354: Bioreactor 12

ENTRY 354: Bioreactor 12

"I'm calling it, give the order to pull back."

"Ma'am - you can't do that."

"I just did. We're closing the Zone, lieutenant. No one in, nothing out."

"But ma'am, this technology..."

"Is going to be buried under dust. If I had my way I'd throw asteroids at it for a thousand years. Now you will obey my order, or else."

"Or else wha-"

<blaster crackle>

"Anyone else want to be a statistic?"

- excerpt from When Gods Quake, Mesh dramatization of the Final Battle of the Zone (AF 7)

TITANs technology was advanced and often ugly, but not inscrutable. During the Fall the transhuman forces did capture, utilize, and reverse-engineer pieces of it, and most morphs and spacecraft today incorporate design elements, material science, or software that ultimately have their origin in the conflict. Other technology was placed under unofficial interdict, a pact of tacit agreements and bizarre cooperation between different authorities to impede and impound any research involving certain categories of TITANs tech; while no one authority or group of interests could police all transhuman research to make sure no-one would develop those terrible weapons again, they could at least bury what remained in the Zone on Mars where no one could get it. Still, every now and again someone would dig something up, or an area of research would veer a little too close to a forbidden topic, and then the offending corp or researcher would find their budget slashed, their resources re-aligned, their research archived and the archives lost...

Bioreactor 12 (codename: WAR WOMB) was, according to Firewall intelligence, the last such device the TITANs brought online in the Zone, though there are no records of it being operational during the final conflict. Believed to be initially developed from colony ship designs from old Earth, the bioreactor spliced together limited sets of DNA from asyncs and force-grew the resulting clones, installing low-sapience AGIs in their cyberbrains to create a disposable army of supersoldiers with a selection of sleights. When the artillery barrages gave way to corridor-by-corridor fighting, these proto-exsurgents pumped out by the bioreactors were a nasty surprise that delayed final victory by weeks; only the lack of raw materials kept the TITAN's from pumping out enough async puppet-soldiers to overwhelm the front line and make an effective counterattack, but one by one the bioreactors fell - all except for Bioreactor 12, kept miraculously intact after the final siege.

The basics of the bioreactor technology are rather well-known - there are few habitats that don't have the technology for cloning and resleeving, it is the experience of the brutal async close combat that brought about the mutual decision by the Jovian Republic, Lunar-LaGrange Alliance, and Planetary Consortium to not develop equivalent technology - partially because it would mean tampering with the Exsurgent Virus, and partially because if any single group developed the technology, the others would be locked into a race to develop their own bioreactor capability, spurring military brinkmanship that transhumanity can ill afford. So Bioreactor 12 sits in the Zone, by its very existence possessing the deadly potential to spark yet another conflict. The shadow of the TITANs still falls over transhumanity's future.

Mechanics

To function, a bioreactor needs to be equipped with a sufficient power source and a steady supply of raw hydrocarbons, which nanite stacks break down into acceptable organic compounds for the cloning process. The asyncs are equivalent to Ultimate Mercs (see Eclipse Phase) with Psi (Level 2), Psi Assault 50, Sense 50, and typically 4-5 sleights of the gamemaster's choosing.

Using Bioreactor 12

Bioreactor 12 isn't your typical MacGuffin, because by itself the technology is not unique, irreplaceable, or irreducible - while current transhuman tech might struggle to achieve the ability to selectively create asyncs and chose the sleights they'll have at the moment, the underlying principles of genetic manipulation, forced growth cloning, augmentation, and resleeving are all fairly well understood. The danger of Bioreactor 12 is not that the tech exists, but that it might be used - the powers that be in the Solar system are afraid of a cold war developing where each side attempts to create armies of async assassins and commandos, and if such research ever hits the production stage then it's only a matter of time before the really nasty TITANs tech starts coming in to play. So preventing the spread of bioreactor research amounts to an elaborate gentleman's game, where none of the major players want that particular option to come into play - but because it's secret, not everybody has gotten the memo, and Firewall and the other agencies are constantly at work to keep it under control. Some far-thinking transhumans worry that transhumanity is stunting its own growth by not pursuing these technologies, but so far the censors have won out, stifling the research before it leads to additional conflict.

