307: Feather

ENTRY 307: Feather

"You'll pay to see this bird molt."
- HoloAd for "Let's Pluck"

In the darkened room, a scarlet swan with the grace of a ballerina takes the tage, its wings colored in darker patterns that make out the shapes of tribal stylings from old Earth. It moves with unhurried purpose through a display of acrobatics, captivating its audience as it circles the poll mounted on the center of the stage. As it launches itself into the air, catch the pole in one hand and spinning around, the music kicks in - and she flashes her tits to a ragged cheer from the crowd.

There are transhumans that will have sex with almost anything, but relatively few have the inclination to become aroused by uplifts - and uplifts in turn have limited sexual attraction to the hairless apes that surround them, so sexual entertainers are largely relegated by species to specific audiences. The exception is "crossover artists," who have developed particular routines, techniques, and cosmetic augmentations that allow them appeal to a larger portion of the transhuman population.

Feather is one of the most successful crossover artists, a headline dancer who has originated many of the basic techniques used in interspecies erotic dancing today, using their pseudo-human attributes and skill to titillate mixed audiences, combining aspects of mating dances and traditional pole and grind dancing into an eclectic but electric mix that leaves many transhumans speechless. A few tasteful adult XP recordings bring Feather a comfortable income and maintain their reputation, so nowadays they spend more time teaching than dancing, giving master classes on crossover artist techniques, giving tutorials on interspecies erotica, and occasionally being interviewed by zoologists for a unique perspective on non-human mating behaviors.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
12	15	20	18	12	17	13	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
8	1	26	5	52	20	4	30

Morph: Neo-Avian

Skills: Academics: Anthropology (Dance) 35, Academics: Psychology (Sex) 35, Academics: Sociology (Sex) 35, Art: Dance (Erotic) 60, Art: Writing 50, Climbing 35, Flight 60, Free Fall (Microgravity) 55, Deception (Distraction) 40, Infiltration 35, Interests: Erotica 40, Interests: Neo-Avians 45, Kinesics 50, Language: Native Czech 88, Language: English 60, Medicine: Physical Therapy 24, Networking: Media 25, Perception 25, Persuasion (Seduction) 33, Profession: Dance Instructor 45

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Cosmetic Augmentation (mammal sex traits), Endocrine Control, Enhanced Pheromones, Sex Change

Traits: Striking Appearance (1)

Using Feather

Sex sells, but you don't often see wild life documentaries for sale alongside hardcore pornography. As much as transhumanity has changed, basic anatomies and instincts mean that uplifts and humans tend to favor their own when it comes to traditional forms of adult entertainment like erotic dance. Feather is a liminal character that straddles those two worlds, and can be a good contact to help introduce the PCs with dealing with human-uplift relations. As a neutral character, Feather can fill in the typical role of a dancer/entertainer type, letting the PCs get involved with showbusiness (shady bits optional), or even education (and dreaded university politics) through their teaching; as an antagonist Feather is likely only to embroil the PCs in a plot accidentally, unless they have something Feather needs - and when you're being aggressively courted by a six-foot tall anthromorphic goose, you damn well know it.

Seeds

• Unknown to almost anyone, Feather is a Firewall agent, often used as a courier for delivering information under the guise of the neo-avian's touring schedule. At their habitat, Feather makes contact with the PCs, but before they can get the message someone shoots the neo-avian with a laser. The wound isn't fatal, but Feather's cortical stack interface is damaged; the PCs will need to protect Feather and figure out a way to get the neo-avian healed up or access the cortical stack to get the message out, all while under attack from an unknown assailant.
• Feather has fallen in love - but the bride/groom's family is unsupportive of the union of their sex-switching son/daughter to an erotic neo-avian performer. While Feather arranges the wedding and tries to placate their beloved's family, the neo-avian also hires the PCs to find some dirt on the local matriarchs and patriarchs to blackmail them into silence. Unsurprisingly, the clan heads hire the PCs to do the same thing with Feather. Will the PCs play both sides and profit, or force everyone to come clean? And what happens when the bride/groom decides to resleeve into a neo-avian morph?

283: Eggman

ENTRY 283: Eggman

"I am the Eggman."

