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Wherein I make characters!

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cglasgow cglasgow's picture
Wherein I make characters!
Genning up a character for Tyrnis' 'High-risk rescue squad on Mars' idea (that he's still waiting for players to sign up for -- go to Registry and [url=http://eclipsephase.com/comment/31290#comment-31290]check out the thread[/url], hint hint *g*) time as well, etc. Edit: I had a character concept here, but, dude was built all wrong due to my ignorance of the rules. So, all snipped. Instead, since I am hit with a bit of the character-writing bug, I shall turn this into a thread for the characters I'm coming up with! See below for further developments.
Tyrnis Tyrnis's picture
For the game that I have
For the game that I have planned, I think that should work quite well.
cglasgow cglasgow's picture
Aggggh!
Aggggh! Someone just told me about the '300 points minimum in Knowledge Skills, 400 points minimum in Active Skills' rule. Which I was entirely ignorant of when I built this guy. He has 65 points in Knowledge Skills. Great. The entire character concept is now scrap. Back to the drawing board!
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Well, I have always viewed
Well, I have always viewed that distribution rule as merely good advice for a versatile character, not an iron-clad law.
Extropian
cglasgow cglasgow's picture
First up, David Pournelle-Kinross
First up, David Pournelle-Kinross, the character I am currently submitting for Tyrnis' game. He's a hotshot young doctor/geneticist/parkour champion born to a hyperelite dynasty! ... that's an Argonaut techno-progressive who used to hang out with Barsoomians, and was a junior member of the science team that came up with the Open-Source Ruster Cure. Thus making him the first hyperelite known to his family to zero out on the CivicNet at the same time he maxed 80 on the Circle-A. :) And yes, that's the canonical Orson Pournelle he's distantly related to. Concept, bio, etc, here:
Spoiler: Highlight to view
HISTORY: David Pournelle-Kinross was born 14 BF as a scion of the ridiculously wealthy Pournelle clan, one of the oligarch dynasties that hold major (if hidden) sway in the Planetary Consortium, and before then in the Offworld Consortium. Raised in the lap of luxury, given the best of everything, he barely remembers Earth; his parents had moved to one of the glitterati's L-5 habitats when he was a young child. The Fall did not directly touch David's life; as one of the hyperelite's children, he was carefully insulated from its tragedies. The main change it produced was that the overcrowding of the L-5 habitats in the wake of the evacuation prompted his branch of the family's move to Mars, filling in the slots in the oligarchy there as Mars' post-Fall expansion mirrored the birth of the Planetary Consortium. It wasn't until David was in university (pursuing a business degree just like all the other 'First Family' hyperelites of his generation) that he first started meeting people outside the hyperelite cocoon, and with them a knowledge of just what crimes his family had perpetrated during the Fall. Distant family patriarch Orson Pournelle had ruthlessly abused his authority over the Panamanian space elevator to sell evacuation slots to the highest bidders, extort priceless Earth artifacts and/or stock holdings in key offworld corporations from desperate refugees as the price for allowing them escape from Earth, and prioritized hypercorp interests over human life. (It's important to note that David hardly knows the /full/ extent of Orson Pournelle's crimes... that kind of stuff is hardly public knowledge. Just hearing about the least bad 10% or so of what that bastard is rumored to have done is still enough to shock the hell out of anyone.) Guilt-ridden and outraged, David cast about for something do that wouldn't just be a futile gesture, and found his answer in Argonaut philosophy. Changing majors to biogenetics (and later to medicine), David chose to embrace techno-progressivism and pursue a path of using technology to enrich the lives of everyone rather than just conserve wealth for an elite few. Of course, he was hardly the first (or the hundredth) rich young scion to rebel this way, and his family elders calmly acted to show this latest young naive rich boy what the 'real world' was like. Arranging for him to be stuck in a backrocket post in the plains of Tharsis after graduating medical school, they figured that a nice sharp taste of the misery of the proletariat would send him running back to the family trust fund and private pleasure habitats. Instead, David found a new thing to be outraged over; the exploitation of the rusters via the 'Genetic Service Pack' planned obolescence. Applying his medical and genetic training alongside that of Barsoomian and Argonaut genehackers, David was a part of the open-source scientific project that came up with a cure for ruster morph degeneration. While this cure has not ended the GSP scam on Mars (for one thing, arranging for distribution is still quite the problem, in addition to the hypercorp memetic engineering that makes so many rusters still believe the Barsoomian cure is unsafe or a fraud), it has led to a new lease on life for hundreds of thousands of rusters, a lease free of the Consortium "recurring revenue stream". In one fell swoop, David set an all-time Solar System record for highest Circle-A list rep ever achieved by a Pournelle. Needless to say, the family was /not/ amused. Pulling strings to get David the hell out of the Martian Outback before he did something even more embarassing to the family was elementary enough, but one does not become a hypercorp oligarch by being ignorant of what makes people tick. His family elders knew perfectly well that the harder they tried to order a rebellious young man not to do something, the more determined he'd be to do it. So instead deciding to lure him by his scientific curiosity, they 'arranged' for a prime job opportunity at Pathfinder to cross his path, hoping to get some use out of him and his proven intellectual potential by handing him a nice laboratory job far away from politics... and if they were really lucky, far away from the Solar System. It worked... for all of six weeks, which is how long it took for interoffice gossip to filter down to David as to exactly why he'd gotten the job. At which point, David took advantage of the intricacies of the corporate HR manual and finessed an internal transfer to the medical division and became a rescue worker. That'll be a good place to still be in Pathfinder (as he's aware that trying to quit would just ratchet his family's attention up to /really/ uncomfortable levels) and yet not locked into his family's vision of what he 'should' be doing until David figures out what he actually /is/ going to do next. As for his elders? While they continue to keep an eye out, they accept that he's safely contained for now. After all, he's taken what's effectively a menial service job, giving paramedical treatment to proles. What could he possibly end up doing /there/ that would in any way be important? PERSONALITY/INTERESTS: As is obvious, David is an