First, hi all! Second, I am puzzled by some of the divisions of technology in Eclipse Phase because I see them as not merely blurring together but being a spectrum where A ranges into B quite easily. I want to discuss some ideas about bioware, medichines and nanomachines. It seems to me that one of the most common tricks in EP is to hack a fabber or maker and use it to make toys the adults don't want you to play with. I don't think I've been in a campaign where this hasn't happened. The character with hacking and a bunch of handy blueprints can be very effective, because she doesn't need to worry about losing her morph or her equipment. I believe this can be taken a step further, please have a look at this chain of reasoning and see where it breaks (if it does) or add links to it. 1. Medichines are "the most common form of nanoware". They are nanobots inside the body which are capable of repairing extremely severe damage (four wounds at once doesn't phase them?!) to their host, or putting their host in stasis. 2. In order to repair damage, medichines must be capable of shuffling cells around, building cellular structures (flesh and bone) and reconstructing complex organs. They must also be capable of taking ingested proteins and materials and either turning them into more cells/tissue or taking those nutrients from the bloodstream (which would suggest that if nanomachines are regrowing missing chunks of your body you're going to want to eat something fast). 3. In order for them to be constantly available in the user's bloodstream, they almost certainly must come from an implanted hive. 4. One can turn them on and off voluntarily, so one's PAN is in communication with them. 5. They can be reprogrammed, and can even adapt to changing circumstances (people grow, muscle develops or diminishes, etc., not to mention new bioware might be installed). 6. "Bioware augmentations can be acquired either as a genemod when the morph is designed and grown or as a later modification to an existing morph, either by using nanomachines to modify the morph’s tissue or by externally growing the organ and implanting it." (p.301, core) 7. A character can have blueprints for bioware. 8. I don't see why medichines cannot have their 'body template' of the user adjusted/reprogrammed to include a bioware blueprint, and immediately all say 'Oh no, user needs healing.' and begin constructing those bioware implants [i]in situ[/i]. (Don't blow your programming roll!) This means that where bioware is concerned, a character created with medichines and bioware blueprints could modify themselves on-station, using the same rules as far as time-to-create which are used for nanofabrication (i.e., since most bioware is 'low' cost it will only be a few hours). 9. For bonus points, if you can hack someone's PAN, you could theoretically reprogram their medichines with a non-functional (i.e., this kills the man...Say, tell them to treat hemoglobin as a toxin) 'body template'. This would force the target to turn off its medichines, at least temporarily, until it could 'reset' them. I also have a few questions about why certain implants are not available as bioware. Bioware Anti-Glare? Fast-reflex nictitating membranes combined with a temporary (fractions of a second) combined with localized neurachem-style synaptic and muscular speed enhancers to close the iris down to nearly nothing ASAP, thus protecting the rods and cones in the retina. Bioware Oxygen Reserve? Rebuild one lung so it has two chambers, separated by a consciously controlled valving system that can be used to increase pressure in the lower chamber via a pumping mechanism, the other chamber contains a dense 'sponge' of symbiotic moss which absorbs nutrients from the bloodstream and acts as a CO2/oxygen converter. One of the things your medichines do when they aren't actively repairing you is occasionally trim the foliage, break it down into simple sugars and stuff them back into your bloodstream for redistribution. Bioware Hardened Skeleton? Modify some osteoplasts to grow longitudinal strands of [url="http://news.discovery.com/tech/print-body-armor.htm"]this stuff[/url] along bone structure, or perhaps something more like [url="http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1314350/squid_beaks_one_of_the_hard..."]this[/url]. Bioware Electrical Sense? Install lateral lines with extremely dense sensory nerve clusters for fine granularity of sensation. Cyberclaws? Same material as for Hardened Skeleton, roughly a similar biological template as that used for bioware claws, but attach them along the backs of the metacarpals so they switchlade out and forward, perhaps with a trigger akin to that of [url="http://notexactlyrocketscience.wordpress.com/2006/08/28/mantis-shrimps-t... mantis shrimp"[/url]. There's a half-dozen different biological ways to turn your kitty-claws into a wasp-knife that I can think of...Toxin delivery system plus gas-generating glands or some such. And (given a few hours) you could reprogram your toxin sacs or drug glands to produce different chemicals. Particularly your toxin sacs since they already obviously must have some system for keeping you from poisoning yourself with whatever is in them. Congratulations, you are now your own bio-polymer factory, at least for small quantities. Or your smart-pet is, once you give it medichines and hack them. You could even grow other bioware 'organs' in a skin pocket in your spare time. Increase your daily caloric intake, wait until those enhanced eyeballs are done, open up the pouch and very gently clip them free and dump them into a container that has medichines to keep them in medical stasis. Put an advertisement on the local mesh. Profit. Thoughts? If you were a GM would you consider this overpowered (I.E., the idea that a character with medichines can have their own built-in bioware fabber?).