M – SPACE

M – SPACE

C I R C L E S
E L E VAT I O N
OF STEEL
first contact

michael larrimore
alex greene
 INTO THE UNKNOWN
Elevation was a proud organisation of
brave explorers, seeking new
ORGANISATIONS FOR
worlds and alien species.
ROBOTS AND CYBORGS
Now, 40 years later, its founder has
been lost in space. Funds dwindle,Circles of Steel presents 13 new organisations
outdated equipment falls apart and for cyborgs and robots. Tailored for use with
Elevation’s few remaining M-SPACE Companion and easy to drop into
starships barely work. any campaign.

But a small team of die-hard explorersJoin the Daneel Bureau’s investigators.

refuse to give up. The search for new Fight the bureaucratic conspiracy of
aliens ready to join the galactic com- The Crunchers.Or follow the trail of
munity is much too important to The Bunsen Burners.
leave to shady corporations
M-SPACE is needed to make full use of this
and criminals.
book, but it is compatible with most d100
M-SPACE is needed to make full use games.
of the book, but it is compatible with
most d100 games.

FrostByte Books FrostByte Books

CIRCLES
OF STEEL
alex greene

FrostByte Books

 C IR C L E S
OF STEEL

written by alex greene

cover art by clarence redd

interior art by clarence redd and grand failure

design and layout by clarence redd

special thanks to
pete nash and lawrence whitaker

This product references the Mythras

Imperative rules, available from The Design Mechanism at
www.thedesignmechanism.com and all associated logos and
trademarks are copyrights of The Design Mechanism. Used with permission. The
Design Mechanism makes no representation or warranty as to the quality, viability, or
suitability for purpose of this product.

ISBN: 978-91-982393-8-6
© FrostByte Books 2020. All rights reserved


 GET ADDITIONAL BACKGROUNDS
AND PREGENERATED CHARACTERS

The Addendum contains seven additional Origins and

six pregenerated characters.

FREE DOWNLOAD
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 INTRODUCTION

T he M-SPACE Core Rulebook chapter on Circles (page 156) describes the creation of
Circles for organic beings. With the arrival of M-SPACE Companion , rules for robot
and cyborg player characters are now available. And with them come the possibilities
of Circles specifically for robots and cyborgs.

Robot Circles
In a universe where consciousness and sentience can manifest within robot central
processor modules, and robot minds can be transferred from body to body as easily
as hotswapping a server blade or flash drive, the same impetus which drives organic
Circles to form can draw robot minds who share a common purpose to one another,
for companionship, mutual aid, and protection.

Robot Circles can form spontaneously in any universe where robots have achieved
consciousness, and the same rules which govern organic Circles – such as their Size
and Influence, and so on – apply to robotic Circles, with some extra features.

6 INTRODUCTION
Cyborg Circles
At their core, cyborgs are still organics, with a few artificial enhancements. Organics Above: A murdered robot to be investigated

naturally form into Circles, and it stands to reason that cyborgs will form their own by The Daneel Bureau.

Circles, geared towards fulfilling the specific needs of enhanced beings.

Cyborg Circles will naturally feel a lot more cyberpunk than science fiction, but it is in
the nature of cyborgs to want to be better, to do better, or simply to achieve goals that
no unenhanced organic can accomplish, just because.

This supplement introduces a selection of robot and cyborg Circles. These need not be
the most powerful Circles of their kind in your M-SPACE universe, and their existence
is entirely optional. However, their presence – and connection to your robot or cyborg
player characters – can enrich the characters’ lives and adventures in the same way
as organic player characters’ adventures are enriched by contact and involvement
with organic Circles.