idealist. Raised as one of the many great-grandchildren of a hyperelite immortal oligarch, bred and schooled to be a hyperlite oligarch, with every genetic and material advantage money could possibly buy, David has instead decided to become a progressive devoted to open-source technology and advancing medical science. Like many rich children turned activist, he's still mildly naive on just what the travails and tribulations of the proletariat actually /are/; unlike many of them, he's genuinely intelligent, determined, and sharp with people. People who were /not/ sharp with people didn't survive long in the Pournelle clan; they ended up with a permanent lifetime trust fund and a 'career' as a useless socialite drone for all eternity, just like all the other ones who couldn't make the grade. David is a devoted Argonaut despite never having actually met more than a few of them and never having been to an Argonaut habitat; he's a philosophical devotee based on what he's read and internalized, not an actually employed faction member. He also is comfortable with many of the anarchist ideals about social justice and infugee rights, even if he'd need to use his endocrine control mods to avoid having a heart attack at the pansexual robot snakes and other such weirdness of a full-on anarchist hab. David's main interest is his genetics research and theoretical nanotech concepts engineering, although he's also starting to get mildly interested in xenomolecularbiology. However, this research-oriented side competes for David's attention alongside the fact that he genuinely likes taking his hands and making sick people well. David's hobbies are classical Greek and Roman literature, tai chi, painting, and nanofab design. He also regularly competes in the Mars Unlimited-class (all augmentations allowed) Freestyle Parkour league, and placed sixth in the last planetary games. APPEARANCE: David was born to a family that could drop more credit on a whim than most transhumans would make in a century. His morph is the best money can buy -- its a custom-sculpted Menton with a striking and attractive appearance that stands out even in this age of mass-produced beauty. He's also bought many after-market augmentations, and a full set of physical augmentations comparable to those on combat morphs to make him competitive in the Unlimited-Class Freestyle Parkour tournament circuit. IMPORTANT PEOPLE/PLOT HOOKS: Marie Pournelle-Kinross: David's fraternal twin sister. While she's apparently chosen the Family-loyalist path of the hypercorp glitterati/executive, her and David are still each other's big-brother/sister-best-friends-forever(*). And what her own opinion is on things like infomorph exploitation or the more unethical uses of Consortium power, not even David knows for sure. Marie always was the subtle one, after all. (*) It's a running joke between them as to which one was born first; nobody knows. The formal birth certificates show an identical time stamp, and the hospital's local file copies of the obstetrician's lifelog and records were destroyed in the Chicago antimatter explosion during the Fall. Professor Anson Hartley: David's mentor at university, this iconoclastic don is chiefly responsible for his conversion to the Argonauts. An eccentric yet undeniably brilliant scholar in several fields, Professor Hartley is an unshakably tenured fixture among Mars academia despite his outspoken opinions against 95% of the University of Mars' corporate donor list. David and him still correspond regularly, and David's still-unopened bottle of genuine Old Earth 22-year-old relic Scotch was a gift from him to David after the Circle-A list exploded with the names of the 11 genehackers, biologists, and nanotechnicians responsible for cracking the current generation of the Planned Obsolescence GSP... and David Pournelle's name was among them. The First Families: Although David's role in creating the Ruster Cure has tanked his c-rep to zero at the moment, its important to note that he's /not/ actually Blacklisted. That could /never/ (well, /hardly/ ever) happen to a Pournelle; short of outright treason to the Planetary Consortium nothing will change the fact that however on the outs he might be with his family /at the moment/, he is still a distant genetic relation to some of the most influential people in known space. Which means that he will never cease to be at least /some/ kind of useful or interesting to a certain class of people. This is why David's Hypercorp [Networking] skill is so high (its not just how he was raised, its the fact that his last name alone still gets many people to talk to him even if he's in disavor), and this is why his existence on the edge of the most influential family dynasties of the Inner System will be a never-ending source of interesting plot complications -- both good for David /and/ bad -- to the DM. Oversight: While the negative attention David's earned isn't quite at the level where I could justify an Enemy negative trait, being part of the Barsoomian Ruster Cure project definitely doesn't earn you any friends at Oversight. Of course, Oversight has unwritten rules as to how much they're allowed to harass hyperelite First Family scions, even disfavored ones... but then again, the First Families have unwritten rules too.
Mechanical writeup here:
Spoiler: Highlight to view
Character Name: Dr. David Pournelle-Kinross, M.D. Player Name: cglasgow Concept: Rebellious idealist scion of hypercorp family Background: Hyperelite Faction: Argonaut Morph: Menton Motivations: +Help people +Technoprogressivism -Family's expectations EGO: Initiative: 10 Lucidity: 50 Trauma Threshold: 10 Insanity Rating: 100 Moxie: 3 MORPH: Speed: 3 Durability: 40 Wound Threshold: 8 Death Rating: 60 Damage Bonus: 2 REP: @-rep: 80 c-rep: 00 e-rep: 00 f-rep) 00 g-rep: 00 i-rep: 00 r-rep: 40 x-rep: 00 APTITUDES: Cognition: 20+10 30 Coordination: 15 15 Intuition: 15+5 20 Reflexes: 15+10 25 Savvy: 15+5 20 Somatics: 15+10 25 Willpower: 20+5 25 SKILLS Academics [Molecular Biology] (COG) 50/60 Academics [Classical Literature] (COG) 35/45 Academics [Finance] (COG) 30/40 Academics [Genetics] (COG) 50/60 Academics [Nanotechnology] (COG) 45/55 Art [Painting] (INT) 40/45 Beam Weapons (COO) 35/40 Climbing (SOM) 40/50 Deception (SAV) 30/40 Fray (REF) 40/50 Free Fall (REF) 30/40 Freerunning (SOM) 60/70 Infosec (COG) 40/50 Interest [Argonauts] (COG) 30/40 Interest [Anarchists] (COG) 30/40 Interest [Financial Markets] (COG) 30/40 Interest [Hypercorp Politics] (COG) 40/50 Interest [Medical Research] (COG) 50/60 Interfacing (COG) 35/45 Kinesics (SAV) (Judging Intent) 40/45* Language [Native English] (INT) 85/90 Language [Ancient Greek] (INT) 50/55 Language [Latin] (INT) 50/55 Language [Mandarin] (INT) 50/55 Medicine [General Practice] (COG) 60/70 Medicine [Gene Therapy] (COG) 50/60 Medicine [Nanomedicine] (COG) 50/60 Medicine [Trauma Surgery] (COG) 50/60 Networking [Autonomists] (SAV) 25/30 Networking [Hypercorps] (SAV) 60/65 Networking [Scientists] (SAV) 40/45 Perception (INT) 35/40 Programming (COG) (Nanofab) 40/50* Persuasion (SAV) 45/50 Profession [Business Administration] (COG) 35/45 Profession [Medical Care] (COG) 40/50 Profession [Survival] (COG) 30/40 Protocol (SAV) 45/50 Research (COG) 40/50 Unarmed Combat (SOM) (Subdual) 40/50* TRAITS Striking Looks 1 IMPLANTS Anti-Glare Basic Biomods Basic Mesh Inserts Circadian Regulation Clean Metabolism Cortical Stack Eelware Eidetic Memory Enhanced Vision Endocrine Control Enhanced Respiration Hardened Skeleton Hyper Linguist Math Boost Medichines Muscular Augmentation Neurachem (Level 1) Oracles Reflex Boosters Temperature Tolerance Vision Filter GEAR Stunner (Smartlink & Safety) Heavy Body Armor w/ Fireproofing, Full Helmet, Immunogenic, Lotus Coating, and Traction Backup Insurance (1 month) Home Fabber Nanobandages Portable X-Ray Emitter Simulspace Subscription (1 month) Smart Clothing Tool Kit [Medical] (Portable) Utilitool Viewer Software: Exploit, Tactical Network 7000 cr
