361: Jayne Joyce

ENTRY 361: Jayne Joyce

"I've never been anywhere, really. I can't even remember Earth. It's like...I don't understand why people want to go back, y'know? We should go forward. Out there. To the stars."
- J. J., Starspotting mblog, entry 12 (AF 10)

Wars and migrations produce a lot of lost, uncared-for children, and even today transhuman society struggles to find the best way to handle their care and development. Orphanages are largely a thing of the past, though the Jovian Republic continues to experiment with the Military Orphan Creche (MOC) program, a Reserve Officer Training Corps-type program where small squads of cadets live, work, and learn together under direction from commissioned officers and NCOs, and many hypercorps have dedicated work-study schools which are effectively the same. Anarchist habs tend to promote foster programs, with single transhumans or small groups adopting underage transhumans for a set period of time; Luna often opts for more permanent adoptions into clans and families, sometimes via arranged underage marriages, with the goal to continue family names and support parents and grandparents as they get older. In the Titan Commonwealth, children are treated almost as small dependent adults, given their own state-issued miniapartment, muse, and a small regular stipend until their majority, with certain limitations on entering contracts and regular check-ups from social workers and guidance counselors. Mars is more eclectic, with many different approaches depending on the habitat, but "wards of the community" tend to have basic mandatory attendance requirements for education, social interaction, play and rest periods that take up most of their waking hours, with the remaining free time spent either in a communal care facility or with a foster guardian, with infants, toddlers, and special needs children receiving the bulk of the one-on-one time and care as necessary.

Jayne has spent most of her sixteen years on Titan, the last eight of them as the big sister/little mother to the younger children in her apartment building, helping to organize events like Birthday/Resleeving Parties, cleaning up the shared restroom/shower/kitchen areas on her floor, and making up stories to entertain the other kids. In two years her mandatory stipend will end, and her apartment will be reassigned to someone else. The guidance counselor is chiming in more frequently with requests about what her future plans will be, with suggests ranging from applying for scholarships in creative writing to vocational work-study indentured servitude contracts. In her off-time, Jayne likes to watch the crews unload from the ships coming in, and imagine what it must be like out there among the stars.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	16	15	13	10	10	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	30	6	60	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer
Skills: Academics: Astronomy 18, Art: Writing 20, Free Fall (Microgravity) 20, Interests: DIY Tattoos 18, Interests: Post-Fall Science Fiction 20, Interests: Space Travel 18, Interests: Titan Geography 18, Interfacing 20, Language: Native Skandinavíska 85, Language: English 80, Networking: Autonomists 5, Programming (Games) 17, Protocol 16, Scrounging 16, Unarmed Combat 16
Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cosmetic Augmentation (multiple piercings, homemade tattoos)

Using Jayne Joyce

Player characters in Eclipse Phase might not always think of themselves as heroes, especially when they're not actively fighting proper villains. Yet to characters like Jayne Joyce, the PCs are heroes just for what they are and what they can do - to travel from habitat to habitat, tackling any job that comes along, meeting strange new people, upgrading their bodies and minds - those are the things that Jayne admires and dreams about. To her, the PCs are role models and incredibly, impeccably cool. The gamemaster can play this for whatever they think it's worth - Jayne may try to emulate their actions, or tag along with them in their adventures (even stowing away with their transport). She might meet the PCs by approaching them for help with one of the kids on her floor, or she might need rescuing herself from some shady types that want her for unspeakable purposes (like long-term renewable wage slave contracts with exceedingly poor terms and badly defined duty requirements). If the PCs rebuff, use, or hurt her, Jayne Joyce might even turn on her would-be-heroes, becoming a particularly bitter enemy.

Seed

• A customary genecheck as the PCs come into port reveaks a genetic match - it turns out that one of the local foster children is directly related to one of the PCs (daughter, sister, niece, cousin, underaged clone, etc.). While Titan law does not mandate that the PC has to assume guardianship, the child's social worker and guidance counselor contact the PC to make them aware of the relationship and suggest a meeting with their newfound relation - Jayne Joyce. Whether or not they agree to come to the appointment, things are complicated when J.J. and the rest of her floor is taken hostage by a group of terrorists trying to extort money from the Titanian government.