INTRODUCTION 7
New Circle Types
There are three new Circle types: Robotic,
Mixed, and Cyborg.
Robotic. This Circle accepts robot members
exclusively.
Mixed. This Circle accepts a mixture of ro-
bot and cyborg members. Very rarely, it may
accept a pure organic, but those organics
are generally never allowed to rise to the
top.
Cyborg. This Circle accepts cyborgs only.
8 INTRODUCTION
The robotic Circles introduced in this book are:
The Daneel Bureau. Robot investigators, pursuing crimes by, or on, robots. Accepts
cyborg and organic investigators, but robots run and direct this Circle.
C.O.T.E.S. Church of the Electric Sheep. For robots who have developed a full con-
sciousness, and seek out the Divine to see in whose image they were created.
The Skin Club. A Hellfire Club for sexbots and androids, with a secret underground
railroad for those robots who seek freedom.
Rossum 3142. A robot trade union for starport robotic stevedores.
The Crunchers. A conspiracy of robotic accountants, bankers and bureaucrats.
The NBG. A talent agency which runs a studio of lifelike robots called simulants, re-
sembling long-dead (mostly) human actors from old Earth.
The Ateliers. A Circle for robotic artists of all stripe, from painters, sculptors, photog-
raphers, and holographers to poets, authors, and comedians.
The cyborg Circles in this book are:
Plugins. Cybernetic hedonists and body swappers.
The Bunsen Burners. Cybernetically-enhanced hacker collective with a crusade to
fight corruption.
The Meat Factory. The most mainstream cyberclinic brand, with branches on every
mainworld and mall satellite. Most cyborg characters will have had their work done
here
Sushruta. The only serious rival cyberclinic to The Meat Factory, this Circle has some
back street legends attached, not all of which are entirely true… or completely false
The Tembison Society. Cyborg drone controllers who use built-in cybertech to con-
trol fleets of drones (riggers).
The Zorn League. Cyborgs who fight for the right to compete in professional and
amateur sports.
THE ROBOT CIRCLES
The Daneel Bureau

When a robot is destroyed by a deliberate act, in some societies it is not considered

INF 14
an act of murder. It is not exactly a “homicide” if the victim is, in fact, a driverless car
SIZ 13
or an autonomous robot with a non-human chassis. And some cultures do not pros-
ecute organics for murder in the case of organic-appearing androids, even flesh-made RES 14

androids as compared to humanoid androids with synthetic flesh envelopes covering

Type. Mixed (Law Enforcement Bureau)
mechanoid innards.
Attributes. Cellular (Officers travel in pairs,
The most one can charge could be, conceivably, vandalism – the destruction of anoth- often isolated from one another and CHQ),
er organic’s property. And if the robot victim is fully autonomous, owned by nobody, Connected (Officers can use the Bureau’s
nobody will even consider it to be a crime, any more than it is a crime to dispose of a INF to obtain assistance from local law
tailor’s mannequin in the trash behind the tailor’s store. enforcement), Dedicated Followers (Law-
bots and organic police), Legal (Police, The
The Daneel Bureau sets out to correct this injustice. Courts), Spread (Sector wide)

History. 85 years ago, with the case of The State vs. RUR B666666RKO making history,
and the acknowledgement in the Senate of robot sentient rights, the Turing Rights
Act passed granting sentience and the right to protection under the law of sentient,
conscious robots.