cglasgow cglasgow's picture
And next up, a gatecrasher
This concept is Janet Makatozi, a Re-Instantiate from Earth who originally grew up as the child of Native American forest rangers in the North American Northwest Wildlife Preserve, and ended up becoming a gatehopper like none other.
Spoiler: Highlight to view
HISTORY:Janet Makatozi was born the child of Lakota semi-traditionalists ('semi' in that they did not embrace neo-primitivism or even particularly strong biochauvinism, they simply believed in historical conservation of their particular ethnic heritage) who were employed as wilderness conservation officers in the great and sprawling North American Northwest Wildlife Preserve. She grew up happy and well-educated and learning all about her parents' work while she still made up her mind what she'd be when she grew up. And then the world ended. Egocast out as a 16-year-old girl during the Fall, she awoke several years later to the hell of a hypercorporate indenture on Venus. Sweating out her year on the surface and surviving due to her perceptiveness, wilderness-trained and unremitting self-discipline, she then ended up in a series of barely-skilled labor jobs in the Venusian economy, her secondary-level education barely complete as of the Fall and what professional-level skills she did possess utterly useless in the Venusian environment. Her luck turned (she thought) when she won a slot in one of Pathfinder's infrequent gatecrashing lotteries, and so she and another team of naive hopefuls were given barely adequate training, barely adequate gear, and shoved through the gate to do a quick survey for minimum wage. However, this gatecrashing team was led by a charismatic and brilliant man, Jonathan Thorne, a (unknown to the rest of his team) singularity seeker who had waited patiently for a team of prospects to come along that would be susceptible to his pitch. Enthralling them with a tale of romantic manifest destiny, he convinced his squad of lottery dreamers to become gatehoppers, using his smuggled bluebox to randomize the gate setting for the return trip and instead of just being one more set of cogs in Pathfinder's exploitation machine, instead be Great Explorers on a Grand Adventure! Janet didn't see known space again for almost two years. Thorne led his team further and further out, across wild worlds of frozen methane and almost-Earthlike pastoral beauty concealing toxic flora and asteroids circling dead stars and sulfur-atmosphere purple deserts beneath multiple moons. The crew of struggling young newbies became solid gatecrashers, then seasoned professionals. They learned how to jailbreak their fabber, to jury-rig makers into long-range life-support packs, to stretch mediocre supplies built by the lowest bidder across months of time and solar system after solar system. They all read virtually the entire contents of their cheap little planetology Solarchive, and those who were already learned taught each other what they knew, forming their own little traveling symposium of learning among the stars. That is when Janet learned of the autonomists and their way of life from Casimir, who hailed from the Jovian trojans and had applied for the Pathfinder lottery only as a lark and was more surprised than anyone when he'd actually won it. By the time they were a year out, Janet already had the equivalent of a college degree in planetology. And one by one, they died. Sarah went from a vac suit failure. Ajan was eaten by a six-legged carnosaur. Nigel died falling into a miles-deep rift on a low-gravity world, during a marathon climb up the side of something as large or larger than the Grand Canyon. Casimir, devoured by a TITAN-created horror on an exoworld on the galactic rim. And Jonathan Thorne, who had lied to and misled and betrayed his entire team, who had deliberately lured them on a mad quest for a transcendence he only dreamed of how to find, who finally stood just short of his sought-for apotheosis, when one of the last daughters of the Lakota successfully stalked him through a rapidly-growing fractal maze and slit his throat from behind. Alone, Janet salvaged the bluebox and continued onward, and this time, without Jonathan to deliberately avoid known settings, she successfully found her way to a planet with transhuman settlement only six months later. By this point she'd been melted down and reforged like a samurai sword, a veteran explorer of a hundred worlds and more, a survival expert and explorer and stalker and hunter like few others. And her grief at the loss of Earth had been, not eliminated, but salved -- for there was a whole universe out there, and in a thing so wide and wondrous, surely one day a new Earth could be found. (If the campaign is set on Mars) Pathfinder welcomes her back and pays her the standard lottery-gatecrasher rates... of course, when you have your travel log and survey readings (even if the later ones were just what the muse was taking largely on automatic) for 90+ worlds, even the lottery-crasher's pittance adds up. Furthermore, the exec in charge of her debriefing was smart enough to remember the casino principle; when someone breaks the bank, don't try to cheat them of their payment. Instead, advertise the lucky sucker even more widely, and use that to lure in a horde of new suckers who actually think the lightning might strike twice. And so with a generous bonus and a 3-year Pathfinder professional exploration contract, Janet continues doing what she's grown to love... even if the PR windfall that Pathfinder was hoping for didn't materialize as anticipated, due to her using her one turn at the microphone to immediately shout out to the autonomists and argonaut explorers... (If the campaign takes place on Titan or Oberon) Janet is in [i]hog heaven[/i], given that the Love & Rage collective or the Titanian Argonauts and their approach to exploring the universe is everything she ever dreamed of. Either way, her rep scores outline the fact that she is currently the record-holder for most exoworlds visited in a gatehop run (or solo), and her x-rep would be even higher were it not for some of the more cautious or cynical gatecrashers wondering if she's not a thrillseeking nut. Janet's Black Mark lies in the fact that she broke a Pathfinder lottery contract in order to follow a singularity seeker to go gatehopping. Even if she remains employed by Pathfinder, hypercorp management is never going to fully trust her to obey orders again.
