279: Blackguard

ENTRY 279: Blackguard

"She was a killer. She was good at it. It was all she was good at. She was an adequately excellent lover, a poor tri-spouse, an inadequate parental unit. But she could kill, and she did."
- Excerpt from the first obituary of Mariah Beavercreek AKA Blackguard

The search for meaning in transhuman life is perpetual. For many who no longer want for entertainment, food, shelter, or the other basics of survival, and whose higher needs of entertainment, exercise, work, and socialization are likewise catered to through a steady stream of Mesh programming, all that is left for them is either degeneration or self-actualization. Some find a cause, others seek to realize a dream or a project, and the rest vegetate in a lifetime of holovids, virtual sex games, and whatever drugs they can coax out of the cornucopia machines. Mariah Beavercreek found her meaning in life as a bounty hunter, neglecting her two spouses and their carefully-cloned children for the thrill of the hunt, caring nothing about the credits accrued or reputation, living always in the moment.

If the mark that finally got the drop on her hadn't sent a particle beam through her forebrain, she'd have died happy knowing she had been doing what she loved.

The grave has less grip these days, and some of her former employers were not yet done with the Blackguard. They resleeved her to their own purpose, giving her a new arsenal and a new mission: to find asyncs and capture or kill them, only bring their bodies back to them. There was more after that - much more, about her family that still thought her dead, and the debt she owed from the resleeving - but she didn't listen to any of it. She had a new mission now, and that was all that mattered.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
13	10	16	17	15	20	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	40	8	80	45	9	67

Morph: Ghost

Skills: Academics: Neurology 40, Academics: Military Science 30, Academics: Psychology 25, Art: Scrimshaw 33, Beam Weapons 54, Blades 44, Fray 50, Freerunning (Microgravity) 25, Infiltration 40, Infosec 38, Interests: Exsurgent Virus 35, Interests: Psi 50, Interests: Merc Groups 25, Interfacing 20, Intimidation 38, Investigation (Legwork) 44, Kinesics 30, Kinetic Weapons 25, Language: Native English 86, Language: Welsh 40, Language: Arabic 40, Medicine (First Aid) 25, Networking: Autonomists 25, Networking: Criminal 25, Networking: Firewall 25, Networking: Media 25, Profession: Bounty Hunting 66, Unarmed Combat 66

Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Chameleon Skin, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Vision, Grip Pads, embedded Psi-Jammer
Traits: Psi Defense (Level 2), Zero G Nausea

Using Blackguard

Obsessive characters need not be one-dimensional or stupid; simply very focused, particularly when in the middle of a mission, able to cheerfully ignore distractions around them. This single-mindedness is very helpful when introducing Blackguard to the player characters - she may be brusque, but it's the cheerful brusqueness of someone busy doing something she enjoys, which is hunting asyncs. As a hunter, she prefers to track her prey, then set up a nest and wait or arrange for the prey to be driven into her crosshairs. To this end, she might hire the PCs to do a bit of the groundwork for her, identifying a good sniper-post or command center, or to act as "beaters" and attack a target to drive them into her killing zone. If any of the PCs are asyncs, they might find themselves on the run, boxed in and driven to where she can take them out - elsewise, they might be hired to stop Blackguard from making her next hit, or to protect a particular async at the behest of Firewall or some other group. Blackguard for her part tries to minimize civilian casualties, but if the PCs come between her and her target, she's more than willing to fire through the PCs if there's a chance at hitting her mark.

202: Jhassa Autumnbringer

ENTRY 202: Jhassa Autumnbringer

“Autumn is coming.”
-- Mesh graffiti

Earth-life adapted itself to seasonal cycles. In the western hemisphere, autumn was the season when the days began to fail, the nights were longer and colder, and everyone prepared for the winter knew was coming. Sacrifices were made: herds culled of animals that would not survive the cold; practical decisions made to preserve precious resources during the period of want to come. The cruelty of the farmer was a kindness, to spare both individual suffering and the group suffering of the herd.

Jhassa is one of the Autumnbringers, ideological assassins that cull the transhuman herd, They target the weak and traitorous, those who will not fight for themselves, those who will not work or produce. In this way they hope to better prepare transhumanity for the conflict they feel is coming—when the TITANs return, or the Factors turn against them, or whatever other existential threat may arise. When that happens, some brave fools will seek to save all of transhumanity. The Autumnbringers know better. They see a long winter and hard decisions, where synthmorphs will need to scavenge each other for parts and biomorphs not bother to recycle the dying and the dead before they consume them. In their cruelty, they hope to spare transhumans the pain of making some of these decisions. Every where Jhassa goes, death and a message are left behind:

Beware. Autumn is coming.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
23	15	17	16	19	23	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	40	8	80	45	9	67

Morph: Ghost

Skills: Academics: Memetics 40, Academics: Political Science 60, Academics: Psychology 50, Art: Acting 36, Art: Writing 44, Deception (Acting) 56, Fray 50, Freerunning (Microgravity) 45, Infiltration 40, Infosec 42, Interests: Existential Threats 45, Interests: Survivalist Groups 45, Interests: TITANs 45, Interests: Triage 60, Interfacing 45, Intimidation 25, Investigation 44, Kinesics 44, Language: Native Urdu 86, Language English 40, Language Hindi 40, Medicine (Euthanasia) 50, Networking: Autonomists 55, Networking: Criminal 55, Networking: Hypercorps 35, Networking: Media 55, Perception 55, Persuasion 35, Pilot: Aircraft 44, Pilot: Groundcraft 33, Profession: Social Engineering 66, Protocol 44, Research 44, Spray Weapons 27, Unarmed Combat 43

Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Chameleon Skin, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Vision, Grip Pads

Traits: Allies (Autumnbringer cell), On the Run

Using Jhassa Autumnbringer

Not quite a “survival of the fittest” type, Jhassa targets individuals and populations that she sees as burdens to transhumanity in the event of the apocalyptic long war the Autumnbringers believe is coming. Individuals on perpetual life support, criminals incarcerated for life, any traitors or collaborators that worked with the TITANs, advocates of de-militarization, individuals that refuse to work and exist only as a drain on a habitat’s resources, etc. Her occasional terrorist bombing garners all the attention, but for the most part are rare; her specialization is euthanasia, sitting down and convincing individuals that it is in their best interests to die, and providing the means to do so—easily, and painlessly. Of course, if the victim resists she’ll put a bullet in them, erase their cortical stack, and release a digital virus to hunt down and exterminate as many forks as she can find—but she likes to at least make the offer.

136: Ben Choudhry

ENTRY 136: Ben Choudhry

“Transhumanity, in any form, must survive. People—not any specific group of people, not one nation or one ethnicity or one bloodline or one clade—must continue in this universe. Yet if you take away all the false skins that transhumans wrap themselves in…biomorph, synthmorph, infomorph…what makes a human being? A chimpanzee shares 99% of its genetic code with human beings, yet an ape is not human. A synthmorph has no biology at all, yet it is human. Transhumanity lies in the realm of the ego, the mind, our collective knowledge and culture, pure data that can be lost and corrupted—and it is this that must be preserved, if transhumanity is to survive.”

— Ben Choudhry, “Voice Diaries”

In a universe where death is a disease, to be fought and conquered, death still claims many—and to Ben Choudhry, each light that is extinguished forever is an inestimable loss. So he has dedicated his life to saving the pieces of them that he can.

On Mars, they call him the Collector of Last Songs, because he heard the oral wisdom of the last native speakers of Abkhaz and Navajo, when they lay dying before the indenture was lifted. On Luna, he dug up the first folios of Shakespeare that had been interred in the grave-complex on Mons Vitruvius. On Ganymede, he broke into the lethal injection chamber of the poet-terrorist Anya Jain, and captured her fork before it could be erased. On Titan, he worked twelve shifts with the New Welsh, and learned their hymns by heart. He moves throughout the system, saving pieces of the human legacy, recording them, propagating them through the Mesh—because he feels someone has to.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	22	18	19	21	20	23	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	46	9	92	45	9	67

Morph: Ghost

Skills: Academics: History 75, Academics: Linguistics 85, Academics: Sociology 75, Art: Singing 65, Art: Writing 65, Free Fall (Microgravity) 55, Hardware: Aerospace 35, Hardware: Armorer 40, Beam Weapons (Lasers) 45, Deception 66, Fray 55, Hardware: Electronics 44, Hardware: Robotics 33, Infosec 66, Interests: Extinct Languages 75, Interests: Lost Treasures 55, Interfacing 55, Investigation 66, Kinesics 55, Language: Native English 90, Language: Hindi 85, Language: Urdu 80, Language: Esperanto 70, Language: Navajo 70, Language: Welsh 70, Networking: Autonomists 65, Networking: Criminals 50, Networking: Firewall 35, Networking: Hypercorps 65, Networking: Media 75, Networking: Scientists 75, Perception 65, Pilot: Aircraft 55, Pilot: Groundcraft 35, Pilot: Spacecraft 55, Pilot: Watercraft 25, Profession: Security Ops 60, Programming 33, Protocol 70, Scrounging 40, Unarmed Combat 30

Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Chameleon Skin, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Vision, Ghostrider Module, Grip Pads, Medichines, Oracles, T-Ray Emitter

