297: Jane Starware

ENTRY 297: Jane Starware

"You see an orphan. I see an undeveloped personnel resource."
- Nicky Blackstone

Hypercorporate life can be tough on families. Along with the hustle and bustle of work, meetings, training camps, seminars, conferences, and all the other events that fill the business portion of the calendar, hypercorps are also societies with their own holidays, teambuilding events, birthdays, and parties, and have to incorporate transhuman events like weddings, funerals, births, resleeving, augmentation and sick leave, and office sex. Employment in a hypercorp, as opposed to freelancing, is a serious commitment for both the hypercorp and the employee and their families. There are health, financial, and educational benefits to be sorted out, and each employee represents a massive investment in time and resources. So on occasion when an employee dies or chooses to give up their children for whatever reason - or, in some cases, when unauthorized fraternization leads to an unexpected and undesired pregnancy - the hypercorp will adopt and raise the child as its own. (Some hypercorps tried the whole clone-worker approach, but after the debacle with Moletronics Amalgamated Genetics, it's a hard sell.)

Jane Starware is one of the adopted children of Starware hypercorp, born and raised by the Starware community, educated through their Pre-Professional Trainee Program, and slotted to advance into their Advanced Internship (Remunerated) program next semester if she can keep her grades up. Individual orphans' relationship to their parent corporations is determined by corporate law and their respective contracts with the hypercorp in question; Jane is currently operating under a "pre-majority contract" which can expire when she reaches legal majority, unless she chooses to transition into a full employment contract.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
11	14	12	9	9	7	10	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
4	1	20	4	40	35	7	50

Morph: Menton

Skills: Academics: History 16, Academics: Physics 16, Art: Singing 14, Deception 13, Free Fall 13, Hardware: Robotics 14, Interests: Hypercorps 15, Interests: Kid Fashion 14, Interests: Starware Lore 16, Interfacing 17, Investigation 16, Kinesics 15, Language: Native German 78, Language: English 70, Language: French 63, Networking: Hypercorps 15, Networking: Scientists 15, Perception 15, Profession: Student 15, Profession: Intern 15, Programming 16, Protocol (Corporate) 15, Research 15, Unarmed Combat 16
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Hyper-Linguist, Math Boost

Using Jane Starware

Being an orphan doesn't always mean being an unloved, unwanted brat. Jane Starware hasn't received a traditional upbringing, but just because she can't identify a specific prime parental figure (she's never met the donors of her genetic material, but for her birthday she was allowed to view their personnel records and noted they both scored very highly on the standard evaluations before their untimely deaths, though those records are still sealed). She's young, and rather optimistic about her future, but curious about the outside world. Her place in the corporate hierarchy isn't confirmed yet, but she already has a rather large indenture hanging over her head (sunk costs from raising her), and Starware aims to recoup those resources one way or another.

Seeds

• Jane has a teenage rebellion stage scheduled, and the hidden sensors in her living facility have picked up evidence of outside communication and a likely runaway attempt. Starware is already aware of this, and plans to let her go for a few weeks or months to experience the outside world. However, Jane's Personal Manager is worried about her safety, and approaches the player characters to keep an eye on her and keep her away from any real threats to her future. If the PCs are up for a little ninja chaperoning, they'll earn a sizable favor from a Starware exec.
• Jane Starware approaches the PCs. She wants them to uncover the sealed files on the death of her parents/genetic donors from the Starware corporate archives, and can provide a limited amount of assistance. All she has to pay is her "piggy bank" - a secret cache of Starware coupons that can get the PCs up to 20% off on any single purchase.
• A group named the Comprachicos approaches the PCs, asking them to help extract Jane from her indentured status so she can be placed with a more traditional transhuman family. After the extraction goes off, the PCs are approached by Starware, and find out that the Comprachicos are a gang of corporate headhunters aiming to sell Jane to a microcorp with less stringent ethical standards toward their juvenile employees and corporate wards.

290: Rocket Rhosa

ENTRY 290: Rocket Rhosa

Every war has its heroes. In the fight against the TITANs, Rocket Rhosa was an armorer and pilot, known for her love of big guns and her innovative and flashy improvised weapons. She was known for having eighteen combat craft damaged or destroyed over the course of the conflict, and never wasted much time in getting another one and equipping it with bigger and ever more dangerous weapons. For the course of the conflict, she was one of the darlings of the Solar system.