PS: Yes, I deliberately worked a Lakota warrior [i]and[/i] a katana joke into the writeup. :) And, the mechanics:
Spoiler: Highlight to view
Character Name: Janet Makatozi Player Name: cglasgow Concept: Native American Gatecrashing Explorer Background: Re-Instantiated Faction: Anarchist Morph: Crasher Motivations: +Exploration +Freedom -Exsurgent Threats EGO: Initiative: 6/7 Lucidity: 30 Trauma Threshold: 6 Insanity Rating: 60 Moxie: 5 MORPH: Speed: 2 Durability: 40 Wound Threshold: 8 Death Rating: 60 Damage Bonus: 2 REP: A-list (@-rep): 40 CivicNet (c-rep): 00 EcoWave (e-rep): 00 Fame (f-rep): 00 Guanxi (g-rep): 00 The Eye (i-rep): 00 RNA (r-rep): 00 X-Plorer (x-rep): 60 APTITUDES: Cognition: 15+5 20 Coordination: 15+5 20 Intuition: 15 15 Reflexes: 15+5 20 Savvy: 15+5 20 Somatics: 15+10 25 Willpower: 15 15 SKILLS Academics [Botany] (COG) 45/50 Academics [Ecology] (COG) 45/50 Academics [Old Earth History] (COG) 35/40 Academics [Planetology] (COG) 40/45 Academics [Xenobiology] (COG) 40/45 Art [Writing] (INT) 40 Animal Handling (SAV) 35/40 Beam Weapons (COO) 45/50 Climbing (SOM) 40/50 Blades (SOM) 40/50 Exotic Language [Lakota] (INT) 40 Fray (REF) 55/60 Free Fall (REF) 25/30 Freerunning (SOM) 40/50 Hardware [Armorer] (COG) 25/30 Hardware [Electronics] (COG) 25/30 Infiltration (COO) 60/65 Interest [Known Exoworlds] (COG) 40/45 Interest [Gatecrashing] (COG) 45/50 Interest [Native American Heritage] (COG) 35/40 Intimidation (SAV) 45/50 Investigation (INT) (Physical Tracking) 50* Navigation (INT) 40 Networking [Autonomists] (SAV) 45/50 Networking [Gatecrashers] (SAV) 35/40 Medicine [Paramedic] (COG) 35/40 Perception (INT) 60 Persuasion (SAV) (Raising Morale) 35/40* Pilot [Groundcraft] (REF) 25/30 Profession [LSRS] (COG) 25/30 Profession [Surveying] (COG) 45/50 Profession [Survival] (COG) 70/75 Scrounging (INT) 40 Spray Weapons (COO) 45/50 Unarmed Combat (SOM) 30/40 TRAITS Animal Empathy Danger Sense Situational Awareness Black Mark (Hypercorps) 1 Edited Memories IMPLANTS Anti-Glare Basic Biomods Basic Mesh Inserts Bioweave Armor (Light) Circadian Regulation Clean Metabolism Cortical Stack Direction Sense Eidetic Memory Enhanced Hearing Enhanced Respiration Enhanced Vision Grip Pads Hibernation Medichines Nanophages Neurachem Oxygen Reserve Toxin Filters Vacuum Sealing GEAR Crasher Suit (10/10 Armor) 10500 cr unspent
Note: Neither concept assumes Firewall has recruited them -- the one because it was specified by the DM, the other because she's intended for a straight gatecrashing campaign. Some points would be shifted around in the event of.
uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture
I like the bit about killin'
I like the bit about killin' one's c-rep while simultaneously becoming an @-rep star. Off-topic slightly, but is there one cure for the GSP-racket or is it a tailored thing? I ask because a character in my so-fresh-it's-still-covered-in-afterbirth campaign has already found himself creating a list of rednecks to cure as they make their way through the Martian backwaters. In case anyone knew off-hand.
Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
cglasgow cglasgow's picture
Well, the fact that the
Well, the fact that the Ruster morph listed in the core book comes [i]without[/i] the Planned Obolescence trait implies that that there is [i]a[/i] cure -- if there's a 'premium model' that the hypercorps sell that doesn't have the planned obolescence trait, then that means that the flaw is not inherent to the design (such as the Comfurt addiction on the hyperbright morph in Rimward, which is there because the neurochemistry on that morph is still incompletely researched). So, the social justice genehackers are totally out there trying to figure out which genetic patch can get you from point A to point B, as it were. IOW, no, as far as I know there is no 'Ruster Cure' in canon... yet. But there easily [i]could[/i] be, so I wrote it into a character backstory. Because I thought it was neat, and because it doesn't actually break the setting for a DM. After all, as the writeup mentions, even if such a cure exists not every ruster is going to [i]take[/i] the cure, especially if the hypercorps start an immediate memetic campaign to convince them that its some horrible anarch cheapjack brew that'll just delay the symptoms a few years but then obliterate their morph beyond repair with incurable cancer even going back on the GSP double-quick won't save them from. Plus there's the problem of distribution, especially in the face of hypercorp cops totally clamping down on the smuggling of. (It's not like your average Martian indenture can just download the specs off the mesh and then tell his maker to brew him a batch; he lives on Mars, any maker he has access to is totally DRM-locked.) After all, I'm pretty sure that the autonomists could totally smuggle at least one fully unlocked cornucopia machine to a Barsoomian settlement in the outback, use it to make other unlocked CMs all day long, and so on until every poor ruster who needs one has his own fully unlocked fabber, right? So why don't they all have them? Because unlocked CMs and fabbers are hilariously illegal on Mars and its very difficult to smuggle them from dome to dome without being shot in the face by hypercorp goons. I'm pretty sure the ruster cure David helped invent leapt to a similar status of legality about two days after it was first published. (Which still keeps David unarrested because even Consortium justice finds blatant ex post facto a little far to stretch, especially when the case has already gone public.) Plus, even if the company wasn't already changing the DNA keys on each new batch of rusters they decant so that a different GSP is necessary for each one, they damn sure are going to start trying that [i]now[/i]. So, yeah, any DM has more than enough wiggle room to say 'Congrats, David! You helped cure the Ruster GSP scam!' on down to 'Congrats, David! You helped an indeterminately large yet still not campaign-changing batch of rusters, but the problem ain't solved yet!' I may be totally new to Eclipse Phase, but I am old enough in general RPG play to know that if your backstory leaves a DM enough wiggle room to retcon it to fit inside his particular vision of the setting without too much stretching, its way more likely to get approved. :)
cglasgow cglasgow's picture
And now, your mostly-standard
And now, your mostly-standard Ultimate-shaped blunt object for serving as the combat muscle in a mostly-standard Firewall campaign, we bring you Gabriel Stone, renegade ultimate mercenary on the run from his shadowy cultist sub-faction of the Ultimates who's been more memory-edited than Jason Bourne. I did say 'mostly' standard, after all. :) Backstory here:
Spoiler: Highlight to view
Gabriel Stone was born 13 BF as a crew-brat on an outer-system tramp... he remembers that much. He also remembers a life grown up in space, circling around everywhere between L-5 and the Jovian Trojans, learning how to fix the airsystem and navigate by the stars and fly the cargo shuttle. He remembers evacuating people during the Fall. He remembers learning an interest in the martial arts and philosophy from one of the evacuees... what was his name? He remembers Dad's decision to take the ship to the outer system routes once the Planetary Consortium got going and started squeezing the tramps. And he remembers the drive disaster that left him and... were there others?... did it even happen at all? ... in space near Pharos Station, and being picked up after drifting for days in his survival bubble by the overhumanist Ultimates shortly after they and Go-nin had seized the Discord Gate. He remembers them nodding in approval at his 'potential' and inducting him into their society. He remembers years of harsh training and indoctrination. He remembers becoming an excellent fireteam-skirmisher and sapper. He remembers his mentor and squad leader, Exemplar Viruja, becoming big-brother, then father, then more. He remembers becoming a loyal member of the overhumanist cult, dispassionately executing cruelties on innocents all across the System in the service of his Ultimate sect, fulfilling contracts for hypercorps and criminals, earning more credit and favors for the Cause. And always there was the smiling face of Viruja, his teacher, leading their squad, encouraging him more and more. And he remembers -- and wishes he could forget -- the day he killed his sister, as collateral damage during yet another hypercorp sabotage mission against yet another competitor for yet another paycheck. His sister, who by all of his memory had died five years before in space, around Pluto. And he knew that his family of drifters did not have backup insurance, and that her cortical stack would have been lost with the rest of her in deep space. At the next opportunity, Gabriel arranged to have himself examined by a freelance psychsurgeon on a scum barge, and confirmed what he had learned; that he had been extensively memory-edited and never knew it. While the psychsurgeon confirmed that his first name was the one he had been born with, his last name was not 'Stone'. Neural pruning had been used so that while he remembered a true outline of his prior life, virtually anything he could use to identify exactly /which/ ship or /what/ family had been excised. The overhumanists had taken what they found in that survival bubble and effectively wiped it clean, and then turned it into cannon fodder for their own purposes; what psychosurgery could not manage, good old-fashioned cult-style indoctrination would suffice to do. Gabriel then made certain other arrangements and went back to angrily confront Viruja. While the beta fork riding shotgun in his morph at that time was barely a gamma once it had finished meshcasting itself back from where Gabriel had self-detonated all over his mentor and the rest of his squad, there was one fact confirmed in the confrontation -- wiping him and then remolding him had not been Viruja's idea alone, but was in the service of a greater plan among the Eris overhumanists. Was it just a means of boosting their #'s? Or had David and his family stumbled across something hidden re: the Go-nin takeover of Eris (as a probability reconstruction posited a 40% chance that his family's freighter would have been docked at the station during the critical time window) and his being salvaged instead of obliterated the result of some twisted Ultimate ethic re: not wasting potential transhuman material? What was Go-nin's involvement in all this; are the corrupted Ultimates being manipulated by them, or manipulating them, or both, or neither? Gabriel doesn't know. Of course, Gabriel had planned his suicidal confrontation with Viruja to serve multiple purposes. One, to see if violently confronting him would get him to spill anything. And two, to arrange for an off-the-books resleeving on a discreet criminal hab, to help break contact and get clear. With his backup resleeved into a new morph of his choice (Gabriel chose a customized Crasher morph as an excellent balance between survival versatility and combat optimums, without advertising his presence in the Ultimate-signature Remade or even in a Fury), upgraded with a few aftermarket boosts, Gabriel returned to the life of a freelance merc, the only trade he now knew. While not blacklisted with the Ultimates faction (after all, they're too individualist to really enforce a firm blacklist), his going "apostate" has zero'ed out his u-rep and earned him a major black mark with Ultimates of all varieties. Especially since their version of the story is much less flattering than the truth. Gabriel is a recent recruit to Firewall. His recruitment was not dramatic; a Firewall scanner noted an unusual blip in u-rep fluctuations, investigated, and found a viable recruit for a freelance combat Sentinel at the other end of the data trail. While Gabriel had already been planning his next move for finding out the truth of his past (and possibly his family) on his own, Firewall's assistance in that regard was accepted. As well as their assistance in sanitizing his backtrail, so that the murder/clean-up attempts of Viruja and his shadowy masters are only an occasional rather than a constant problem. And maybe, fighting to protect transhumanity from genuine threats will help Gabriel make up for all the greedy, conscienceless killing he'd been used for in the past.
