339: Mater

ENTRY 339: Mater

"Children are too precious to entrust their care and development to amateurs. Being an educator takes training; it is a highly skilled activity. To say nothing of being a personal trainer, an activities coordinator, a nurse, and a bodyguard. It takes a team to raise a child, but more than that it requires a dedicated parent. Ask yourself: at what age would you teach your child about resleeving? Personal augmentation. Pornography on the Mesh. The context and subtleties of an inappropriate relationship. To know when they are being lied to. Why they are being lied to. How and when to lie themselves. These are hard questions to you, because you learned them on your own - because your parents, and their parents, and so on were amateurs. Just the few children, disparate decades of experience, already out of date by the next generation if it was passed on at all. This is why you need me - because you want the best for your child, and I am a professional."
- Mater, salespitch

Professional parenting traces its routes to organized education - the idea, almost as old as transhumanity, that teaching children was a specialized task and that biological parents were not uniquely qualified for the job just because they'd managed to insert tab a into slot b and win the prize forty or so weeks later. Mandatory public schooling has been an arsenal in civilized upbringing of young transhumans for centuries, but it is only since the Fall that cultural inertia and the breakdown of education infrastructure, and the failure of the Lost Generation that has allowed transhumans to get more ambitious and realistic when it comes to raising their young. While the transhuman family unit is far from dead, particularly among conservatives, those habitats and individuals that can afford to prefer to hire professional parents who work to develop young egos to achieve greater potential and prepare them for the rigors of contemporary transhuman society.

Mater was a pro-parent in the Jovian Republic who saw too many of her kids exposed to a toxic society, torn between stagnant cultural values, ultraconservative parents, and her push for critical and independent thinking. After a decade of raising young rebels who escaped or self-destructed, Mater vanished herself. As a freelancer at loose ends, Mater has been recruited by Firewall as an independent operator, gathering her own talent to undertake missions - often ops against other Firewall elements that are suspected to have been corrupted or gone rogue.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
19	18	20	13	13	15	16	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	32	6	64	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer

Skills: Academics: Art 23, Academics: Biology 23, Academics: Chemistry 23, Academics: History 23, Academics: Physics 23, Academics: Philosophy 23, Academics: Politics 23, Academics: Sociology 23, Art: Drums 25, Art: Painting 25, Art: Singing 25, Art: Tattoos (DIY) 25, Beam Weapons 18, Blades 20, Clubs 20, Deception 26, Fray (Dodge) 23, Hardware: Electronics 20, Infiltration 33, Interests: DIY Tech 33, Interests: Education 40, Interests: Teaching Methods 40, Kinesics (Lying) 25, Kinetic Weapons 18, Language: Native Spanish 83, Language: English 80, Language: Latin 80, Networking: Autonomists 20, Networking: Criminals 10, Networking: Firewall 15, Palming 25, Perception 25, Profession: Parent 60, Protocol 30, Scrounging 23, Unarmed Combat 25

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Oracles, Skillwires

Using Mater

As an ally and contact, Mater is the voice at the end of the line. Stern, humorous, compassionate, pedantic, professional, and supporting as she needs to be, the player characters are her "kids" and she will coach and guide them to the mission objective, providing support when she can and trust in their abilities when she cannot. In a neutral antagonist role, Mater might be on assignment, either running an opposing team or acting as pro-parent to one or more children - teacher-cum-bodyguard, teaching and protecting them. Mater is only likely to be a violent antagonist if she believes that the player characters (or the people they are working for) have or will directly harmed any of the children under her care.

Seed

• Mater has been kidnapped, and is being held hostage somewhere on the player character's habitat. As the only agents available, Firewall taps the player characters to find her - and time is running out. The culprits could be an exsurgent cult, or a former "student" of Mater's from the Jovian Republic gone wrong and out for revenge - or perhaps this is all a test that Mater has set up to prove the PC's abilities, so that Firewall will trust them with the real assignment...

