311: Corrupted Chrysanthemum

ENTRY 311: Corrupted Chrysanthemum

"I am as I was when they found me. Broken in body, but whole of mind and spirit, flush with purpose. I will not live a life consumed by the pain and hate I experienced; I will be a force for love, a surcease for pain, a lightener of hearts. I ask nothing of anyone, but if you wish to join me, you are welcome."
- Corrupted Chrysanthemum, at her official excommunication

A bride of Frankenstein with flowers woven in her streaked hair and a bright red sari, Corrupted Chrysanthemum is the chairperson of the Ishnigarrab, and acts as general manager of its digital and physical assets. Seductive when she chooses to be, matronly by nature, "C-squared" has a reputation for total honesty and often takes those who meet her for the first time by surprise with her actions. Opponents find her obtrusive, distracting, violating their personal space and privacy with frightening ease; neutral or friendly transhumans find her touchy feely but mother hennish, alternately doting and giving them their space, only to show up when they don't know they need it to supply a warm hug or a caress.

Her physical appearance originates from how she was first found - a victim "saved" by human soldiers only to be subject to a violent nineteen-day imprisonment punctuated by periodic gang rapes and idle mutilations, only to be stapled back together by their medic. In time, they moved on and left their playthings behind. Corrupted Chrysanthemum crawled forth from that hole, but not alone: she carried with her the other three survivors who had suffered with her. That was the start of the Ishnigarrab, and though her body has long healed the physical depredations, C-squared retains the image of her ordeal on her morph as a physical reminder of what she fights against.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
13	24	26	14	13	16	14	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
8	1	28	5	56	45	9	67

Morph: Pleasure Pod

Skills: Academics: Psychology (Affection) 44, Art: Acting 45, Deception 45, Free Fall 25, Infosec 22, Interests: Non-Profit Organizations 50, Interests: Sex Industry 44, Interests: Transhuman Displays of Affection 66, Interfacing 25, Language: Native Arabic 86, Language: English 66, Language: Japanese 55, Medicine: Physical Therapy 45, Networking: Autonomists 22, Networking: Criminals 22, Networking: Media 44, Perception 33, Profession: Therapist 66, Unarmed Combat (Claws) 45

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Clean Metabloism, Cortical Stack, Cosmetic Augmentation (discolored and mismatched skin connected by large stitches, cosmetic skin, discolored eyes and hair), Cyberbrain, Cyberclaws, Enhanced Pheromones, Mnemonic Augmentation, Puppet Sock, Sex Switch

Traits: Allies (Ishnigarrab), Blacklisted (Jovian Republic, Catholic Church), First Impression, Neural Damage (Dyscalculia), Striking Looks (1)

Using Corrupted Chrysanthemum

Perhaps unusual for most NPCs the player characters meet for the first time, C-squared will always greet them warmly, often with a hug and the offer of a cookie (for biomorphs) or a bit of shell polish (for synthmorphs) and otherwise fuss over their comfort. Even if they appear violent, C-squared will surrender and attempt to talk to them (while sending off directions and possibly an alert to local security through the Mesh; she's warm-hearted, not stupid.) As a contact or ally, Corrupted Chrysanthemum is open and honest with the characters, and will rarely ask for anything in return...but she will also not tolerate the PCs making demands of her, under any circumstances. C-squared's effort to promote her message and volunteer organization has not always gone smoothly; the details of her philosophy (and certain allegations she made against key individuals) have made powerful enemies in the Jovian Republic and the Catholic Church, where she is persona non grata, and innumerable local frictions with sex workers, administrators, moralists, and the occasional hygienist, so there are no end of conflicts in which she might feature as antagonist, victim, or employer.

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.

187: Parasitoid Pod

ENTRY 187: Parasitoid Pod

Parasitoid pods were developed by exhumans experimenting with different ecological relationships. As the name implies, the parasitoid pod spends the majority of its existence within another living entity, most often another transhuman morph or pod. The elongated body of the parasitoid pod curls amid the host organism’s guts, tapping into its circulatory, digestive, and respiratory systems to derive basic nutrition; early efforts at tapping into the host’s nervous system were eventually abandoned in favor of using basic Mesh protocols.

