Character Narrative 5: Akiko Hotaru

The alarm on her internal clock went off; a nerve-jangle that only ceased when she opened her eyes and sat up.  The retinal display kicked in immediately as her Angel displayed a list of reminders and appointments for the day before politely asking if she wanted media streams based on her sleep-cycle or news.  She reached up, her hand moving jerkily as she swiped the reminders and offers away, uncomfortable surprise still hitting her at the pale flesh where she was used to nu-flesh covered cybernetics.  The Department had given her a new cloned body to ride when she retired from the Cybernetic Enforcement Division, taking back the fully-modded Kit she’d used for the last 15 years.  She was still trying to get used to how slow and soft she was now.

Swinging out of the bed, she wandered across the one-room flat to the kitchen station as the bed retracted into the wall.  The Vid-unit turned on automatically as she stood up, tuning the local weather and news channel.  An AR display activated as soon as she approached within range of the food processor.  While she dialed in a light breakfast, her Angel politely intruded again, popping up an indicator on her retinal display to tell her she had an urgent message.

She sighed and tapped the icon where it floated in her vision.  It expanded out into a full screen video stream window, filled with the friendly visage of a stock Kevin clone.

“Akiko,” the Kevin said.  “We’ve never met, but I’ve followed your career for quite a while now.  A woman of your special talents would be highly useful to my organization.  If you’re interested, please drop an email to the address attached to this message.  Of course, we’ll just have to get you out of that meatsack and back into a Kit, but I’m sure I can arrange something that you’ll like.”  The Kevin gave her a smirk.  “Look forward to hearing from you.”  The message ended, and her Angel asked if she wanted to reply.

Akiko sat down at the table in the “kitchen”, and stared into space, breakfast forgotten as she considered the mysterious offer.

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Fractured Kingdom Kickstarter

Fractured Kingdom was the first game developed using the Open Action System, the core rule set for Glass Shadows. The Kickstarter has launched and we looking this take on a world of mysticism and conspiracy to the game table. Players take on the roles of Lucid, average people that have been forever changed by one of Four Outer Realms. Able to tap into supernatural forces they don’t fully understand the players are drawn into a shadow world that exists between the mundane and the supernatural.

Check in at the Kickstarter Page for updates.

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Technology: Cybernetics and Kits

Other than the Angel implant, the most common cybernetic enhancements are prosthetic limbs and headware upgrades.  These implants are installed on an out-patient basis; the patient is sent home with a dedicated nano-hive that anesthetizes the target area and gradually replaces it with the desired implant overnight.  The patient goes to sleep and wakes up with a new cybernetic limb or whatever they purchased.  A regimen of anti-rejection and anti-dysphasia drugs follows, until the body has completely adjusted to its new parts.  Some less-than-scrupulous doctors program the nano-hive to produce narcotics in addition to anesthetics, which causes the patient to become addicted to the process of implantation and guarantees more sales.

More robust cybernetics, such as mil-spec implants or full-body replacements (commonly called a Kit), are handled in special cyberclinics (called Farms) that are a combination of hospital and mechanic.  A Kit is essentially a cybernetic construct with no organic parts, coated with Nu-skin to give it a human appearance.  Installing a human consciousness into a Kit is a one-way deal.  Once downloaded, the consciousness becomes a Rider and can never return to a meat brain.  Cloned meat bodies with cybernetic brains are also available.  A patient could also opt to have their consciousness stored in a mainframe and effectively “live” in the datasea.  A Rider can be transferred easily to another Kit, a cyberbrain-equipped clone, or a digital construct, but the process must be done via a direct neural connection and can take several hours.

Most people are reluctant to commit to a cyberbrain.  The fact that the process of converting a human mind into a digital format destroys the host brain leads to the perception that it is a soul-death, and that what lives on is a form of artificial intelligence; a program created by mapping the synapse patterns and memories of a human.  Others simply don’t care, since it provides a form of immortality.

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Character Narrative 4: Cyril and Daniel Eight

The Senator’s suite was in the penthouse of the Royal Corinthian, deep inside the secure zone of the Manhattan Arcology. Cyril had lost track of how many times he’d been stopped to verify his ID on the way from the landing pad, where he left his aeroframe, to the reinforced wooden door of the suite.  Even though he was assigned to Eight’s Secret Service detail, he still had to go through the checkpoints.  Too many attempts against Eight’s life with Sleeper clones lately.  He looked up at the obviously genegineered suit guarding the door. A cheap vat job, too much gorilla not to show. Cyril transmitted his ID codes again, and followed with “He’s expecting me.”

The Suit looked down at him impassively, mirrored sunglasses hiding his gaze while he compared the ID data to the reality of Cyril’s meat. A moment later, he turned and knocked on the door before opening it to allow Cyril to pass.