143: Brainbug

ENTRY 143: Brainbug

Minimalism as applied to morphs seeks to simplify, and if possible eliminate, unnecessary elements, focusing on the critical features—which begs the question, what is critical when it comes to a morph? For some, attachment to the classical bipedal human form is simple traditionalism, or, worse, a crippling nostalgia. Mobility is key, as is the essential bioengine that turns matter efficiently into fuel, and self-repair. Most important and defining of all, however, is the ability to sustain transhuman-level intelligence.

Brainbug is a custom-designed, minimalist biomorph, a giant pulsating brainsac with a vaguely human face sitting on top of a body like that of a sixty-centimeter long cockroach. The ‘roach provided the basic biological platform: six segmented legs with enough strength to hold up the brain, a simplified digestive tract that can derive nutrition from damn near anything, and good general tolerance to different environments. The bulbous, over-sized head with the semi-human face perched on top looks like a bad hackjob to anyone unfamiliar with the genetics or basic anatomies involved. Little things like aesthetics and a solid skull were sacrificed in exchange to achieve a maximum brain/body mass ratio; the modified lungs even allow it to speak.

Full tenured faculty at Titan Autonomous University, Brainbug spends its days split mainly between research and lecture. It is the author of dozens of books and hundreds of essays, articles, and reviews, though it is perhaps best known for Titan Eroskandinaviska, an evocative and, at times, incomprehensible multi-level love letter to the geophysical and ethnolinguistic aspects of Titan. Rumor has it that the Brainbug’s personal quarters consist of a cramped nest lined with paper accessible through a large hole in its office wall.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
50	13	14	10	10	10	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
5	1	30	6	60	20	3	40

Morph: Unique Biomorph

Skills: Academics: Artificial Intelligence 75, Academics: Entomology 85, Academics: Linguistics 85, Academics: Philosophy 75, Academics: Titan History 80, Art: Found Art 55, Climbing 80, Free Fall 45, Interests: Chess 95, Interests: Educational Systems 50, Interests: Go 90, Interests: Intelligence Research 75, Interests: Xeno-insects 80, Interfacing 65, Investigation 75, Language: Native Skandinavíska 99, Language: German 75, Language: Mandarin 75, Language: English 75, Networking: Scientists 80, Profession: Teaching 95, Programming 75, Protocol 75, Research 95, Scrounging 70

Enhancements/Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Emotional Dampers, Enhanced Smell/Taste, Grip Pads, Hyperlinguist, Math Boost, Temperature Tolerance, Toxin Filters

Disadvantages: No hands/manipulator limbs

Using Brainbug

Insects are one of the critters that the majority of humans find both instinctively fascinating and creepy; a two-foot long roach with a mockery of a human head balanced on top is liable to elicit some substantial reactions from players, and well it should. Brainbug as presented is mostly harmless, a university professor that has exchanged traditional notions of transhumanity in exchange for increased brain mass and cognitive function. As a contact or ally, Brainbug provides all the raw thinking power and academic credentials that player characters could need for most adventures; as an enemy, Brainbug is a decidedly more inhuman Moriarity, protected from suspicion by its rep on Titan but liable to cast schemes that encompass the entire solar system…or beyond.

128: The Scholars of Bacon

ENTRY 128: The Scholars of Bacon

“We tried to be heroes, and they made us out to be villains. So we became villains, and they called us monsters. So we became monsters—and now we are legend.”

- Blackhat, Scholar of Bacon

They have taken all knowledge to be their province. In the name of the common good they fight the forces of censorship and intellectual oppression. They seek to free the dark data that people would hide in the shadows, and seed it throughout the Mesh, for anyone to find, access, and learn. Their actions have led directly to the destruction of the Ares Kiln habitat on Mars’ northern pole, and the deaths of its 25,000 inhabitants. For this and hundreds of other crimes, they are considered some of the most outrageous infocriminals in the Solar system.