After the war, her star fell. Rhosa never found a habitat where she fell at home, and her temper and taste for alcohol and explosives got her intro troubles legal and economic. For years she was reduced to the nominal position of pilot on an automated ore-trawler, because the owner was old-fashioned and preferred to have at least one transhuman on board to keep the AGIs honest. That was her low point, where she fell into dissipation from which she might never have recovered.

Then the space pirates attacked, and she found herself again. Now she's sober (mostly) and back to her chipper old self, piloting one rusty tub after another, each equipped with outlandish weapons of her own design - pirate hunters, smuggler outrunners, escort ships, whatever meets the needs of the job. She has friends in every port again, and most of them know to keep her off the sauce when playing with the plutonium.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
21	15	20	15	15	10	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	40	8	80	35	7	50

Morph: Menton

Skills: Academics: History (Explosives) 55, Academics: Sociology (Propaganda) 55, Beam Weapons 50, Demolitions (Munitions) 48, Free Fall 36, Gunnery 72, Hardware: Electronics 34, Hardware: Spacecraft 48, Hardware: Munitions 56, Interests: Big Guns 33, Interests: Exotic Weapons 30, Interests: Propoganda 35, Interfacing 23, Intimidation 25, Language: Native Greek 95, Language: Russian 90, Language: English 90, Language: French 75, Navigation 23, Networking: Firewall 25, Networking: Scientists 25, Pilot: Spacecraft 49, Profession: Arms Dealer 50, Profession: Demolitions Expert 60

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Hyper-Linguist, Math Boost, Multi-tasking, Oracles
Traits: Addiction (Alcohol, moderate)

Using Rocket Rhosa

Armorers are wonderful people that make things that hurt other people, and often will modify them to meet your specific needs at a reasonable price. They are often enthusiastic (if not always outgoing) professions with deep interests in their particular areas of expertise. Most players don't give much thought to their weapons past the raw statistics, and for most games this is sufficient - the idea of the rules and presentation being to induce a sense of verisimilitude of combat, since realistic depictions of science fiction battles is both difficult and open to wide interpretation. However, this does not mean that any idea or tweak involving weaponry can't be included in your home games - maybe the PCs see that the opposition has started "hotboxing" their beam weapons by modifying the settings to obtain higher damage at the cost of reduced range, lifetime, and the not-insignificant chance of exploding, and now the PCs want to hotbox their own weapons. Easy enough for somebody with the right skills - enter the armorer.

Rocket Rhosa for her part is a classic example of the out-of-work warrior archetype: enthusiastic when she has a project, and rather drunken and morose when deprived of purpose. Her specific purpose is blowing things up, which can come in handy for the PCs in many ways, but also makes her a deadly foe if she starts gunning for them (say, if the PCs decide to try their hand at space piracy). She's a loyal friend, but sometimes careless, and anyone that knows her for any length of time knows not to trust her when she starts disarming grenades while on her third bottle of whatever the locals distill.

220: Mother Okunya

ENTRY 220: Mother Okunya

In the Ge-Rouge residential quarter of the Legba habitat in the Main Belt, she is everyone’s grandmother—a strong but thin and wrinkled woman who will treat every child as one of her own, and every one younger than her as her child. She moves through the community on her errands, busy with purpose, but she always has a kind word, a shoulder to cry on, a handkerchief for snotty noses, and a tube of vacuum seal for every rupture. She has healed marriages and ended them with a word, and her condemnation can mean slow death as their contacts unfriend them from their networks and their rep plummets. All this she accomplishes with the same toothless smile, the kind that lets her tend to her knitting while some of her boys and girls tie the battery wires around someone’s testicles.

