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In the bargain bin

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Fri, 2011-01-14 20:41

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

In the bargain bin

One memorable scene in Morgan's "Broken Angels" had the protagonists shop for team members by going to a market where retrieved cortical stacks were sold... by weight, almost. In a recent game session the character's came across something similar on Mars, and bought three stacks. They were lucky - they found a very competent Mormon missionary willing to work with them (the old prospector and the kid will *hopefully* end up somewhere better than the screwed up asyncs pocket). While I improvised this it might be worthwhile developing a bit more detail of the stack retrieval trade. How much is a found stack worth? How much more if it has been scanned, disinfected and identified? How does the trade function outside the official channels of resettlement charities and infomorph brokerage/rehab? While slavery is banned within the PC, there are presumably plenty of private groups who run their own informal indenture systems. How do they work?

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Sat, 2011-01-15 08:19

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: In the bargain bin

There is most likely a non-trivial cost with running, scanning and inventorying a mystery ego, and most are going to be of extremely limited worth. So I imagine that recovered stacks either fall into the 'unknown ego' category, or the 'known ego', with the latter being worth significantly more even for the least valuable egos (since at least you know they work). I wouldn't be surprised if there are major limits on selling un-verified stacks, since they might be carrying viruses.

Sat, 2011-01-15 10:50

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: In the bargain bin

I sort of see the strack trade coming in three sorts of varieties. Variety 1: Upstanding stack retrievers. These people work in the Planetary Consortium, maybe Venus, and other places that still embrace capitalism. Sometimes, a person's stack is recovered but they have no insurance policy, when means no bounty for recovering the stack, which means no bonus for the recovery. Thus, the egos recovered are essentially salvage. These are then offered the choice of indenturehood or being kept in dead storage. It's effectively slavery, sure, but it's better than being dead. Variety 2: Soul traders. These are the nasty, criminal kind of stack retrievers. It's fairly similar to the former, but there are no standards and the means for using bought egos are invariably nasty. Need the ego of a high-profile person? You might just find that cortical stack that was deemed irretrievable after they "fell" into a blast furnace on one of these markets. This isn't about not retrieving a bounty, this is about criminally trading in people's minds. Variety 3: Anarchist traders. This falls a bit between the first two varieties. It's a don't-ask-don't-tell approach, with the egos being traded usually those of the enemies of the habs. Some lucky guy gets the drop on some hypercorp stooge, then finds out that he's secretly working for Ozma and decides to give the stack to someone who can really do some damage. Unlike the second variety, anarchist stack trading to people who you know are going to do bad things is usually not done (unless they're bad people), because your stack will usually be next on the trading block if you fail to follow the golden rule of Don't Be A Dick.

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[img]http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/982/exhumanbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/4473/scumbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/1396/gatecrasherbar.jpg[/img] [code][@-rep +1, f-rep +2][/code]

Sat, 2011-01-15 19:27

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: In the bargain bin

I think "cleaned" stacks do merit a higher price, presumably one price level above the usual (unless the cleaner is somewhat sloppy... beware the beasts of the bargain bin!)

Axel the Chimeric wrote:
Variety 1: Upstanding stack retrievers. These people work in the Planetary Consortium, maybe Venus, and other places that still embrace capitalism. Sometimes, a person's stack is recovered but they have no insurance policy, when means no bounty for recovering the stack, which means no bonus for the recovery. Thus, the egos recovered are essentially salvage. These are then offered the choice of indenturehood or being kept in dead storage.

There are also charities that pay a nominal fee. In this thread http://www.eclipsephase.com/soul-traders I argued/claimed that an ego is has a moderate price (~1000); presumably this is what a charity will give you if it is a nice one, while a less well funded charity receiving a lot of bad stacks may just give a low price. So I would guess the bargain bin has stacks for low prices, but they could be nearly anything. Once you identified/cleaned it up it could reach a moderate price. This might include some basic psychosurgery or therapy to rehab badly shocked egos. ("Where. Are. My. CHILDREN?!")

Quote:
Variety 2: Soul traders. These are the nasty, criminal kind of stack retrievers. It's fairly similar to the former, but there are no standards and the means for using bought egos are invariably nasty. Need the ego of a high-profile person? You might just find that cortical stack that was deemed irretrievable after they "fell" into a blast furnace on one of these markets. This isn't about not retrieving a bounty, this is about criminally trading in people's minds.

Yes. In the above thread I suggested this price system: * An ordinary person: Moderate * An useful person (skills 60+, interesting experiences, or extant family): High * A very useful person (Skills 80+, exceptional abilities, experiences or traits, family with larger ransom potential): Expensive and upwards * Conditioning increases the price one level (achieved through psychosurgery, effective blackmail, addiction, working contract) * True loyalty +2 levels * Mental traumas and other misfeatures decrease the price one level or more (psychological problems, neural damage, rebelliousness, exsurgent infection) * Beta fork: one level cheaper. * Gamma fork: two level cheaper (includes loyalty) These are the cleaned ones, raw stacks are one level cheaper (and obviously usually of unknown potential - but that stack found in the wreck of a fancy stealth fighter is probably worth a bit).

Quote:
Variety 3: Anarchist traders. This falls a bit between the first two varieties. It's a don't-ask-don't-tell approach, with the egos being traded usually those of the enemies of the habs.

Good point - people with no friends have no protection. Try trading in the stacks of hab members, and everyone will be on you like a ton of bricks. I can imagine anarchist collectives "buying" stacks from people who found them (i.e. trading services or rep) since it is never a bad thing to have a chance at getting some useful members. I can imagine salvage specialists selling off retrieved crew stacks from wrecks, or prospectors picking up stacks they find.

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