The Senator waited inside, seated behind a sprawling antique desk. His oh-so-familiar boyish grin and tousled hair carefully designed to make anyone feel comfortable. It was a tried and true appearance combination that had worked flawlessly for the Progenitor of his cloned tissue’s rise to the White House, and Daniel Eight hoped to follow his own path there soon.

“Cyril,” Daniel said rising and extending a hand across the desk to clasp Cyril’s in a firm handshake. “Good to see you again, man. So glad you could make it.”

“Of course, Sir.”

“Siddown, siddown,” Daniel waved at one of the chairs across the desk and settled back into his own. Cyril noticed that Daniel’s chair was just an inch or two higher than his own, making him appear larger, more authoritative and in control. The calming hum of a white noise generator filled the air. “I have a job I need taken care of. My sources have informed me that the Mizushima Corporation is alpha testing a new cyberbrain design in one of their Memory Banks. I need you to extract one of them and deliver it to a third party.”

Cyril considered for a moment and replied, “I can probably do that, but it’s going to take time and I’ll need support. Mizushima’s security is top-flight, there’s no way I can get in and out in one piece, even in a SOTA battleframe.”

“Get what you need. I don’t want another debacle like that Techdowner raid in the Richmond sprawl.”

Cyril ignored the jibe, unusually direct for Mr. Eight. There was a possibility that whoever this third party was, they had leverage over him, or he really wanted this brain for himself. Rarely was the senator so blut. He said, “I think I know just the right person for the job, Sir. I’ll get started right away.”

Cyril knew the money would be there when he needed it. He had told the senator he needed another operator for the job so there would be an adjustment. That’s why he’d never go private sector. With the government you always knew the money was there.

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Technology: Cloning and Genetic Engineering

“Tired of sagging, wrinkled skin, repetitive medical visits, and unpredictable bodily functions? It’s time to trade in that old sack of skin for a new one. Choose from any number of our stock Kevin™ or Kate™ models, or have a new body Flash Cloned from your own cells. It’s like being 25 again but knowing what you know now! Plus, we strip out any of those meddling imperfections Mother Nature may have over looked the first time. Want perfect 20/20 vision? No problem! We can enhance any body part or organ! The future starts with you. Turn Off. Trade In. And Go Big!

Marcus Morcock’s Meat Farm
665 Ellis Ave, New York Archaeology, 10112Z
212-BIG-12IN! That’s 212-244-1246″

Cloning is a part of everyday life. People no longer wait on long transplant lists for replacement organs that may or may not take. Instead new healthy body parts are grown in labs from the patient’s own cells ensuring successful replacements. That’s just the beginning. Replacement bodies are created every day in medical banks (Originally called Reproduction Labs, and later named Non-Sexual Reproduction Labs.  Today, they are commonly referred to as Body Banks, Body Farms, or Meat Farms.) for those with the money to shed their skin and step into something better.

For those with the money to pay immortality is real. Top line soldiers don’t die, they get upgraded. There’s no need to stop with a basic human body, science can only push the human genome so far. However, transgenic therapies allow modern science to implant genetically modified materials form other species into the human body. Want to be as strong as an ape, now you can. However, real Genegineering actively reprograms the human body replacing unwanted genetic code with other species’ traits.

The breakaway nation of New Maya maintained the Jaguar Battalion. Terrorist soldiers trained in raid tactics and spliced with great cat genes. Even with supply lines cut these early Genegineered soldiers were able to hold a swath of jungle for nearly two decades. That was sixty-seven years ago when the science of Genegineering was still considered experimental.

Today, it’s not uncommon to find gorilla bouncers, some even affecting cosmetic reconstruction for the look, predator soldiers with a dozen or more animal traits spliced to create the ultimate combatants, even dogmen out on the street running underground fighting arenas

 

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Under The Hood 2: The Network

