I find the Lost to be very interesting but I have several questions about them. Given the limited (not a complaint, there's deliberate space for GM's to add their own riff on the Lost) information about them, there could be many valid interpretations of them. I (and likely other readers) welcome your suggestions.
First question: Raising an actual crop of human beings is hardly the domain of business alone; do you think the project was a government project. That is, a project encouraged (or at least not prohibited) by the Planetary Consortium. I'm thinking much like NASA contracted out space tech contracts to the big aerospace companies.
Also, do you think the Futura (at least the good parts of it) project was public knowledge from the beginning? It doesn't seem that the public was bothered by the innate fact that a generation was actually being grown until Things Went Terribly Wrong.
There is no other mention of Hanto Genomics that I can find past the Lost sidebar of the core book. As it was the spearhead of the research and seems to have disappeared, I am guessing it took the brunt of the blame for the project failure and went bankrupt. Cognite seems to have survived (barely) due to ...what; innocence, blackmail material, good lawyers, deep pockets? If a genomics company was the main partner of the project rather than a cognitics (?) corporation; then I guess that whatever made Futura even a theoretical possibility had more to do with biomorphic genetics rather than cognitive circuitry.
The team must have been either very confident and/or desperate to have used TITAN technology. Do you think this part of the project was known if the rest of the project was publicized? Was the Consortium or Ozma in on it (or at least aware of it)?
Could the TITAN tech be a trap left by the TITAN? Something that seemed obviously helpful (once tamed) in the short term but subtly harmful in the long run.
Anyway, somehow the project Went Wrong. Do you think it was a conspiracy from the beginning by the project heads, sabotage from some other party, or a accident. My understanding is that the infection had to be deliberate but there is no proof as to who.
It occurs to me that if you believe you are trapped in a video game, other 'characters' aren't real and thus killing them isn't anything. If a player's actions in typical video game were translated into real life, that person might seem to have no regards for other people (characters). Such as character might be considered psychotic at first glance.
If the Futura project had actually [i]worked[/i] (that is, no psi and no psychosis), how do you think the kids would have reacted once literally released into the 'real world.'; resentment and gratitude. Would the kids have been indentured to pay for their upbringing?
I'll stop here for now? I look forward to your feedback. Thanks in advance! :-)
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A few questions about the Lost
Fri, 2014-06-27 23:12
#1
Blue Screen of Death
A few questions about the Lost
Sat, 2014-06-28 03:30
#2
ShadowDragon8685
Blue Screen of Death wrote:I
If the Futura project was being conducted on wholly-owned habitats, the only form of government with any kind of standing to complain would have been the Consortium, which Cognite was part of. It seems likely that the Consortium itself was encouraging Cognite's project, with other hypercorps partnering or investing.
People were traumatized by the Fall, which was still ongoing when the Lost Generation started cooking. On page 233 of EP Core, there's a report dated 2nd quarter, 8 AF which explicitly is stated to be five years after the end of the Lost, and the project itself took 34 months before that. So, they launched the Futura Project within [i]literal months[/i] of the "Official" end of the Fall.
At that point, people were traumatized and terrified, and probably would have backed anything that was looking forward.
Hanto probably took the fall, yeah. Cognite's survival wouldn't have been "barely," they're strongly implied to be one of the voting members of the Consortium board and they own Phobos. Like, the entire moon, among other things. Cognite is like Fuchi Industrial Electronics from Shadowrun - if you want to take them out, you're going to have to fight a literal war to do it. (And yes, I used that analogy because that is [i]exactly what happened[/i] to Fuchi.)
"Desperate" is most likely, and the TITAN tech thing being well-known? HELL no. The Consortium was in on it by default as Cognite is part of the Consortium, and you bet your ass Ozma's fingers were deep in this pie.
[i]Could[/i] it be? Absolutely. [i]Is[/i] it? No way to know. That's one of the things Firewall Proxies enjoy losing sleep over.
Could've gone any way of those That's going to have to be up to the individual GMs.
That [i]might[/i] be part of things. I suspect that the Lost all developing morph fever played a role in things, but a creeping sense of unreality - especially as the lack of permanent consequences started to sink in - would have been a part, too. Honestly, I'd expect growing up in the Lost to be kind of hellish; literally no effective parents, and copypasted environments... And, of course, the derangements you get from the Psi trait.