Seed

• Strange heat signatures have been recorded in the Zone, and silent alarms are going off: every sign is that Bioreactor 12 has just gone online, and production could start at any moment. No one outside the Zone knows if this is a timed delay, a resurgence of the TITANs, an espionage mission into bioreactor tech that went wrong, or just some nutter that broke through the perimeter and managed to turn it on. Whatever the case, military forces are quietly aligning around the Zone and tensions are running high; the PCs are asked to sneak into the Zone and ascertain the situation before the powers-that-be declare it time for a full military strike. As a mark of trust, the PCs are given a sat-beacon that can call down a tungsten rod from an orbital weapons platform on its own position - of course, with a radius of destruction of 500 meters, the PCs had better be ready to run or resleeve if they have to use it.

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.

278: Psiwire

ENTRY 278: Psiwire

"Psi represents the potential to turn the TITANs' weapons against them. Turned to our use, to the greater benefit of transhumanity."
- Anita Gutenburg, Firewall Researcher

The proposal came in on the heels of the discovery of the Watts-MacLeod strain of the Exsurgent virus, from secret scientist to secret administrator. To their credit, it was initially rejected - but Firewall never throws anything away, and the proposal was modified and resurrected after each discovery, as sleights were cataloged and side effects measured. Until, eventually, the weight of evidence finally gave, under utmost secrecy and discretion, the long-awaited stamp of approval. Resources were directed, labs created, samples and test subjects procured for a project with no name or number.

There followed pain, madness, death, and ego-destruction - but progress enough that the credits and test subjects kept coming. Weeks into months. Incinerators kept busy dealing with the bodies. Now, after a year or more, a field prototype. Stable. Ready for testing.

The secret echelon at Firewall has been told that the aim of the project was to create an augmentation that, in conjunction with infection with the Watts-MacLeod virus, would allow a subject to switch between psi sleights at will - an electrochemical switch of sorts, shifting between nodes in the subject's brain. This was the lie that they bought, and may yet continue paying for, even after they eventually discover the truth.

Mechanics

The developers of the secret Firewall project could not figure out a way to make their "psiwire" system work - so instead, they faked it. Test subjects are multiple forks of the same ego in cloned bodies which are subjected to the Exsurgent virus; those that develop similar or identical sleights are disposed of, and the remaining egos with unique sleights are harvested, subject to psychosurgery to increase suggestibility, and implanted in a single biomorph using a variant of the Multiple Personalities augmentation (Eclipse Phase 301). The disparate egos are conditioned to be unaware of each other, to the point that they believe that they are a single ego switching between using different sleights, when in fact they are separate related egos operating under a shared delusion. The result is far from psychologically stable, and most of the test subject egos have developed schizophrenia, paranoia, or multiple personality disorders (which, in a morph that already has a version of the Multiple Personalities augmentation is really confusing), with quite a few self-destructing and at least one where an ego became positively exhuman. However, while stable the biomorph appears to be able to switch between 2-8 psi-chi or psi-gamma sleights more or less at will, determined by which personality is at the fore. Skill ratings and psi level are typically uniform among all egos, though would probably diverge the longer the test subject exists.

Using Psiwire

Aside from the time-honored tradition of dabbling in things probably better left unknown, Firewall test subjects implanted with psiwire systems present unpredictable and adaptable NPCs without being too overpowered. Rather than a single NPC with a dozen sleights, the NPC is actually a bundle of mini-NPCs that appears to have a lot of psi powers. The mystery as much as the challenge this presents to player characters can provide the impetus for some interesting roleplaying, especially if any of the PCs look to gain similar abilities.

270: Group Psi

ENTRY 270: Group Psi

Psi is a solitary activity in Eclipse Phase. There are no mechanics for group psi use. It doesn’t follow the cultural paradigms for magic, there are no rules for two asyncs cooperating to achieve an effect greater than the sum of their parts, no group minds, or distributed strain. There are a couple good reasons for this. The exsurgent virus affects people, and their perception of their situation and abilities, differently—one async’s understanding of their abilities may simply not be compatible with another’s. Too, there is no real async culture; each victim of the virus is unique, often alienated because of their ability. If there was a Mesh stream just for asyncs to sit down, talk sleights and maybe try to get laid, every other member would be a Firewall agent trying to reel in a new fish. Maybe the exsurgents can get it together enough to do something like that, but the exsurgent already have weird powers beyond the ken and normal ability of transhumanity.

