349: Grey Boy

ENTRY 349: Grey Boy

"Some egos resleeve like they're changing clothes. Some stick with the meatsack they're born in 'til they die. A couple want to explore a new body, or think that resleeving will solve all their problems. Me? I guess I wanted to make a statement. Take a step that I couldn't step back easy. It's about commitment, see. If you want to push your limits, to see how far you can go, you can't leave yourself an easy out. So when I went grey, I went all the way. See, lot of exhumans take the easy way out - abandon the whole humanoid form, go for something that looks exotic. Not many of 'em twig that being exhuman is more than a weird morph, it's a state of mind. You gotta change your perceptions, not just your look."
- Grey Boy, interview with Exhuman Spotlight (AF 8)

Deep down, most transhumans are the same - whatever they might look like on the outside, biomorphs share anatomical and genetic similarities to other Earth-based life, the majority of synthmorphs and pods are generally humanoid, and almost all transhuman egos are recognizable as human. Key word: almost.

Grey Boy designed the greymorph from the ground up, based on a theoretical left-handed Z-DNA structure. On the outside, the greymorph looks like a pop culture reference a century or so out of date, but on the inside it is as alien as transhuman science can get - instead of bones, for example, it has a flexible cartilaginous endoskeleton with an arrangement of "floating" bony plates protecting critical organs. It has orifices most transhumans would need a degree just to name, and one of the byproducts of its respiration and digestive systems is a nerve gas. More than that, the greymorph brain was deliberately designed to be hard for contemporary transhuman technology to sleeve in and out of - as alien as Grey Boy could make it and still be able to interact with transhumans. One sleeved in, it took three years of therapy for Grey Boy to adapt to the greymorph, to learn how to operate things that look like knees and elbows but really aren't, to parse sensory information his new brain fed him as colors he didn't have names for, and why chalk tasted like candy to him now.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
20	12	20	13	20	14	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	2	42	8	84	40	8	65

Morph: Greymorph (Unique Biomorph)

Skills: Academics: Genetics 80, Academics: Philosophy (Anarchy) 34, Art: Fingerpainting 24, Deception 25, Fray 36, Free Fall 30, Gunnery 19, Infosec 25, Interests: Pre-Fall Science Fiction 40, Interests: Tobacco 22, Interests: Xenobiology Culture 40, Interests: Xenopsychology 35, Interfacing 30, Language: Native Czech 80, Language: English 75, Language: Russian 60, Negotiation 35, Networking: Autonomists 15, Networking: Criminals 15, Networking: Firewall, Networking: Scientists 25, Profession: Geneticist 37, Protocol 21, Unarmed Combat (Claw) 40

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Bioweave (Light), Circadian Regulation, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Poison Glands (Nervex, Psi-Opener), Enhanced Senses (Echolocation, Enhanced Vision), Eidetic Memory, Fractal Digits, Hibernation, Medichines, Neurachem (Level 1), Oxygen Reserve, Toxin Filters
Traits: Addiction (Nicotine, Minor), Greymorph*, Morphing Disorder (Level 3), Social Stigma (Exhuman), Claw Attack (1d10 DV, use Unarmed Combat skill)

* Greymorphs are treated as xenomorphs in terms of being affected by psi (see Eclipse Phase 222) - asyncs suffer a -20 modifier and +1 strain using sleights against them - and are unaffected by Enhanced Pheromones (Eclipse Phase 305). In addition, Greymorphs may only ever create delta forks (Eclipse Phase 273-4).

Seeds

• Having spent the last several years acclimating to his morph and finding himself, Grey Boy is at the point where he's happy being on his own - unfortunately, the universe has other plans. It turns out having an "alien perspective" is a marketable quality, and he's getting besieged with offers from everyone from xenocultists looking for an alien love messiah to hypercorps looking for insight on the Factors. Firewall hires the player characters to make contact and convince Grey Boy to lend his unique perspective to protecting transhumanity - a transhumanity he no longer really feels a part of.
• Grey Boy keeps his ear to the ground on developments, and hears a rumor of a Jovian Junta military black research project - a psi-opener tuned to xenomorphs. Intrigued, he hires the PCs to steal the research - all they need to do is bust into the heavily-fortified military habitat and copy the files. Of course, there is the minor problem that the Junta was experimenting with the psi-opener on live xenomorphs...who are now loose in the compound.
• A new drug is making the pretty young morphs in the club sick - and the media is reporting that Grey Boy has gone missing. The PCs are hired to look into one of the drug deaths, and the clues they follow just might take them to a xenocult that's harvesting Grey Boy for his secretions - the drugs to raise funds, the nerve gas to stockpile as a terrorist weapon - but the leaders are stupid enough to let the nerve gas bleed into the psi-opener, hence the club kid deaths.