So, yeah. It was a gigantic clusterfuck. I'd expect intimidation and threats to be as common as saying "Hello." Fights would likely have been an occurrence you'd have seen daily, kids would murder others either because they were fucking psychotic and sick of seeing that other guy's fucking face, or because they were afraid of themselves being murdered and decided to do unto the other guy before he did unto them. And of course, you also have to remember that they would have been going through [i]puberty[/i], too, so I'd expect that sexual assaults were commonplace as well.
I expect that was the intention behind the program: raise a huge number of brand-new young adults, well-trained, obedience-conditioned, and conditioned to think of mama corp and papa corp as the authority to obey. In other words, perfect corporate drones. Yes, they definitely would have been indentured.
You're welcome. :)
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Sat, 2014-06-28 21:36
#3
uwtartarus
My interpretation of it was
My interpretation of it was that the inclusion of the exsurgent virus was some sort of maverick element of Ozma, and that there are numerous Lost and Cognite interests who are pissed off by that blunder, so a lot of figures in the spy scene are trying to get proof of it, as well as continue that line of research.
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Sun, 2014-06-29 23:40
#4
Blue Screen of Death
I hadn't done the math. You
I hadn't done the math. You are quite right, Shadow Dragon, the Futura project was begun pretty much right after the Fall. As it was still possible to make kids the 'old-fashioned' way, I guess the advantage is that the Futura kids would be ready-grown and trained quickly so that their cost in precious life-support was compensated for.
I do get the idea that Cognite is one of the 'big bads' of EP. You can't make mudpies out of minds without getting your hands a little dirty. The excellent (and under appreciated) show [i]Dollhouse[/i] started out with memory-altering professionals moral (or at least they [i]thought[/i] they were) and then sliding down that slippery moral slope. And, of course, when you manufacture [b]Mind[/b], you are pretty good at countering the machinations of other minds.
Uwtartarus, I can see Ozma corrupting the project. They get psychic assassins and someone else pays for it.
Pretty much I think you have helped answer my questions about what happened to the murderous moppets before the project failure. I've now wondering about what happened after the Lost fled.
Specifically, I am fascinated by the Futura morphs and why they are considered to be such a disadvantage for Lost characters.
The Futura morphs are an odd duck at the used morph lot. They were created by modifying an already impressive Exalt with recovered TITAN technology and thus became the only standard morphs tainted with alien tech.
One of the improvements was how fast a Futura could grow compared to other morphs. This would be a very valuable advantage to any morph farm or user but the fast-growing Futura genes do not seem to have been used again. This implies that there is something dangerous or wrong with that particular avenue of rapid clone development.
The Futuras also had an increase in mental agility and resilience (if not actual intelligence). This does make sense, the project heads did want the kids to withstand the strange artificial childhood they were rocketed through.
I don't see how the Eidetic Memory is more expected from a fast-grown clone than say Hyper-linguist or Math Boost (both deal with the rapid processing of information).
It also seems strange that Emotional Dampers are part of a standard Futura. It seems that last thing you want in your brand new kids is an ability to lie better by having an almost inhuman 'poker face.' Of course, the ability's use is optional.
I believe that both Rob Boyle and Jack Graham have both stated that the Futuras are recognizable as such. Why would the project make the Futuras so obvious? It seems like it would make it that more difficult for the 'product' to fit into normal society.
I could see several reasons for this:
1. The distinction could be rather subtle (say, the same mole on the cheek) but the Lost are so notorious that everyone knows to look for the mole. It is practically a siren to those wary of it.
2. The Futuras were meant to be irrevocably different as a form of branding and copyright protection. Perhaps the kids would have been given more conventional replacements after their contracts of indentiture were fulfilled or when the Futuras were less cutting-edge than next years model.
3. It could be that the Futuras start out looking normal but then slowly change into different. This may explain why the knife-happy girl in the core book looks normal (under all the blood, that is) but probably resembles the pale Lunar Ego Hunter a few years later. This change may have an unforeseen development as the Futuras aged (there certainly wasn't time for long-term testing), possibly an TITAN trap to make the alienated children more alienated or a theft alert by Cognite (more than a year without a Cognite booster kit and the Futura goes incriminatingly distinctive).