That’s not to say that you cannot have two or more asyncs cooperatively use their powers toward some joint purpose in your Eclipse Phase game, but treat it as what it is: an unusual and maybe unique set of circumstances, deserving of a bit of attention. Two (or more) asyncs in the same place, trying to use their sleights to achieve a given effect, should be a cinematic scene—let the players sweat a little, see if it works. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but here are some guidelines to consider if you allow group psi in our game:

• Rule of One: Psi sleights with a range of self are too personal and centered on the individual async—though there may be a two-headed exsurgent morph or twins that can get away with it.
• Rule of Two: Complementary Sleights Can Assist the use of other sleights. It is up to the player to come up with a good justification for why, for example, one async using Cloud Memory on an ego will make the use of Implant Memory by another async at the same time easier, but if the players can provide a good justification, and it seems logical, maybe it should work. As a guideline, use the Complementary Skill Bonus Table (Eclipse Phase 137), with the assisting async’s skill acting as the complementary skill to the primary async’s skill.
• Rule of Pi: Two (or more) asyncs working together against a single target tends to present considerable strain on the target ego; the conflicting signals causes an amount of mental strain to the target equal to the number of asyncs + 1 every Action Turn for sleights with a duration of Temp (Action Turns) and every minute for sleights with a duration of Temp (Minutes) or Sustained.
• Rule of 2^2: The Mindlink (Eclipse Phase 227) sleight allows all asyncs in the link to target another member with their sleights, facilitating group psi activities—but keep in mind, if one the target of the mindlink is an unwilling participant and an async, they can also target any member of the group through the mindlink with their own sleights.

268: Void Sisters

ENTRY 268: Void Sisters

“We will give birth to the Ultimate Human, who will finally achieve their true and terrible potential, and through them we will guide transhumanity from these warring states to their true destiny.”

- Aba Menses

“Crisis promotes change, stress reorganization. In flux, all states are possible. Seize the momentary opportunity, and shape the future.”

- Kitab Toksa, Void Sister core text

The origins of the Void Sisters of Phobos are obscured; anyone who digs too far runs into a tangle of hypercorporate red tape and the Sisters’ own carefully constructed legends, seeded along the most likely searches to guide researchers and data miners to only the information they want known about themselves. What is known is that they had some elemental role in the project that gave birth to the Lost, that they are highly selective of inducting new members and have quite arduous and long-lasting initiations designed to help inductees achieve their ultimate potential. On Phobos itself, they are most known for raising orphans in their own ideology, seeding their philosophy into a new generation.

Infobrokers who are smart enough to think a few steps ahead paint a slightly different picture of the Void Sisters, if a client has favors or creds enough to buy the data. The Sisters were founded pre-Fall by several women who were very involved in the Toksa Society, a quasi-scientific new faith group that preached the achievement of the full human potential by any means necessary—strict training, education, drugs, primitive augmentation, and even rumors of eugenics, indoctrination, ritual prostitution, and quasi-mystical techniques in the inner circles. The group never had more than a few hundred members, but wielded outsized influence due to political and corporate contacts, and established themselves on Phobos by establishing relationships (and at times, marriages) with key personnel.

After the Lost debacle, the Void Sisters lost considerable influence, and their public profile noticeably diminished—though it never disappeared. Strategists believe that as much of a third of the group has gone underground, while the remaining public operations with raising orphans represents a new part of their grand plan, whatever that may be.

Using the Void Sisters

Semi-mystical sisterhoods with generational plans, using sex, politics, and more nefarious means to exert their influence and protect their interests are a kind of trope in fantasy and science-fiction. In Eclipse Phase, the Void Sisters aren’t even alone in the role; Titan has the blue-cloaked Oubham-Ad, Luna has the willowy biosculpted Night Women, Mars has the Cloisted Sisterhood of the Closed Fist, even Eris has the Daughters of Eris. Cultivating an air of mystery and feminine wiles has its advantages, and many groups take advantage of it, to the amusement and bemusement of synthmorphs and infomorphs not taken in by the philosophical posturing. If this was all there was with the Void Sisters, they would be an interesting group of NPCs but not a real threat.

Unfortunately, the Void Sisters have access to one thing more: a sample of the exsurgent virus. At the highest levels, the Void Sisters are an exsurgent cult that rigorously trains its members and exposes the most loyal to the virus to instill psi abilities that are passed off as examples of the Sister’s achievement of their full potential. If the truth ever gets out, it would destroy the Sisterhood…and quite possibly a serious chunk of Phobos as well.