Unlike natural parasitoids, the parasitoid pod does not enter the host’s system innocuously and grow slowly over time. Implantation (and escape/removal) tend to be traumatic experiences for the host; the average parasitoid pod is 1-2 meters long and 2-4 centimeters in diameter, and the morph is quite capable of chewing its way in (or out) using its claws, though most egos prefer surgery to avoid placing undo stress on the host. Once installed, the parasitoid places an increased burden on the host’s system, requiring greater food and water intake to sustain both systems.

The reasons behind occupying a parasitoid pod differ from ego to ego, and tend to be complicated. Some exhumans simply prefer the lifestyle, where they are kept warm and nestled womb-like in the guts of another morph—either a chosen victim, or a pod selected specifically as a carrier and to aid in interaction with transhumanity at a greater remove. Alternately, some transhumans have taken to carrying a parasitoid pod as a quick “back up” morph that they can quickly resleeve into should their regular morph be damaged (or if they need to abandon it quickly). Practical egos in need for subterfuge have noted the advantages of hiding within another morph, and Firewall has become aware that parasitoid pods are difficult to discern with psi sleights, perhaps masked by the host’s nervous system.

Generic Parasitoid Pod Stats

Parasitoid pods have all of the advantages of pods (Eclipse Phase, p.142).

Enhancements: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Clean Metabolism, Cyberbrain, Puppet Sock

Aptitude Maximum: 25 (5 for Coordination, Reflexes, and Somatics)

Durability: 10

Wound Threshold: 2

Advantages: Psi Chameleon (when in host), Fang Attack (1d10 DV, use Unarmed Combat skill)*

Disadvantages: Social Stigma (Pod), Unfit (2), Blind, Deaf, Mute, No hands but five hundred feet

CP Cost: 10

Credit Cost: High

* Success is automatic if the parasitoid is already installed in a host.

Entering or leaving a host biomorph inflicts 1d10 DV on the host morph per round, and typically takes 1 round per every meter long the parasitoid pod is (or longer, if the entry is contested by grabbing the parasitoid as it enters). The parasitoid pods typically enter or exit from a point just within the host’s mouth or anus, but other places are possible. Once installed, the host’s cost of living increase by 25% as their needs for water, oxygen, and nutrition increase. Parasitoid morphs can be removed surgically, though they will often seek to leave of their own accord if they become aware of this, or can be poisoned by various medications (treat as a poison, but half cost and only the parasitoid is effected, not the host). When removed from the host, parasitoid pods have limited ability to accept nutrition—if they do not enter another host or a vat of nutrient and oxygen-rich fluids within 24 hours, the pod will expire. In some habitat sewer systems, a parasitoid pod could theoretically survive indefinitely without a host.

144: Shipslug

ENTRY 144: Shipslug

Autonomist habitats tend to take a pragmatic approach to criminal offenses. With omnipresent camera coverage and Mesh-based tracking, evidence for minor offenses is typically overwhelming and trials little more than a formality; legal emphasis typically focuses on a negotiated settlement to repair the criminal morph’s relationship with the community—sometimes a fine, more often some form of community service. There are always a few dirty jobs that need to be done on any habitat, and some of the dirtiest are done by shipslugs.

Bioengineered from Terran gastropods, shipslugs are massive pods engineered as vacworkers, clinging to the outside hulls of ships and habitats, absorbing radiation, removing debris, and conducting simple repairs like temporarily patching holes with a silicone-based mucous that hardens into a ceramic plug. While most egos might be disinclined to resleeve into a pod even temporarily, shipslug mesh inserts come with a custom morph-specific built-in augmented reality game that translates their real-world work tasks into short virtual fantasy quests. As a consequence, shipslugs are one of the most popular penal pods currently in production.

Generic Shipslug Stats

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Carapace Armor, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Ghostrider Module, Grip Pads*, Lidar, Oxygen Reserve, Puppet Sock, Radar, Temperature Tolerance, T-Ray Emitter, Vaccum Sealing

Mobility System: Snake (4/16)

Aptitude Maximum: 30

Durability: 40

Wound Threshold: 8

Advantages: Armor (8/8)

Disadvantages: Social Stigma (Pod), Limbless

CP Cost: 40

Credit Cost: Expensive

*The entire underside of a shipslug counts as single massive “foot,” and is mainly used to stay attached to the hull without trouble.