I believe fanon assumes that the Futura 'difference' is extreme paleness; a kind of albinism (without the usual health problems) but I would interested in what y'all think is obviously 'strange' about the Futuras.
Gotta go and this post is long, more later. Thanks for all your feedback.
Mon, 2014-06-30 01:46
#5
uwtartarus
IIRC, I don't think the
IIRC, I don't think the Futura's have TITAN tech incorporated in them, do they? I thought they were just a model/geneline used (based on the Exalt) for the project, and the line was created explicitly for the project, thus it has the project's stigma, but is otherwise no different than how a Ghost or an Olympian are different than Exalts.
I thought the whole Watts-McLeod virus (if it was JUST that virus that infected them) was part of the programming, thus if you had the blueprints to a Futura morph, it would JUST be a specialized Exalt with the particular traits it has.
—
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Mon, 2014-06-30 02:41
#6
DivineWrath
I don't think the futura
I don't think the futura morphs have any accelerated growth genes (I'm going to go double check just in case). EP tech is capable of growing adult biomorphs in 3 years time (with pods being even faster). If I recall correctly, the Lost were raised in accelerated simulspace to keep up with the rapid growth of their morphs, so when their morphs were adults, the Lost were adults as well.
Edit: I found a good summary on (EP, p. 233). I may have got a few points wrong, but I got most of it right. They were gene spliced for rapid growth, but got simulspace acceleration while sleeved. Unfortunately for the Lost, many of the genetic and tissue samples came from sources that might have been contaminated during the fall (and using facilities that used to be over run by the TITANs didn't help). It is likely that TITAN infections affected the entire generation (and probably many of the research staff), and thus influenced the outcome of the children. Had the research team managed to avoid such contamination, things might have ended better...
Mon, 2014-06-30 12:38
#7
Chernoborg
some scattered thoughts...
I've generally thought the introduction of Watts-McLeod was the act of a rogue scientist, specifically Dr. Patel, and not overtly sanctioned by the overseeing entities.
As they were sleeved in Futuras that were being fed simulspace information as quickly as their brains could process ( perhaps a 6X speed limit for biobrains?) they weren't subject to morph fever.
As the morphs are tuned to rapid growth ,would Futuras heal more rapidly than standard Exalts? Or perhaps just rebuild more quickly in healing vats.
So, if I'm reading the backstory correctly the original bodies that the egos that became the Lost were harvested from are still around,right? I wonder if the Lost egos were alpha forks of these infants and there would be regular almost 10 year old transhuman kids unknowingly connected to this debacle.
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Mon, 2014-06-30 12:41
#8
Leng Plateau
The emotional dampers
The emotional dampers make a lot of sense when you consider the Fall. You have a system full of people suffering from PTSD and you're considering a war to retake Earth? You'll need the new generation to be capable of handling extreme mental trauma, thus the massively reinforced willpower coupled with emotional dampers. It might even have worked out if the Watts-McLeod infection hadn't run rampant in the clone tanks...
As for the Futura, it was really a well thought out upgrade of the impressive Exhalt morph as near as I can see. Just the kind of generation that could have been needed. Personally I tend to picture them as intended to fill a bit of a nordic ubermensch look to stand out. Originally intended to be a distinctive and impressive look but then with what happened... well distinctive looks cut both ways when you get a reputation for going colorfully insane.
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Mon, 2014-06-30 14:03
#9
Axel the Chimeric
I'm gonna do what others have
I'm gonna do what others have and go thing by thing with my own answers.
I'm of the opinion that saying that this is the province of a business alone is a misunderstanding of what a hypercorp is. They're not simply a business, they're more like a for-profit nation-state. Cognite quite literally has its own cities (in the form of habitats), its own military arm, its own... Everything. Cognite might have had other Consortium members as backers but they don't really need them and it doesn't seem likely with a project like this; this is Cognite basically playing a hand in an attempt to create an entire generation of loyal superhumans who would be their favourite pets. You don't want other fingers in that pot.