Seed

• Aba Mendes has a problem: she is really a sex-shifting investigative reporter that has spent eight years in the Void Sisters, constantly trained and tested, putting up with the mandatory bedtimes, strange meditations, and weird internal politics, pursuing a story she wasn’t sure was really there. Now, she’s in too deep, about to be exposed to the innermost secrets of the order, and she wants out. The call goes out, but Firewall intercepts it. They order the PCs to extract her—but only after she’s undergone the final initiation. Dare the player characters to wait, not knowing if Mendes will survive the ordeal? And if they do, will they be prepared to charge into the midst of an active exsurgent cell guarded by a small army of space-geisha-martial artists?

201: The Burning Plague

ENTRY 201: The Burning Plague

“Burn. All burn.”
- Last transmission, Utica Station

There is an old legend, that one of the titans of myth stole fire from the gods and gave it to transhumanity. Perhaps it is ironic, then, that it was one of the TITANs that instigated the Burning Plague. First categorized as spontaneous human combustion and subsequently ignored, medical evidence eventually came forth of a new, deadly strain of the exsurgent virus that causes the subject to rapidly develop pyrokinetic abilities—in a process that is so rapid, most subjects lose control and explodes in a ball of flame.

It starts with a fever that you can never quite shake, running a little hot constantly, all the time. After a couple weeks you get used to it, the extra energy that seems to drive you a little faster during the day, and keeps your mind so busy you can hardly sleep at night. In a month, you’re past the little headaches and periods of light-headedness, face flushed all the time, incredibly energetic. Some victims report bursts of nymphomania or compulsive touching, spreading highly infectious body fluids with each contact. At the end of the event, the flashes start. No one knows quite what triggers them—agitation, stress, light cycles, hormones, anything. But things around the victim start to burn…anything they concentrate on starts to burn…and when they realize they are the one causing it, they start to burn. Most victims self-immolate at this point, the victims of their own developing psi power.

Mechanics

Stage 1 (initial infection to 30 days):

Upon initial infection, the character begins to feel feverish. Other physiological effects may include mild headaches, nausea, skin rashes, early onset of periods, light sensitivity, and priapism, but most victims report a sense of energy and alertness—treat this as temporary +1 to REF and COG. Medical attention at this point usually points to a mild viral infection, though a detailed scan of the brain will reveal tumors growing and the nervous tissue altering in subtle ways. If these tumors are surgically removed or treated, the infection resets to day 1, but does not go away. Resleeving at this point will save the character’s ego.

Stage 2 (30 days to 35 days):

After a month, the tumors in the character’s head have reached full size, and they gain the Psi (Level 3) trait and the Pyrokinesis Psi-Epsilon sleight with all the usual psi drawbacks (Eclipse Phase, p.220); at this point the character is considered an NPC (though any forks of the ego prior to this point are still under the control of the player). At this point, the character’s pyrokinetic psi powers begin flaring almost uncontrollably. Every hour, make a Control Test—if the character succeeds, then they can determine how their pyrokinesis is used; if they fail, then the pyrokinetic effect is random, usually with some item nearby or that they are focusing on bursting into flames. As most victims do not have any ranks in the Control skill, few survive very long once the flares begin.

Stage 3 (36 days+):

At this stage, the mutations in the character’s brain and nervous system stabilize, and they gain control over their pyrokinetic psi abilities—at least enough to keep from frying themselves by accident. The neural damage also causes profound shifts in how the victim perceives the world and relationships with other transhumans. The original personality and memories are still present, but the NPC tends to feel alienated in their own skin, like a computer running an emulation of another operating system on top of the one built into it. Such characters also run a slightly higher body temperature, making them easy to pick out in a crowd with thermographic sensors.

199: Vel Von Voom

ENTRY 199: Vel Von Voom

During her awake-cycle, Vel von Voom is a young face that stands out in the crowd, her face and body a mass of scar tissue, artful brands concealing and incorporating the older, ugler chaotic burn wounds that speak of some horrific fire. So she faces the world through a mask she burnt into her own face, proud and terrifying. Vel has the ambition, but not the skills, and there is no road-map to stardom or happiness. So she works where she can find it, builds her rep in small ways, shares her music with those who will listen, and steals kisses from girls in dark, little-used corridors and maintenance shafts.

