291: Blind Tigers

ENTRY 291: Blind Tigers

"They say it is all in our heads. Of course it is. The universe is in our heads, the shadows on the wall of the cave..."
- Dzen Stephanopolous, Sight Beyond Sight

One of the peculiarities that became apparent once resleeving took hold in transhumanity is that for a significant part of the population physical injuries and disabilities coincide with or led to related psychological damage which was carried with the ego to the new morph. These conditions appear to be distinct from forms of neural damage (such as cortical blindness) that become inherent to the ego, but the effects are largely similar - an individual who had some physical limitation in an old morph such as blindness, deafness, limited mobility in a limb, partial paralysis, etc. carries some of their physical handicap or disability forward into the new morph as a mental handicap. Unlike neural damage, psychosurgery and therapy has often proven effective in treating individuals facing these mental disabilities.

Some individuals facing these conditions do not respond well to therapy, or choose not to undergo it. Instead, they embrace their disability in their lifestyle. Popularly called "blind tigers" (or deaf tigers, crippled tigers, etc. as appropriate), these transhumans are the leading edge of the population working to accomodate habitats and services for transhumans with disabilities, by coding alternative sensory input into Mesh sites and channels, working braille translations next to written instructions, designing systems designed for mobility-challenged morphs, giving alternate-sense skill training classes, etc. A large part of their efforts are simply providing a community of like-disabled individuals to provide continued encouragement and opportunity for both the community of disable transhumans and individuals.

Using the Blind Tigers

If a character in Eclipse Phase suddenly goes blind, one of their first instincts is probably to hack the nearest camera (or even ghost another character's visuals) and so regain their sight that way. If the blindness is a purely physical phenomenon ("Aargh, the laser got my eyes!") this is fine; kudos to the player. For other characters who have blindness as a result of mental derangement or neural damage however, this will not work. This isn't meant to be a way of screwing over the player character and gamemasters shouldn't inflict psychological disabilities willy-nilly, but the basic concept of being an inherent trait of the ego instead of the morph is that the disadvantage is completely removed from physical capability - it is a psychological block on the ego's ability to perceive certain information or utilize certain abilities, not a a matter of having defective parts. A character with Mental Disorder (Blindness) just can't process visual information, a character with Mental Disorder (No Left Arm) cannot use their left arm (or equivalent limb), etc.

Again, the point of this is not to screw over PCs ("Ha ha, sucks to be you."), it's an optional limitation for players and gamemasters to consider to promote roleplaying - how would you get around if you were blind and simply swapping out cybereyes wasn't an option? How would you make the universe a better place for other blind characters? In most cases, these disadvantages are not completely unsurmountable by any means - muses can act as go-between translating speach or visual stimulus into a form that the blind tiger character can interpret; sonar, radar, lidar, and other augmented senses can easily make up for vision in many (though not all) instances; the Mesh alone generally has options available to accomodate any number of disabilities, and so on and so forth. Blind tiger characters who work to integrate the solutions of their disabilities into their lifestyles are not working to deny their disadvantages as much as embracing them as key aspects of their character.

A particularly appropriate occasion to pick up a Mental Disorder of this form is when mental stress from resleeving, where a physical limitation or bit of damage from the old morph is carried over as a Mental Disorder of the ego. Again, this isn't intended to be a death sentence for the character, and the disorder can be dealt with via psychosurgery or therapy as normal.

Seeds

• The player characters arrive on Pallwyn, a "dark habitat" where the primary sense is sonar, not normal transhuman vision. As a consequence, the PCs will have to find their way through a habitat full of "blind" morphs, where all the signs are in a sonar-reflection language and concepts like color are not in general use compared to terms for texture, jitter, delay, echo spread, etc. The habitat is currently suffering a series of murders, but some of the key clues are being left in visual media that the investigators are missing...one of the local blind tigers approach the PCs and ask them to find the killer, whom they are afraid is another one of the blind tigers. Of course, as strangers with full visual faculties, the authorities might grow suspicious of the PCs if they get involved.

245: Cancer Dreams

ENTRY 245: Cancer Dreams

“Transhumanity is the cancer.”

- Blaim, exsurgent apologist

Cancer remains a risk for biomorphs—radiation, toxic chemicals, certain diseases, and for flats age and genetic predisposition mean cancer will continue to be a threat for some time, though genehackers continue to work on improved anticancer traits. Yet even a splicer who stays away from cancer causing agents may still in time develop cancerous cells, and even deadly tumors. Medical scientists continue to research the issue point to a variety of possible influences that account for these cases, from exposure to a basilisk hack to micronutrient deficiency leading to improper cell development.