328: Heracles

ENTRY 328: Heracles

"There is no place for gods anymore."
- Heracles, catchphrase

In a time when a transhuman can change their bodies and minds, when Earth and all its nations are lost, when the old religions and ethnicities begin to fade against the new cultures forming, many egos become lost in themselves; lost in the transience of life and frozen by the endless possibilities open to them even as some of the building blocks of their identities disappear they seize on whatever they can - and if they cannot be themselves, then sometimes they become someone else. These are emotional victims of the Fall, unable to cope with their own pasts they redefine themselves into personas that can.

One of the fixtures of Olympus habitat on Mars is Heracles; a hulking biomorph who claims to be the immortal demigod from Greek and Roman myth. Nobody really believes him, but he is entertaining, never breaks character, and always puts on a good show for the tourists. For the price of a few drinks he will gladly show anyone around the habitat, to all the good bars and places of secret beauty and forgotten history, some of which might actually be real.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
10	12	14	15	20	50	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
5	1	30	6	60	20	3	40

Morph: Unique Biomorph

Skills: Academics: History (Greek) 75, Academics: Mythology (Greek) 85, Academics: Linguistics 15, Academics: Philosophy 15, Art: Sculpture 15, Art: Singing 15, Climbing 25, Clubs 50, Fray 40, Free Fall (Microgravity) 25, Interests: Alcohol 35, Interests: Olympus 50, Interests: New Religions 35, Interests: Wrestling 35, Interests: Xenocults 35, Language: Native Greek 99, Language: Latin 75, Language: English 65, Networking: Media 15, Profession: Tour Guide 25, Protocol 15, Scrounging 16, Unarmed Combat (Wrestling) 67

Enhancements/Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts
Disadvantages: Mental Disability (Delusion - Hercules)

Using Heracles

The exhuman ego that thinks it is Heracles has gone to considerable trouble to embrace its persona, and it's body reflects that: a muscle-bound biomorph with the proportions of a Classical Grecian statue. Dedicated to his role, Heracles will seek to prove his status by telling stories and performing feats of tremendous strength. Continued efforts to undercut these displays or prove him wrong will make him angry, and then morose, at which point he will drink until he blacks out, then wake up and continue on as if nothing has happened. As an NPC, Heracles is probably best used as a quirky local to add color to Olympus and provide some comedy or pathos as appropriate to the scene, and as a contact with their finger on the pulse of the habitat. Heracles is too mentally broken to hold grudges, and stupid enough for PCs to trick him into doing their dirty work by playing along to his delusions (say, by pretending to be mythological figures themselves), so will likely only be an ally or enemy for brief periods of time.

Seeds

• A woman named Megara Milogiannis approaches the PCs. She claims that Heracles is her husband - estranged and lost in his delusion after the Fall, when a TITAN strike destroyed their home and family. Megara claims their children's egos were preserved as archives, but she needs her husband's access code to access them. Can the PCs work through Heracles' delusion? Should they? Is Megara even telling the truth, or does she want Heracles' cooperation for some other purpose?
• An industrial accident caused part of Olympus' internal structure to collapse. Heracles was drinking nearby and raced to the scene and helped rescue morphs trapped in the rubble, but was caught in a slip and now is paralyzed from the waist down. The despondent self-proclaimed demigod, who lacks the resources to get the damage healed, calls on the player characters to put him out of his misery, so that his spirit can go to the Elysian Fields. What do the PCs do?
• One of the peculiarities of Heracles is that he wears only a strange furry hide for clothing, along with sandals and, on special occasions, boxer shorts. A visiting archaeobiologist from Titan has recognized the hide as belonging to a supposedly long-extinct lion species, and asks the PCs for a sample. Heracles refuses - unless the PCs can best him in a wrestling contest. If they win, they get the hide; if they fail, they have to fulfill a trial of Heracles' choice...starting with his community service to clean out the sanitation ducts on Olympus' lower level.