Stats here:
Spoiler: Highlight to view
Character Name: Gabriel Stone Player Name: cglasgow Concept: Renegade Ultimate w/ a Mysterious Past Background: Drifter Faction: Ultimates Morph: Crasher Motivations: +Personal Development +Redemption +Find The Truth EGO: Initiative: 8 Lucidity: 30 Trauma Threshold: 6 Insanity Rating: 60 Moxie: 2 MORPH: Speed: 2 Durability: 50 Wound Threshold: 10 Death Rating: 75 Damage Bonus: 3 REP: A-list (@-rep): 20 CivicNet (c-rep): 40 EcoWave (e-rep): 00 Fame (f-rep): 00 Guanxi (g-rep): 40 The Eye (i-rep): 30 RNA (r-rep): 00 Ultimate (u-rep): 00 APTITUDES: Cognition: 15+5 20 Coordination: 15+5 20 Intuition: 15+5 20 Reflexes: 15+5 20 Savvy: 15 15 Somatics: 15+15 30 Willpower: 15 15 SKILLS Academics [Engineering] 45/50 Academics [Military Science] (COG) 40/45 Academics [Philosophy] (COG) 40/45 Beam Weapons (COO) 45/50 Blades (SOM) 45/60 Fray (REF) 60/65 Free Fall (REF) 40/45 Freerunning (SOM) 40/55 Demolitions (COG) 50/55 Hardware [Armorer] (COG) 35/40 Hardware [Industrial] (COG) 35/40 Infiltration (COO) 45/50 Interests [Exsurgent Threats] (COG) 40/45 Interests [Known Habitats] (COG) 40/45 Intimidation (SAV) 50 Investigation (INT) (Deductions) 35/40* Kinetic Weapons (COO) 60/65 Medicine [Paramedic] (COG) 35/40 Navigation (INT) (Astrogation) 30/35* Networking [Firewall] (SAV) 30 Networking [Hypercorps] (SAV) 40 Networking [Ultimates] (SAV) 30 Perception (INT) 50/55 Pilot [Spacecraft] (REF) 35/40 Profession [Gourmet Chef] (COG) 45/50 Profession [Military Ops] (COG) 50/55 Profession [Security Ops] (COG) 50/55 Profession [Logistics] (COG) 50/55 Seeker Weapons (COO) 40/45 Spray Weapons (COO) 40/45 Throwing Weapons (COO) 35/40 Unarmed Combat (SOM) 60/75 TRAITS Brave Black Mark: Ultimates (Level 3) Edited Memories Enemy IMPLANTS Basic Biomods Basic Mesh Inserts Bioweave Armor (Light) Circadian Regulation Clean Metabolism Cortical Stack Direction Sense Eidetic Memory Enhanced Respiration Enhanced Vision Grip Pads Hardened Skeleton Hibernation Hyper Linguist Math Wiz Medichines Neurachem (Level 1) Oxygen Reserve Respirocytes Toxin Filters Vacuum Sealing Wrist-Mounted Tools GEAR 3900 cr Railgun SMG (Smartlink, Safety, Extended Clip, Imaging Scope) 100 rounds AP, 200 rounds normal Underbarrel Seeker for SMG 10 Thermobaric micromissiles Shard Pistol (Smartlink, Safety) 100 rounds standard, 100 rounds coated w/ Twitch Densiplast Gloves Vibroblade Heavy Body Armor (Full Helmet, Life-Support Pack, Radio Booster, Refractive Glazing, Specs) (19/16) Guardian Nanoswarm w/ dedicated hive Scout Nanoswarm w/ dedicated hive Armor Clothing Repair Spray (x2) Software: Tactical Network
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
cglasgow wrote:Well, the fact
cglasgow wrote:
Well, the fact that the Ruster morph listed in the core book comes [i]without[/i] the Planned Obolescence trait implies that that there is [i]a[/i] cure -- if there's a 'premium model' that the hypercorps sell that doesn't have the planned obolescence trait, then that means that the flaw is not inherent to the design
Couple of point's on this point; Having Any open-source broad-spectrum cure available for planned obsolescence sucks about half the wind out of the sails of the barsoomian movment and the Tharsis league. As a GM this would make me twitchy and I'd ask that the PC made his bones in a less spectacular way. Simply being a hypereliete doctor who refuses to tow-the-line and refutes the meme that genehacking is dangerous not to mention violates Copyright! Would probably be enough to accomplish what you're trying to do. (that of course is just my feeling about the setting.) I'm fairly certain that I can say with fairness (and kindness) that you're wrong when you use the term "design" (singular) in reference to Rusters. Ruster is a term for a class of morph in the way that sedan or pickup trucks are terms for types of vehicles. There could easily be hundreds of models (not to mention model years) of Rusters and they are definitely produced by several unrelated hypercorps so a "Cure" (singular) for P0 doesn't strike me as very realistic. Also; Planned Obsolescence may be a misleading term in the fact that it's often not an evil scheme but just poor design or shoddy workmanship that leads to the issues. The obsolescence of Ford's Pinto, Chevy's Chevette, or Microsoft's Vista OS were not planned as such. They all just suck for multiple and various reasons, some of which should have been predicted but were ignored. As a biomorph is orders of magnitude more complex than any of those products it's hard to say that there is any single cure for the obsolescence of any particular Ruster model. The only planned and evil part is turning after-market support for a shitty product into a revenue stream. On the otherhand it's not really that big a deal and I apparently just feel like typing today. I like your characters overall.