Yet the most popular theory is simply mental stress. The physiological response to prolonged psychological pressure. Because of this, contemporary cancer treatment therapies typically attempt a holistic intervention, addressing not just the specific instance of the disease but the lifestyle that may contribute to its development. Of course, for the masses in scum barges, more effort is put onto the development of treatments that allow biomorphs to live with cancer rather than take the time and expenditure of resources to try and cure it when the patient is just going to be pushed back out into the toxic environment of the scumbarge.

Mechanics

Rather than develop a derangement, a gamemaster may chose for a biomorph who accumulates sufficient mental stress to develop a mild form of cancer. Untreated, this has the potential to spread and lead to major health issues, though once detected most forms of cancer may be healed with a day or two in the healing vat. As with a derangement, any form of cancer will subject the player character to certain involuntary lifestyle changes: pain, nausea, disorientation, personality changes, migraines, lack of energy, etc.

Using Cancer Dreams

Like death, cancer is a boogeyman that can generate strong emotions at the table when it is brought up. Yet in Eclipse Phase, cancer and death have both lost something of their bite. While still dangers that PCs face, they are no longer the absolute terrors they once were, and the gamemaster can take advantage of this fact, playing cancer as everyday and nothing to be concerned about…until transhuman science runs out of tricks to deal with it…

Seeds

• A recent spike in psychosomatic cancers that resist healing in the PCs habitat has sparked a medical investigation, and the PCs are asked to find connections between the patients as they are being treated. Investigation finds that all of the patients had dreams of getting cancer and may have been exposed to a basilisk hack six to eight months ago—and as they close in on the perpetrator, the PCs begin having cancer dreams of their own…
• Malleux, a local handcraft artist, is being treated for a small brain tumor caused by a faulty nanite infection, and as part of their holistic treatment the doctors want to address their stressors as well. The PCs are hired to befriend Malleux for a couple days and shake them out of their hidebound and negative life habits. Complicating the subject is an obsessive fan and Malleux’s agent, both determined to keep Malleux ill and depressed because the more they suffer, the better their art.

206: Single Splicer Female

ENTRY 206: Single Splicer Female

She seeks company. Watches everything, learns quickly, and shows active interest in what her victim does. She shares their interest, asks to borrow their media, talks with them about it. Always, always, she wants to know about them, turns the attention and conversation back to them, their past, how they feel, what they think, what they want. The most egotistical and self-centered don’t seem to notice until she starts dressing like them. Borrowing clothes. Then maybe changes her hair to match theirs. Her eyes. Her face. By then, it’s almost too late…and she already has some of their passcodes and identification, passing herself off as them on far-flung parts of the Mesh, begging favors and squirreling away funds…

Whatever her original identity, the Single Splicer Female has long buried it under a chain of assumed identities. Her concept of self is unstable, and so she latches on to an individual—often a female splicer in need of a roommate or partner, though when at loose ends she is less picky. They may become friends or lovers. With connection comes identification; she sees her victim as her idealized self and seeks to become them. Given time and transhuman augmentation technology, there’s no telling how far she might go, but most of her victims interfere by the time she starts using her skinflex to assume their appearance and begins to steal their identity.

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: Anthropology 35, Academics: Psychology 45, Academics: Sociology 30, Art: Acting 45, Art: Makeup 50, Blades 33, Deception 60, Disguise 38, Interests: Gossiping 25, Interests: Identity Theft 60, Interests: Stalking 55, Interfacing 30, Kinesis (Faces): 50, Language: Native English 85, Language: Spanish 70, Language: Portuguese 70, Language: French 50, Networking: Media 24

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Mental Speed, Sex Switch, Skinflex, Skillware

Traits: Mental Disorder (Adaptive Identity Disorder)

Using Single Splicer Female

A doppelganger with a psychotic twist and a penchant of going for your online wallet, Single Splicer Female is a solid choice for a contact that goes from cool to clingy to scary. While presented as an individual, given the way that Eclipse Phase plays with identity there could be any number of egos with the same Adaptive Identity Disorder and a criminal bent—possibly an entire gang that mimics and then replaces a small group of people, uses their identities for some purpose, and then abandons them, fading away into the sea of transhumanity to pull the same con again.