327: The Maas Gate

ENTRY 327: The Maas Gate

"The Pandora Gates are a universe in and of themselves; each is obviously based on the same technology, but each is also unique, yet there are no indications that one was made before the other, with no indications of refinement or development. Even the basic materials they are made of could have been made a million years ago or yesterday. Each is also complete into itself, a whole unit...except for the Maas Gate."
- Prof. Brainbug, impromptu lecture at Titan Autonomous University

The Maas Gate was discovered and claimed late in AF 9 by Kalen Maas on Tethys, buried in centuries-old ice. It was recognized early on as technology of a piece with the Pandora Gates, but with crucial differences - smaller, with a simpler interface, and partially damaged as evidenced by a sixteen centimeter burn mark on the edge of the outer torus. Kalen quickly incorporated as Maas Laboratories, and has begun construction of a new laboratory facility to study it; meanwhile the Maas Gate is kept and studied in a high-security laboratory leased from Godwinhead and originally designed for dealing with radioactive samples.

By design or damage, experimentation with the Maas Gate has shown it does not operate identically to existing gates. The gate torus is small, only twenty-eight centimeters inner diameter. There is a wormhole effect, but no means to input an address. The effect itself only remains stable for 2.4 seconds, and puts out so much electromagnetic noise that telemetry from probes is often lost or corrupted. What came as a real surprise is that 11.2 seconds after the gate effect collapses, it spontaneously activates again and ejects an object with near-identical mass to any that passed through the prior gate episode at a velocity of 4.6 m/s, often accompanied by an "exhalation" of gases. These "exchange masses" are always alien objects which are of sufficient dimensions to fit through the torus and within 3 grams of the mass of the initial mass, none of which have ever been recovered.

So far "exchange objects" have included micrometeorites, metal fragments, partially fossilized extraterrestrial gastropod-analogue shells and exoskeletons, a single gold-coated alnico magnet with considerable intermetallic buildup, a lightly radioactive saline/heavy water solution, and a glass tube filled with neutral gasses and inscribed with a series of lines of different thicknesses and depths. The nature of this quid-pro-quo exchange and the complete randomness of the "exchange mass" has led to both considerable theorizing about the purpose of the Maas Gate and, almost inevitably, gambling. The "lottery" method of testing with the Maas Gate has proven popular with researchers, who simply drop input masses through and receive the exchange mass for study - and many of the results are posted directly to the Mesh, where bookmakers like Maas Roulette can bet on the nature of the outcome.

The current popular theory, supported by the little sensor data relayed from probes sent through the gate-device, is that the Maas Gate hooks in to a storage and exchange system set up by the gatebuilders to facilitate communication. The only slightly-less-popular theory is that the Maas Gate is an intelligence test, and that the more crap transhumans drop through the gate the greater the likelihood that whatever comes out is going to be dangerous enough to destroy everything. Maas Labs has already limited the mass of input objects to no more than 1 kilogram, ostensibly to minimize the possibility of receiving highly unstable heavy elements in quantity, and the countermeasures have been set up to hopefully contain any alive xenobiological material or active nanoinfections that might pass through.

Using the Maas Gate

Using the Maas Gate in a game directly is tricky; although PCs could gear themselves up as micromorphs (entry 282) and maybe go exploring with no guarantee of return. Instead, the Maas Gate will primarily be used in the form of the exchange objects that it outputs, which are perfect macguffins for most games and at 1 kg +/- 3 g are eminently transportable and valuable. Concerns about the nature and purpose of the gate are real, and the internal politics at Maas Labs regarding the cavalier "lottery" approach can get quite heated, and may cause some parties to involve the PCs in one fashion or another - staging a break in to underline the need for greater security, etc.

Alternately, the gamemaster may decide that the Maas Gate is a fake, a clever prop whose properties are replicated with stage illusion and carefully planned demonstrations in front of scientists. The electromagnetic noise, the light show, the puff of smoke or gas that just happens to hide the object the moment it emerges, the inability to get good sensor data - all possible elements of an elaborate hoax. If this is the case, then Kalen Maas will laugh all the way to the bank, provided they can find someplace far enough to run when the scheme is exposed.

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.”)

230: Rexxus

ENTRY 230: Rexxus

“Given the choice of being anybody or anything—what would you be?”
“A dinosaur. With lasers.”
- Rexxus, A Posthistoric Life

On Mars, a bipedal dinosaur stalks the slops of Olympus Mons, shaggy feathers red and brown from the Martian dust, a massive fishbowl helmet over its head allowing it to breath properly. Four meters tall and thirteen meters long from snout to tailtip, from the outside this biomorph is a painstaking reconstruction of an adult Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is Rexxus, one of the last paleontologists in the solar system.