At night, she dreams of fire. Reliving the night when They burnt their way in to her parent’s ship, the smell of her mother’s boiling fat splashing against her face, the boneless thing that forced her into its burning, burning embrace… After the first few fire alarms, she started to sleep in water cocoons. Waking up half-scalded from boiling currents was better than sparking a blaze that called station maintenance and security down on her head. Sleeping with lovers turned out to be another bad idea; on the last one her sleep-self had gotten creative, burning a terrible pattern of fine lines in her skin that hurt to look at…

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
12	13	12	15	16	10	13	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
5	1	26	5	52	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer

Skills: Academics: Accounting 28, Academics: Astrophysics 25, Academics: Psychology 26, Art: Branding 34, Art: Singing 28, Blades 27, Deception 28, Fray 26, Free Fall (Microgravity) 30, Hardware: Aerospace 24, Infiltration 26, Infosec 26, Interests: Black Markets 28, Interests: Criminal Groups 25, Interests: Psi 29, Kinesics: 20, Kinetic Weapons: 20, Language: Native Dutch 85, Language: English 72, Language: Korean 46, Language: Cantonese (Swearing) 22, Networking: Autonomists 17, Networking: Criminal 20, Networking: Hypercorps 17, Palming 31, Persuasion (Flirt) 30, Profession: Appraisal 27, Profession: Day Labor 32, Profession: Smuggling Tricks 29, Scrounging 39, Sense 30

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Gills

Traits: Mental Disorder (Compulsive Self-Branding, Night Terrors, Sleep Firesetting), Pain Tolerance (Level 2), Psi (Level 3), Striking Looks (Level 1), Uncanny Valley

Sleights: Pyrokinesis (see Eclipse Phase, p.372)

Using Vel Von Voom

Some gamemasters will see Vel von Voom as Carrie…in Spaaace. If that’s what works for you, fine. But I challenge you to be more creative. Fire is a weird thing in space, and need not be teenaged refugee from a burn war pointing her finger and letting loose a flamethrower. Imagine instead subtler, more bizarre uses – floating will-o’-the-wisp candle flames floating in the microgravity around her as she shivers in her night terrors, or slow-burning arabesques crawling over the nearby surfaces she touches. The amount of control Vel even has over her abilities is questionable—as is her overall mental state. Vel’s façade is that of an independent teenager, orphaned by the Fall, mostly self-educated, doing odd jobs and finding what small pleasures she can when and where she can. If that’s all the gamemaster wants to portray, fine and dandy. But nobody reaches Psi 3 unless they’ve fully converted to the exsurgent virus—and it remains to be seen whether the Vel that can do that awesome dragon on your arm with a piece of wire and a torch is the real Vel, or just the artificial shell of an ego that’s no longer remotely transhuman.

166: Firebreak Protocol

ENTRY 166: Firebreak Protocol

Firewall is dedicated to maintaining transhuman existence—at any cost. There are levels of existence that may be hellish and unthinkable to most transhumans, but are acceptable to the Firewall organization. While they will strive as long as they can to preserve transhumanity as it is, if Firewall is faced with another extinction event there are several less-than-optimal alternatives that may come into play. One of them is the Firebreak Protocol.

One of Firewall’s greatest fears is a mass outbreak of the exsurgent virus, particularly if realized through a basilisk hack through the omnipresent Mesh or the FORBIDDEN REACH scenario. Information is one of the hardest things to contain, and a substantial portion of Firewall’s research is dedicated to find ways to detect, counteract, or vaccinate the population against a basilisk hack exposure. Illicit transhuman experimentation has led to the development of the technology beyond the Firebreak Protocol: a specialized basilisk hack that infects the subject with a low-lethality (72% survival rate) variant of the Watts-MacLeod strain of the exsurgent virus that renders the subject immune to further basilisk hacks. The basilisk hack would be broadcast in a habitat in response to a suspected local outbreak, immunizing the remaining population and preventing the further spread of the exsurgent virus.

Mechanics

The Firebreak Protocol is a basilisk hack (Eclipse Phase, p.364) which infects the subject with a variant of the exsurgent virus. This hack is particularly severe, designed to be difficult to overcome—victims take a -30 penalty to COG + INT + SAV Test to see if they are susceptible. About 28% of victims suffer a series of grand mal seizures every minute until they die or receive medical attention. The rest are changed, their brains rewired in several ways to resist basilisk hacks. They gain:

• The Psi Defence (Level 2) positive trait. They do not have to pay CP for this trait.
• Two Neural Damage negative traits, often (but not always) dyslexia, color blindness, or amusia. They do not gain any CP for these traits.
• A +20 modifier when resisting further infection from the Exsurgent virus, including basilisk hacks.
• Reduce the character’s Trauma Threshold by 1.