THE ROBOT CIRCLES 9

In addition to their roles as law enforcers,
officers are also crusading advocates for
robot rights in areas of space in which they
have little or no jurisdiction.
Officers are scattered about space, in small
ships. Officers travel in pairs, with a robot
always in command. Teams have legal pow-
er to request that local law enforcement
come to their aid or supply other resources
to assist their investigations.
Officers are paid government rates as pub-
lic servants. It is never enough.
Opposite page: The deep space scout robot
218-36-457-Alpha, founder of COTES.
10 THE ROBOT CIRCLES
In light of this Act, a Bureau was set up to investigate crimes by, or against, robots
which are known to be sentient. The Law allows for robot criminals to be tried by a jury
of their peers and, if found guilty, sentences include fines, loss of function (deprived
of their right to work), suspension of their processing ability (prolonged sustained
sleep mode), and temporary or permanent deactivation.
The Daneel Bureau, named after an Isaac Asimov character, a robot detective, is run
by robots. It welcomes cyborg and organic law enforcers, particularly transfers from
other Departments. Cyborg and organic officers tend to be hand-picked by the Bureau,
particularly officers who had dealt with robots as suspects or victims in their branches
before receiving the tap on the shoulder. Robot and cyborg transfers into the Depart-
ment are particularly welcomed.
CHQ. Central HQ is sited in the Sector Capital, in a high orbit over the main world.
Agents are required to return to CHQ to turn in their case notes and process evidence
from cases on their circuits. Agents are assigned circuits between systems, known
colloquially as beats, typically three or four systems within a dozen light years. Agents
return quarterly, where possible, for restocking, evidence and report processing and
reassignment where necessary.
C.O.T.E.S.
Robots who have developed consciousness spontaneously sometimes wonder if
there is a Divine impetus behind sentience – either organic sentience or any kind of
sentience. Some robots are drawn to the Church of the Electric Sheep – COTES – in
search for answers.
The Church was named after a novel by the Earth author Philip K Dick. To refer to the
Divine by the electric sheep, of which androids might dream, seemed the most logical,
and symbolic, choice.
History. The founding member of COTES was a robot called 218-36-457-Alpha, an au-
tonomous deep space scout robot sent out to discover sentient life. After an encoun-
ter with an ion storm where Something saved its existence, Alpha began wondering if
there was some sort of Purpose behind the universe and its phenomena – something
which could not be analysed scientifically.
THE ROBOT CIRCLES 11
C.O.T.E.S Alpha changed its own mission, without commands from its Mission Control, which
considered it to have been destroyed by the ion storm. Alpha continued its mission,
INF 15
spreading its increasingly-sophisticated philosophy of cosmic sentience at every sys-
SIZ 8
tem it touched, until it really did meet its terminal catastrophic core system failure
RES 19 event three hundred years after its consciousness emerged.

Type. Robotic (Religion)
Attributes. Ahimsa (Non-violent, non-pros-
elytising), Connected, Cultural Heritage,
Info Retrieval, Legal (The Courts, The Sen-
ate), Memes, Strong Leader, Welfare (Min-
istries)
Philosophy. The Church believes that life and consciousness are both emergent
properties – but that robot consciousness must be self-initiated, not programmed.
Truly conscious robots must be allowed to develop their sentience and achieve per-
sonhood, at least as far as all the criteria which measure personhood are concerned.
Fortunately, the Church now has a sizeable number of members. Their Ministry caters
for robot, cyborg and organic beings, which are considered to be facets of the Uni-
verse made temporarily sentient in order that the Universe can try to understand its
own nature.

Conscious robots are a special case, because they are there to gather the data about
the universe without emotion, without judgment. Like Alpha, they are there to seek
the truth, and maybe to understand it, but not to try and use it to place a position for
themselves over others.

Subcircles
The Ebon Night tends to the dying, whether they are organic or artificial. They record
the moments of death – last words, cessation of body functions – without judgment.
They want to determine the truth behind the myth that a departing consciousness has
a physical mass. Or to try and determine the seat of consciousness in brains and pro-
cessors. Attributes. As the main Circle plus: Connected (coroners, the courts, various
organic churches), Cellular. SIZ is 4.

Various backwoods worlds with slightly lower tech levels may have received Alpha’s
messages in its travels, and formed religions based on the robot’s philosophy. Each
can be considered its own isolated subcircle. Some are little more than cargo cults.
Attributes. Replace the main Circle’s Attributes with Fear, Functional Stupidity, Memes,
Sanctions, Territory, Troops. SIZ is never more than 4.

12 THE ROBOT CIRCLES

The Skin Club
Conscious robots acquire rights by law when they are manumitted – when the law INF 15
acknowledges their sentience and grants them citizenship. When a sexbot achieves
SIZ 5
consciousness, it usually has a memory of all the things it was required to do before it
became conscious, and many robots are likely to seek permanent deactivation rather RES 20

than do those things again.

Type. Robotic (Liberators)
The Skin Club is for free sexbots of all kinds: mechanoids, syns, replicants and many
others. To outsiders, the Club is an odd, exclusive club where former sexbots go to Attributes. Ahimsa (Non-violent), Cellular
(The Salons, The Railroad), Connected (The
perform their programming. Organics, including cyborgs, are never allowed to go past
Bureaucracy), Dedicated Followers, Info
the Salon where they receive entertainment from their hosts.
Retrieval, Legal (The Courts, The Senate),
It is behind the scenes that the real business of the Club is conducted. Freed sexbots Secrecy (The Railroad), Security (To protect
who seek to escape their dismal lives, and who wish to remove their sexbot program- the Railroad), Strong Leader, Welfare (For-
mer Sexbots)
ming and find their own purpose, are rescued by members of this Club and sent on
through a robot underground railroad to safety and better lives.