I actually imagine it was hidden and that element was very contentious when revealed, but not for the reasons you might think. Indentures might have been exceedingly pissed off that the hypercorps were clearly trying to drive the market for them down and render them slaves forever, for example, whereas Barsoomians and anarchists in general might have been horrified at the notion of a corporation trying to have children. Your average Martian, though, knows that Uplift is a thing and would probably have had it spun to them as "We're trying to repopulate humanity!", and would probably welcome the idea of a buffer against horror... Even if they're worried they might be out of a job.
In the end, most Martians would probably be more worried about the economic risk to themselves. The "It's all gone tits up" aspect simply supersedes that.
Again, I think I disagree on the nature of what Cognite is; Cognite isn't just one company, it's dozens of smaller subsidiaries. You might buy a Hanto Genomics Optical Upgrade™, but Hanto may be owned by Hǎo Jiànkāng Genetic Solutions, in which Cognite has a 54% share.
As in the real world, it's easy to pass the blame on these sorts of issues. A company's executives are so distant from the actual work that it's easy to pin the blame on one smaller group, say that no-one else had any knowledge, and let that section go under; cut off a limb and save the enormous tree. Cognite would have made a contrite apology, had its best people on the talk-show circuit, and done their best to conceal the most damning evidence while seeming to participate with the official Consortium inquiry (no doubt headed by a former Cognite exec).
As for the genetics thing... The idea behind the Lost generation was to give them the best bodies and minds for the transhuman age. Body and mind can't really be disconnected, especially in terms of childhood development. Saying that it was more genetics than cognitive circuitry is disconnecting two very much intertwined things. One helps produce the other.
I vote confident, with an extra rider of excitement. I doubt the use of TITAN tech was in any way made public except maybe from a few independent journalists that were soundly discredited and/or sued into oblivion. Ozma almost certainly knows about it at this point and might have known about it beforehand. The Consortium's top politicians don't likely know about it, but its corporate heads may.
I doubt it, honestly. It might have been but I don't honestly think the TITANs thought that much of transhumanity. They definitely left traps but I think this was just a good ol' case of human hubris, with people using that which they did not fully understand on other human beings.
I don't think what Went Wrong was a sudden thing. The Lost might be the result of messing with TITAN tech, they might be the result of being raised in a simspace, they might be a combination thereof, or someone may have sabotaged the project, but whatever went awry wasn't a sudden occurrence. What was sudden was the escape of the Lost into the system at large, and just how that happened is a very good question...
I actually played a Lost character who suffered a delusion like this. He only believed other asyncs had souls; i.e. were "real" people. Everyone else was just a meat robot (or a metal robot) that had no actual existence. Where it got interesting was that he experienced a sensation that might as well be called love for the group's psychologist, Adam. It led to a very bizarre relationship, with Leo (the async) growing increasingly frustrated with feelings of isolation that he'd never felt before.
In the end, rather than come to accept the notion that non-asyncs had souls, Leo decided to go the other direction and tried to reproduce the Watts-McLeod virus to infect his target of affection. Suffice to say, it did not go well.
I don't think there's any carte blanche answer to how they'd react, but I can almost certainly imagine they'd have been indentured, yes.
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Wed, 2014-07-02 00:28
#10
Blue Screen of Death
Thank you again for all of
Thank you again for all of your replies. There is so much [i]brain[/i] here.
The general consensus seems to be that Futuras aren't that different, just notorious. Though if they do look different, I think Leng Plateau has it right, Aryan does seem 'traditional' for this sort of thing. :-) I guess the upcoming Morph Recognition card will have the answer. But if they are albinos, I am thinking of the Village of the Damned Midwich Cuckoos. Pale skin, white hair, glowing eyes and [i]creepy[/i] British accents. :-)
Chernobog, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so can I borrow your idea of unaltered and unsuspecting 'normal' twins of psychotic Lost kids?
Ditto Axel on the wonderful idea of a psychotic earnestly trying to understand this 'affection' interface. I'm picturing a young Hannibal Lector in Love. Gotcha on the idea of Cognite being not just a company town, but a company [i]moon[/i]. Weyland-Yutani, look out!