The Nine Lives find Mother Okunya effective at policing her section of the habitat, and mostly leave her to it so long as she does not directly involve herself in their business. Indeed, many of the Nine Lives owe her favors, though she never seems to let them stay indebted to her for too long, nor asks for more than any of them can readily part with. In her neighborhood, every eye is her spy, every hand one of her tools. Those who come there always make right with Mother Okunya if they know what’s good for them, and for those who are ignorant she surprises with a visit.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
28	15	20	15	15	10	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	40	8	80	35	7	50

Morph: Menton

Skills: Academics: Psychology (Testing) 55, Academics: Sociaology (Initiations) 55, Art: XP Editing 50, Interests: Old Earth Cultures 30, Interests: Teaching Methods 35, Interests: Torture Methods 50, Interfacing 30, Investigation 30, Intimidation (Torture): 50, Kinesics 60, Language: Native Swahili 95, Language: Arabic 90, Language: English 90, Language: French 75, Language: Yoruba 75, Networking: Firewall 25, Networking: Scientists 25, Profession: Interrogator 50, Profession: Teacher 60, Research 77

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

Traits: Fast Learner

Using Mother Okunya

This minor crime boss/social hub sees herself as placed in this universe to test those people in it, to find them wanting or deserving depending on their merits. She has no malice or mercy in her soul, and will never, ever break character from the harmless old woman until the trap is shut. For PCs coming to Legba for the first time, she will seem a relatively harmless NPC—the neighborhood’s grandmother—come to greet them and give them a small gift. How they react determines how they are going to be treated for the rest of their stay. The longer the PCs stay in her demesne, the more little tests she will place before them—what do they PCs do when accused of theft? What do they do if they find a valuable object, just lying about? If someone gives them a gift? If a child has an accident in front of them and is injured? If a father takes his son to the walkway and whips him with an electrical cord in public? Keep in mind that Mother Okunya does not follow normal moral or ethical guides; her philosophy is more severe and survival oriented. Violence is met by sudden and overwhelming violence as the entire residential district turns against them; kindness and respect repaid by friendly and helpful locals; dishonesty by firm but polite refusal of service; nobility and honesty by whatever help it is in her power to give. However, the longer the PCs stay the more involved and personal the tests will become—and attentive PCs might notice that none of the long-term residents of Ge-Rouge is without a scar or missing some body part.

178: Niels Watanabe

ENTRY 178: Niels Watanabe

Early menton designs focused primarily on functionality, to the exclusion and detriment of all else. The prototypical models were often flawed caricatures of humanity—stunted, malformed, and ugly by comparison to the mediagenic gods that dominate the Mesh. These were only the most visible errors; later on researchers and early adopters realized the dangers these unperfected morphs posed to egos, the enhanced wetware of the brain often leading the transhuman consciousness into extended fugue states as they lived entirely in their own minds, forgetting reality, or became fixated into various autistic states. Still, the enhanced mental capabilities attracted any number of scholars, researchers, and others who wanted the intelligence edge that they felt the morph would give them. Perhaps this is the truth underlying the media’s portrayal of mentons as cold creatures of rational intellect or unhinged mad scientists, but while it is true many mentons fit that mold, not all of them do.

Niels Watanabe was an early adopter, and for his troubles was sleeved into a stunted morph with a severe degeneration of the spine and brainstem, rendering him a quadripalegic with an outsized cranium on top of a stick-thin, useless body. He took the loss of mobility in stride and good humor, and is generally carried about in a variety of automated walkers or other vehicles, sometimes driven by one of his three wives. Unlike most mentons, Watanabe is not much of an academic, nor interested in research of formal learning. Instead his is a genius at problem-solving, brilliantly creative to the point that he is nearly unemployable—some of his proposed solutions have included the invention of exotic states of matter or permanently dying every resident of a habitat half-black and half-white, for example. These moments aside, Watanabe is infamous for his frankness, insight, and undisputable creative brilliance, and his services put him in sufficiently high demand that he never wants for work or favors when he wants them. Keeping busy keeps him happy, whether it is on a project or picking out gifts for his identical triplet brides, but sometimes he does enjoy a challenge—especially if it is a truly strange situation—and his friends and colleagues are aware of this aspect of his nature, and continually send along any interesting problems they encounter.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
40	5	15	5	16	5	22	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
9	1	44	9	88	33	5	50

Morph: Menton

Skills: Art: Poetry (Limerick) 45, Interests: Any* 25, Interfacing 60, Investigation 50, Kinesics 50, Language: Native Japanese 80, Language: Norwegian 66, Language: English 44, Language: Hindi 44, Language: Italian 44, Language: Korean 44, Languague: Mandarin: 44, Networking: Hypercorps 36, Networking: Scientists 53, Perception (Visual) 56, Profession: Creative Consultant 60, Programming 33

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

Traits: Exceptional Aptitude (COG), Common Sense, Feeble (SOM), Frail (1), Neural Damage (Quadripalegic), Unfit (2)

* Niels has a vast number of interests and a lot of time on his hands; assume he has a rating of 25 in any non-Academic field of knowledge, even obscure ones like Old Earth Yo-Yos or Hyperspace Engineering.

