Shadowrun: Eric Moore

   Here’s one of the last few major player characters for the current Shadowrun campaign – in this case a pretty much full-conversion cyborg.

   Eric graduated college at Texas A&M, after having moved to the soon-to-be CAS in the wake of the Indian Wars and the breakup of the United States. In the confusion and chaos, his citizenship is… confused. He’s never officially declared for anyone, and his family background is not very clear; his family broke up and relatives have either died or fell out of touch.

   He studied Civil Engineering (first at Arizona State, which doesn’t even exist anymore), and got a job at a mining company. He supervised the use and abuse of explosive materials. Since licensing got a little confused after the national breakup, he handled and applied explosives even without a formal state authorization.

   A few years later, his company was bought out by Mitsuhama Computer Technologies, expanding into the North American market and trying to assure a steady supply of raw materials. Eric continued working the mining operations, setting up major jobs in Texas, California Free State, Tsimshian, and Salish-Sidhe.

   In that last job, working alongside Gaeatronics on their power plant, he received an offer for MCT’s Seattle division. The Seattle company was involved in building demolition, clearing out space for new corporate offices (not only their own), and needed more supervisors with experience. Eric took the job.

   After working construction for a couple years, Eric moved into a more desk-job-oriented position. He dealt with hiring for a lot of construction and factory jobs. With the Seattle market settling down and construction getting more and more scrutiny (with the increasing use of Shadowrunners), his job became much more sedate. But he also lost opportunities to advance.

   Things were boring and largely hopeless, with too many older management types around, especially since the Japanese tended to dominate the upper ranks with their own obnoxious brand of chauvinism. Fortunately or unfortunately, fate intervened and broke up Eric’s dull, normal, life. On a visit to a job site, he was accidentally run over by a careless dozer driver. And then the driver, seeing people panic, got confused and rove forward over Eric again.

   Eric’s chest was crushed and most of the rest of his body was destroyed. One arm was severed totally and his leg bones turned to powder. Most of his major organs were savagely burst open, and it was only the quick application of oxygenated fluorocarbons which prevented brain damage and death.

   Theoretically, his body could have been healed (with Shadowrun technology), but the surgery would have been likely to kill him, and he already required constant life support just to keep from dying. They had to place a simple simsense system just so he could respond to simply question, and no amount of pain medication was going to hide the fact that his body was mostly turned to jelly.

   Simply put, there weren’t many options. He’d need months of life support for them to clone organs, or just huge amounts of cyberware. And either way meant huge, huge debts he couldn’t really pay. But in the meantime, MCT came back with an offer.

   Instead of lying in a bed hoping the doctors could keep him going for long enough, MCt would pay for the necessary surgery to put him into an experimental neuroborg shell. He didn’t have much left except his brain anyway, and this way he could at least work and “live.” Eric accepted. He didn’t have too much choice in the matter anyhow.

 

Priority	Spent	Gain
Resources	16	280,000 ¥
Skills	12	34 Active Skill Points
Attribute Points	12	24 Attribute Points
Magic	6	Latent
Available Races	26	Neuroborg
Subtotal	72
Base Points	60
Race Bonus	6
Net Edges/Flaws	6
Total Available	72

   Well, that is a minor surprise: race values of 22 and up included a +6 bonus to Magic. This really wasn’t meant to apply to Neuroborgs, who are only a “race” by technicality, but no one ever noticed before – and, by the usual rule of “the person who finds an editing error or slip-up in the rules gets to use it”, so be it.

Basic Attributes

		Augmented
Body	5	18
Quickness	2	5
Strength	5	10
Charisma	1	-5
Intelligence	6
Willpower	5
Special Attributes
Reaction	4	11
Initiative	1d6 + 4	4d6 + 11
Essence	6	0.4
Magic	0
Dice Pools
Karma	2
Astral Combat	7
Combat	6
Control	4
Hacking	2
Spell
Good Karma	0
Karma Earned	10
Karma Spent	10

Skills and Knowledges

Active Skills		Rating
Edged Weapons		4
Throwing		4
Computer		5
Etiquette: Corp		4
Negotiation		5
Demolitions		4
Motorcycles		4
Motorboats		4
Build/Repair/Skills		Rating
Edged Weapons B/R		2
Throwing Weapons B/R		2
Computer B/R		2
Demolitions B/R		2
Motorcycles B/R		2
Motorboats B/R		2
Knowledge Skills		Rating
Mitsuhama		5
Civil Engineering		5
Japanese Culture		4
North American Zoology		4
Western Philosophy		4
Cybertechnology		4
Metallurgy		4
Human Resources		4
Parabotany		4
Talismongering		4

 

Edges:

Name	Prelim Cost	Final Cost
Educated: 2	2	2
Longevity	1	1
Rapid Learner	5	5
Freeware: Major	3	3
Biotolerance	3	1.5
Geneware: 6.0 BI	13	6.5
Initiate: 2 (Oath)	3	1.5
Summoner: 3	6	3
“+1 Cha/Summoning”	1	0.5
	Add Sum	24

   This has a problem: the character intends to become a mage if he can ever afford to get his cell samples genetically modified with assorted geneware upgrades, a new body grown, and his brain put into it. That’s why he got half-price on the second group of edges; they don’t actually have an effect at the moment.