In the flavor text of the Lunar Ego Hunter, it says she has a new face and identity, along with a tricked-out morph. So it looks like Futuras can be modified anyway.
So here is my final question about the Lost: Whatever one might feel about the Futura morph, how is [i]starting[/i] with one a real disadvantage? It wouldn't be that difficult to upgrade. For example:
[color=cyan]
[b]A part of the lunar cave wall rippled and formed itself into an athletic, dangerous ghost morph. The cornered Lost boy simply sat cross-legged and still, perhaps resigned to his fate. The bounty hunter was almost sorry for the boy and offered cold comfort. “Don't feel too bad, kid, you had to hide that distinctive Futura mug but a deserted cave in an abandoned settlement?! Anything could happen and no one would know. I'm thinking there are better ways to be unseen.” She made a ripple of [i]invisible[/i] flow across her skin as emphasis.[/b][/color]
[color=cyan]
[b]“No,” said the boy, “that's what [i]I[/i] was thinking. You just didn't know it.” And then the psiclone sent a lifetime of agonized memory into her mind in a very precise way. He was ready to catch her as she slumped. After all, he didn't want to bruise his pretty new face...[/b][/color]
In any case, as part of a group, the Lost would likely have to egocast into other morphs on other worlds (those distant morph banks being very unlikely to be stocking Futuras).
As always, I welcome your feedback...
Wed, 2014-07-02 12:27
#11
Axel the Chimeric
You're a sweetheart, Blue.
You're a sweetheart, Blue.
I didn't answer this question the first time but there's a thought I want to throw in with this: The Lost were probably "someone's" pet project. I put that in brackets because a project this size has many hands in the pot, but there was someone, somewhere, who said "I want to create tens of thousands of children without parents raised in fast-sims under experimental conditions using TITAN tech, possibly one of the largest single undertakings in transhuman biogenetic experimentation, with returns possibly taking generations to manifest", and, to that proposal, someone else's response was "Hot damn, fund that!".
This kind of project was huge and risky and someone probably put their reputation on the line for it, and, in exchange, they would have had significant control. That probably means that they helped design the Futura; a perk of the job. As such, Futuras probably have a "family resemblance" of sorts, at least in their basic appearance. Perhaps they all have the same eye/hair colour, but it goes beyond that; they might have distinctive facial structures, body hair patterns, and other oddities that go beyond just the most obvious things.
It's also mentioned somewhere that the early Lost gene lines may have come from purchased fetuses from people who were exposed to TITAN tech during the Fall. Therefore, they may also all share a literal family resemblance, there.
There's little things that might identify a Futura beyond just their faces. They might have a distinctive kind of way of growing a beard, or their knees might be particularly stiff or loose and alter their gait. The most distinctive feature about a Futura is the +10 to WIL, which represents mental resiliency and drive, so Futuras are probably rarely still; always looking like they're thinking, always doing...
Even when it's not one of the Lost sleeved inside, a Futura seems like it might be reasonably recognizable in the same way a particular car model may be.
You cannot know how accurate that is.
Yes... And no. It's very difficult to upgrade without leaving a large trail for the kinds of people Cognite might hire to find you.
Remember that your average Lost is someone with no history, and, in EP, that is a shocking thing. EVERYONE has a history, and someone who doesn't is almost certainly up to something. These people dropped from nowhere into somewhere, and that means they're more or less immediately obvious. This person who then has no data, no history, no rep, is then looking for a way to offload an old body and hop into a new one and, in the process, likely try and get the hell away from somewhere.
Your average Lost is probably stuck. They're likely on Luna or Mars or somewhere around there, trying very hard to build up the reputation and/or credits they need to QUIETLY sleeve into a new body and build a new identity, because having a Futura is pretty much a massive "Oh hey, you're a crazy person" red flag.
Having a Futura means you're trying to run from one life with a massive disadvantage, and then jump right into another and start all over again and pray that this does not come back to bite you in the ass; hope that THIS TIME you were quiet enough to keep them from finding you and dragging you back into Hell.
This is considerably more of a problem, since it instantly gets rid of the disadvantage. So it seems, at least. However, the Lost in question is doing one of two things: Either they're getting rid of their old body, or they're putting it in storage. Either one is immensely risky and dangerous, because people are looking for them. Bad people. People who don't tell crime bosses their names because they don't have to.
