humanity’s cultural heritage, but they don’t translate well into space. Massive ungulate methane factories are impracticable for most habitats, and are inefficient as a food supply. So only a tiny fraction of the different breeds of cattle known to transhumanity made the transition into space. Some post-Fall societies with strong cultural attachments to bovines make do with miniature breeds, which are less costly to maintain—fifty-centimeter high zebus are a relatively common sight in the largest Indian-influenced habitats.

On the other hand, the bovine genetic code had been completely sequenced long before escape from Earth became an issue, and even if physical cows rarely if ever made it up the gravity well, transhumanity still had a massive database of genetic data, and, in many cases, sperm and egg from breeding operations. The average transhuman may only see a classical cow in a rare zoo (or more likely on a live feed over the Mesh), but the genetic legacy of the cow has not been lost, and in many cases is opensource and available to genehackers throughout the solar system.

The result are transbovines, grown from synthetic DNA in growth vats, and often with a number of tweaks, fixes, improvements, and transgenic infusions. The urge to craft chimeras is so widespread that the majority of cattle retain only 25% to 50% of classical bovine genetic material in their make-up; transbovines intended for the production of milk and meat typically have up to 3% human DNA incorporated to make these products easier to digest by flats. Rumors abound that the Carnival of the Goat and some criminal syndicates has access to transbovines with a much higher percentage of human DNA to facilitate customers for prostitution.

Seeds

• A breed of lunar miniature cattle known as “Chameleon Cows” for their environment-reactive skin color is under threat of extinction from neglect; the PCs are asked by a preservation society to try and recover a breeding pair. Unfortunately, the minis’ genetic code is under a long-going intellectual property dispute, so transporting them off of Luna is illegal—not only do the PCs have to find the hiding transbovines, but they will have to smuggle them past the authorities as well.
• Firewall asks the PCs to transport materials from a remote outpost to a facility on Mars, including a six-limbed transbovine named Mahri with a high percentage of transhuman DNA—she looks like a slender, blue-white-black furred cow with a disturbingly human face. Mahri is believed to be an effort at uplift, and may have minor Psi abilities. Possible complications may include an attack by Exsurgents trying to reclaim Mahri; infection of the crew by the xenomorph exsurgent virus through Mahri’s milk; or Mahri giving “birth” to an exsurgent biomorph.
• Superaurochs are high-gravity, densely overmuscled, legless transbovines developed by some of the Trojan and Jovian habitats—they look like brown, cow-shaped slugs on steroids and produce the best steaks in the universe. A prime cut is worth a premium in the Inner System, and the PCs are approached by local criminals planning a raid. All the PCs have to do is stage a suitable distraction for the heist, and they get 25% of the cut from the sale.