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

cglasgow cglasgow's picture
Planned Obolescence the
Planned Obolescence the negative morph trait, however, is totally a deliberate and evil hypercorp scheme as applied to the Martian Rusters. We know they know how to make morphs without that trait, the core book tells us. In fact, Planned Obolescence the negative morph trait and the whole Genetic Service Pack thing didn't even [i]exist[/i] until Sunward, AFAIK -- the oppression the Tharsis League and the Barsoomians were facing in the corebook description of Mars was your more bog-standard "company town, company store" type exploitation, along with control of the rails, exploitative pricing, hypercorp expansion, etc, etc. So nah, I don't really feel like I made a massive setting change from the core -- all I did was partially (and based on the DM's choice, possibly [i]very[/i] partially) un-retcon a retcon Sunward did. Hell, the whole 'GSP as oppressive hypercorp scheme on Mars' is optional content even in Sunward -- the sidebar on page 166 says "Optional Rule" at the top. Along with 'open-source and premium ruster models without the flaw totally exist', like I said earlier. :) Add: Also, I didn't have him invent the cure single-handed -- you did notice that credit was shared among an 11-man team of argonaut and anarchist scientists of various disciplines, yes? David wasn't even one of the senior team members. (Ironically, looking at his sheet, his greatest value to the project would have been that he was the only one there with a degree in hypercorp business management, although he had more than enough genetics and nanomedicine to contribute as a supporting team member as well.)
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
cglasgow wrote: In fact,
cglasgow wrote:
In fact, Planned Obolescence the negative morph trait and the whole Genetic Service Pack thing didn't even [i]exist[/i] until Sunward, AFAIK /snip/ all I did was partially (and based on the DM's choice, possibly [i]very[/i] partially) un-retcon a retcon Sunward did.
The books are not published in sequence of events. There is no (at this point) evolving metaplot. The core book is AF-10 Sunward is AF-10. Rimward does not follow Sunward does not follow EP Core in any time line, in the same way that the classic Mayan period did not follow the Dark Ages in Europe. It's a minor issue in the way of thinking about the setting as presented but it will help players to understand that things like Planned obsolescence have been around since there's been hypercorps on mars. It's kind of clunky, but additions to existing settings by later books are not retcons as much as expansions of that part of the setting. I completely retract any arguement I made against a "Cure" (singular) Apparently there is A cure and it's even called "The Cure"; Sunward p. 98 "People’re convinced their bodies will fall apart if they get off the GSPs, when really all you need is a few months of low-level genetherapy to correct some of the errors the corp genetic designers couldn’t be bothered to fix." As long as your character invented the cure at least 5 years before the fall it works. Sunward p.98 "In the years between when I left home and the Fall, I put in five years planting water bears and blacking rocks, I ate paste, and I scarce cracked a beer or lit a joint the whole time. I don’t think I could ever make myself save cred like that again, and if I’d had kids, there’d’ve been no way. At the end I got the Cure, and it worked." sorry for my confusion I thought "The Cure" was more complex

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

cglasgow cglasgow's picture
It wasn't quite that far back
It wasn't quite that far back in backstory, but meh, it still works even if all we did was take it from 'possible to cure with a few months of gene therapy' to 'look, its as easy as repair spray. just inject this tube once a week for a month and you're good'.
uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture
Good to know. Didn't mean to
Good to know. Didn't mean to start any controversy. I think that I am gooding to portray it as per the sidebar. Gives one of the Argonauts in the group an a clear goal to accomplish: disseminate the cure as it were.
Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
Infomorph Kitsune Infomorph Kitsune's picture
I has a question! I'm sorry
I has a question! I'm sorry for hijacking this one temporarily, but I thought a new thread for one little question was a waste... Can Infolife take morphs beyond that of Synthetic? Like could they take on a Pod or a Sylph or something? It seems like they can, but I want to make sure.
Hoarseman Hoarseman's picture
Yep, they can use any morph.
Yep, they can use any morph.
cglasgow cglasgow's picture
Next up, a scum!
Next up, a scum! Now, we've all seen scum hackers, scum enforcers, scum artists, etc., but a scum quantum physicist? OK, OK, he hacked a little too, but that's because a man's recreational drug habit didn't pay for itself. Besides, it would be hard to be one of the brightest young up-and-comers in quantum computing and theoretical physics without learning something about the theory of computation in general, which would mean you were handy with all sorts of computing technology... And so, we bring you Slammer Steve, Scum Science Genius! Edit: ... and, we totally forgot to buy Research skill. *moves some points around* That's the one thing I'm not fond of re: EP so far -- its so easy to forget a skill while throwing it all together. Man, couldn't they just use broad skill categories or something?
