036: Red Green

ENTRY 036: Red Green

Among classical golf enthusiasts, the Red Green on Mars is considered perhaps the best xenoscape courses for traditional play—the course winds its way along 18 kilometers of sand traps, gravel plains, and swathes of brilliant blue-green genegineered fungus with grass-like follicles designed to grow on the Martian soils and volcanic clays. The light gravity of Mars allows for impressive drives, which the course designers have taken into account with carefully shaped hillocks and trap slopes to funnel overshoots and undershoots into nasty corners and test the golfer’s ability to chip up and putt. At a par 81 the Red Green is hardly the most difficult course in the system, but it remains a masterful test of skill for anyone playing the full 18 holes.

Red Green was built and is maintained by a commune of terraformers, The NovAres Collective, and is technically still in the alpha stages of production—large swathes of the green typically die off when they fail to take root and are carried off by dust swarms, and must be painstakingly replaced. Many members can be seen out before dawn, stripping the dead turf for recycling, oxygenating the soil with a nutrient-rich paste, and laying on new hexes of fungal-sod. The course has few rules—mostly the Collective asks for players to avoid overly damaging the sod—but a volunteer network handles scheduling, organizes the annual Mars Pathfinder Cup tournament, and accepts donations for the maintenance of the green and to further NovAres’ research.

The Mars Pathfinder Cup is, inarguably, the most important and widely-watched sporting event from the Red Green; entrance is qualified to the fifty highest-scoring players on a standardized skill test, with five wild card participants, with a minimum suggested donation of 1,000 credits (or equivalent) towards the grand prize—even with NovAres’ 10% rake-off, this has typically exceeded half a million credits in recent years.

Seeds

• One Red Second is the sculptor who designed the Red Green; in a past life he was a zen gardener, but the Fall still haunts the aged flat, and he has lost any serenity he might have had, wandering about as a scrounger across the surface of Mars. The NovAres Collective is planning a 19^th hole to test some experimental soil compound-fixing features, and asks the PCs to help find One Red Second and convince him to design it.
• The Mars Pathfinder Cup is up, and the players are dropping like flies—no rules against foul play and the pot is almost a million credits. If the PCs want the job, they’ll be given golf skillsofts and put into the game as wildcards to keep the peace—even if that means breaking a few legs.
• A pirate terraforming outfit wants a sizable sample of the Red Green sod so they can backsequence its genome and publish the data to the Mesh. Whether they get it from the course or the NovAres lab, the PCs can earn a bit of rep if they pull off the heist.

025: Cockfighters

ENTRY 025: Cockfighters

In the low-gravity mooncrete wells of Luna and the chicken-wire cage-tubes of orbital habitats, feathers and blood fly, the droplets playing out their strange fluid mechanics before splattering the walls. Avian biomorphs and even trained animals that could not fly in Earth gravity fight with ankle-spurs and wing-tip blades, circling and sparring in blood matches for dominance, honor, and money.

Most contemporary cockfights involve a vast range of contestants, from the purebred baseline chicken-matches on Luna to the neupenguin “blood in the water” matches on Ganymede. Enthusiasts spend considerable time and research designing, training, and augmenting their fighting animals, and prized champions are worth considerably more than most basic morphs.

The most common cockfight format involves small, aggressive, low-maintenance domesticated birds that are normally flightless except in low gravity, locked in a small open chain mesh cage or other arena-space to keep them from going after the audience. Specific rules and the legality of the matches—and the inevitable betting—varies from habitat to habitat, but the matches enjoy a widespread social appeal that brings large crowds from across the population spectra of the habitats.

Pod Cockfights are generally held separately from trained animals, as the addition of a transhuman intellect adds yet another dimension to the bloody spectacle, and avian pod fighters are respected martial artists within their own leagues. The most elaborate and expensive of all cockfights are pod matches between augmented bipedal flightless birds resurrected from relic DNA. While too large to be capable of flight even in low gravity, the modified emus, ostriches, and thunderbirds are capable of incredible feats of jumping and agility.

Seeds

• The latest fad in Extropia is the Dodo Club, an entry-level, mostly bloodless cockfighting social event aimed at less mature egos, with supplementary programs to help the young transhumans design and modify their birds and plan their strategies. However, a rogue group using cruel training techniques and vicious implanted weapons is cutting a swathe through the league. Someone needs to stand up to these bullies…will it be the player characters?
• Social approbation against cockfights in the Jovian Republic has been growing—spurring the increase of illicit matches underground and in neighboring habitats. Legitimate enthusiasts are upset against the restrictions being put in place, and the shady characters running the matches. Suspicion rests on the most vocal opponent of cockfighters, Chair Yeungling. If the player characters can prove a link between Yeungling and the criminals running the matches, the fans would be very grateful
• A major pod cockfight is scheduled in the habitat the characters are in—the morphs are ready, but egos with combat experience are scarce. If the player characters are game, they can temporarily resleeve into bitching military-grade avian biomorphs and engage in bloody gladiatorial contests for rep and credits.

024: Makankana

ENTRY 024: Makankana

The demand for top-grade athletes for zero-g and microgravity sports has led to designs combining the pinnacle athleticism of Olympian morphs and the special adaptations of Bouncer morphs. From a technical standpoint, these designs are difficult: each morph has contradictory traits which can be difficult to reconcile at the level of individual biological subsystems, with Olympians being mainly designed to grow and develop in ideal conditions of normal gravity and plentiful oxygen to achieve their potential. As a result Olympian Bouncer morphs, sometimes called Voidstars, require specialized training and environmental conditions in addition to genetics to achieve the heights of transhuman biological potential, and are generally restricted to some of the wealthier or better-connected transhumans in the larger zero-g and microgravity habitats. The results, however, are astonishing.