- The Eggman

The balding, unassuming middle-aged splicer known as the Eggman has as mysterious a past as any other veterinarian/ornithologist specializing in the study and preservation of both Earth's classical avian species as well as the neo-avians created through uplifting. Some say he carried on an interspecies relationship for years with an uplifted emperor penguin, and originally received his egg pouch implant to help brood their adopted egg. Others claim he received it as a smuggler for the Triads, forced to carry illicit biologicals in de-embryoed ostrich eggs. One drunken professor of neo-ornithology on Titan insists that Eggman got the pouch as a grad student, and used it to successfully hatch the first kiwi off-earth after the death of its natural mother. Whatever the truth, the Eggman is not telling.

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: Oology 90, Academics: Ornithology 77, Art: Painting (Birds) 43, Art: Makeup 50, Disguise (Bird) 48, Interests: Parenting 44, Interests: Neo-Avians 45, Interests: Uplift Rights 33, Interfacing 25, Language: Native English 85, Language: Maori 70, Language: New Zealand Sign Language 50, Medicine: Veterinary 66, Networking: Criminals (Black Market Animals) 30, Networking: Science 42, Profession: Vererinarian 60, Unarmed Combat (Beak) 28 

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Beak (transgenic graft, 1d10 DV, use Unarmed Combat Skill), Egg Pouch (modified Skin Pocket)

Traits: Expert (Oology)

Using Eggman

Some people are all surface. They hold no illusions about themselves, who they are or what they do. They present no masks to the outside world, and whether they love or hate themselves, they are resigned to be themselves, through fortune and calamity. The Eggman is one such who is exactly what he appears to be: a veterinarian, oologist, and ornithologist. His mission in life is the study and care of eggs, avians, and neo-avians, and he values their well-being above his own existence. When the PCs meet him, he will almost inevitably be incubating an egg in his egg-pouch, letting his body heat keep the chick warm until it is ready to hatch. This does not necessarily mean that as a PC the Eggman is boring, or even especially honest in what he tells them, but his actions will always show his true nature: he will never do harm to an avian or neo-avian (non-fertilized eggs are fair game, even though he prefers to preserve them as surrogate ova), or by inaction allow one to come to harm. If faced with a failure at this basic task, he may even committ suicide.

Seeds

• The Eggman has heard rumor of a new Enhanced Pheromones implant that allows transhumans greater empathy with avians and neo-avians. Unfortunately, the research has been stolen by the Intelligent Design Crew. The Eggman asks the PCs to retrieve the design schematics from the ID Crew, offering as payment a small ransom in unfertilized eggs - any one of which will fetch a good price as food or research material on the open market.
• Recently, the Eggman accompanied a gatecrashing expedition, and returned with a strange purple-black egg in his egg pouch. Now he has been acting oddly, neglecting his birds and engaging in strange medical research, acting belligerent and burning favors left and right. His friends and neighbors are worried about him, and have passed the hat to hire the PCs to find out what is wrong with him. If pressed, the Eggman claims to have formed a psychic link with the alien egg he found - and that it is sick and dying, and he wished to find a cure. However, if the Eggman is separated from the egg, it quickly hatches and grows into something similar to a small, feathered headhunter (Eclipse Phase 383, but with DUR 10) with psi sleights that only affect avians.

105: Blazespiders

ENTRY 105: Blazespiders

Ecological controls in living habitats require finesse and patience, at least for the least intrusive and most economical means. Neo-avian habitats and scum barges in particular tend to suffer from recurrent insect unwanted infestations of ticks, lice, and weevils—personal pests whose populations expand tremendously without natural predators, but most large-scale means of eradication involve chemicals or radiation that are toxic to transhumans as well, or at least undesired. So instead of trying to eliminate the bad bugs, the neo-avians of Mahogany implemented a two-fold approach to suborn the pesky critters and control their population.

Mahogany pest populations were selectively interbred with genetically modified specimens to produce a hybrid species that produces photoproteins—the chemical luminescence making the tiny specimens easier to identify. Then the neo-avians introduced a predator arachnid species designed to target the spectrum of light put out by the glowing lice, ticks, and so forth. Additional ecological controls are required to track and maintain the balance between the population, but Mahogany habitat’s bug problem has dropped significantly without needing to resort to chemical agents, and is entering trial periods in other neo-avian habitats.

A side-effect of the designer spiders are the webs they weave, which incorporate the excess photoproteins they intake from their prey. The result are startlingly beautiful webs, growing in dark dusty corners where few people disturb them, and under the leaves and between the leaves under the dark forest canopy of Mahogany. It is these pale glowing cobwebs that have given the Mahogany spider its most popular nickname: the blazespider.