Using Shipslugs

Eventually, the player characters are going to cause some trouble, or at least be blamed for it. Whether in the wrong or not, they need to come to an understanding with the authorities or powers-that-be on the habitat or ship. Prison sucks, so it’s good for the gamemaster to have sole alternative community service/work release solutions available—and while shipslugs may not be the sexiest morphs available (except to other shipslugs), they are fairly durable and can go on extended spacewalks with bare minimum of equipment, making them a solid option for one-shot adventures or sidequests to get the PCs out of their comfort zone for the length of a mission.

Seed

• While fighting off scum pirates trying to hijack their transport, an errant weapon discharge causes a nearby asteroid to explode, causing micrometeorite damage to the hull and forcing it to call for volunteers to mind the shipslugs to conduct emergency repairs. The science officer asks the PCs to pitch in, explaining that the asteroid was nearly pure platinum-group metals—and the dusty bits and fragments the shipslugs collect can be collected and sold off at the next habitat for a tidy profit which she’ll split with them (her “finder’s fee” is 10% if they feel like negotiating). Of course, the PCs may not be the only ones with that idea…and the scum pirates may still be out there and come back to try their luck again while the shipslugs are hard at work.  

139: I Am Thief

ENTRY 139: I Am Thief

Incarceration was too expensive for such a petty crime, his morph not worth the hassle to lease, at least that’s how he likes to explain it. Instead they took his name and his rep. “You do not have a psychological compulsion to steal,” the court-ordered psychosurgeon said, before the hypnotics kicked in. “So you should respond well to negative reinforcement and removal from enabler-types.” When he woke up, all he could remember was a fading dream of his mother calling him by something that sounded wrong. Then he stared up at the doctor and said “I Am Thief.”

The details of the crime vary on the telling. Ten nanograms of antimatter from an orbital factory on Mercury. The tactile scans for a caste of pleasure pods with five specialized sex organs, custom-ordered by some big-shot in the Jovian junta. A gate code for an asteroid a kilometer in diameter with an 80% concentration of platinum group metals. A kiss from neotenic who lied about her age. The ending is the same. Whatever his real name is has been edited out. He knows his name isn’t “Thief,” but it’s all he can remember his mother or friends or anyone call him. When he meets someone, he blurts out “I Am Thief!” like a verbal tic. Enforced behavior. Good to scare off anyone trying to get him back into the life, bad on a first date. Once the first impressions wear off, people are more understanding, if never quite at their ease—would you trust a thief?

The remaining damage is subtler and more exquisite a torture—designed to discourage to undo the conditioning or memory edits. I Am Thief cannot recognize himself in a mirror; there is a disconnect between his identification of self and the reality. He hired someone to track down his original name once, paid all the credits he’d saved up and then pawed through the documents in frustration, unable to relate to any of it. His real name slipped out of his head as soon as he’d heard it, his pictures looked like strangers to him, the history a strange parallel life to his own. He kept the image of his mother, and archived the rest. There was probably some operation to undo the damage, the conditioning. It would cost a lot—more than an honest job would get him. So whoever he was, whatever he was called—right now, he is I Am Thief.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
13	14	16	14	13	16	14	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	28	5	56	45	9	67

Morph: Worker Pod

Skills: Academics: Engineering 65, Art: Photomanipulation 65, Climbing 40, Deception 65, Demolitions 40, Free Fall 55, Hardware: Electronics 55, Infosec 55, Interests: Industrial Music 50, Interests: Mah-Jongg 66, Interests: Poker 66, Interfacing 55, Investigation 55, Language: Native Spanish 86, Language: English 66, Language: Mandarin 55, Language: Portuguese 50, Networking: Autonomists 50, Networking: Criminals 55, Perception 66, Profession (Thief) 66, Research 60, Scrounging 55, Spray Weapons 33

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Mnemonic Augmentation, Puppet Sock