342: Smile, Akira

ENTRY 342: Smile, Akira

Industry is, for the most part, automated. Intellectual labor is reduced by the omnipresence of computing power, and in no short supply thanks the ease of resleeving - a single intelligent, skilled ego can theoretically be forked to fill as many positions as necessary, and even where this is not feasible skillwires can make up a large part of the difference in terms of filling the need for skilled and semi-skilled labor. The bulk of the transhuman workforce is thus relegated to non-autonomous, non-skilled service - emotional labor. These are the transhumans who are the face of the hypercorps, not just the big media personalities but all the minor actors, service reps, wait staff, call staff, and others that essentially exist to interact between the hypercorp and the transhuman customer, and it is their actions and appearance that influence the customer and give them their impression of the hypercorp as a whole. Customer service metrics clearly show the correlation between happy, helpful, empathetic service employees and customer evaluations; follow-up deep studies of buying habits and spyware track-backs of reviews confirm the causative relationship. So when the customer comes calling, the hypercorp representative will always meet them with a smile.

Akira once did a calculation, and determined that he had spent six years of his life smiling. Three days later the habitat authorities found the mutilated body of a fifteen-year-old splicer; the ego in the cortical stack was heavily deranged and could only repeat the word "Smile" - her parents opted to restore their daughter from a four-day-old backup. Akira, a trusted low-level hypercorp employee, was never even questioned or implicated in the crime. Every day, all day, he would sit and flash customers his smile, sometimes for sixteen hours on a shift. Even that was sometimes not enough; his manager came to talk to him one day and said that kinesics programs showed his smile didn't look real enough, that secondary behavioral characteristics suggested tiredness and insincerity. Fortunately, the corporation had a program - a mild prescription he could take while he was at work, and a minor cosmetic augmentation to help his face shape and hold his smile more comfortably. It was important, Akira's manager emphasized, that he do his best to be the face of the company.

That was when Akira started thinking about his next victim.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
18	13	18	13	10	18	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	30	6	60	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer
Skills: Academics: Art (Manga) 25, Academics: Psychology (Sociopaths) 20, Art: Drawing 20, Blades 35, Deception (Smile) 70, Free Fall (Microgravity) 20, Interests: Comix & Cartoons 30, Interests: Serial Killers 40, Interfacing 23, Language: Native Japanese 85, Language: English 80, Language: Korean 75, Networking: Autonomists 5, Networking: Hypercorps 5, Profession: Customer Service 50, Protocol: 45
Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cosmetic Augmentation (Smile augmentation), Emotional Dampers
Traits: Addiction (Antidepressants, Major), Mental Derangement (Smile Mask Syndrome)

Using Akira

Akira spends the bulk of his waking life pretending to be happy. This depresses the ever-living shit out of him. Every day, for hours on end, talking to people that don't know or like him with a smile plastered on his face - his face altered to let it assume and hold that smile longer, going through the motions of having one emotion while he feels dead inside. But he doesn't have the rep or the skills to do much else, and his ever-rotating series of bosses continue to put pressure on him to do his best, micromanaging him closer and closer to a smiling nervous breakdown. The player characters might even start feeling bad for him until they find out his hobby is killing people. As a minor hypercorporate wageslave, Akira might be a useful contact - which makes it all the more interesting when, after being mildly helpful in several sessions without asking anything in return, Akira suddenly calls in a favor and asks for the PCs to dispose of something for him - like a necklace of teeth. As a straight-out antagonist, the player characters might be hired to track down the sadistic serial kidnapper that always horribly mutilates his victims, few of whom can do more than describe his omnipresent smile.

339: Mater

ENTRY 339: Mater

"Children are too precious to entrust their care and development to amateurs. Being an educator takes training; it is a highly skilled activity. To say nothing of being a personal trainer, an activities coordinator, a nurse, and a bodyguard. It takes a team to raise a child, but more than that it requires a dedicated parent. Ask yourself: at what age would you teach your child about resleeving? Personal augmentation. Pornography on the Mesh. The context and subtleties of an inappropriate relationship. To know when they are being lied to. Why they are being lied to. How and when to lie themselves. These are hard questions to you, because you learned them on your own - because your parents, and their parents, and so on were amateurs. Just the few children, disparate decades of experience, already out of date by the next generation if it was passed on at all. This is why you need me - because you want the best for your child, and I am a professional."
- Mater, salespitch

Professional parenting traces its routes to organized education - the idea, almost as old as transhumanity, that teaching children was a specialized task and that biological parents were not uniquely qualified for the job just because they'd managed to insert tab a into slot b and win the prize forty or so weeks later. Mandatory public schooling has been an arsenal in civilized upbringing of young transhumans for centuries, but it is only since the Fall that cultural inertia and the breakdown of education infrastructure, and the failure of the Lost Generation that has allowed transhumans to get more ambitious and realistic when it comes to raising their young. While the transhuman family unit is far from dead, particularly among conservatives, those habitats and individuals that can afford to prefer to hire professional parents who work to develop young egos to achieve greater potential and prepare them for the rigors of contemporary transhuman society.