Spoiler: Highlight to view
Steve Zitwilski was born on an isolate habitat well off in the corner of the system, raised in a quasi-survivalist bioconservative hab that varied between boring, dull, and mind-numblingly tedious. A natural mathematical genius who loved getting lost in theoretical visions of sets and logic paradoxes, his 'planned community' ignored everything he enjoyed and assigned him duties as a maintenance technician. He sweated through hours of militia training he had little aptitude for, spent hours more repairing and fixing the primitive local data network (and the life-support systems, and the entertainment room ectos, and cleaning out the waste tanks), and had nothing to look forward to for the rest of his life but the same. The few peeks of the outer system and the general mesh network (which the hab restricted most access to) he got gave him glimpses of a wider world out there, a world where textbooks actually existed for subjects beyond the secondary-ed level, where 'higher mathematics' didn't mean 'counting higher than 100 while doing a full physical inventory of stores', where people could even get something more interesting to drink than homebrewed grain alcohol and cigarettes came in flavors other than tobacco. A world where people actually [i]had fun[/i] and [i]did things[/i]. And then the scum fleet [i]Lick Me I'm Delicious[/i] made a swing by their little out-of-the-way hab as part of its self-imposed quest to visit every inhabited rock in the system at least once, and Steve ran away to join the circus without a single look back. While there was some culture shock to be getting used to, and he still occasionally had to clean the waste tanks (although miracle of miracles, so did everybody else, and they actually took fair turns!), 'Slammer Steve' (as he now called himself) found happiness for the first time in his life. As well as Orbital Hash, girls, mosh pits, girls, thrash synthrock, girls, nanodrugs, girls, advanced educational software, girls, nanofab hacking, and girls. (And guys too, of course, but by Scum standards Steve's still a bit of a conservative... which means by anybody else's standards he's a cheerful lech.) With access to the full educational resources of the mesh, Steve alternated studying advanced theoretical mathematics (and then quantum physics, research infosystems, prediction theory, etc,) via correspondence university and hanging with the local scum techies and learning all sorts of fun exploits, nanohacks, and recreational pharmaceuticals. Slammer Steve found in himself a genuine talent for several of the hard sciences, and eventually left the [i]Lick Me[/i] to attend grad school full-time (at an anarchist/argonaut free university hab, of course -- no fucking way he was going to go suffer through some stuffy hypercorp diploma mill). While there, he got sort of shanghai'ed by a Firewall team sent to investigate an X-threat that had just lost their own infosec specialist to an Exsurgent virus on-site, and needed a temporary replacement for the job from anyone nearby and available. (That Sentinel squad has long since gotten their own hacker back by restoring him from his pre-mission backup, but that didn't do them any good at the time.) Seeing a use for a genius scientist in several disciplines with a bit of an adventurous streak, the team's Proxy chose to back their decision and induct Steve for full evaluation. Having passed, he is now ready for deployment. Steve's r-rep is because he publishes regularly on established scientific mesh communities, and has had several critically acclaimed insights and refinements into quantum computing theory and hierarchical mathematics as applied to general assembler engineering for nanites. His g-rep comes from his doing occasional mercenary hacking jobs for this or that criminal network whenever he needed to trade for something off the red market (or felt like it). His @-rep, natch, reflects that he's a solid citizen and all-right guy by scum standards, but not any kind of major trend-setter or networking king. PERSONALITY: Steve is a fairly typical example of someone from a very repressed background tossed into a group of total libertines, tempered by a strong measure of actual intelligence and a survival-oriented awareness produced by having lived in space habs his entire life. While actually researching or working on anything that could kill someone if he screwed it up, he's entirely focused on the job; as soon as that's over with, he flips the switch in his head and goes back to being a cheerful party animal looking for his next romance-of-the-hour or hit of the good stuff. He stays away from petals like the plague, though; those things can cause permanent neural damage, and Steve's neurons are the most valuable possession he has.
Mechanics:
Spoiler: Highlight to view
Character Name: Slammer Steve Player Name: cglasgow Concept: Scum Science Genius! Background: Isolate Faction: Scum Morph: Menton Motivations: +Adventure +Scientific Curiosity -Regimentation EGO: Initiative: 7 Lucidity: 30 Trauma Threshold: 6 Insanity Rating: 60 Moxie: 3 MORPH: Speed: 1(3) Durability: 40 Wound Threshold: 8 Death Rating: 60 Damage Bonus: 1 REP: A-list (@-rep): 40 Guanxi (g-rep): 30 The Eye (i-rep): 10 RNA (r-rep): 50 APTITUDES: Cognition: 20+10 30 Coordination: 15 Intuition: 15+5 20 Reflexes: 10+5 15 Savvy: 15 Somatics: 15 Willpower: 15+5 20 SKILLS Academics [Chemistry] (COG) 40/50 Academics [Computer Science] (COG) 60/70 Academics [Engineering] (COG) 40/50 Academics [Mathematics] (COG) 60/70 Academics [Nanotechnology] (COG) 50/60 Academics [Physics] (COG) 70/80 Deception (SAV) 25 Fray (REF) 40/45 Freefall (REF) 50/55 Hardware [Armorer] (COG) 30/40 Hardware [Electronics] (COG) 50/60 Hardware [Industrial] (COG) 30/40 Hardware [Robotics] (COG) 30/40 Infosec (COG) 70/80 Interests [Exsurgent Threats] (COG) 30/40 Interests [Kama Sutra] (COG) 40/50 Interests [Prediction Markets] (COG) 40/50 Interests [Recreational Drugs] (COG) 40/50 Interfacing (COG) 60/70 Investigation [COG] (Deductions) 40/50* Kinetic Weapons (COO) 40 Medicine [Paramedics] (COG) 30/40 Networking (Autonomist) (SAV) 40 Networking (Criminals) (SAV) 35 Networking (Firewall) (SAV) 25 Networking (Scientists) (SAV) 35 Perception (INT) 40/45 Persuasion (SAV) (Seduction) 40* Pilot [Spacecraft] (REF) 30/35 Profession [Habitat Systems] (COG) 30/40 Profession [Mesh Networking] (COG) 40/50 Programming (COG) 70/80 Research (COG) 50/60 Scrounging (INT) 25/30 Unarmed Combat (SOM) 40 TRAITS Ego: Adaptability Ego: Math Wiz Morph: Striking Looks (Level 1) Ego: Addiction: Recreational Drugs (Minor) IMPLANTS Basic Biomods Basic Mesh Inserts Circadian Regulation Cortical Stack Eidetic Memory Hyper Linguist Math Boost Medichines Mental Speed Mnemonic Augmentation Oracles GEAR 8500 cr Medium Kinetic Pistol (Smartlink, Safety) 100 rounds Homing Biter ammo Anonymous Account Services Ecto (Disposable) Fabber (jailbroken) Fractal Gloves Respirocytes Standard Vacsuit (Smartcloth) (7/7) Specs Utilitool Software: AR Illusions, Encryption, Exploit, Firewall, Recognition (Gait, Image, Vocal), Kinesics, Probability Mapping, Radio Motion Detection, Spoof, Sniffer, Tracking, Tactical Network
Tyrnis Tyrnis's picture
Infomorph Kitsune wrote:I has
Infomorph Kitsune wrote:
I has a question! I'm sorry for hijacking this one temporarily, but I thought a new thread for one little question was a waste... Can Infolife take morphs beyond that of Synthetic? Like could they take on a Pod or a Sylph or something? It seems like they can, but I want to make sure.
Not only can they, but Infolife take the same -10 penalty for sleeving into a synth that any other character takes -- so it's actually easier for them to resleeve into biomorphs. Most infolife PCs I've seen have favored synths for story purposes, but there's nothing at all in the game mechanics to favor that.