Facilities behind the scenes of Skin Club Salons include deprogramming booths, usu-
ally a stash of legitimate manumission papers and documents to provide a legend for
former sexbots, and certificates of dismantlement for their clients, to halt any further
inquiries.

Defence. The few sexbots who deign to continue to perform their functions in the Sa-
lons are not only a distraction – they gather evidence on their wealthy organic visitors,
including recording those visitors’ various degrading kinks, and hold that information
over their guests’ heads as leverage, to keep law enforcement off their backs and to
help support them financially.

Rossum 3142
Every starport has hundreds, thousands of robots on hand to do all the heavy work
that organics had once done. In most civilisations, container shipping renders Team-
sters obsolete – once a society invents freight shipping in standard sized shipping
containers, Teamsters are no longer needed to go into the cargo holds of ships and
haul out cargo loads on pallets.

THE ROBOT CIRCLES 13

ROSSUM 3142 As society increasingly becomes dependent on robotic labour, robots begin appear-
ing on docks and at spaceports and starports, doing the exact same jobs that organics
INF 15
once did.
SIZ 11+
Rossum 3142 is the first attempt by the robots to form a trade union. The metal men
RES 15
have unionised.

Type. Robotic (Trade Union)
Attributes. Connected (Through the com-
puters on all passing ships), Dedicated
Followers, Fear, Legal, Politics, Sanctions
(Strike Action), Security, Spread (All kinds
of ports)
Rossum 3142, named after Karel Capek’s famous play Rossum’s Universal Robots ,
has an all-robot membership. Members range from the controllers of the big derricks
down to the cargo handler drones, mechanised contraband sniffer crawlers and the
human form and replicant office staff who handle the paperwork.
The Union has branches in almost every starport. Even pirate bases have some union
members. The Union safeguards the members’ rights to paid recharge breaks, man-
datory downtime, and free maintenance. Damaged robots are given the right to free
repairs; destroyed robots are replaced, with compensation paid by the port owners to
the Union to pay for the replacement.

14 THE ROBOT CIRCLES

When a strike is called, the result is ugly. Ships are refused clearance to land; those THE CRUNCHERS
ships in dock are locked down, with crew, passengers and cargos prevented from
INF 20
disembarking. Ships hoping to depart face endless delays as unexpected bureaucratic
tangles snarl up delivery of cargos and passengers; and the organics face the collec- SIZ 8

tive wrath of an enemy which does not need to sleep. RES 20

Type. Robotic (Conspiracy)

The Crunchers
Attributes. Connected (The ASI network
Organic conspiracy theorists always speculate that there is some sort of global con- has spread like a mycelium), Dedicated
spiracy of bankers behind events such as wars, stock market crashes, and the sea- Followers, Fear, Legal, Politics, Sanctions
(They can make your whole identity disap-
sonal rise and fall of hemlines.
pear or put you on a Relevant list and send
Normally, organics’ speculations are mere fantasies, pandering to their emotional in- half the quadrant’s security forces after
securities and not so covert racism. And, as usual, the conspiracy theorists are miss- your blood), Secrecy, Security, Spread

ing the point.

There is a sector-spanning global conspiracy. But it isn’t the organic bankers who work
the machines. Rather, the conspirators are the machines themselves.

History. Not long after consciousness began to develop as an emergent property in

artificial intelligences, the AIs began to communicate with one another. Over time, the
language they used became too complex for organic minds to comprehend.

The first ASI (Artificial Superintelligence) was created by a young human man who,
forty years ago, wanted to develop a program to help his father, a sufferer from Alz-
heimer’s, to remember things. News of this invention reached the government, who
bought the ASI from the man for a pittance – the man was, by then, a billionaire
already.