Mater was a pro-parent in the Jovian Republic who saw too many of her kids exposed to a toxic society, torn between stagnant cultural values, ultraconservative parents, and her push for critical and independent thinking. After a decade of raising young rebels who escaped or self-destructed, Mater vanished herself. As a freelancer at loose ends, Mater has been recruited by Firewall as an independent operator, gathering her own talent to undertake missions - often ops against other Firewall elements that are suspected to have been corrupted or gone rogue.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
19	18	20	13	13	15	16	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	32	6	64	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer

Skills: Academics: Art 23, Academics: Biology 23, Academics: Chemistry 23, Academics: History 23, Academics: Physics 23, Academics: Philosophy 23, Academics: Politics 23, Academics: Sociology 23, Art: Drums 25, Art: Painting 25, Art: Singing 25, Art: Tattoos (DIY) 25, Beam Weapons 18, Blades 20, Clubs 20, Deception 26, Fray (Dodge) 23, Hardware: Electronics 20, Infiltration 33, Interests: DIY Tech 33, Interests: Education 40, Interests: Teaching Methods 40, Kinesics (Lying) 25, Kinetic Weapons 18, Language: Native Spanish 83, Language: English 80, Language: Latin 80, Networking: Autonomists 20, Networking: Criminals 10, Networking: Firewall 15, Palming 25, Perception 25, Profession: Parent 60, Protocol 30, Scrounging 23, Unarmed Combat 25

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Oracles, Skillwires

Using Mater

As an ally and contact, Mater is the voice at the end of the line. Stern, humorous, compassionate, pedantic, professional, and supporting as she needs to be, the player characters are her "kids" and she will coach and guide them to the mission objective, providing support when she can and trust in their abilities when she cannot. In a neutral antagonist role, Mater might be on assignment, either running an opposing team or acting as pro-parent to one or more children - teacher-cum-bodyguard, teaching and protecting them. Mater is only likely to be a violent antagonist if she believes that the player characters (or the people they are working for) have or will directly harmed any of the children under her care.

Seed

• Mater has been kidnapped, and is being held hostage somewhere on the player character's habitat. As the only agents available, Firewall taps the player characters to find her - and time is running out. The culprits could be an exsurgent cult, or a former "student" of Mater's from the Jovian Republic gone wrong and out for revenge - or perhaps this is all a test that Mater has set up to prove the PC's abilities, so that Firewall will trust them with the real assignment...

335: Emilia Bickerdyke

ENTRY 335: Emilia Bickerdyke

"The struggle continues."
- This Is Not Porn (AF 3)

At a time when transhumanity has the technical capability to overcome the limitations of traditional biology, much of it remains crippled and hidebound by old-fashioned sexual mores, ideologies, and laws. Fighting against prejudice, misinformation, and sexism are social workers like Emilia Bickerdyke (of the clan that later became the Titan Bickerdykes). Embeek was one of the first splicers with the sex change augmentation, cut her teeth teaching sex and gender education to the Lost Generation, spent a term undercover with the Carnival of the Goat while earning a limited degree in Transhuman Law at the Open University, and unionized the sex workers at the ruster camps on Mars. Her manifesto This Is Not Porn chronicled her pioneering work in the Jovian Republic against gender-selective abortion in favor of in vitro sex change and selective gender screening in a strongly bioconservative sect, the years-long battle on the definition of obscenity that freed fifteen hundred sexual-political prisoners that had been guilty of intraspecies erotica, a highly-publicized series tracking down the perpetrators of a series of hate-crimes aimed at inheritable sexual augmentations, and the revelation that the Jovian Republic had been funding a mutating STD built with material derived from the exsurgent virus - which revelation brought down one hypercorp, thirteen government officials, and sent her packing back to the Planetary Consortium.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
12	15	17	13	13	10	14	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	28	5	80	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer

Skills: Academics: Anatomy (Sex) 33, Academics: Biology 30, Academics: Sociology 30, Art: Writing 36, Blades 25, Fray 25, Free Fall 27, Infiltration 36, Interfacing 25, Interests: Sex/Gender Augmentations 65, Interests: Transhuman Sexuality 35, Intimidation 33, Kinesics 33, Language: Native English 84, Language: Dutch 55, Networking: Criminals 25, Networking: Scientists 28, Palming 25, Perception (Taste) 33, Persuasion 46, Profession: Journalist 34, Profession: Social Worker 60, Scrounging 20

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Pheromones, Enhanced Taste, Medichines, Sex Change

Using Emilia Bickerdyke

Transhuman sexuality is a complicated thing, especially with the levels of technology available to the average transhuman. Some things that would be crimes by contemporary laws and standards are acceptable to the bulk of transhumans, and other sexual possibilities are beyond current philosophy - though not current imagination. As a catalyst, Embeek can be the character to drive any adventure dealing with some aspect of transhuman sexuality, and unlike some other NPCs is likely to speek plainly and frankly about any technical detail. PCs hung up on old concepts of sexuality will not earn her enmity unless they act to deny the rights, orientation, or identity of others - she respects their beliefs even if she does not share them, so long as those beliefs do not infringe on others.

Seed

• A dispute has arisen between the Jovian Republic and the Planetary Consortium on fuckboxes; custom engineered and built cybernetic devices that essentially consist of lovingly-crafted alien genitalia. The Jovian Republic wish to interdict the fuckboxes because of concerns about perversion and lowered birth rates, but Embeek is arguing cogently against them because of the artistic and technical innovation that goes into fuckboxes. The crux of the argument falls on the 3rd Annual Fuckbox Competition, and the PCs are asked by Embeek to attend and protect the Jovian delegation from the more militant attendees as she attempts to change the Jovians' minds.

318: Greysmith

ENTRY 318: Greysmith

"So I said to the guy, 'You want an old-fashioned katana made out of carbonized iron? I mean, yeah, I can make it, but I've got...no, look, really they're doing some great stuff with nanomaterials these days...no, it can't cut railgun pellets out of the air, that would be stupid.' I ended up putting an edge on a hunk of rebar. Stupid flat was happy as a spigipede in shit."
- Greysmith, unwinding with Therapist-by-the-Hour, session #366

Greysmith spent his early adolescence on Luna as Aditya Gupta, under the thumb of his traditionalist parents. Born a girl, they wanted a boy to carry on the family name, and raised him up as one while they saved up credits for the sex reassignment. He spent his days learning material science and working part time at the ore refinery, and his nights learning about his cultural heritage and staging mock battles with his schoolmates. A poor investment by his father reduced the family savings meant that Aditya's puberty was spent in a binder and with no hope for higher education, and by the time they could afford the sex reassignment he no longer wanted it - he identified male, but was rather attached to his female body. The argument turned into a terminal familial clash regarding life choices and life debts, and ended with a twenty-year old Aditya cashing in all his favors for a one-way trip to Mars. Aditya Gupta was dead; Greysmith was born.

Two meters tall, androgynous, and lanky, Greysmith has visible muscles on his arms and shoulders and all manner of small scars around his eyes, making him look a bit like a raccoon when he has his goggles off. Greysmith's specialization is the creation of traditional low-tech items, preferably with high-tech materials that can improve their performance or take less time and energy to create. Most people know him as "Katana-man" because of his penchant for traditional pattern welding, but he resents being boxed into a niche and does a lot of experiments with nanomaterials, allotropic alloys, and whatever else he can get his hands on. Unfortunately for him, even six years after leaving home he still hasn't managed to cut all ties with his old life - his parents have entered a lawsuit for filial abandonment at New Varanasi, and he keeps having to dodge random cousins enlisted to bring him back, change his sex, marry a nice girl and pump out a bunch of grandkids while supporting his parents financially and emotionally.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
14	14	20	15	10	28	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	30	6	60	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer
Skills: Academics: Engineering (Combat) 50, Academics: History (Weapons) 35, Academics: Metallurgy 50, Art: Metalworking 36, Blades 24, Clubs 24, Fray (Parry) 25, Free Fall 35, Hardware: Armorer 66, Interests: LARP 30, Interests: Martial Arts 24, Interests: Mock Combat (Re-Enactment) 27, Interests: Weapon Design 25, Language: Native Hindi 85, Language: Urdu 80, Language: English 70, Language: Japanese 70, Language: Mandarin 55, Networking: Autonomists 24, Networking: Firewall 25, Profession: Smith 40, Unarmed Combat 24
Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Nanovision, Radar Sense, Temperature Tolerance
Traits: Blacklisted (Luna), Neural Damage (Migraines)