The Scholars of Bacon began as an intellectual gathering of hackers, philosophically guided to promote freedom of ideas and freedom of data—all the black information that governments, hypercorps, and religions refused to the public. As they faced more and more severe feedback from the authorities they opposed, the core of this group took up a more extreme, radicalized position. Where once they dealt in pornography and copyright violation, now they seeded schematics for nuclear weapons. The ‘Mesh Pharmacopeia they began now hosts chapters on chemical weapons, failed pharmaceuticals, recreational drugs culled from government and hypercorp databases. Worship services were interrupted by streaming feeds of atrocities committed in the names of their religion, and friendly cartoons broadcasts aimed at children taught them how to make and use drugs.

Ares Kiln was an ice-mining operation, split along old nationalist lines into two ideological groups engaged in low-level domestic warfare. In response, the controlling council enacted Mesh controls limiting access to data on armed and unarmed combat, weapon manufacture, etc. The Baconites responded by uploading an archive of digital weapons, viruses, trojans, and manuals on infowar culled from a senile military satellite AGI. Armed with these, the competing factions crippled the habitat’s support functions and destabilized the reactors, while hidden viruses corrupted cortical stacks. In the end, rescue parties were willing to salvage less than a tenth of the egos from their dead shells. The Baconites took the blame for the disaster, and went to the shadows, still fighting the long fight.

Seeds

• The most notorious of the Scholars of Bacon is Blackhat; who specializes in removing age-access restrictions on data, letting children access whatever they want—whether or not their adult guardians know or approve. Blackhat’s latest misdeed occurred on the PC’s habitat, and while controls were re-instated after a short-lived “youth revolt,” parental groups have already raised a bounty of over 25,000 Titanian kroners for Blackhat’s capture. If the PCs don’t go for the bounty, there are others that will…but Blackhat might be anyone…or frame anyone to throw the bounty hunters off their trail.
• One of the Baconites, an infomorph named ReadThreePlayOne, has grown jaded from the struggle and wants to come in. The PCs are asked to escort R3PO to Luna, where their testimony might break the Baconite network—if they and the PCs can get there intact. The Baconites are like to dig up and publish every dirty secret the PCs ever had to get them to drop the job.

083: Unguam

ENTRY 083: Unguam

“Those in power fear the autodidact. The strictures of control that bind habitats, stations, societies, and governments are designed to channel the clanking masses into approved forms and methods of study, entertainment, research, and release. Theirs is the balance between positive and negative reinforcement—grants, student loans, database access, and one-on-one teaching versus denial, cost, censorship, and legal penalties. Even the natural countervailing forces of transhumanity are usurped and suborned; revolutionary instincts tamed by limited access to “approved” materials. All frightened of what one morph might learn, what they might do, if they had access to the truth.”

- Introduction to Exsurgent Darkcast, Transmission CXXIII

Most habitats, hypercorps, and media outlets in the solar system limit access to data on exsurgents, not just in fear of memetic hazards and anti-exsurgent operation security, but as part of a tacit—and sometimes legally binding—compact to suppress such information. Formal investigation of exsurgents and related phenomena are thus classified by various public and clandestine agencies, and their study largely restricted to a tier of academics with certain credentials, faction affiliations, and proven expertise. Counter to this trend are autonomous, self-educated investigators like Unguam, the editor/publisher of the underground ‘Mesh periodical the Exsurgent Darkcast. Unguam and his allies have all discovered something of exsurgent activity, artifacts, technology or philosophy and desired to know more, but were rebuffed and reviled by the conspiracy of silence. So through the auspices of Unguam and others like him they dig deeper into such dark matters, sharing information and seeking the hidden truth…but what they seek is far more dangerous than they think.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
26	12	21	12	17	13	19	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	38	7	76	30	6	45