Traits: Eidetic Memory, Fast Learner, Hyperlinguist, Patron (highly-placed hypercorp officers that bankroll his operations), Blacklisted (Jovian Republic, New Varanasi), Uncanny Valley

Using Ben Choudhry

Ben thinks of himself as a good guy, doing what is right, and willing to bloody a few noses if that’s what it takes. That said, he won’t kill to get what he’s after, and prefers to avoid violence and work within the framework of the local laws whenever possible (or convenient). The times when he has broken the law, he’s done so in such a spectacular manner that he’s still considered an enemy of the state by the Jovian Republic, and has a bounty on parts of his anatomy in New Varanasi (if asked, he’ll claim he didn’t know they were hermaphrodite twins and leave it at that; if pressed he’ll add that they can’t prove paternity.) So while very capable in his own right, Ben is not exactly a superspy, and there are places he cannot go and things he cannot do—which is a good place for the player characters to come in. As an ally or employer, Ben needs people to be his hands and eyes where he is blind and bound (or forbidden on pain of castration); as an enemy Ben is likely to find ways to delay, annoy, distract, and otherwise make the PCs’ lives hell in every way possible without killing them.

080: Jhil Nightbreaker

ENTRY 080: Jhil Nightbreaker

In an age of transhumanity when people are more connected than ever before, there are communities that choose to stand apart—not just brinkers, but conservative communes, ultrapolitical clades that refuse to associate with anyone of a disparate ideology, distance-isolated habitats that have grown inward and strange, and all the hermits and fear-eyed survivors of the Fall that have yet to adapt to the ever-changing universe and the communities that they find themselves apart in. Left by their own, these bubbles of oldthink and weird beliefs might thrive or collapse under their own dynamic, potentially retaining strange, conservative traditions and technologies for decades or generations.

Jhil is a nightbreaker, a dedicated culture intrusion specialist. Her purpose in this life is to violently infiltrate and disrupt these cloistered, insulated societies. The weapons of the nightbreaker are broken taboos, violated social mores, and garish displays of counterculture. Some of her most famous antics include the flash-butcher mob during the drawing of the mandalas in a BuddhistClassicist™ monastery on Mars, and the Rape of the Unborn that occurred when artificial transgenic sperm fertilized all of the eggs stored in the First Genebank of the Jovian Republic. Yet she has also broken the night of some ultraconservative cultures with no more than a public display of affection.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	23	16	17	23	19	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	40	8	80	45	9	67

Morph: Ghost

Skills: Academics: Memetics 60, Academics: Political Science 40, Academics: Psychology 50, Art: Performance 65, Art: Tattooing: 55, Art: Writing 44, Deception (Acting) 67, Fray 50, Freerunning (Gymnastics) 45, Infiltration 40, Infosec 45, Interests: Politics (Conservative) 45, Interests: Religion (Conservative) 45, Interests: Isolated Communities 45, Interests: Cultural Taboos 60, Interfacing 45, Intimidation 25, Investigation 44, Kinesics 44, Language: Native Hindi 86, Language English 40, Language Mandarin 40, Networking: Autonomists 55, Networking: Criminal 55, Networking: Hypercorps 50, Networking: Media 55, Perception 55, Persuasion 55, Pilot: Aircraft 33, Pilot: Groundcraft 44, Profession: Social Engineering 66, Protocol 44, Research 44, Spray Weapons 27, Unarmed Combat 33

Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Chameleon Skin, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Vision, Grip Pads

Traits: Addiction (Taboo Violation, Major), Allies (Nightbreaker cell), Brave, First Impression, On the Run

Using Jhil Nightbreaker

By herself, Jhil is charismatic, dedicated, and more than a little addicted to what she does. Her definition of freedom is more than a little scary, in-your-face and personal, and she has tremendous difficulty holding that back unless concentrated on a larger gig. Jhil’s sole affiliation is to her higher purpose, and she is willing to beg, borrow, and steal resources from or work with anyone if she can break the night and crash the artificial strictures that transhumans wrap themselves up with instead of embracing the universe.

Seeds

• The first part of any of Jhil’s larger schemes is founding a local Nightbreaker cell—a group of rebels against the current order, usually immature and nonviolent artist-types that she can bend to her will or her wiles. One of the PC’s contacts has fallen in with the group, but needs their help to get away from the demented, obsessive Jhil…
• A group of ultrarich hypercorp executives are abusing a conservative low-tech NeoMennonite Barsoomian settlement on Mars, masquerading as church elders to sexually abuse and psychologically degrade the residents under the guise of religious authority. Jhil approaches the PCs to help her expose the malefactors to the community…knowing that it will probably shatter the already unstable society.