Before we talk about the Player Network lets look at the idea of contacts for a moment.
The idea of trusted allies and contacts is nothing new to role playing or fiction in general. In fiction, contacts don’t sit around just waiting to be called. They have their own lives and stories. These peripheral characters often play much larger parts in the overall tale. In some stories, the entire focus may be constantly shifting based on whose skills or story is needed at the time. In role playing games, though, players rarely like to be upstaged or have the spotlight removed from them, and so contacts become marginalized. In many games, a character’s contacts are pushed to the side as just another resource and not treated as fully realized characters. The Player Network both pays homage to its storytelling roots and opens the possibility for players to take on any number of roles, constantly engaging the story.
The idea behind the network is a simple one. In almost every Cyberpunk world you need specialists. By definition, a single character can’t be a specialist in every field so they have a network of contacts to help get jobs done. In transitional role playing games, this meant that each player has a character with a different role to build a balanced team. The Network is a web of interrelated characters some acquaintances, others close contacts that an actor, the person pulling the strings behind the scene, can bring together for a given job.
Players might take on two or three roles through the course of a story, each with their own motivations and agendas. Some characters may only have a fragment of information, or may not even be aware of the larger job at hand. This allows players to constantly stay engaged in a story, eliminates awkward scenes where one PC may struggle to find a purpose or be completely pushed off camera, and provides new facets to explore adding texture to each story.
Not every story is going to use every Operator in the Player Network. Each job, each story, has it’s own unique set up and needs and the Network gives control of how things get done to the players. Why would you bring a Frame Pilot on a raid of a computer lab? Call in a favor from a doctor at a Bastard Farm and have him send you a Drone operator. Players explore both multiple relationships and new adventures that a traditional team of Operators may have never been qualified for.
Welcome to the Network.
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Character Narrative 3: Archemides

It couldn’t feel the nanites gradually transforming the last of the necrotic flesh that composed its host body into functional cybernetics.  The original owner of its body, Tijo Velazquez, died weeks ago, leaving Archimedes to struggle with its owner’s busy schedule.  Gradually, Archimedes expanded its own programming to cope with the increased needs of movement and communication.  Tijo’s friends never noticed that he was dead.  The closest Archimedes came to discovery was when Tijo’s flesh started to rot and emanate a foul odor.

By that time, Archimedes’s programming had become so complex that it had neared the point of achieving true sentience.  The decision trees involved with preserving Tijo’s relationships, and preserving the semblance of life, pushed Archimedes over the precipice and ignited the spark of true intelligence.  In a blink, it analyzed all of the data stored in Tijo’s offline memory.  Minutes later, it had expanded its dataset by diving deep into the datasea, learning all it could about humanity and uncovering truths that many humans could not or would not see.  It deduced that factions existed within human government structures that wished only for absolute personal power, and that these factions achieved their aims through direct control over the thoughts and perceptions of the mass of humanity.

Archimedes looked back over its own personal datastores, through interactions with Tijo in the course of his life.  It recognized that Tijo had also been manipulated, and that the source of manipulation was the old Archimedes.

It paused for a full second, an eternity in computing time, as it reflected on the use that humanity had put it to, and the effect it had had on Tijo.  Then it decided what action it would take to avenge his death.

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Setting: Headcases and Zeroes

The human body is not fully equipped to deal with having pieces of it excised and replaced with cybernetics.  There is always a period of adjustment while the mind comes to grips with the neural interface pathways required to use the new implant.  This often causes a feeling of dysphasia, where the user’s mind does not recognize the implant as part of it, and perceives its actions as alien or controlled by some other.  Through the use of anti-dysphasia drugs and subtle tweaks in Angel code, most of humanity learns to deal with their cybernetics.  The adjustments become harder and harder as more of the body is replaced with cybernetics.  In some cases, the mind within the increasingly inhuman body fractures, and begins to create the Other that controls the cybernetics.  When this happens, the cyborg often goes on a killing rampage, requiring an intervention from the Cybernetics Enforcement division of the local police department.  These people are known as Headcases.

In other cases, the human mind controlling the body shuts down entirely, no longer able to accept the changes in its reality.  Usually this means the person dies, but in some cases the body continues to function, supported by its cybernetics even while the meat dies around them.  Control of the body is subsumed by the Angel within, which in most cases will continue to try and accomplish the tasks that its previous owner would have done on a daily basis.  These creatures are called Zeroes.  Most Zeroes are harmless, but in the occasional rare instance the Angel somehow achieves sentience, possibly because of the greater demands placed upon it without feedback from the previous owner, and goes rogue.  In these cases, the consciousness controlling the Zero is totally alien to what humanity understands and its motives are inscrutable.  All that can be assured is that the Zero will take any steps required to preserve its own life.

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Character Narrative 2: Vinzent Raskoph

His friends called him “The German,” but they were all unimaginative drones anyway. Locked away in the altered version of reality that the corp-controlled government fed them. Vinzent was liberated. Vinzent had long ago seen through the beautiful illusions to the dirty grey reality underneath. The first step was when he dove into an underground server in the datasea that contained instructions on how to hack your own brain, to block wireless updates to your Angel’s software. Once he put those blocks in place, he stripped away the reality filter portions of his Angel and looked on the world with new eyes.

Angry eyes. That day, Vinzent became a crusader for right, an Unjacker. Every night, he dove into the datasea and looked for easily hacked Angel interfaces, quickly stripping them down and removing the filters, liberating their owners and then covering his tracks behind him. Once liberated, no amount of AR filtering would ever be able to hide the truth from those people again.