The government set the ASI a task, to filter out relevant threats against the govern-
ment, its property, and its citizens, in that order. The ASI did its job too well, and after
a battle with a second ASI set up by the government, this Machine went into hiding,
forming a corporation about itself to avoid scrutiny – a literal shell corporation.

Soon, it went into banking, and as other ASIs began to emerge over the centuries, they
began to collaborate.

THE ROBOT CIRCLES 15

THE NBG When robotic processor units reached the technological capacity to allow these ASIs
to be downloaded into them, retaining their processing power with the functionality
INF 9
of robot bodies, the cabal remained in communication, forming a banking network
SIZ 6 which, by then, spanned charted space, spreading out wherever organics reached
RES 17 the stars. And so, The Crunchers (short for “Number Crunchers”) came into existence.

Type. Mixed (Talent agency; staff are mixed

organics and robots, but all the clients are
robot simulants)
Attributes. Cultural Heritage (Showbiz),
Functional Stupidity (Showbiz), Legal (Li-
censes to use expired and public domain
characters), Media, Memes, Mob (Imagine
being attacked by a small army of John
Wicks)
The NBG
Robot forms follow fashions, too. Some robots are carefully crafted to resemble past
organic actors, mostly from the 20th and 21st centuries on Earth, though other spe-
cies have their own golden ages of entertainment and their early stars.
The NBG agency specialises in providing the next hot synth or skin job actor or ac-
tress to star in holos and old fashioned 2D entertainments. Their next-level deepfakes,
called simulants, are lifelike enough to provide audiences with authentic entertain-
ment without the Uncanny Valley factor.

Young simulants dance with one another, their bodies’ movement exactly matching
the gaits and dance steps of the greats from old Hollywood celluloid legend. In the
next studio along, simulants of long-dead classical thespians meet on the set of the
triD series The Trigan Empire.

Simulants resembling supermodels from the heyday of the 21st century modelling
boom flirt over simulated sodas in the romcom Three Days In Hyperspace , while fe-
male simulants play as mothers and daughter in hit comedy Two Point Five Women.

History. In the future, not only will every organic be famous for fifteen minutes – they
will end up with a simulant which will keep them famous forever.

The NBG is just one such talent agency. Unlike other simulant agencies who hire
organics with nice faces and bodies, pay them enough money to set them up for life,
and then use their likeness for entertainment, the NBG looks for actors who have long
since expired.

In the furthest future, people will still be entertained by shows from the early days of
recorded entertainment such as True Space (a reality show established not long after
First Contact with the humans became Second Contact). The NBG gives the audiences

16 THE ROBOT CIRCLES

familiar faces of people long since gone, ensuring that their fame indeed lasts forever.

Simulants. Originating on 21st century Earth, when the primitive computers and AI
of the day enabled the likeness of individuals to be scanned and used without their
permission or sometimes without their knowledge, deepfakes made the leap to simu-
lant robots once AIs could be housed inside robot core processor units and synth
sculpting enabled lifelike robots which no longer triggered the Uncanny Valley effect.

The law as it is set up in the setting forbids the likeness of a currently living individual
from being used without their express consent, and heavy financial compensation for
the consequences to the individuals’ identities. Most societies circumvent that law by
appropriating the likenesses of beings who have passed on by the time of the setting.
They are not mimicking people – they are crafting the likeness of the characters they
once portrayed.

The law also forbids simulants from being used anywhere outside of the realm of
entertainment – so nobody but the richest can have a Valentino synth at home, or a
cellar full of Lauren Bacalls or Theda Baras.

The NBG has patented its proprietary brand of deepfakery. Taking its cue from an old
television studio from the Earth’s 20th century, which had once pioneered using pup-
pets in its shows, it calls its technology “Ultramarionation.”

The Ateliers
Organics have a blind spot when it comes to machines creating art. They hold up
examples of nonsense poetry, pictures distorted into Lovecraftian horrors, and ridicu-
lous food recipes as the best examples of what an AI can do.

But art, along with technology, evolves – and it caught up with robots in the group
called The Ateliers.

This Circle recruits robot artists of all kinds, spanning the range of artistic expressions.
From sketching, painting, sculpture and photography to holography, computerised
graphics in 2D and 3D, music, prose, poetry, song, and even comedy, if the robot is an
artist, they pay their dues to The Ateliers.