Using the Firebreak Protocol

The Firebreak Protocol is one of Firewall’s dirty little secrets. It is not pleasant, it is far more lethal than most characters would like, it is far less effective as an immunization agent than Firewall’s limited testing has shown, and it is currently being deployed to habitats throughout the solar system, hardwired in to be triggered remotely in the event of a mass basilisk hack outbreak. It is currently being planned as the primary countermeasure if FORBIDDEN REACH ever comes to pass (see entry 103). And the player characters through their missions for Firewall may have helped it be developed, tested, and installed. The Firewall agents aware of the Firebreak Protocol are those dedicated to preserving humanity in some form—and they are willing to pay the cost.  The player characters may agree or not; some may even volunteer for testing, hoping for psi powers. Other PCs may argue against it—and, if sufficient evidence is ever brought to Firewall’s higher ups that the Firebreak Protocol is not as effective as they think, the program may be dismantled, at least until it can be refined.

164: Molly 8

ENTRY 164: Molly 8

Even Firewall makes mistakes. Molly 8 was trained as an asset, one more orphan of the Fall that nobody would miss if things went wrong, but with skills and dedication to the cause. She volunteered for the Experimental Psi-Implant program. Nothing was ever quite clear to her after that.

Molly 8’s escape from Firewall containment was messy. Her mental state since then has continued to degrade, though she remains generally functional in society. Instincts or the remainder of her training convince her to change her face and name frequently, to seek out the edges or lowest levels of society, and to generally keep on the move. She no longer remembers who exactly is looking for her, but she knows it has something to do with her powers.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
12	13	15	15	8	12	50	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	100	10	200	40	8	60

Morph: Remade

Skills: Academics: Neurochemistry 60, Academics: Linguistics 60, Blades 45, Climbing 55, Clubs 45, Deception 80, Disguise 65, Fray 45, Free Fall 45, Freerunning 45, Impersonation 65, Infiltration 60, Infosec 60, Interests: Firewall 55, Interests: Psi 55, Interests: Psychiatric Drugs 55, Kinesics 45, Language: Native English 85, Language: Korean 50, Language: Spanish 50, Language: Mandarin 50, Networking: Criminals 40, Palming 45, Perception 55, Profession: Scrap Merchant 55, Profession: Spycraft 55, Spray Weapons 25, Unarmed Combat 55

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Circadian Regulation, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Enhanced Respiration, Experimental Psi-Implant, Temperature Tolerance, Toxin Filters

Traits: Addiction (Psike-Out, Major), Exceptional Aptitude (WIL), Mental Disorders (ADHD, General Anxiety Disorder, Insomnia, PTSD), Neural Damage (Dyslexia, Mood Swings, Synaesthesia), Uncanny Valley

Experimental Psi-Implant

The experimental psi-implant administers is a combination of dozens of drug glands tied to specialized medical sensors and a computerized controlled center. It releases controlled doses of various psi drugs into Molly’s system, either on a preset schedule or on command. At any given time Molly 8 has 3 different doses of Psi-Opener running through her system, giving her access to 2 Psi-Chi and 1 Psi-Gamma sleight (determined by the gamemaster); Molly can also voluntarily activate a dose of Psike-Out once every hour. A command override signal to the implant will cause it to release a dose of Inhibitor once every six hours. It was hoped that the continued circulation of psi-drugs would enable Molly 8 to develop Psi skills, but instead the continual mental stress and her constantly changing brain chemistry have left her almost insane.

Seed

• Molly 8 was a failure. Molly 9 was a success—but she went rogue. Molly 9 is smart enough to time her psi-drug intake, and knows exactly when she’ll have what sleights available to her, and is working to upgrade herself even further, by stealing a tech device that might grant her access to exsurgent-only psi sleights. Firewall wants Molly 9 brought down, but she has already defeated three teams. As far as Firewall can see, the only hope is to recruit Molly 8 to help hunt down her “sister”; maybe then the player characters will have a chance.