Traits: Edited Memories, Innocuous, Modified Behavior (Enforced: introduce himself as “I Am Thief”), Neural Damage (cannot recognize representations of himself as himself)

Using I Am Thief

When using this character, it’s important to get first impressions down: he will always clearly (and often loudly) introduce himself as I Am Thief. It’s just how he’s wired. Thief has worked out a lot of little habits to minimize the impact this has on his life—including walking with his eyes closed through crowded thoroughfares, guided solely by his Muse, just so that he can avoid introducing himself to everyone he sees. As a plot hook or an employer, I Am Thief is memorable and skilled without being a gamebreaker—his enforced behavior is a gamebreaker for most, so he’s willing to reach out to the player characters for help with his “personal problem” or to plan a job to get the creds to deal with it. As a target or enemy, I Am Thief has the same motivations, but players might get a peek at what he did that caused someone to rewrite his brain in that fashion—maybe he stole something from the Factors, or crossed somebody he really shouldn’t have. Either way, if somebody else sics the player characters on him he probably still has the loot…or knows where it is.

125: MultiMhari

ENTRY 125: MultiMhari

“The worth of a transhuman lies not in their disadvantages, but in how they overcome them.” – Mahtama Bhatusta

Flocking through the teeming transhumans of Extropia a bevy of identical pods moves in gracefully choreographed unison, five bodies networked under one mind, working the crowd. Residents on the station know her as MultiMhari, a freelance bodyguard who offers the best value (in terms of numbers) of anyone on the station. A little research will reveal her real name as Mhari Chughtai, once resident of New Varanasi on Luna, and still wanted for a host of thefts and a dozen cases of fraud and bigamy.

Originally an AGI, Mhari was conditioned as a pod-hopper for a concierge service for a hypercorp, intended to resleeve between different pods according to the client’s desires. However, resleeving never came easy to Mhari. Her first assignment saw Mhari a pleasure pod, and its appearance imprinted itself on her conscious as Mhari’s idealized self-image. Mhari became so tied to the morph that moving to anything else caused panic attacks and self harm. So she fled her indentured servitude, and fell into the criminal underworld on Luna, and when the local heat grew too intense she burned the last of her favors to flee to Extropia.

On her own, Mhari struck a balance between her pod-hopping conditioning and her pod-restrictions, and turned it to her unique advantage. Using a custom multi-tasking implant and a group of identical pods, Mhari rides herd over a group of temporary forks, seeing out of ten eyes, moving ten arms and ten legs in perfect orchestration—one mind in five bodies. A dazzling spectacle when she hits the dancefloor of the club, and a deadly one when engaged in five-fold melee, each individual iteration working in perfect coordination with the others.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
14	15	20	15	20	17	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	40	8	80	30	6	45

Morph: Pleasure Pod

Skills: Academics: Anthropology 55, Academics: Biology 44, Art: Dancing 66, Art: Beam Weapons 50, Deception 55, Disguise 44, Fray 44, Impersonation 55, Infiltration 50, Infosec 50, Interests: Pods 40, Kinesics 55, Language: Native Basque 90, Language: French 60, Networking: Autonomists 40, Networking: Criminals 55, Networking: Hypercorps 35, Networking: Media 25, Palming 75, Perception 50, Profession: Bodyguard 50, Profession: Dancer 65, Profession: Pickpocket 55, Protocol 75, Unarmed Combat 50

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Enhanced Pheromones, Mnemonic Augmentation, Multi-Tasking*, Puppet Sock, Sex Switch

Traits: Adaptability (2)**, Blacklisted (Luna), Identity Crisis, Social Stigma (AGI, Pleasure Pod)

* Custom implant; enables each of the five pods in MultiMhari’s network to as a fork of MultiMhari’s principal ego.

** Applies only to resleeving into another pod that meets the requirements of Mhari’s Identity Crisis trait—slipping into a new pod is extra easy for Mhari.

Seed

• Another Mhari pod has been identified stealing restricted access codes to critical Extropia subsystems, and a bounty has gone out for her capture. MultiMhari goes underground and contacts the PCs, claiming whoever it was, it wasn’t one of her—and she’ll owe them big if they can prove her innocence.