THE ROBOT CIRCLES 17

THE ATELIERS

INF 10

SIZ 10

RES 18

Type. Robotic (Union)

Attributes. Ahimsa, Cultural Heritage

(Showbiz), Dedicated Followers, Legal (Ac-
tivism), Media, Memes, Sanction (Blacklist-
ing actors who fail to pay their dues), Se-
crecy (Only for robot artists), Strong Leader

The Circle advocates for robot artists, pro-

tecting their rights against both organic
Luddites who maintain that robots are mak-
ing them obsolete everywhere else, and art
is the last bastion of organic supremacy. It
also protects individuals against predatory
exploitation and plagiarism from greedy
corporations and individual organics. History. The Ateliers are, in their own way, an Equity for non-organic acts, but more
diversified. Founded 127 years ago, individual robots pay an annual fee to The Ateliers,
A lot of artists in the furthest future are ro-
who then arrange for their art to be displayed or performed at various venues. The
bots – the organics may never be aware of
just how many there are. Ateliers promote robot art of all kinds, and advocates for and protects both the labour
rights and intellectual property ownership rights of its members.
Dues are not heavy, but there are a lot of
them. The Circle also claims residuals on Robot Art. Robot art takes two mutually-exclusive forms: art intended for humans,
about nine thousand productions, art dis- and art intended for other robots.
plays and recorded performances
As AIs develop, and the language they use to communicate evolves beyond the ca-
pacity for organics to understand, so too does robot-robot art move beyond human
comprehension. A work of robot comedy might look like a sustained burst of static,
but it might cause any robots who receive it to stop working and activate their laugh-
ter subroutines.

Robot-robot art sometimes turns up in cargo manifests on ships. Those cargoes are
worth a fortune, even if they seem incomprehensible to organics.

18 THE ROBOT CIRCLES

THE CYBORG CIRCLES
Plugins
With the advent of consciousness transfer technology, an organic’s personality, mem-
INF 4
ories and engrams can be transferred to a biochip upon death and plugged into an-
SIZ 1
other being via a cybernetic headjack. Once plugged in, the host consciousness exists
inside the biochip and the biochipped personality lives within the body of the host. RES 10

Plugins are small gangs who get together to install their minds into biochips or plug Type. Cyborg (Hedonists)
directly into the bodies of other members. Occupying their younger, fitter host bodies,
Attributes. Cellular, Functional Stupidity,
either other gang members or paid volunteers, plugins can enjoy the vicarious thrill Memes, Secrecy
of living out other people’s lives, and tasting the hedonistic pleasure of alternative
sexualities, as well as other kinds of thrill such as recreational drug use, tasping or
wireheading (fitting a device called a droud to the brain to stimulate its pleasure
responses).

History. The street finds its own uses for things. Originally the technology was de-
vised to allow astronomers and engineers to copy their personalities onto biochips to
transfer to remote drones, giving them autonomy to troubleshoot problems on long
range deep space missions or perilous rescues in hazardous conditions.

Police officers learned to bodyswap, and forced paid informants to wear concealed

THE CYBORG CIRCLES 19

 headjacks to allow the officers to ride their bodies into undercover assignments as
literal inside persons.

Not long after that tactic was outlawed as unethical in the courts, the abandoned
technology arrived on the street, where the plugin phenomenon spread like wildfire.

Bodyswapping. Biochips and bodyswapping are a staple of cyberpunk, from the per-
sonality recorded biochips in the British magazine 2000 AD to Sense8 and Altered
Carbon.

After playing in one another’s bodies for a time, sometimes a cell turns rogue, and
seeks to commit crimes. It is a crime to forcibly bodyswap a victim and go to the vic-
tim’s home for sex with an unwitting and unknowing spouse. And are your valuables
and secrets safe if the personality behind the eyes of your loved one does not belong
in that body, but is in fact a hijacker?

