325: Marin Buskovic

ENTRY 325: Marin Buskovic

“I went to sleep on Earth, I awoke to see the stars. Yet I knew I was in prison still. Only the cage had changed. Very well. I know prisons. They are not the end."
- Buskovic, post-hibernation interview

The first hibernoids were designed for sleeper-ships to the Outer Rim and beyond; explorers sleeping away the decades as they inched along at sub-light speeds. Exploration, however, could not account for the full cost of their development, and soon after other uses were looked at for these morphs - and found. "Sleeper prisons" enjoyed a brief vogue before the Fall as relatively cost-effective in terms of operating expenses and in some countries were considered relatively humane. Regrettably, the bulk of the sleeper prison populations are believed to have perished in the Fall, or in the months and years since as the automated systems failed and the hibernating prisoners starved or succumbed to infection in their sleep.

Yet not all the sleeper prisons were on Earth. Luna had one, as well as a few experimental orbital facilities and certain "hibernation brigs" on the oldest orbital habitats. With the fall of Earth and its political bodies, debate arose as to what to do with these prisoners. Most were woken up and released on their own cognizance or issued new trials; others were assessed as posing a danger and retained in their state, perhaps indefinitely; the Jovian Republic is said to have simply unplugged theirs and harvested the organs, though most experts consider that simple xenophobic libel.

Marin Buskovic was serving two life sentences in the Luna sleeper prison for a pair of murders he had committed, and opted for hibernation over regular prison. The authorities at the time of his trial had been unsympathetic - Buskovic had been a police officer, who had successfully solved the case of the marital kidnapping of a young woman and returned her to her true husband and family. Regrettably, the woman had been raped by her kidnapper, and her family considered her to have dishonored them with her "adultery" and killed her. Buskovic tracked down the men responsible and killed them in cold blood. In AF 6, as the debate about the sleeper prisons was the talk of Luna, the circumstances of Buskovic's case became a cause célèbre. An online petition for his release hit 1 million votes, and the Lunar authorities agreed to release him.

Now, Buskovic is a man out of time, still sometimes struggling with the world he finds himself in - his post-hibernation assessment shows that he still believes he is in prison, resulting in the retention of certain prisoner behaviors like stashing home-made weapons about and paranoia about inspects. Unwilling to trade on his temporary moment of fame, he supports himself as a freelance investigator and part-time law enforcement agent, with a reputation for "old school" solutions to problems.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
14	13	18	18	18	25	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	2	42	8	84	35	7	53

Morph: Hibernoid

Skills: Academics: Anthropology 25, Academics: Philosophy (Law) 40, Art: Graffiti 24, Art: Harmonica 20, Blades 36, Clubs 36, Deception 25, Fray 36, Free Fall 30, Gunnery 19, Impersonation 25, Infiltration 36, Infosec 25,  Interests: Pre-Fall Earth 66, Interests: Neo-Slavic Culture 24, Interfacing 20, Kinetic Weapons 60, Language: Native Ukrainian 80, Language: English 75, Language: German 44, Language: Russian 60, Negotiation 35, Networking: Autonomists 15, Networking: Criminals 25, Profession: Bodyguard 37, Profession: Lawman 36, Spray Weapons 55, Unarmed Combat (Subdual) 40

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Bioweave (Light), Circadian Regulation, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Hibernation, Medichines, Neurachem (Level 1), Toxin Filters
Traits: Mental Disorder (Delusion - Still in Prison, Paranoia)

Using Buskovic

Buskovic is a freelancer, but his sense of justice is stronger than his attachment to a particular employer or code of law. He particularly dislikes violence against women and children, but his somewhat archaic understanding of sex, gender, relationships, and technology mean he can sometimes misunderstand a situation - he still hasn't quite grasped the implications of Neotenic morphs and the Sex Change augmentation for example, and has taken to calling them "hermaphrodites," even when people correct him. Most of those who know him overlook this, as he means well and will break some noses for "hermaphrodites" that are being harassed. Player characters may run up against Buskovic in many contexts, but most probably when they're doing something illegal or in the pay of a criminal figure (even if the job itself is legal), or else he's extra muscle for a job provided by their employer. Buskovic is also a good moral ruler to illustrate the difference between contemporary understanding of social issues versus the acceptance or nullification of those issues in Eclipse Phase - a Neotenic morph out on a date with a Splicer and getting a little touchy-feely will have Buskovic reaching for his gun, for example.