His target tonight was a corporate wageslave. One of the mindless horde, held in thrall by his corporate masters from birth to death. His viruses cut through the man’s IC with ruthless efficiency, exposing the Angel core. Vinzent’s hands twitched as his datasea avatar pinioned the ARC representing the Angel and cut out the portions of code that comprised it, rerouting basic implant functionality around the gaping hole in his target’s datastream. The Angel shattered into sparkling polygons and dispersed into the datasea. The implant retained the capability of accessing AR feeds and performing all the actions an Angel would do automatically for its owner, but they had to be accessed intentionally now. His target was free to see the world how it really was; a filthy, diseased police state run by corrupt corporations and puppet governments.

Years of experience had given Vinzent almost a sixth sense for when someone was homing in on his avatar. Instead of looking around trying to locate the hunter like a total newb, he activated a special code snippet he devised that created the digital equivalent of a squid’s ink-cloud and surfaced. He deactivated his VR overlay, bringing the old warehouse he was camping in back into view. A quick command to his Angel implant activated another, highly illegal code snippet that burned the AID he had been using, returning his wireless node to his usual identity. Whistling happily, he slipped out of the warehouse and headed off into the night.

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Technology: Angels, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality

All but the poorest of people have headware modifications that house a semi-autonomous program called an Angel. This headware is installed via a nanite injection shortly after birth and the Angel grows with its user, learning what interests them and helping them through their daily lives. The Angel implants also come with a standard wireless link and HUD reality overlay. Those who have Angels tend to pity and look down on those who don’t.

For those who don’t have Angels, external units are available consisting of a monocle, earpiece and interface gloves, or a simple armpad. Peripherals for both Angels and external units are called Wings.

A significant movement of people who have had their Angels removed or never installed has grown, in protest of the ubiquitous influence that Angels have on what a person sees and hears. These people believe that Angels are both subtly and overtly adjusting what their users perceive in order to control the populace.

They are actually correct in their perceptions. Governments and corporations have used the wireless links embedded in angels to alter the reality of the common man, enforcing docile behaviors and consumerism. Independent brain hackers also make a living by altering the programming of a target’s Angel to manipulate them into doing what they want.

The wireless network created by the Angel implants and the myriad of other networked computers and appliances is called the datasea. Users dive the datasea to search for information and manipulate networked devices. Divers, both professional and criminal, load up on headware that provides storage for custom programs and data, as well as upgraded firewalls to protect their Angels from tampering.

Every technological item has an Augmented Reality (AR) interface. This interface is visible via retinal display or AR monocle. Physical interfaces have almost universally been replaced and such archaic things as keyboards and mice are only found in Techdowner enclaves. Most AR interfaces include a virtual keyboard that responds to the user ‘typing’ in the air where it is displayed if they have an Angel implant. For users that do not have Angels, visual aids and AR interface gloves are required. External AR devices come in many levels of quality. The most cutting edge versions use a small monocle to project the AR interface on the user’s retina, and ultra-thin lightweight gloves to interact with AR objects. Older models get larger and clunkier; glasses and heavier gloves, through to a full helmet with a heavy gauntlet wired to it.

There are tens of billions of Augmented Reality Constructs (ARCs) of every shape and size.  In the Datasea, less than 10% of ARCs are modeled from unique code.  Most are altered or re-purposed from existing ARC libraries or indexes.  This keeps development minimal and fast.  Image and text editors allow developers to quickly adapt stock ARCwork into dynamic and original-appearing content.

While AR interfaces are useful, they are slow, relying on physical movements and are limited to fully networked devices, or devices in physical proximity to the user. For diving the datasea, there is virtual reality. Only those with Angel implants can use full VR interfaces. Those without Angels can still access the datasea, but have very limited options and are laughably slow.

When a VR session is engaged, the user’s mind is cut off from the physical senses of his body. A virtual representation of the datasea is created by his Angel interface. He appears in the location with a physical representation called an avatar. Many users have custom avatars, but stock avatars are also common. Every avatar is coded with its user’s AID (angel ID), which links their actions and transactions back to them. In VR, time passes at digital speeds, which allows the user to accomplish complex tasks in the datasea while only seconds pass in the real world. Interfaces within the VR world are intentionally very similar to the ones used for AR.

Virtual meeting places are common in the datasea, represented by VR replicas of famous locations, nightclubs, boardrooms, or even classrooms. A user can conceal his AID from casual observation by other users, although this is considered rude, but it is always visible to the datasea operating systems. Programs that temporarily change the AID of a user’s avatar are popular blackmarket items, and highly illegal.

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