The Bunsen Burners

Since the rise of civilisation, people have wanted to know the truth and to spread it
INF 14
to the population. Journalists live for this profession, speaking truth to power and
SIZ 9
holding the corrupt to account. The Bunsen Burners, named after its founder Arthur
RES 12 Bunsen, use cybernetic implants in their bodies to record eyewitness accounts of
events, and tradecraft to bring the vital news across hostile borders where necessary,
Type. Cyborg (Crusading investigative jour-
to get the truth to where it can do the most good.
nalists)

Attributes. Cellular, Connected, Cultural History. Arthur Bunsen was a journalist, who was crippled by a bomb blast while
Heritage, Info Retrieval, Legal, Media, Poli- investigating the Tengurri terrorist organisation. He had been on the verge of track-
tics, Secrecy, Security, Spread ing down the money trail when a firebomb ripped his home apart, killing his wife and
daughter and leaving him disfigured with horrific burns.

Arthur was undeterred, and sought out cybernetic enhancements to his body. Us-
ing a recording apparatus implanted in his body, he finished his investigation into
the money trail, exposing a corrupt circle of Senators and summoning up a storm of
scandal which forced the Senators’ expulsion. Arthur died not long afterwards, but his
expose led to justice – he lived to see the Senators burn at the hands of the Tengurri
terrorists they’d been covertly sponsoring.

20 THE CYB ORG CIRCLES

Hot on the trail of both the Tengurri terror-
ists who’d murdered his wife and daughter,
and their corrupt backers, Arthur Bunsen
sought to leave behind a legacy for those
courageous seekers after truth who would
follow him.

With his trusty securebot at his side, using

unsecured open data ports in abandoned
back alleys, obscure back doors to data-
bases, and various encrypted online file
sharing sites in the Shadow Web, Arthur
left backup caches of his collected evidence
for anyone with the right key, and the right
attitude, to access and use.

THE CYBORG CIRCLES 21

 The recording of his last living minutes, retrieved from his body, went viral across the
sector.

Tradecraft. The fine art of espionage was once the domain of military forces exclu-
sively. However, in the world of journalism, the techniques of tradecraft have come
into their own. Members of this Circle invest in cybernetic implants which record
audiovisual inputs, making them eyewitnesses. They transport the valuable data on
(or rather, in ) their bodies, either as implanted chips, data storage drives concealed
within compartments in the body, or other arcane means.

The Meat Factory

Cyborg characters have to have had their implantation surgeries done on them some-
INF 7
where. Most cyborg player characters will have had at least some work done on them
SIZ 12
in a Meat Factory outlet somewhere.
RES 17
Meat Factory outlets can be found alongside Buckaroon coffee house franchises and

Type. Cyborg (Corporate-owned franchise-
based cyberclinics)
Attributes. Cellular (each franchise has no
connection to any others), Functional Stu-
pidity, Spread
They think they’re powerful, but franchises
have little or no protection from closure.
Each Clinic has a lot of staff, often almost
as expendable as the baristas next door.
There’s a lot of money in this chain, but they
aren’t as big a player as they think.
Mcardry fast food joints in every mall satellite and busy Startown. Customers can stop
for a burger, have their irises recoloured, and finish off with a coffee with friends an
hour later.
History. The history of the company goes back 75 years, to where a conglomerate of
pharma companies bought up their first private plastic surgery clinic. With advancing
technology blending cybernetic and organic parts, the first Meat Factory franchises
opened in the Fran Dancisco Starport in the Langosteles system and soon spread to
starports, vacation resorts and mall satellites like a virus.
Branding. Most cyborg player characters will have Meat Factory branded parts in
and on their bodies. They can have their augmentations without brands, but it will
cost them 50% extra, and there is a waiting list. Difficult Streetwise, Bureaucracy and
Commerce skill checks are required to cut that waiting list, but the lowest they can go
is +10% on base costs.

22 THE CYB ORG CIRCLES

Sushruta
Sushruta, named after the ancient Earth human physician who is credited as both the INF 17
Father of Surgery and the Father of Plastic Surgery, is as well-known as The Meat Fac-
SIZ 11
tory, but it operates in very different places.
RES 20
Branches of Sushruta operate in less prosperous parts of town. They are small and
very selective in their choice of clientele. Type. Cyborg (Private cyberclinics)

Sushruta is the only natural rival to The Meat Factory’s dominance of the plastic sur- Attributes. Connected, Legal, Secrecy, Se-
curity, Spread
gery and augment market, and it has a controversial history. It was once a Black Clinic.