151: Mood Lizard

ENTRY 151: Mood Lizard

The Mogwai Experimental Animal Therapy Group based out of Godwinhead is a research/marketing cell working to commercialize and popularize therapy animals. Over a century of research has shown the therapeutic benefits of therapy animals to transhumans, reducing the stress of transhuman and posthuman life and promoting positive qualities; what MEAT-G is attempting to discover is the most profitable critter with a broad consumer appeal and bring it to market. Most of their work to date has seen only modest successes like the Yeti Tarantula (“The Furry Spider You Can Pet!”™), but their latest creation seems like a sure-seller: the Mood Lizard.

Using the Namaqua Chameleon as the base genetic chassis, MEAT-G has engineered a companionate animal with a much broader color-change mechanism tied to a trade secret sensory data interpretation node in the brain—the lizard literally changes color to reflect the emotions of the nearest transhuman. Group testing in children and psychotherapy patients has proven positive, especially among synthmorphs as the Mood Lizards like to crawl up on the shell above the power supply and bask in the warm spot. MEAT-G is looking to begin initial market testing on a commercial level soon—if successful, they’ll move into general production.

Mechanics

Mood Lizards all have Psi Level 1 trait and a variation of the Psi-Gamma sleight Empathic Scan with a duration of Constant (Eclipse Phase, p.226). (They might also have Psi-Chi sleights, but it’s hard to tell with a lizard.) About 1 in 20 Mood Lizards is a carrier for the Watts-MacLeod strain of the Exsurgent virus, which may be contracted from contact with their saliva or feces.

Seeds

• A Firewall team tracking surviving victims of the TITANs that may have been exposed to the Exsurgent virus has found a “cell” of four possible infectees in the same group—MEAT-G. Combined with the empathic chameleons the group is putting out, Firewall has decided to red flag the group. The PCs are asked to shut the entire operation down with prejudice before the Mood Lizards go into production. They will provide as much firepower as the PCs need…but they want every living thing associated with MEAT-G destroyed, including any infected patients in the test groups.
• While the Mood Lizards are still being tested, MEAT-G’s scientists are moving ahead with Phase II—the Mood Rex! Larger, bipedal lizards with claws and fast reflexes (equivalent to neurachem Level 1) and stronger psi abilities (Drive Emotion sleight), the Mood Rex is a weaponized prototype designed for military and law enforcement use. When a competitor on the genepet market steals a batch of fifty Mood Lizards, MEAT-G hires the PCs to get them back…and asks them to field-test Mood Rex at the same time!
• One of the therapy patients misunderstood the point of the Mood Lizard they were given, and cooked and ate it. Now they claim to be sick from the lizard meat and is suing MEAT-G. The therapy group hires the PCs to investigate the victim, a remade named Ianthe Complex (see Entry 150), and find anything to make them drop the suit.

133: Drooga

ENTRY 133: Drooga

For three weeks, drooga was the most popular tipple in Phelan’s Recourse, before the Fireeater Riots broke out. Drooga next showed up in Nova York, sold in double-bulb squeeze-bottles and labeled as “Friendmaker;” it lasted six days before the Long Night of Tears, a series of carefully choreographed murder-suicide art projects. On Profunda, an “energy injection” called Anyana maintained an underground presence for six months before statistical analysis determined a strong correlation between its use and clinical depression; chemical studies of captured samples proved Anyana’s near-identical composition to drooga. So it is, throughout dozens of habitats over a decade, drooga continues to pop up, in a number of forms and names, usually to quick acclaim and eventual catastrophe.

On the surface, drooga is a flavorless alcoholic spirit, nearly identical in appearance, smell, and lack of taste to higher-proof vodka. Chemically, things are more complex: while there is alcohol in drooga, it’s little more than a delivery system for a cocktail of strange carbon-structures, long-chain peptides, and traces of synthetic neurotransmitters. Firewall has identified components which parallel sequences of the Watts-MacLeod Virus, and combined with its effects the general consensus among those secretive groups familiar with the exsurgent virus is that drooga is some form of psi drug. Of course, that just begs several more disturbing questions, such as who has the know-how and capabilities to make such a drug, and why they would do so. Studies of past drooga “outbreaks” have not shown any definite connection or distiller, leading most to assume the worst-case scenario: the recipe is out there somewhere on the Mesh, just waiting for someone to find and make it again.