On the other hand, the Single Splicer Female can be seen as a victim of their mental illness, driven by their impulses and lack of self-identity into an unhealthy lifestyle and a cycle of abusive relationships. “Fixing” them is probably beyond the PCs’ abilities or cares—a long-term project that involves a great deal of therapy, medication, and helping the SSF come to terms with and establish their own identity, a task better left to psychiatric care professionals and institutions. Although, an individual who understands their illness and has sufficiently strong will and resources could use it to their advantage, and turn the SSF from a minor criminal to a deadly assassin…

186: Gate Bleed

ENTRY 186: Gate Bleed

The most experienced gatecrasher transhumanity has ever produced has done, at most, a couple dozen jumps between worlds. The medical evidence of side-effects from gatecrashing is thus rather sparse; worries about the effect of sudden transitions from different gravities, pressures, and radiation levels have so far proven mostly unfounded. Whomever built the Pandora Gates, their technology appears to be rather gentle as long as an unmodified flat doesn’t try to take a stroll into deep space or a high-g world. After all, that’s what drones and probes are for. The psychological effects of gatecrashing remain mostly unexplored as well. Generally speaking, most gatecrasher corporations at least do a cursory profile of their employees before and after they get sent through a wormhole to another planet, and most seem to have handled the journey fairly well. Key word: most.

Gate Bleed is more a rumor than a condition. Stories are told in Gagarin’s Rest of gatecrashers that see impossible things—Iktomi web cities on Mars, cockroaches crawling through the knee-high forests on Luca, Mishipizheu boiler reefs in the seas of Europa—images from other planets leaking into their perception. Rarely experienced and difficult to study, the few drunken psychologists and neurologists to discuss the sightings came up with the theory that the transhuman brain or ego is just doing what it always does…filling in the gaps in the individual’s perception. Confronted with people who regularly travel from wildly different environments, the brain simply ignores or sketches in the familiar-looking bits of alien scenery by substituting some image that seems to fit.

Mechanics

Gate Bleed is a minor derangement associated with frequent gatecrashing, which is rare enough that the condition itself is almost unheard of, aside from the community of gatecrashers. Currently, sufferers are subject to uncommon, brief hallucinations, often on the edges of their perception, which bleed elements from the various worlds they have visited together. A typical example is a cockroach glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, crawling on an exoplanet where there can be no cockroaches. The study of Gate Bleed is made difficult both by its rarity, and because it is underreported: no one wants to admit to being crazy or seeing the impossible for fear that they will be blackballed from further gatecrashing.

Suggested Game Effects: Sufferers suffer brief hallucinations which are logically “impossible.” By itself this rarely causes any life-endangering problem unless coupled with some other illness (a fear of bugs combined with seeing a scorpion inside your gatecrasher vacuum suit, for example), but tends to cause further mental stress, especially if the subject cannot confide their visions or seek help. Characters with Gate Bleed typically gain 1-2 Mental Stress per month, which may lead to further related derangements like paranoia or more frequent and disturbing hallucinations.

Seed

• A gatecrasher has committed suicide, and their family hires the PCs (as neutral outsiders) to investigate the circumstances. An early lead is the gatecrasher’s journal, which seems to chronicle a descent into mental illness, including signs of Gate Bleed…though PCs will have to talk to other gatecrashers who will have to explain what that is. However, if they dig a little deeper they might find out that not all of the victim’s bleed-visions were hallucinations…and someone may have played on their illness to drive them to suicide.

185: Beano

ENTRY 185: Beano

Resleeving facilitates behaviors and desires that in normal flats would be impossible. Why should a transhuman that is one gender by accident of birth be restricted to that gender for the rest of their life? Why should a transhuman that believes themselves a wolf not be able to become a wolf in truth, if by their resources and favors they can achieve it? Where in the past these aberrations would be stifled or suppressed as a form of mental illness, or at best only partially indulged through roleplay, now they can be realized and indulged in ways never before thought possible. For many transhumans, this is the realization of their innermost dreams, becoming in physicality what they already know themselves to be mentally, so ego and morph finally match. Others discover that changing a morph does not solve all an ego’s problems, and that an ego’s ugliness shines through no matter how beautiful the morph may be.

Beano has never had a problem with what they are. It was always other people that had problems with Beano, even though Beano only every wanted to be close to people. Very close. The authorities on Titan finally caught up with Beano after the sixth child disappeared, the crushed bodies were found in Beano’s bedroom, with Beano still hugging them as tightly as they could.

Beano posed a problem to the Titanian authorities. Despite the heinous nature of their crimes, Beano was undisputedly mentally disturbed and not responsible for their options. Many of the families and guardians were baying for blood, with the most moderate of them suggesting ego-pruning and most calling for Beano to be shoved out of the nearest airlock. A compromise was reached: Beano’s morph was publicly executed, but their ego recovered and rescinded to psychiatric care until such time as it was no longer a danger to the public.