Using Niels Watanabe

Watanabe is not insane, nor is he your typical genius. If asked some complicated or obscure question, he may cheerfully answer “I don’t know!” and then have one of his wives (Ivanna, Kim-Lee, and Star) show you the new recipe he just thought of for synthetic tapioca. He is so creative in fact, that many people have difficulty following his reasoning, and sometimes his answers are completely useless (anytime he goes on about “anti-neutrino fields” and the color purple, his wives just shrug and roll their eyes). However, his intuitive genius does allow him to skip past several logical steps to suggest innovative, if occasionally wacky, solutions to any problem—and if the PCs have a suitably wacky or difficult problem and need a solution, Niels Watanabe may be their go-to contact.

On the other hand, being trapped in a useless, deformed body has rather twisted Niels mind a bit, and there’s more than enough super-villain potential there for gamemasters that need someone brilliant, bitter, and off-the-wall to mastermind some harebrained scheme.

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.

062: Gailteach

ENTRY 062: Gailteach

In every war, there are casualties, the disruption of social systems, and people who fall between the cracks and out of the human networks they knew. Gailteach was an operative, though for what agency, hypercorp, or government she does not recall. Doctors who have examined her believe that at some point Gailteach was exposed to multiple basilisk hacks, either at once or in close succession, and the damaging information is still cascading through the menton’s nervous system, causing rolling neural damage that continually rewrites the neural connections between individual sequences in her long-term memory. So while her recall remains perfect, the result is an asynchronous fugue, Gailteach’s recollection of past events continually shifted out of order.

Despite the damage, Gailteach maintains her significant linguistics skills, though in her personal speech is prone to rambling in multiple languages, not all of them natural. She maintains an existence as a researcher and translator, publishing original papers and articles on linguistics, and serves as a tireless on-call community literacy teacher, translator, and interpreter for her habitat. This selfless service has given Gailteach an excellent reputation, and the community provides more of her material and medical needs. For other matters, Gailteach relies on the assistance of her muse Egon, who is programmed to only communicate in certain synthetic languages.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
28	15	20	15	15	10	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	40	8	80	35	7	50

Morph: Menton

Skills: Academics: Linguistics 85, Academics: Neurolinguistics 80, Art: Logograms 50, Interests: Accents 60, Interests: Dialects 75, Interests: Synthetic Languages 80, Interests: Xenolinguistics 80, Interfacing 50, Investigation 50, Language: Native Gaelic 95, Language: Any*, Networking: Firewall 25, Networking: Scientists 25, Profession: Interpreter 75 Profession: Linguist: 80, Profession: Teacher 60, Profession: Translator 65, Research 77

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

Traits: Fast Learner, Mental Disorder (Severe phobia of psychosurgery), Neural Damage (Amnesia, Blackouts)

* Gailteach knows hundreds of human languages and dialects; common languages (Arabic, English, French, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, etc.) have a typical rating of 75; uncommon languages 60, and synthetic & obscure languages (Esperanto, Klingon, Sumerian, &c.) 50.

Using Gailteach

While she doesn’t advertise it, Gailteach is an occasional resource for Firewall, and the PCs are most likely to encounter her in that respect. Gailteach is aware of her memory issues and so will remember the PCs (and any NPCs) in different contexts on subsequent encounter, so that at any given time her general reaction to such characters may be positive, neutral, or negative; however Egon’s memory functions perfectly, and anyone who takes advantage of Gailteach’s faulty recollection (for example, she may mistake the character for a relative, wife, or old lover) will find themselves cut off from contact with Gailteach by all the means at Egon’s disposal. Playing Gailteach may be difficult for the gamemaster; keep a list of random foreign words and phrases around to pepper into her speech can help, and if the nature of her neural damage is difficult to grasp, treat it as early on-set senility.