Mechanics

Type	Application	Onset Time	Duration	Cost
Bio	Inj, O	20 minutes	1 hour	Typically Low or Trivial

Drooga is a weak psi-opener (Eclipse Phase¸ p.325) which boosts latent telepathic potential and receptivity, while the alcohol content impairs judgment and lowers inhibitions. The result is that drooga users in close proximity begin to experience each other’s emotions, which tends to lead to the quick formation of deep emotional bonds; treat this as temporarily gaining the Empathic Scan sleight (p.226) and the Psi Vulnerability trait (p.151) for the duration of the drug’s effect. The duration and side-effects of drooga mimic that of alcoholic drinks of similar volume, but bypasses toxin filter augmentations; users take 1d10 mental stress when the drug wears off, usually masked by the hangover. Chemically, drooga is mostly alcohol by volume and does not register differently to casual chemical analysis. Like alcohol, drooga is mentally addictive with an addiction modifier of -5.

Seed

• Firewall has captured a supply of drooga and wishes to experiment with it as an interrogation tool. The player characters are asked to participate, subjecting themselves and the target to the psi drug by various means and running through a series of interrogation scenarios (good cop/bad cop, a friendly fellow prisoner, etc.) The target is a suspected lead to the drooga manufacturer.

069: Elder Argentgrodd

ENTRY 069: Elder Argentgrodd

One of the most prominent neo-hominids in the solar system today is Elder Argentgrodd, an uplifted silverback gorilla. The self-described ultra-male of Luna, Argentgrodd is outspoken, intelligent, media-genic, and more than a little bit of an asshole. As an employer or a customer he is a complete nightmare, entirely self-centered, demanding, and with an innate driving need to dominate every situation through a combination of verbal and physical intimidation, using his size and intellect to browbeat and threaten other morphs, particularly males and combat-oriented morphs. On the other hand, Argentgrodd is also remarkably kind and playful with children and female biomorphs (regardless of age, gender, or appearance), often leaving a rage to tickle and educate them.

He has an average of six episodic programs airing on the Mesh at any given time, from an edutainment stream aimed at young uplifted neo-hominids to an adult-oriented program where female biomorphs compete in a variety of physical, sexual, and mental challenges to join his harem. Most of these programs are created under the auspices of his personal media hypercorp, Argentgrodd AG, and recorded in a small lunar dome habitat that replicates a variety of ape forest habitats from Earth.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
18	17	19	17	22	26	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	42	8	84	30	6	45

Morph: Neo-hominid (Gorilla)

Skills: Academics: Neurology 66, Academics: Philosophy 77, Academics: Psychology 55, Academics: Sociology 55, Art: Finger Painting 44, Control 60, Deception 77, Free Fall 33, Fray 66, Interests: Exsurgent Virus 44, Interests: Uplifts 80, Interfacing 65, Intimidation (Physical) 80, Kinesics: 55, Language: Native Arabic 89, Language: Afrikaans 44, Language: English 77, Language: French 58, Language: Swahili 50, Networking: Media 75, Networking: Scientists 55, Perception 66, Profession: Media Presenter 80, Protocol 40, Psi Assault 40, Psychosurgery 55, Research 50, Sense 55, Unarmed Combat (Punches) 67

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Enhanced Pheromones*, Mnemonic Augmentation

Traits: Hyperlinguist, Illiterate, Math Boost, Mental Disorder (Atavism, Megalomania), No Cortical Stack, Psi (2), Zoosemiotics

* Custom implant, applies to neo-hominids only.

Using Elder Argentgrodd

Argentgrodd probably has more than a few dark secrets for gamemasters to use and players to uncover, including but not limited to media cover-ups of financial shenanigans at his hypercorp, violent episodes resulting in significant damage and at least three deaths, sexual crimes and paternity suits, and his very brief foray into politics, which may have resulted in him partially eating a visiting dignitary. All those are relatively par for the course when you’re a massive gorilla and a celebrity, but Argentgrodd’s darkest secret is his psi abilities. The incidents stem from an encounter with a TITANs artifact that is not in any of Argentgrodd’s official (or even unofficial) biographies, and which the uplifted silverback is extremely careful to conceal from the public because he still has that artifact, hidden in a lab beneath his lunar jungle dome. Argentgrodd has had a team of trusted neohominid researchers secretly studying the artifact for a decade, with vague plans of using it to infect and “upgrade” an entire neo-hominid society.