The science of prehistoric life remains extremely relevant in the age of terraforming, but with the lack of access to Earth’s biosphere and fossil record the disciplines of paleontology and paleocology have repositioned themselves, adapting their data and techniques to exploring the development of life on other worlds, and essentially merging into the burgeoning disciplines of xenoecology and xenobiology.

Rexxus is a holdout. He loves dinosaurs, and wants to share his love of dinosaurs with a new generation—a generation that he hopes will reclaim Earth. In the meantime, he is large and in charge, a valued eccentric and minor celebrity in the Martian social scene and respected academic.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	20	14	23	20	38	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	2	42	8	84	65	13	75

Morph: Tyrranosauroid biomorph

Skills: Academics: Paleoecology 75, Academics: Paleontology 80, Art: Performance 50, Beam Weapons 35, Deception 55, Fray 66, Free Fall 60, Impersonation 55, Infiltration 66, Infosec 55,  Interests: Dinosaurs 66, Interests: Teaching 50, Interfacing 40, Kinetic Weapons 50, Language: Native English 80, Language: German 75, Language: French 44, Negotiation 65, Networking: Hypercorps 40, Networking: Scientists 40, Perception (Smell) 66, Profession: Paleontologist 77, Profession: Teacher 66, Unarmed Combat (Bite) 70

Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Bioweave (Heavy), Claws (on feet, non-retractable), Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Respiration, Enhanced Smell, Hand Laser, Temperature Tolerance

Advantages: Bite attack (1d10 DV, use Unarmed Combat skill), Heavy tail provides +20 to any Physical skill tests where balance is a factor

Disadvantages: Limited articulation and grip strength on forearms (-20 to any Physical skill test requiring forearms); mass and size limit travel and habitat options; overall physical difficulties requires customized equipment and assistance in getting dressed, etc.

Traits: Pain Tolerance (Level 2), Tough (Level 3)

Using Rexxus

There is little practical reason to be a tyrannosaurus rex in Eclipse Phase…but then Rexxus is not a terrible practical individual, a proponent of a dying academic discipline and an ardent supporter of the need to reclaim the planet Earth. Because of the rarity of his expertise, Rexxus is one of the few people that the PCs can go to if they encounter an Earth fossil or critter possibly recreated from fossil DNA—he’s the best in the system, and more than willing to practice his skills; he probably also has the contacts needed to sell such rarities, though he’d prefer to see them in a museum... More likely, PCs on Mars may get to meet Rexxus if their adventures put them in contact with groups that want to reclaim or recolonize the planet Earth.

227: Luvia

ENTRY 227: Luvia

“First I was a witness. Then I became an accomplice. Finally, I became a victim.”

- Luvia, “The Favela Within”

Every habitat has a window, where the inhabitants can look out at the stars and endless blackness between them, to escape for a moment the walls that close them in. It is at such portals that Luvia likes to sit as she writes, a Galatea in glass and chrome, beneath her transparent skin a glowing fluid shifts and flows—and very few know that the real luvia is not the skin, but the liquid that flows beneath.

Luvia is an ego on the run. As a freelancer for the Nine Lives she did what she was told and didn’t ask any questions. One day, she saw too much, and got pulled in deeper. Where once she smuggling minor contraband, now she was ego-trafficking, taking cortical stacks from habitat to habitat. Luvia fell deeper and deeper into the business, subliminating her desires of escape into her writing and cutting deals on the side, even selling information to various habitat authorities. Eventually she arrived to find out that she was the next delivery.

What happened next, Luvia doesn’t remember. No hidden memories, simply discontinuity. When next she woke her biomorph was gone, her ego encoded into the nanoswarm. Since then she has been on the run…from the Nine Lives, from her past, from everything. She makes a small living as a fanfiction writer, the incremental rep boosts enough to cover her modest physical and mental needs. Every couple of months she gets antsy, switches habitats, keeping one optical sensor open for anyone on the lookout for her.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
20	19	14	15	12	18	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
5	1	42	8	84	30	6	45

Morph: Synth/Liquid morph*

Skills: Academics: Philosophy 45, Art: Writing 56, Climbing 35, Deception (Impersonation) 56, Free Fall (Microgravity) 40, Fray (Dodge) 25, Infiltration 37, Infosec 45, Interests: Crime 45, Interests: Law 38, Kinesics 25, Language: Native Lithuanian 86, Language: English 50, Language: Mandarin 50, Medicine: Paramedic 36, Networking: Autonomists 50, Networking: Criminals 50, Palming 35, Profession: Courier 55, Profession: Writer 60, Protocol (Criminal) 35, Scrounging 30

