Gengineering and Alienation
Transhuman bodies are superior to those mortal forms that nature devised.
Add 50% to the cost if a hull has been modified so heavily as to induce Alienation.
Wearing these perfected forms can sometimes be more than an individual can stand. Every human has an instinctive sense of what their own body and mind should be like- the product not only of early experience but of hardwired evolutionary cues. Adopting a form too drastically different from the one they were born in produces Alienation, which can hamper a form's effectiveness.
Alienation manifests first as a sense of unease and inescapable tension. Then come the phantom sensations from limbs or bodily dimensions that should be there but aren't- "Phantom Body Syndrome", or "the Itch" in common parlance. Severe Alienation can result in sudden breaks of thought, hypnotized fixation on alien sensations, or partial paralysis of limbs. In the very worst cases, the brain dissociates from the body and retreats into a hallucinatory coma of false sensations.
Most Hulls are designed to accommodate baseline human cognitive processes. Swapping from a six-foot male Hull into a four-foot female Hull with multiple prehensile tentacles and aquaform adaptations may be deeply jarring to a mind, but the built-in dampers and adaptation cues will generally allow for a quick physical acclimation to the form. Psychologically, the wearer may or may not appreciate the new body, but it will obey the wearer’s will.
Shapes that lack these buffers and cues are more dangerous to a foreign mind. Hulls can have their design margins pushed, comfort and responsiveness sacrificed for pure efficiency and raw utility. Without the genetically hardwired buffer interface between a mind and the raw meat of a Hull, vastly superior performance can be obtained at the cost of increasing Alienation. Some minds are willing to pay that price in exchange for additional power.
In most cases, those who are willing to push the limits are content with relatively minor tightening of the mental tolerances, acquiring Hulls with only 1 or 2 points of permanent Alienation. This can prove problematic when unusual tech effects, a poor mind download, or a hasty backup produces an identity with a few extra points of Alienation. Such an event can turn a relatively minor 1-point Alienation flaw into the complete incapacitation of a 4-point coma. Still, for some, there’s no other way to fit all the desired augmentations into the Hull they have chosen.
ALIENATION POINTS | PROBLEM |
| 1 | On a natural roll of 2 on a skill roll or 1 on an attack roll, you briefly dissociate, losing your next round’s action. |
| 2 | As 1, and you also have difficulty accessing your abilities in this body. Every time you fail a skill check, lose access to that skill for 1 hour. Experts may try to prevent failure with their class ability. |
| 3 | As 1 and 2, plus your connection to the outside world is growing tenuous. Every fight or scene of mental or emotional stress adds 2 points of System Strain when it begins. If your System Strain exceeds the Hull’s Constitution, you fall unconscious until it has dropped below the maximum. |
| 4+ | Your mind has completely dissociated from the body. The world is a garbled confusion of images and sensory inputs, and you are unable to perform any physical action. Gain 2 System Strain points per day. |
Hulls and Bodyswapping
In common parlance, a Hull is simply the body that a mind wears.
Many of them are crafted artificially by skilled technicians or expert artisans, but the term is also often used for the body into which a mind was originally born. All meat is fungible in Strange Stars, and one’s birth-body is more a sentimental foundation than the final destination for a mind.
To implant a mind into a Hull, it must normally be artificially created to serve as a host. In a pinch, bodies created by more traditional biological methods can be used for Hulls, but this requires extensive preparatory treatment to prevent ego rejection and the difficulty is greater than that of simply growing a new Hull. This does not stop some particularly brutal souls from literally wearing the skins of defeated enemies.
Artificial Hulls are created in vats, each one the product of individual effort by a human technician. Mass-produced Hulls are more limited in the sophistication of their augmentations, as extreme improvements require careful attention by a trained biotech.
Most people who are not wearing their birth-skin make do with one of these mass-produced models for the sake of economy. A Hull can be kept "fresh" and serviceable for an indefinite amount of time so long as it is kept in a properly-designed storage pod.
Hulls without such facilities survive no better than the average coma-stricken human being, and will die soon.
Implanting a mind into a Hull requires a little under four hours of careful uploading from an intact identity tablet or an ego-occupied Hull. Faster uploading is possible, but it comes with a distinct risk of permanent Alienation from the new Hull; the technician must make a roll a Tech/Medical check at a difficulty of 6, +1 for each hour of speed increase. For each point by which the roll is failed, 1 permanent point of Alienation is gained as long as that Hull is worn. If this leaves the body unusable, the transfer fails and must be repeated from scratch. Transfers require a minimum of two rounds to execute. Transferring from an occupied Hull erases the source Hull’s ego, whether or not the transfer is successful.