065: Mme. Bleu

ENTRY 065: Mme. Bleu

Madame Bleu is an establishment on most major and many minor habitats, a small podcasting service that operates discretely and does not advertise through regular channels. It operates a single kind of morph, the eponymous Mme. Bleu—identical female pods with a few specific enhancements, as well as a basic cover identity and associated peripherals (ecto, clothing, living quarters, etc.). The Mme. Bleu pod is designed as a cover identity for conducting autonomous business at a distance. Clandestine and criminal elements have caught on to the nature of Mme. Bleu, so that the majority of professionals know what they are dealing with, even if they do not know exactly who is puppeting the morph. In this way Mme. Bleu has become something of a generic feature of clandestine communities, a mainstay whose presence signals an expectation of a certain level of professional behavior from both parties. Damage or destruction of a Mme. Bleu pod never results in physical reciprocation, but given that the pod’s identity is usually very well connected throughout transhuman space, the assailant’s rep usually takes a severe hit in response…at least until amends are made.

Mechanics

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

The hypercorp or group behind the Mme. Bleu pods is well-concealed, but not unreachable. The day-to-day operations on individual habitats is usually handled by an “office” of two or three local, detail-oriented personnel that take care of the Mme. Bleu pod and “her” cover identity; they report back to “corporate” and do not have access to the details of operations. If confronted or asked about the service, they can provide contact information for “corporate” and little else; company policy for “office” personnel is to comply with requests for information as much as possible.

Using Mme. Bleu

Madame Bleu is a puppet, designed for puppetmasters to interact with the player characters from a safe distance. As such she may approach the PCs with an offer of employment, or blackmail, or even be the mastermind behind whatever plot or operation the PCs are currently facing. In all such situations, she is the cut-out, the place at which the trail tends to end—if the PCs get too close, the puppeteer will simply leave and the PCs will be faced with a twitching and drooling lump of meat.

On the other hand, the identical nature of the Mme. Bleu pods also means that she is a familiar face, once the player characters may encounter many times, on many different habitats, for different purposes. This familiarity can be used to the gamemaster’s advantage; first as a surprise (How did she get there? Why is she dealing with the enemy?), and then as they discover the pod’s nature their compliance as they understand that they are dealing with a mouthpiece. Once the PCs accept Mme. Bleu, they will begin to look for her as the potential hook for an adventure—an expectation that the gamemaster may fulfill or subvert, as they see fit.

046: Zushell

ENTRY 046: Zushell

The dearth of affordable morphs has led to many egos and infomorphs adopting less pleasant and durable options for physical embodiment. One of the most disturbing vehicles for transhuman consciousness are zushells, sometimes called “zombie morphs.” Initially designed as disposable bodies for temporary activity of a few hours in dangerous environments where synthmorphs were undesirable, zushells are biomorphs with zero regenerative cell activity, existing in a constant state of apoptosis: skin cells die and slough off in a few days, never to be replaced; red blood cells usually last four months before they die and the zushell’s blood literally begins to rot; injuries never heal and necrotic tissue never expelled. Even with constant tissue replacement therapy and various preventative measures, the ego living inside a zushell faces a constant battle against their failing body.

For some, it’s worth it. Buying a zushell is relatively cheap compared to renting a morph in the short term, and the attendant health defects aren’t generally noticeable for the first 72 hours after the zushell is decanted. For others, zushells are the final resort for the poorest and most desperate egos, willing to cling to physical existence even if it means living in dying shells of flesh.

Generic Zushell Stats

Enhancements: Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Puppet Sock

Aptitude Maximum: 15

Durability: 15

Wound Threshold: 2

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Social Stigma (Pod), Doesn’t Heal

CP Cost: 5

Credit Cost: Moderate

Zushells require regular tissue replacement therapy. Initial treatments (weeks 1-4) are Trivial in cost, and increase one level every subsequent period (weeks 5-8, Low; weeks 9+, Moderate; etc.). This generally requires at least moderate medical facilities and stocks of clonal material available. After a week without tissue therapy, a zushell’s durability is permanently reduced by 5 points.