Seeds

• A corpse has been found on a slow transport from Mahogany to the player character’s habitat—a desiccated, mummified thing covered in blazespider webs. The cause of death is unknown, and tensions are flaring in the habitat as people start to come down sick. Someone hires the PCs to look into the blazespiders aboard the ship, which should not have been allowed past Mahogany’s biological quarantine—unless the former incumbent circumvented those safeguards because they were smuggling something else…
• A legal dispute has arisen between Mahogany, which holds the rights to the blazespider genome, and Titanian microcorp Attercorp which breeds the transgenic spiders to brew a specialty cosmetic/stimulant called “Attercop.” Jurisdictional differences mean the suit is unlikely to come to a quick resolution, so Mahogany hires the player characters to contaminate the Attercorp stock with a bacterium that will break down photoproteins—then Mahogany can sell the cure along and make the licensing fee part of the deal. If the PCs refuse, another group is hired for the same job. Unfortunately, the contaminated batch of Attercop hits the market and causes fatalities, and the authorities blame the PCs.
• A mentally unstable ghost-morph name Piotr Benevich was bitten by an experimental blazespider while touring a lab. While the spider was not venomous or radioactive, the bite (and the characteristic glowing bitewounds) has triggered a psychotic break in Piotr, who believes he is infected with blazespider DNA. Piotr’s aunt and uncle contact the PCs and ask for them to find and restrain him before he can do any harm to himself or others.

090: Otta Tvash

ENTRY 090: Otta Tvash

Genetic engineering and after-market modification of neo-avian morphs has caused them to diverge so far from the standard phenotypes that their origin species can become ambiguous; the distinctive outlines that marked them out become blurred as they too become a trans-species, as far removed from what their primal genestock as a Barsoomian is from Australopithecus. Whatever Otta Tvash once was, today she is a slick-scaled amphibious horror, skin grown over her useless eyes, body cadaverous and reptilian, the plumage between her scaly plates smooth and rippled black and white like a penguin’s. Otta’s anatomy has been adapted to allow her to slide into the strange waters of alien worlds and using her bat-like wings to “fly” through the lakes, rivers, and seas of other planets.

As a gatecrasher, Otta brings adaptability to potential expeditions, able to survey from land, air, and in the sea; she has studied other neo-avian morphs and developed aerial deep-dive and skimming techniques which have proven quite effective combinations on worlds where gravity and local conditions permit both flight and swimming. More than this, her lack of sight brings a unique perspective—where other gatecrashers may be overwhelmed by the sights of the strange worlds they visit, Otta focuses on the more subtle things, such as air pressure, viscosity, density, and gravity, mapping her surroundings with tiny intermittent chirps.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
10	18	19	20	12	17	13	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
8	1	26	5	52	20	4	30

Morph: Neo-Avian

Skills: Academics: Botany 50, Academics: Chemistry 55, Academics: Oceanography 50, Climbing 35, Flight 60, Free Fall 55, Freerunning 70, Infiltration 55, Interests: Gatecrashing 60, Interests: Neo-Avians 45, Investigation 35, Kinesics 30, Kinetic Weapons 40, Language: Native Czech 89, Language: English 40, Medicine: Paramedic 40, Navigation 60, Networking: Autonomists 55, Networking: Scientists 55, Perception 50, Pilot: Watercraft 40, Profession: Diver 75, Scrounging 60, Swimming 80

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Carapace Armor, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Endocrine Control, Enhanced Senses (Direction Sense, Echolocation, Enhanced Smell), Medichines, Oxygen Reserve, Radiation Sense, Respirocytes, Temperature Tolerance, Toxin Filters, Vacuum Sealing

Traits: Neural Damage (Blind), Striking Appearance (1)

Using Otta Tvash

Birds are weird, people are weird, and neo-avians are very weird indeed. When the PCs run into Otta Tvash, feel free to indulge in more than a bit of descriptive text—she’s a sight even hardened transhumans might pause at, a streamlined bipedal bird-reptile thing, built for air and water, as strange a chimera as any Medieval bestiary ever produced—but she’s not an animal. Whether as antagonist, ally, hireling, or contact Otta is a gatecrasher, a blind explorer that discovers the world through her sense of hearing and smell, and gamemasters might use her to teach the PCs a few things about using their own enhanced senses—the ones they write on their character sheet and then forget about. For herself, Otta is content exploring new worlds, focusing not on what she was or is but what she will be.