Backing up a mind requires twenty-four hours and the same attention from a technician. Backups that take a full 24 hours are automatically successful, while each 4 hours cut from the time adds +1 difficulty to the base 6 Tech/Medical check. Uploads that fail the Tech/Pretech check produce a flawed identity copy that applies 1 permanent point of Alienation to any Hull into which it is uploaded. Backups require a minimum of ten minutes.
Identity transfer is intended for use with fully-formed human minds. Children and adolescents who have yet to attain full cerebral development often produce flawed and unstable identity tablets. A Tech/Medical roll must be made to record a child at a difficulty of 20 minus their age. Failure means the tablet is imperfectly formed and will produce a deeply disturbed and mentally altered intellect, while success produces a serviceable tablet. The results of the check are not obvious until after the recording is uploaded into a Hull, and in the case of particularly subtle insanities, may not be clear even then.
Game Mechanics and Hulls
A PC wearing their birth-body uses their original, naturally-rolled scores for their attributes. By default, the common human body of the Strange Stars is equivalent to a basic-type Hull, though some Luddite or exceptionally primitive cultures (such as Runeling) may lack such advantages. When rolling hit points, take note of the basic roll, unmodified by Constitution- when and if the PC swaps bodies, they’ll need to apply their new form’s Constitution modifier to their basic hit points.
A PC who adopts a new Hull retains their naturally-rolled
Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores, modified by whatever special cerebral traits the Hull may have. If the Hull has augmented mental statistics, the PC uses whichever is higher.
Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores are determined by the Hull being worn. System Strain in a new body is always zero.
PCs wearing a new Hull also retain their base hit points, as the great majority of a person's hit points reflect not physical damage, but their luck, wit, and combat savvy. If the Hull has a positive or negative Constitution modifier, apply it to the character's base hit points; a 4th level Warrior putting on a Hull with Constitution 15 would immediately add +4 hit points to his total, while a crippled
Hull with Constitution 3 would apply a -8 penalty. Hit points can never drop below 1 due to a Hull's weakness. NPCs without class levels usually simply have the base hit points of whatever Hull they are wearing.
Skills, experience level, class abilities, and other traits are usually retained into a new Hull. Psychic powers are not usable unless the new Hull has been designed to contain a psychic mind.
Psychic power point totals always progress with the bonuses of the psychic's original body- the Hull's Wisdom and Constitution modifiers do not apply. Psychics can only "torch" their powers while in their original birth-bodies. A feral mind can be backed up, but it will remain demented in any fresh corpus, even one with augmented mental attributes.
A PC who is killed may be restored from their most recent backup.
The backup will have all the skills, experience, and memories of the PC at the time the backup was made, but any memories or experiences earned since then will be lost. Multiple copies of a PC can be restored into multiple Hulls, though many factions have taboos against such personal duplication.
Hulls are comparatively expensive, and PCs may not always have access to the best possible bodies. Depending on the GM's discretion, the campaign may begin with the PCs wearing their original bodies, or they may have already swapped out into forms more suitable for their purposes. Acquiring access to backup Hulls once the game begins is likely to be fairly high on the PCs’ list of things to do, given the propensity for damage experienced by most adventurers. Factions might well offer such things as an inducement to free agents, either in the form of ready-made Hulls in storage pods or the opportunity to use their facilities to implant as necessary.
PCs and Hull Varieties
The following page gives a list of some of the more common types of Hulls available in the Strange Stars. Each one comes with a default status cost, with the details of status-based purchases in a post-scarcity setting described later in this archive. The cost includes implantation services, though there’s no discount for omitting such if the PCs have access to their own inception tables.
Hulls may be equipped with augmentations as given on the table on the following table. Each augmentation has a point cost, and a given Hull can handle only so many points of augmentation. Some Hulls allow for pushing this limit at the cost of additional points of Alienation. Add 50% to the status cost if the hull has been modified so heavily as to induce Alienation.
A PC acquiring a Hull from a faction is usually obliged to take whatever suite of augments is available on the Hulls currently being sold. To determine whether or not a Hull with the desired augments is available, the PC should make a Luck saving throw.
Add a +4 bonus to the roll if buying from a large, powerful faction, and up to a -4 penalty if buying from a faction with few available Hulls. On a failure, the PC can pick any one augmentation, but the GM picks the others based on the role the Hull was most likely intended to serve. On a success, a Hull is available that matches all the PC’s augmentation desires.
Alternately, the PC can commission a Hull to be grown to their specifications. This takes one week, unless specified otherwise by the Hull description, and doubles the status cost of the Hull.
Hull Types
Most of the following Hulls can be grown at any major habitat.