Using Greysmith

As a practical craftsperson, Greysmith can easily be brought into the game as the NPC that fills the role of building, repairing, or selling equipment, particularly any sort of armor or melee weapon, and in a pinch can be the go-to person when researching a particular weapon, martial art style, bit of combat-related history, etc. or if the gamemaster wants to introduce a new weapon or piece of related equipment into the game. He does accept commissions, and his work is reasonably popular, which lets him spend far too much time with Therapist-by-the-Hour, basically subsidizing her lifestyle at the expense of his own. Greysmith himself has some ready-made seeds in his ongoing family drama, and would be more than happy to crank out some customized weapons for player characters willing to run interference with a particularly persistent cousin or go back to Luna to resolve his parents' madness (or at least bribe someone into making the lawsuit go away). As an antagonist, Greysmith would have to see the player characters as a threat of some sort - perhaps if they were taking up too much of Therapist-by-the-Hour's time while undergoing psychosurgery, for example - in which case he might be possessive enough to call in a few favors and try to make life tough for them, maybe even threaten them a bit.

Seed

• Greysmith is in love with Therapist-by-the-Hour, and he finally confessed it. She responded by cutting their session short and saying she can no longer see him professionally, and he's spent the last three days getting high at a hookah bar that specializes in narcotic vapors. Unfortunately, the PCs need him for some reason - maybe he's the only person on the habitat with the materials to make the part they need to make their space ship go, or their cyberclaw malfunctions and now every time they pop the claws they uncontrollably urinate themselves and he's the only one that can fix it - and he won't be functional again until he's sorted things out with TbtH. The exact nature of the situation and the PC's fix to it can be flexible - TbtH might reciprocate his feelings, but want a marriage contract; or else they may have to play Cyrano de Bergerac and guide Greysmith through wooing her back; or maybe they can just bribe her to accept him back as a client, or at least convince her to unlock the sex therapy option on her menu in the hopes that a good tumble will satisfy him temporarily. Whatever the PCs come up with, it should be fun.

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.

276: Stoneburner

ENTRY 276: Stoneburner

WANTED - CAPTIVE OR INTACT CORTICAL STACK
FOR CRIMES AGAINST TRANSHUMANITY
DESTRUCTION OF NEW AUSTRALIA HABITAT
DEALER IN WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
CONSIDERED ARM AND DANGEROUS
BOUNTY: 100,000 CREDITS / 25,000 FOR ALPHA FORK
REDEEMABLE FROM ANY PLANETARY CONSORTIUM EMBASSY

Some transhumans just want the universe to burn; the ones to really watch are the scientists and engineers that figure out how to make it burn better. The transhuman known as Stoneburner earned infamy as a reseacher in exotic nuclear weapons that turned to custom design work for the highest bidder when the initial research funding ran out. Even then Stoneburner might have prospered, but a jury-rigged nuclear propulsion system had a little too much oomph, and cracked the dome of the Lunar colony of New Melbourne and filling it with radioactive sand. Since then, Stoneburner has been on the run, sheltered by criminals and terrorists, trading skills for security and the resources to continue their research.

Having been repeatedly exposed to the products of their own weaponry, Stoneburner carries the scars of multiple burns and long-term chromosome damage that renders them sterile and with frequent cancers that are only kept at bay with regular trips to a healing vat. More characteristic is visual blindness, a remnant of an early exposure to their namesake weapon which has since become ingrained in their ego, so that even with fully functioning eyes and ocular nerves the Stoneburner cannot see, but navigates the world by touch and hearing and taste.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
18	16	25	10	10	11	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	30	6	60	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer
Skills: Academics: History (Nuclear Weapons) 50, Academics: Physics (Nuclear) 75, Demolition (Nuclear Weapons) 56, Free Fall (Microgravity) 30, Hardware: Nuclear Weapons 60, Interests: Exotic Weapon Design 75, Language: Native English 85, Language: French 80, Language: Braille 70, Language: American Sign Language 70, Language: French Sign Language 55, Networking: Criminals 40, Networking: Hypercorps 33, Networking: Scientists 55, Perception (Radar Sense) 70, Profession: Physicist 40, Research 45
Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Emotional Dampers, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Radar Sense
Traits: Genetic Damage (Sterile, prone to cancer), On the Run, Neural Damage (Blind)