Makankana is a prime exemplar, a free agent in zero-g jai alai and monstrously deformed by old human standards—their bandy legs and wiry, overlong arms and barrel chest give them a distinctly simian appearance that serves Makanaka astoundingly well in the court, able to maneuver with an ease, precision, and speed that many synthmorphs have difficulty matching. Makankana currently works as something of an itinerant player, signing short contracts for a few games with teams like the New Olympians out of Titan and the Three Righteous Dragons from Quin Long. The neuter Voidstar lives for the next game. Makankana's muse Xi Shi doubles as Makankana’s agent, and sees to the traveling star’s physical needs and continual training.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	30	25	30	15	30	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
11	1	30	6	60	40	8	60

Morph: Olympian/Bouncer

Skills: Academics: Physics 60, Academics: Statistics 72, Art: Dance 60, Climbing 90, Free Fall 93, Interests: Gambling 45, Interests: Zero-G Sports 90, Intimidation 67, Kinesics 40, Language: Native Esperanto 90, Language: English 80, Language: Chinese 80, Networking: Autonomists 66, Networking: Criminals 39, Perception 88, Profession: Athlete 93, Throwing Weapons 65, Unarmed Combat 60

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Grip Pads, Oxygen Reserve, Prehensile Feet

Traits: Ambidextrous, Brave, Limber (1)

Using Makankana

As something of a mercenary player, Makankana is more likely to be a living macguffin than a regular contact or antagonist—someone that the player characters are likely to kidnap, bribe, injure, play against, bodyguard, train, or babysit as the needs dictate. The credits and rep surrounding Makankana's performance in a given game attracts all sorts of attention, from Triad gamblers looking to fix a game to hypercorp reps eager for an endorsement, and all of these provide opportunities for gamemasters to ensnare PCs in Makankana’s world of zero-g and microgravity athletics.

Given Makankana’s focus on the next game, interactions for anything else will probably have to go through their muse, Xi Shi. The AI is an androgynous parent-figure to the Voidstar, and also their agent, negotiating business deals, managing their assets, making reservations, reminding Makankana to eat, etc. In the event that Makankana is threatened with injury or imprisonment, Xi Shi will try to bribe or negotiate with the malefactors so that Makankana comes out as whole as possible—though if this comes at the cost of throwing a game, Makankana will overrule the muse.

023: Jovian Moonlets

ENTRY 023: Jovian Moonlets

The leading team in the system for zero-g jai alai, the Jovian Moonlets are currently stationed out of Amalthea. Though the whole team rarely travels outside Jupiter’s moon-system, video and XP broadcasts and recordings of their games travel from one end of transhuman space to the other. The challenge, skill, speed, and potential for damage incumbent in the revitalized ancient sport is a large part of the attraction for many transhumans, as are the various underground and off-the-court matches, gambling, grudges, and general drama, which feeds peripheral merchandising and spin-off industries.

Following the Neuva Euskara Association rules, a zero-g jai alai team consists of up to sixteen members arranged in eight pairs of doubles, though only four doubles will play in any given match, and is played in a three-dimensional uniform polygonal stadium with eighteen three-meter square playing areas and eight triangular foul zones. Play emphasizes spatial awareness and precision over strength, and there are strong tactical and mathematical elements in tracking and playing the ball in zero gravity. Each ball is equipped with a bell or other unique audible characteristic to enable players to better keep track of it. The danger of the game largely comes from the ball itself, which can travel in excess of 300 kph and cause serious injury or death to some morphs on impact; the need to maneuver in zero-g, which given the mass and momentum of professional players often leads to damaging collisions with playing surfaces or other players; and finally the xistera itself, which commonly becomes a deadly melee weapon in less regulated play.

The Moonlets have a wide variety of transhumans on their team, though the majority are biomorphs from the habitats surrounding Jupiter and Neptune, including an extensively augmented uplifted dolphin named Jurgen Joshi that is often considered the team’s most valuable player. The Moonlets franchise is owned by the players themselves as a cooperative, and they split the net profits from playing games, the sale and licensing of their game recordings and likenesses, and merchandizing. New players are elected by the team as a whole, initially as probationary members with non-voting shares. Players may also be forcibly expelled or retired from the team by a two-thirds majority vote, cashed out as their shares are automatically repurchased by the cooperative.

Seeds

• After a particularly disastrous first match against the Ganymede Skullfuckers, team captain/CEO/manager Allura Makkabee is several morphs short of a full team. Heading into a rematch and given that the Skullies are more brawlers than players, Makkabee has decided to fill out the ranks with some morphs that know their way around a fight—if the player characters are interested, they can get signed up as provisional players, enjoy a crash course in zero-g jai alai, and play one game before getting cashed out.
• Jurgen Joshi has started cutting outside deals—selling his likeness to promote a new brand of transgenic tuna. The Moonlets can’t afford to lose their best player, but Jurgen needs to learn a lesson in abiding by the spirit and wording of his contracts. The player characters are asked to find a way to kill the transgenic tuna campaign, in exchange for which they get a fortune in Moonlets merchandise, season tickets, access to their video and XP vaults, etc.