   On the other hand, normally lost essence cannot be restored, and – if a characters magic rating ever goes down to 0 – they go mundane and can’t bring it up again unless that “initiating mundanes” thing works out. Ergo, we need to keep his magic rating above 0 at the moment (although this will allow him to be a pretty heavily cybered mage later on).

   Secondarily, no edge can have a cost of more than 6 points. That means that the “geneware” edge is definitely pushing things. Given that it may never come into play, I suppose we can let Mr Moore get away with treating the modified cost as the limit, but 6.5 is still too high.

   Just as importantly, Geneware doesn’t work that way: You can get one point of innate bioware for 3 edge points, and it still has the normal BI cost. To get that down costs a FURTHER 1 edge point per -.5.

   To fix this take Geneware/-6 Body Index (12 edge points). This genetic hack will allow his body to handle 6 points of bioware without effect, but he’ll still have to pay for it – expensive, but in comparison with paying off his current body, a trivial expense. (2) Take the half-point this saves and use it to buy Initiate I with an Oath (2 edge points), and apply it to his original latent magical talents – taking Attunement II (+2 Magic) and Astral Sight. With that, he’ll have astral sight (if he learns to use it) and enough magic to be trainable later. Presumably he tried to initiate while in college or something and thought what little he saw at the time was a hallucination or something – especially since, as a latent talent, he had no active magical talents to disturb the rest of his life.

Revised Edges:

Name	Prelim Cost	Final Cost
Educated: 2	2	2
Longevity	1	1
Rapid Learner	5	5
Freeware: Major	3	3
Initiate I (Oath)	2	2
Biotolerance	3	1.5
Geneware: -6.0 BI	12	6.0
Summoner: 3	6	3
“+1 Cha/Summoning”	1	0.5
	Add Sum	24

 

Flaws:

Name	Value
Cortex Bomb: Cutoff Switch	6
Distinctive	1
Enemies: Minor	1
Freakish: What IS that!?	4
Legal problems	2
Miser	3
Obligations: Com/Maj/Plot	4
Oblivious	2
Offensive: Magicians	2
On File: Benign/Megacorp	4
PsyQ: Honorable/VC/Mod	4
PsyQ: Chromeheads freak him out	3
Sum	36 (23 effective)
Exempt Flaws*
Detailed Background	4
Day Job: Major	3
Net Total	30

   *Normally flaws over 10 points are halved in value, but Detailed Background and Day Job – since they can serve as plot hooks – are exempt from this. Unfortunately, there’s a minor problem here: no combination of Psychological Quirks can be worth more than 6 points, and he’s listed for seven – requiring problems which are both severe and appearing constantly. Dropping to 6 leaves him .5 points short. The easiest way to deal with this is to drop the “+1 Cha/Summoning” entry to rebalance things. That would be cheap to buy later anyway.

   Secondarily, several items need to be defined a bit more. What are his legal problems, and how and why does he offend magicians?

   On the other hand, a known positive psychological quirk – being Honorable – is worth a -2 modifier on social target numbers when it comes up. This is a good thing, since being a freakish cyborg may otherwise make most social interactions impossible.

 

Cyberware	¥ Cost	Essence
Neuroborg Chasses	12 Million	5.76
Additional Systems		Borg Ess.
Wired Reflexes 3	0.00	5.00
Titanium Bone Lacing	75,000	2.25
Dermal Sheath 3	120,000	2.10
Knowsoft Link	1,000	0.10
Orientation System	15,000	0.25
Internal GPS	2,000	0.10
Spatial Recognizer	1,200	0.20
Holdout II	4,000	0.20
Hearing Amplification	3,500	0.20
Hearing Dampener	3,500	0.10
High-Frequency Hearing	3,000	0.20
Low-Frequency Hearing	3,000	0.20
Image Link	1,600	0.10
Flare Compensation	2,000	0.10
Thermal Sight	3,000	0.20
Ultrasound Sight	10,000	0.50
Electronic Magnification 3	11,000	0.10
Totals	258,800	11.90

   Well, since a Neuroborg Chasses can accept up to 15 Essence worth of Cyberware, that works out. I’m not quite sure why Wired Reflexes III is listed as a free item, but at 12 million worth of freeware already, what’s another half-a-million? There may also be some compatability issues – Bone Lacing and a Dermal Sheathe may not go with Neuroborg – but I’ll have to dig out the book to see if there’s a cyberlimb-compatible equivalent.

Contacts

• Makio Yen, MCT Special Recruiter
• Jim Dougan, MCT Motorpool Chief

   Minor Purchases (20,000 NY): Pocket Computer, Telephone, Mechanic’s Kit, Flashlight, and a BMW Starfire Motorcycle.