Basically, the Futura is a plot hook digging into the character's back; a time bomb that they cannot defuse, but simply try to make go off safely as they run like hell from the baggage of their old life. Even if they're not in the Futura anymore, someone out there will find where they got rid of it. From there, they'll track the identity of the ego who resided in it, find where they egocast to, and then all they've done is give their hunters new information on how to find them.
Being a Lost is the knowledge that Damocles was a fool, because he only saw the [b]one[/b] sword hanging above his head.
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Wed, 2014-07-02 12:33
#12
uwtartarus
Axel the Chimeric wrote:-
Nice. Now to convince my players to play one to unleash this stuff on them...
—
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Wed, 2014-07-02 21:04
#13
Chernoborg
Sure! I wouldn't put anything
Sure! I wouldn't put anything out there if I didn't want anybody using it.:)
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Thu, 2014-07-03 02:45
#14
UnitOmega
I'm trying to remember where
I'm trying to remember where it was noted, but I distinctly remember reading somewhere that outwardly, the Futura is very hard to tell from a base Exalt. Most of the mods are internal, and thanks to bodysculpting, you can avoid the phenotype issues easily. You'd probably need to make a pretty good Interest: Morphs or similar skill roll to spot one. That being said, anyone sleeved in a Futura that is identified as such is going to get some interesting questions. Then that Social Stigma (Lost) comes into play.
Starting in a Futura isn't necessarily a disadvantage, it's just a flavored restriction like how a Hyperelite can't use a Flat or Splicer. The Futura can become a liability that leads into the actual disadvantage for being a Lost, represented by the Social Stigma trait.
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Thu, 2014-07-03 23:27
#15
Blue Screen of Death
Axel the Chimeric wrote:You
Aw, you're gonna make me blush. ;-)
It does seem that the really bad ideas in history have to come from a certain number of people. A crazed loner can only do so much harm and a big crowd should have someone to say what a bad idea the bad idea is. So I can see the Lost were a small, vanity project that went wrong. Perhaps the Lost all bear their creator's faces. I can see a Post-Fall Trump doing that quite easily.
If the original Lost genetic stock came from possibly corrupted stock, it might be that the Lost kids [i]eventually[/i] looked something like the tamer human subjects of the recently late and lamented H. R. Giger. Of course, a distinctive beard pattern would also work to pinpoint the Lost as well (especially for the girls ;-) ).
Just don't let young Hannibal cook for you and it's all good.
And I can see that stealing another morph is possible but getting away with it long-term in a panoptic society is the real trick. But a Lost child might return to their old Futura for two other reasons that occur to me:
First, the Lost may be [i]addicted[/i] to their Futura bodies. Suffering from a horrible botched artificial childhood as well as fending off an alien presence in their mind would cause the Lost to seek out any balm and comfort that they could. The WIL boost of the Futura is unique among the common morphs and the Lost may need them just to blunt the edge of their psychic agony. It could be that the Lost can leave their Futuras for a short time but need regular sleeving in their old security blankets.
Second, I could not at first understand the Emotional Dampers for the Lost. They don't regulate emotion, just its expression. I'm flying mostly off memory here but there is a real-world precedent for the Lost.
Around the collapse of the USSR at the end of the Cold War, the plight of many Eastern European Orphanages became known to Western media. Terribly underfunded and understaffed but overcrowded, the orphanages were just able to meet the orphan's physical needs but not their emotional needs. The newborns grew up without truly knowing human touch and it did have effects.
Those suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder often don't react to or show emotion correctly. So the advantage to the Lost is not that they can turn [i]off[/i] their flawed emotional reactions but that they can turn them [i]on[/i] correctly. It could be that when the Lost are in any other morph, their emotional reactions are so 'off' they are instantly recognizable to those in the know. So they may as well stick to their Futuras anyway.
As for convincing your players to play the Lost, I say look for the one that would play the mopiest X-Man or the most emo Vampire.
Thanks to all, I think my questions about the Lost have been essentially answered. Both the Lost and the Futuras are what we make of them. Thanks again for your replies. :-)