Using Stoneburner

A straight-up target for player characters with a mind for a bit of bounty-hunting, Stoneburner also makes a good solid science-type lieutenant for any established NPC antagonist, a mercenary scientist who has probably been responsible for more death and destruction than most. Alternately, as a contact Stoneburner is cagey but basically honest, willing to assist the PC on a quid pro quo basis; a canny gamemaster may have Stoneburner hire the PCs to assist clear their name or obtain certain materials, painting themselves as just a toolmaker with no control of how the things they built are used. Since Stoneburner has no rep to speak of with any network because of the bounty, they stick to parts of the system where safety and basic material concerns can be bought with credits.

251: Achamoth

ENTRY 251: Achamoth

“How much for you and your sister?”

- Achamoth on the prowl

Once upon a time, Achamoth was a human being—with a gender, a spouse, a life. Something went wrong. The details are fuzzy, green-tinged slices of memory that Achamoth always remembers slightly differently. Sometimes it acts transhuman, trying to blend in with the crowd, even interacting with people. Sometimes it forgets it isn’t transhuman, and doesn’t remember again until the screaming starts again. Even by exsurgent standards, Achamoth is disturbed, and almost completely uncontrollable except for a few ingrained trigger scents tied to primal states (cardamom: lust, garlic: rage, cinnamon: sleep, cumin: hunger).

Achamoth is an exsurgent prototype. Cosmetically transhuman from the outside, within that leathery, carapace-like exoskeletal shell oozes something closer to an undifferentiated slime colony, with a brain like Christmas-tree lights strung out throughout it’s two-meters-a-bit frame. Because Achamoth’s version of the exsurgent virus appears to be damaged or dormant, Firewall has not yet brought them in, but keeps track of the exsurgent prototype so that it can lead them to other exsurgent cells—even cleaning up after a few of its disastrous attempts to “blend in” with transhumanity.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
18	16	15	15	17	12	18	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	-	-	-	70	14	95

Morph: Splicer (Exsurgent Prototype)

Skills: Academics: Virology 65, Exotic Ranged Attack (spit) 48, Free Fall (Microgravity) 56, Infiltration (Blending In) 50, Interests: TITANs 75, Language: Native English 85, Language: Cantonese 70, Language: Mandarin 70, Language: Japanese 55, Networking: Exsurgent Cells 33, Networking: Firewall 25, Perception (Visual) 70, Persuasion (Negotiation) 67, Profession: Virologist 40, Unarmed Combat 45

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Carapace Armor, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Emotional Dampers, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Enhanced Vision, Nanoscopic Vision, Oxygen Reserve, Vacuum Sealing

Notes: Achamoth is filled with an amorphous green fluid in place of most of its internal organs, giving it inhuman durability. It can regurgitate this material as a Spit Attack (area effect) Toxin (Application: D, O; Onset Time: 1 Action Turn, Duration: 5 Action Turns, Effect: 1d10 ÷ 2 (round up) DV per Action Turn ).

Using Achamoth

Gamemasters should decide on their own whether Achamoth is truly the damaged, dangerous, and pathetic entity it appears to be, or whether the inhuman intelligence within that leathery shell is playing Firewall and the exsurgent cell network as it pursues its own goals—transformation back into human, for example, or revenge against the TITANs, or maybe a mass exsurgent infection to turn an entire habitat into creatures like itself. In any event, interacting with Achamoth will probably bring its Firewall “handlers”—an autonomous clique which is willing to kill other Firewall agents to preserve the secret of their particular asset.

Seed

• Trouble in paradise: a particularly gruesome murder of People’s Representative Lean Brundage and her wife Scarletta on the vacation-habitat of New Hawai’i in orbit around Mercury has triggered all sorts of alarms in the Firewall search engines, and led to them now being aware of Achamoth and the autonomous group watching and directing it. Believing that one or more members of that group have begun using Achamoth as their personal assassin, the PCs are hired to investigate the scene in New Hawai’i—and if possible, eliminate Achamoth and its rogue handler with extreme prejudice (“Fired. Out of an airlock. In the general direction of the sun.”)