192: To Be Tuesday

ENTRY 192: To Be Tuesday

“It’s a game, Miss Tuesday.”
“But what do they hope to win?”
“They don’t want to win. Or lose. Winning and losing means an end. They don’t want it to end. They just want to play.”

- Excerpt from the novel Tuesday Prime

On Pandora, in the little marketspace crammed with stalls that feed the tourists and the gatecrashing employees, there is a small noodle shop. The meat is textured protein, the noodles mostly starch and carbohydrates with the regulation-required micronutrients most biomorphs need, and the water is recycled habitat water with just enough salt and trace minerals left in for flavor. But the vegetables are picked fresh every morning from the fast-growth gardens, and the oil and soy sauce is all-natural, imported at some expense from Mars. The owner of the little nameless stall is Feng Liu Tuesday, a smiling thin-boned creature with a shock of dark hair that seems to change its shade every week, mismatched eyes, and a face like a Mongol princess. Tuesday works ten-hour shifts, broken up by two periods of deep sleep. Most of the details of running the business—permits, ordering, bookkeeping, deliveries, checking the autocatheter—is handled by Tuesday’s muse, Khutulun.

Tuesday’s greatest effort each shift is the business of being Tuesday. In an ongoing game that is part cosplay and part round-robin, each shift another ego settles into the cyberbrain of Feng Liu Tuesday…and spends the next ten hours trying to be Feng Liu Tuesday. Every twelve hours, a different ego looks out from behind those mismatched eyes, to greet customers and see the gatecrashers off to their next journey, or returning from their last one. Hundreds of followers keep track of each day of Tuesday’s saga, the ego in the pilot seat sending out regular updates, little cameras in the noodle shop recording each move and conversation. Performances are rated, debated, argued about; original elements are incorporated into the ongoing group exploration of “Who is Feng Liu Tuesday?” Many pilots are content to simply do the best they can at being Tuesday, managing Tuesday’s relationships with their regulars, lovers current and former, etc. There is even a break-away community managing a neotenic morph that, according to group consensus is, Tuesday’s little sibling.

Mechanics

Feng Liu Tuesday is essentially a pod version of a hibernoid (Eclipse Phase, p.140) with the Cyberbrain, Puppet Sock, and Sex Switch implants in addition to those standard for that morph, and the Social Stigma (Pod) trait for those aware of their nature; physical attributes are set at 15, with mental attributes provided by the puppeteer. If a character deliberately maims or kills Feng Liu Tuesday, their m-rep, r-rep, and @-rep scores take a hit – subtract 6 points, divided between the three scores as the gamemaster sees fit.

Using Feng Liu Tuesday

Tuesday is a living, breathing example that the world the player characters perceive is not the only world; while those characters move and talk and breath in the physical world of Eclipse Phase, there is no guarantee that what their senses perceive is “real”—or that the morphs they are talking to are being driven by the egos that they think. A large part of Feng Liu Tuesday lies in the reveal, how the gamemaster lets the players in on the idea that Tuesday is not whom they appear to be, but a series of egos taking turns piloting the morph and trying to stay “in character.” Tuesday might hire the player characters for a job, or be a trusted contact, or simply a messenger that a local spy corporation uses to hold and deliver certain items, with espionage adding a tiny thrill to the game of being Tuesday. If the PCs make an impact on Tuesday during one of their shifts, other egos driving Tuesday may seek them out to interact with them further (depending on the ego involved and their particular alignment in the Feng Liu Tuesday continuity, this might lead to a fight, fuck, or flight response). It’s a bit of zany antics and odd behavior that players might shrug off as eccentric or add some chaos to keep a game busy, though how the PCs react once they find out that thousands of fans have been experiencing everything that Tuesday has perceived might put them in a spot of bother…a one-night stand with a noodle vendor could have a PC wake up to find themselves an unexpected porn star, and the rest of the group dragged in as data mining fans try to “ship” Tuesday with them; or a single witnessed murder could lend the PCs in hot water as the damning XP evidence circulates throughout the Mesh.