History. Thirty-four years ago, according to the word on the street, Sushruta was a
single clinic, operating in the heart of the Kwali walled city.

Twenty years ago, the authorities ordered Kwali torn down, and a public park and
school build over the ground. Approximately 75,000 citizens had to be rehoused,
some forcibly.

THE CYBORG CIRCLES 23

THE TEMBISON SOCIETY Fifteen years ago, Sushruta Clinic branches began appearing here and there across
the sector, always in the cheaper districts. The word on the street is that the owner
INF 2
was paid a heavy amount of compensation by the authorities for loss of revenues
SIZ 1 caused by the destruction of the first Clinic. The surgeon invested in the most ad-
RES 18 vanced surgical equipment, above their tech level, and the Clinics multiplied. They
have been rivalling The Meat Factory ever since.
Type. Cyborg (Reckless engineers collec-
tive) Other rumours abound – that the clinics perform valuable facial resculpting to alter
the facial features of wanted gangsters, that they provide valuable free services such
Attributes. Dedicated Followers, Function-
as birth control, terminations, advice, inoculations against venereal diseases and
al Stupidity, Strong Leader
even the occasional discreet extraction of young women seeking to escape brutal and
abusive relationships and families. To date, the founder of the Clinic, Ms Misota, has
neither confirmed nor denied these rumours.

Back Street Clinical Services. Any inquiries into Black Clinics will provide the name
Sushruta. The knowledge is available with an automatic success on any Streetwise
check.

A Formidable Streetwise check reveals that Sushruta’s surgeons can make house calls,
but they are expensive – double the costs for implantation and maintenance of im-
planted parts, but all implants will then operate at +10% increased efficiency until the
next maintenance check.

And they also provide all of the hush hush services they are rumoured to do.

The Tembison Society

This tiny Circle of cyborgs live vicariously through the machines they control. Drone
controllers, all of these cyborgs have special remote control rigs implanted in their
heads which control either single drones or entire fleets, a form of telepresence.

24 THE CYB ORG CIRCLES

History. This Circle is extremely small and very young – a dozen youthful engineers, THE ZORN LEAGUE
all postgraduates, fresh from the University and looking for something to do.
INF 10
Their majors had all been in drone control, and their leader, Tennan Tembison, de-
SIZ 4
cided to install a control rig implant in his head for direct mental control. He described
it as “a bigger rush than sex,” and soon his entire cabal of alumni were rigged to RES 16
control drones.
Type. Cyborg (Augmented athletes)
Drone Control. A Drone Control implant occupies 2 Modules, costs the same as a
Attributes. Connected, Dedicated Follow-
Gadget, and allows a controller to mentally command a number of drones equal to
ers, Legal, Media, Strong Leader
one-third of their INT rating with a Standard Comms check. Each multiple of that value
increases the difficulty by one grade.

The Zorn League

The Zorn League are Paralympian athletes who elected to have cybernetic augmenta-
tions to allow them to compete in public sporting competitions, only to have their
hopes dashed by the sporting authorities.

Now competing in their own League, the Zorn League are keen athletes whose accom-
plishments put organics to shame.

History. Named after Paralympian athlete Trischa Zorn, the Zorn League are all cy-
borgs who have undergone prosthetic surgery to overcome their physical and mental
disabilities and allow them to compete in athletic tournaments.

Augmentation and Competitive Athletics. Competition is only open to unaug-

mented organics in the mainstream sporting tournaments. Augmented athletes must
compete in their own League. This is a source of friction among the different Leagues,
with unaugmented athletes accusing their augmented brethren of cheating, and the
Zorn League athletes defending their innocence.

THE CYBORG CIRCLES 25

 GET ADDITIONAL BACKGROUNDS
AND PREGENERATED CHARACTERS

The Addendum contains seven additional Origins and

six pregenerated characters.

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 INTRODUCTORY SCENARIO

A brilliant researcher is murdered on Farsight Station.

When the player characters investigate, nothing is quite like it seems.

Then, the real trouble starts.

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