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Mnemonic Augmentation, Specialized Hive (liquid morph)

Advantages: Armor 6/6

Disadvantages: Social Stigma (Clanking Masses), Uncanny Valley

* The “real” Luvia is permanently encoded in a nanoswarm suspended in a glowing fluid; the Synth morph is just a shell specially modified to carry her liquid form around. If the shell is ever destroyed, the nanoswarm still exists unharmed and follows the rules for nanoswarms in Eclipse Phase, p.328-9. The nanoswarm is Luvia’s cortical stack; if it gets destroyed, her ego is lost.

Using Luvia

Luvia is adventure-bait, a living macguffin to hang some simple plots off of. Lots of people might want her: the Nine Lives, the security forces of a dozen habitats, and the hypercorp that invented her liquid morph. The PCs are likely to be brought in because these groups lack physical representatives in the habitat. Sufficiently mercenary PCs might be approached directly to find and collect her, only to find that Luvia is a bit more slippery than she seems. If the PCs are soft-hearted, then the interested parties will probably pose as part of Luvia’s past life—friends, family members, lovers. Where it goes from there depends on the PCs, but the multiple groups involved gives plenty of potential for complications.

213: Demi Wannah

ENTRY 213: Demi Wannah

“We are as we make ourselves to be.”

- Tattoo on the back of Demi Wannah’s neck

Demi Wannah was born with no legs, just a pair of crippled stumps. Her parents abandoned her, and the overburdened habitat she grew up in during the Fall consigned her to an institution, where her legs were amputated, she was sterilized, and her budding breasts burned off so that she would be less of a burden. When she was old enough, she built herself some new legs, and escaped.

The past is a datafile to Demi Wannah that she has archived and left forgotten. Her attention is on the now, on her work—mostly freelancer graphic design for local microcorps, and some custom design for synthmorph and cyberlimbs. With the new lower torsos of her own design she walks, scuttles, crawls, slithers, fucks, kicks, skips, jumps, and every other thing just as anyone else does, and never takes it for granted. With her new “saucer” augmentation, she even has limited flight via vectored thrust, though it makes her airsick.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
20	19	14	15	12	18	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
5	1	42	8	84	30	6	45

Morph: Flat

Skills: Academic: Bioengineering 60, Art: Architecture 40, Art: Graphic Design 45, Free Fall (Microgravity) 30, Hardware: Robotics 36, Interests: Custom Implants 60, Interests: DIY Augmentation 60, Interests: Unique Morphs 60, Language: Native Portuguese 84, Language: English 50, Language: Spanish 66, Networking: Hypercorps 30, Networking: Media 30, Perception 60, Profession: Graphic Designer 65, Protocol 33, Unarmed Combat (Subdual) 28

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Multi-Tasking (x4), ModularTorso*

Disadvantages: No Cortical Stack

* Unique augmentation; Demi Wannah’s legs and lower torso have been replaced with a modular slot that can be fitted into custom-designed mobility systems based on synthmorph designs with different mobility rates and augmentations. Among the lower torsos available to Demi include a bipedal walker (4/16), arachnoid walker (4/24), thrust vector “saucer” (8/40), and snake (4/16, 8/28 rolling).

Using Demi Wannah

Demi bears the scars of her past, and the handmade augmentations that are her future. As a contact or an ally, she can provide the PCs some custom augmentations or put them in contact with someone else that can. As an antagonist, her early upbringing has affected her ability to form close relationships and relate to other people—she has a tendency to steal and betray people, imagining that they are going to steal and betray her. As a plot hook, most actions will resolve either around Demi’s past or her work designing custom synthmorph limbs.

Seed

• People start dying on the player’s habitat. After some sleuthing, their only common factor is their past with Demi—the doctors, nurses, and administrators who bureaucratically condemned and mutilated her. When the PCs confront her, she does not struggle or seek to explain. If they turn her in, they are given a small reward—and according to the consensus of the habitat, she will be given a public trial and anyone is allowed to speak for her. The PCs will be asked to attend as witnesses. If they do nothing, she will be mindwiped and the cost of the procedure and her re-education taken out of her belongings—she may even lose her morph entirely.