Morph: Menton

Skills: Academics: Astrobiology 33, Academics: Chemistry 44, Academics: Engineering 44, Academics: Geology 44, Academics: Physics 44, Academics: Xenoarcheology 45, Art: Architecture 44, Infosec 66, Interests: Exsurgents 44, Interests: Psi 44, Interests: TITANs 77, Interfacing 77, Kinesics (Sense Motive) 34, Investigation 55, Language: Native Portuguese 91, Language French 44, Language English 66, Networking: Autonomists 55, Networking: Media 55, Networking: Scientists 25, Perception 55, Profession: Darkcasting 66, Protocol 44, Research 55

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Hyper-Linguist, Math Boost

Traits: Allies (Exsurgent Autodidacts), Enemy (Firewall)

Using Unguam

Unguam is somewhere between a conspiracy theorist and an info-terrorist; his intentions to discover, investigate, utilize, and spread knowledge about exsurgents, psi abilities and the like would be commendable if it didn’t mean accidentally or purposefully spreading digital and nanobiological viruses, activating latent TITANs technology, and possibly aiding and abetting covert exsurgent organizations. As a contact, he can be used as a mouthpiece to give the player characters “the real dark truth” behind certain events and subjects not normally available on the ‘Mesh; as an enemy he’s likely to be a slippery shadow figure on the trail of (or causing) one exsurgent event or the next. If Unguam ever finds out the PCs are working with or for Firewall, he will never trust them again.

054: Second Meditation

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.

040: Knowledge-of-Self

ENTRY 040: Knowledge-of-Self

What began as a specialized Montessori curriculum dedicated to teaching genetics to young flats has become one of the more popular education systems among biomorphs. The system is uniquely personalized to each individual, helping the student to sequence and analyze their own DNA, RNA, and mRNA. Studies follow the student’s interest, highlighting mutations, transcription errors, artifacts of genetic manipulation, heredity groups, even applicable copyright and intellectual property law, interspersed with a series of experiments in manipulating their own genetic material to better understand what can be done. In habitats which recognize hypercorp intellectual property laws actually implementing or selling genetic code or material derived from Knowledge-of-Self experiments is illegal, but most jurisdictions concede the right to experiment.

Mechanics

Knowledge-of-Self as an education program is available to all biomorphs with access to the Mesh, and provides training allowing characters to purchase any relevant skill up to a rating of 50 in a reduced timeframe: 1 week of K-o-S schooling yields 2 RP for relevant skills only. Higher ratings and specializations from the program are possible, but generally require access to the greater facilities available at an institute of higher learning and one-on-one teaching sessions.

Seeds

• A dozen biomorphs in an open-source K-o-S program have contracted cancer from an experiment; the markers for the cancer are disconcertingly similar to those left by infection by the exsurgent virus. Firewall tasks the characters with finding out who hacked the program and stop them—and they need to do it quick, before the genetic terrorist perfects the program and tries again.
• Genetics hypercorps and the government are attempting to ban K-o-S programs from the Jovian Republic, citing the dangers of unsupervised experimentation with human genetics. Local teachers have put out a surreptitious call for assistance in backing up K-o-S materials to darkcast sites. The players can earn a good bit of rep, as long as they stay ahead of the Junta and the hypercorps.
• A genetic artist is being sued for adding an art module to an existing K-o-S program, which encourages students to express themselves through modeling and manipulating their DNA; a hypercorp hires the player characters to steal the sourcecode so they can reverse-engineer it and add it to their existing commercial education software.
• While working on K-o-S, an NPC discovers they have a genetic clone-sibling—one of the PCs. While not identical, with a deft bit of hacking the clone has stolen their identity and has been borrowing the PC’s name and rep for a series of criminal transactions, and now the various players are calling the markers due. The PCs will have to find the clone if they want to clear their rep.
• The K-o-S programs for uplifts are generally much less complete than those for transhumans; a dolphin uplift named Mickeymac asks the player characters to help “liberate” an archive of private data on uplift genetics to a specific pirate network so that ze can integrate it into the existing open-source software.