Some smaller or less influential factions may be unable to produce bespoke hulls, and a few are unable to create anything better than the most basic varieties of body
| HULL TYPE | COST | NOTES |
| /10F | Basic Hulls have the Basic Immunity benefit package, but cannot include any other alterations. These Hulls have a base hit point total of 4. | |
| /15F | A containment Hull appears as a normal human being, but has the Regeneration and Stabilized Systems augmentations to prevent accidental death during interrogation sessions. | |
| /15F | Xenohulls can take up to 5 points of alterations related to adaptations and physical modifications, and up to 3 more of any kind at a 1 to 1 cost in Alienation. These Hulls have a base hit point total of 6. | |
| /20F | Up to 3 points of alterations can be selected from the list in this section. Up to 3 additional points can be taken at a 1 to 1 cost in Alienation and additional purchase expense. These Hulls have a base hit point total of 8. | |
| /60F | Up to 6 points of alterations can be added, and up to 3 more are allowed at a 1 to 1 Alienation cost. Bespoke Hulls usually require a month to produce and add 2 Alienation for any wearer other than their intended owner. These Hulls have a base hit point total of 16. |
| HULL AUGMENT | COST | EFFECT |
| 1 | The Hull has up to eight additional arms or tentacles, as many as four of which can manipulate objects with standard manual dexterity. No additional attacks are gained, however. | |
| 1 | The Hull has lightning-fast reactions, automatically winning initiative once per hour. | |
| 1 | The Hull is remarkably resilient, and has armor equivalent to AC 3 which has been grown so as to be concealed from anything short of a close medical examination. Optionally, the Hull has armor equivalent to AC -1 in a form impossible to conceal. | |
| 1 | The Hull is equipped with implanted weaponry equivalent to a monoblade or a man-portable postech projectile or energy weapon. The body itself creates any necessary ammunition or power. One-handed weapon equivalents can be grown so as to be concealed to anything short of a medical scan when not in use. | |
| 1 | One attribute is set to 14. If a mental attribute, the wearer uses the higher of it or his own. | |
| 2 | As Lesser, except that the attribute is set to 18. | |
| 1 | The Hull is designed to perfectly match a given culture or Faction’s tastes in beauty and instinctive social cues. +2 to social skill checks with that group. | |
| 1 | The Hull is designed to exist in an environment normally fatal to humans- deep underwater, a methane atmosphere, deep in space, floating in the winds of a gas giant planet, or so forth. It has full normal sensory and movement abilities and can breathe the existing atmosphere. | |
| 1/2 | The Hull can fly at a base movement rate of 40 meters per round, either through physical organs or embedded nanite antigrav. For 1 point, this flight functions only in low gravity environments, while 2 points allows its use in any environment. | |
| 1 | The Hull has a base ground movement rate of 40 meters/round. | |
| 1 | The Hull ignores movement penalties due to rough or slippery terrain, never slips or trips, and gains a +2 bonus on skill checks related to running, swimming, climbing, or gymnastics. | |
| 1 | Requires at least Intelligence or Wisdom 14. The Hull has subconscious cognitive processes constantly operating. Once per session, the PC can ask the GM for a useful conclusion regarding a topic, and the GM will tell them what he or she thinks is the most useful fact that they might possibly have concluded from their available data. | |
| 1 | For each point spent, two pieces of non-weapon, non-armor equipment are made permanent parts of the Hull. The Hull provides unlimited energy for these devices, but they count against its encumbrance. Items with more than 1 point of encumbrance leave visually obvious signs of their presence. Hardware cannot duplicate the effects of another augment. | |
| 1 | The Hull gains a +3 bonus on saves versus poison, disease, and radiation. The Hull does not age past physical maturity and has indefinite natural longevity. | |
| 2 | As Basic, but also immune to radiation, temperatures between -100 and 100 degrees Celsius, and to those poisons and diseases not explicitly created by pretech bioweapon research. | |
| 2 | The Hull can alter its appearance to that of any creature with the same or fewer number of significant limbs and within 30% of its original size. The change takes one round and grants no special abilities. With a DNA sample, the mimicry is perfect to the genetic level. | |
| 1 | The Hull has a wide range of sonar, radar, infrared and other sensors. Its visual perception works normally out to 100 meters regardless of light levels. | |
| 2 | In addition to the effects of perceptual acuity, the Hull’s sensory centers have been altered to track a 360’ radius at all times, whether asleep or awake. The Hull can even listen in on unencrypted radio traffic. The Hull cannot be surprised and may awaken immediately to react to events around it. | |
| 1 | This Hull has been prepared with the necessary alterations to receive a psychic mind. | |
| 2 | The Hull repairs itself and refreshes spent vigor quickly. Regenerate 1 HP/minute, up to a maximum of one-half the PC’s maximum hit points, rounded up. This regeneration does not prevent death at zero hit points. | |
| 1 | The Hull does not need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep, gaining all necessary power from implanted metadimensional tap nanites. | |
| 1 | If reduced to zero hit points, the Hull automatically stabilizes, and revives at 1 hit point ten minutes later. Further injuries while unconscious or damage that could not be cured by a lazarus patch cannot be overcome by this augmentation and will result in death. |