After six years, Beano’s principle therapist proscribed a possible solution, an experimental work-treatment which met with Beano’s enthusiastic approval. With certain limiters in place, Beano was resleeved into a specially-modified jellybone suit. Now, Beano can hug the children as much as Beano wants. It’s their job. The only sad part is when Beano has to let them go…

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
10	10	18	15	10	15	17	-

Morph: Jellymorph* (Unique)

Skills: Academics: Psychology 34, Art: Performance (Clowning) 34, Deception 50, Fray 23, Infiltration 35, Infosec 30, Interests: Children 25, Interests: Clown Lore 28, Interests: Neotenics 24, Interfacing 25, Intimidation 30, Language: Native Irish 76, Language: English 56, Networking: Clowns 25, Perception (Touch) 28, Persuasion (Coaxing) 37, Unarmed Combat (Smother) 38

Disadvantages: Modified Behavior (Immobile, Enforced), Mental Disorder (Monophobia), Social Stigma (Murderer)

* Beano is resleeved into a jellybone suit (Entry 004), a special type of vacuum-adapted exoskeleton mainly reserved for children, with a Durability of 30 and Wound Threshold of 5.

Using Beano

Beano’s believes physical limiters prevent them from physically moving the suit, making Beano largely a passenger in the suit, often mistaken for a muse or helpful AGI designed to accompany and look out for children. However, Beano’s limitations are actually the result of mental conditioning; there exists a chance that they can overcome that conditioning through force of will…and that possibility is probably what will lead the player characters to Beano. As a known child murderer, no matter how mentally disturbed, Beano will be the first suspect if a child or neotenic morph ends up dead or injured, particularly if there is a jellybone suit involved. It is up to the gamemaster as to whether Beano is guilty or innocent of that crime—sometimes the obvious suspect does do it, other times they are the red herring that throws the investigators off the scent so that the real killer can strike again. Alternately, the gamemaster may decide that Beano has overcome both their initial compulsion and mental programming, and now uses their morph as an assassin…enfolding their victims and then purposefully starving them of oxygen until they asphyxiate. Beano’s “signature,” if one is needed, is to leave their victims with a post-mortem smile or stylized version of their old whiteface.

027: Gravity Sickness

ENTRY 027: Gravity Sickness

Bioengineering can moderate most of the physiological effects of living and transitioning from different gravity zones, but many transhumans still report psychological issues related to living under a different gravity than what they experienced growing up, or are used to. Typical symptoms include depression, nausea, weariness, feeling too heavy or light relative to their current gravity, and even psychosomatic joint pain. Gravity sickness most often affects biomorphs, but even synthmorphs can be subject to it, even if their morph should be physically incapable of registering the stress of different gravities.

Therapists have had success treating gravity sickness as any other psychological illness, categorizing it as a variation on environmental disorders, but a sizeable pseudoscientific industry has grown up with different treatments, trying to explain away the cause as microchemical or tidal imbalances in the brain that can be corrected with targeted antidepressants or nanite-driven microsurgery; more elaborate treatments generally involve renting the user time in artificial gravity chambers, coupled with exercises and massages designed to work out or relax muscles in the comfort of a familiar g-force. Some of these products offer a bit of temporary relief, but none address the psychological issues at the root of the problem.

Mechanics

Gravity sickness is typically a minor derangement from a trauma associated with a rapid gravity transition—a falling elevator, a ship crashing into a planet, a particularly long microgravity fall, that sort of thing. However, gravity sickness can also be a much more serious and long-lasting disorder associated with long-term habitation in a different gravity environment or chronic gravity transitions. Both the derangement and the delusion respond to psychotherapy and (in extremis) psychosurgery. At the gamemaster’s discretion, drugs and alternative therapy treatments may alleviate the penalties associated with gravity sickness for a time, but they always come back.

Suggested Game Effects: Characters with gravity sickness take skill penalties for prolonged physical activity in any gravity other than their “natural” one, particularly ones like climbing, free fall, lifting, and jumping that work with or against the force of gravity. Martial artists, dancers, and sports players in particular tend to adapt their styles to incorporate perpendicular movements to the direction of gravity.

Seeds

• Statistical reports say an unprecedented number of transhumans in the habitat are coming down with gravity sickness, and the cases are localized to a certain area. Interviews of the afflicted include reference to a strange metal sphere, chrome and mirror-polished, which seemed to distort space around it. Firewall fears an alien artifact causing local microgravity fluctuations is the cause, but the truth might be more prosaic—it’s up to the player characters to investigate and hope they don’t come down with gravity sickness themselves.
• A wealthy biomorph who has long suffered from the gravity of Mars wants to try an experimental psychotherapy “shock cure” method: a free fall jump from near orbit to Mons Olympus. All he needs are a few trusted bodyguards to safeguard his jump—including at least one willing to accompany him.