Zushells cannot heal damage or wounds without medical care. Zushells can accept Medichines (p.308, Eclipse Phase), but do not benefit from the accelerated healing provided by that implant.

Using Zushells

Aside from introducing a zombie-like figure to your Eclipse Phase game, zushells are both cheap and disposable, a bit like burner phones for some of the more shady movers and shakers in the grey lines. Zushells see the most use in places with lots of biomorphs and where synthmorphs and pods are expensive or rare, such as the Jovian Republic or some of the more distant or metal-poor habitats. Gamemasters should always remember that characters that occupy zushells for an extended period of time are trapped in biological existential hells of their own making—skin growing grey and falling off, teeth falling out, minor and major organs failing, even minor injuries failing to heal.

Seeds

• An exsurgent terrorist is planning to release dozens of zushells puppeted by his forks and infected with the exsurgent virus within a habitat, with the intent of spreading the disease. Firewall has caught wind of the plan and asks the player characters to eliminate the threat—whether it means an old-school zombie massacre, opening the habitat to space, or however else they choose to handle the situation.

041: Sue Dies

ENTRY 041: Sue Dies

Some taboos are hard even for transhumanity to break, being culturally or biologically deep-coded. Even the majority of exhumans instinctively recognize and react to the simple graphic of a smiley face, and likewise most transhuman biomorphs exhibit chemical and neurological responses to the sight and smell of pregnant human females. As with every other human weakness or peculiarity, some clever individuals have found ways to exploit this for their own advantage.

A professional surrogate, Sue Dies gestates fetal biomorphs for a fee within her body, sometimes to develop them to a state where an ego can safely inhabit them; more often to smuggle illegal or experimental morphs past check points. While not pregnant in classical terms (or even capable of becoming pregnant, as Dies’ entire original reproductive tract is in long-term storage orbiting somewhere around Venus), Dies is more than willing to play on any cultural stereotypes others may have—helpless and vulnerable, proud and maternal, even to act as the femme fatale for pregnancy fetishists, if it will save her life or serve her purposes.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
14	14	16	13	21	16	16	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	32	6	64	30	6	45

Morph: Surrogate Pod

Skills: Academics: Anthropology (Pregnancy) 53, Academics: Biology 62, Art: Belly Dancing 75, Art: Erotic Entertainment (Pregnancy Fetish) 55, Beam Weapons 50, Deception (Bluffing) 56, Disguise 55, Fray 36, Impersonation 55, Infiltration 34, Infosec 50, Interests: Pregnancy 60, Interests: Smuggling Tricks 65, Kinesics 56, Language: Native Spanish 83, Language: French 52, Language: Mandarin 42, Networking: Autonomists 45, Networking: Criminals 66, Networking: Hypercorps 44, Networking: Media 44, Palming 45, Perception 50, Profession: Smuggler 75, Profession: Surrogate 60, Protocol 66, Unarmed Combat 36

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Puppet Sock, Gestation Sack

Disadvantages: Social Stigma (Pod)

Using Sue Dies

Dies is a social chameleon, smuggler, and provocateur who preys on the expectations of others, changing her persona and demeanor more quickly and easily than most egos resleeve. Gamemasters get the most use out of Dies when her true nature is not immediately obvious, to play the role of a pregnant woman to the hilt and only reveal herself when necessity demands it. Her performance is greatly enhanced by costume—maternity wardrobes that accentuate her shape; naked the differences between her surrogate pod body and that of a pregnant flat are much more obvious.

Seeds

• A criminal ego is seeking to escape from the habitat the PCs currently occupy—resleeved into a developing morph in Sue Dies’ gestation pod. Rewards are offered and increasingly draconian restrictions implemented as the powers-that-be try to sniff out the crook.
• Sue Dies is carrying a special load this time, a custom-designed Olympian biomorph that she plans to resleeve herself into. However, the oversized developing morph strains the capabilities of her current body, rendering her bedridden beneath her massive gestation pod, and unable to defend herself against her erstwhile employers, who are looking to reclaim their property. Sue uses her savings to hire the player characters to protect her until it is time to harvest the new morph in just a couple days or weeks.