150: Ianthe Complex

ENTRY 150: Ianthe Complex

Resleeving is easy. Augmentation and cosmetic alteration is even easier. The limits of what a morph can look like are relatively few, if you have the resources and imagination. In the rush to perfection, many transhumans forget that there are egos out there with issues: body integrity identity disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, compulsive overeating, muscle dysmorphia, bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, dermatillomania, trichotillomania, and all the rest. These conditions don’t just go away when the ego is augmented or resleeved to a new morph; in some cases easy access to personal augmentation just feeds and enables the affliction—or worse, push the ego over a precipice into much more disturbing psychopathology.

Ianthe Complex looks like a nine-foot-tall Remade wetdream clothed in flesh. Standing still they look like an anime seductress made flesh, high elfin cheekbones and massive breasts, impossibly thin arms and legs ending in hand-like claws, a waspish waist over massive hips. When she moves the illusion is shattered, muscles bunches and rippling just beneath the skin like a shaved jungle cat. The effect is at once alluring and disturbing to most humans, but few look past the surface to the dangerous, damaged persona inhabiting that singularly striking morph. A broken seductress whose inability to accept their body has led them to seek to perfect others.

Ianthe lures their victims back to their secret love nest—a faraday cage sealed off from the rest of the habitat where no one can hear the victims scream. A single victim can last for weeks or months as they remake them with the needle, and the scalpel, and the rack. Most die from cumulative surgeries; they keep the victim’s cortical stacks as mementos of their time together. A few are eventually released, if Ianthe is pleased with the results; these crippled morphs are often too far gone to be much help in identifying their tormentor.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
24	19	14	19	21	25	12	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	2	24	4	48	40	8	60

Morph: Remade

Skills: Academics: Psychology 33, Art: Dancing 75, Art: Erotic Entertainment 66, Art: Scarification 60, Beam Weapons 33, Deception 75, Disguise 55, Fray 44, Infiltration 40, Infosec 45, Interests: Cosmetic Augmentation 66, Interests: Criminal Psychology 40, Interests: Xipe Totec 60, Kinesics 44, Language: Native Portuguese 84, Language: English 50, Language: Spanish 66, Medicine: Cosmetic Surgery 66, Networking: Hypercorps 30, Networking: Media 30, Palming 44, Perception 60, Persuasion (Seduction) 70, Profession: Social Director 65, Protocol 66, Unarmed Combat (Subdual) 77

Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Circadian Regulation, Claws, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Enhanced Pheromones, Enhanced Respiration, Prehensile Feet, Sex Switch, Neurachem (Level 1), Temperature Tolerance, Toxin Filters

Traits: Mental Disorder (Body Dysmorphic Disorder), Patron, Striking Looks (Level 2), Uncanny Valley

Using Ianthe Complex

A serial killer, kidnapper, and amateur cosmetic surgeon, Ianthe Complex works out their inability to be satisfied with their body by helping to “perfect” others—living examples of which tend to end up as grotesques. Even as intelligent and clever as they are, Ianthe should have been caught by now, except that they have attracted the secret patronage of some highly-placed individual that admires their handiwork. Gamemasters are encouraged to play up the awkward, unnatural but sociable outer personality that Ianthe projects when engaging with others; most characters find it no more strange than that of any transhuman who has undergone considerable personal augmentations. The change comes when cornered or dealing with the PCs in private—the mask drops to reveal something feral but calculating, cruelly creative, and very dangerous.

094: Ulf Vargsnev

ENTRY 094: Ulf Vargsnev

Principle only goes so far, even in the bioconservative Jovian Republic, and even the civic leaders must balance their philosophy against what is best for their people…and their children. Ulf Vargsnev was a sick kid with a host of genetic defects and long-term illnesses picked up from years of exposure to cosmic radiation and toxic byproducts of his mother’s chemical manufacturing complexes. Magda Vargsnev wanted a better life for her son…so she bought it. The process was supposed to be legal within the constraints of Jovian law, exercising several loopholes concerning the replacement of human organs by systematically replacing Ulf’s failing organs with transgenic material that did not qualify as human according to the Jovians’ meticulous stands. Over the course of eighteen weeks, Ulf Vargsnev was essentially remade, rebuilt in form and function. Then the clinic was raided.

As a minor, Ulf was not held responsible for his mother’s actions, and the court let him off with sterilization. However, the stigma of being transgenic in a bioconservative society stuck with Ulf; unable to obtain any better employment he took work as a biological waste disposal specialist, out of sight and out of mind of the majority of the Jovian population, and began to associate with the less prejudiced criminal elements that operated on the fringes of society.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
23	18	19	21	19	27	18	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
8	1	36	7	72	40	8	60

Morph: Transgenic (Remade)

Skills: Academics: Biochemistry 42, Academics: Genetics 40, Beam Weapons 35, Blades 44, Clubs 44, Fray 44, Free Fall (Microgravity) 45, Infiltration 36, Interests: Jovian Republic 50, Interests: Transgenetics 50, Intimidation 45, Kinesics 45, Kinetic Weapons 44, Language: Native Finnish 91, Language: Norwegian 67, Language: Danish 55, Language: Swedish 56, Language: German 55, Language: English 77, Networking: Criminals 55, Perception 50, Persuasion 30, Profession: Waste Disposal 52, Scrounging 30, Unarmed Combat 44

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

Traits: Addiction (Alcohol, Petals, Minor), Stigma (Transgenic)

Using Ulf Varsnev

In another habitat, another society, Ulf would be a valued member of society. However, in the Jovian Republic his abilities, skills, talents, and output are disregarded; as far as they are concerned he is a second- or third-class citizen, a barely human eunuch who is only suited to taking out the trash, and that he does begrudgingly. As an NPC gamemasters can take two basic tacks with Ulf: trapped by his life and making the best of a bad situation in the only habitat he’s ever known, or dying to escape but unable to scrape together the resources and favors to do it. Either way, he makes an excellent contact for the PCs, a friendly face within the Jovian Republic that knows a few things about operating on the down low. For a price, he can probably smuggle them anywhere they want to go by hiding them among the medical waste he carts around. Of course, given his history that price might range from breaking his mother out of prison to giving him a ride off this rock.