Aberrant 2.0 Trinity
Rules Details
- Equipment and game mechanics
- Psions
Setting Stuff
The World of 2150
Inspiration
Over two and a half centuries ago, Doctor Calvin Hammersmith stumbled upon a discovery which changed the face of the world, bringing in posthumans and embroiling humanity in something greater than itself, drawing the attention of the Doyen and changing its fate forever. These Inspired, as they were originally called, changed the world. Great inventions of every form changed the world. Great men built nations and brought sweeping changes to the world, some good, others horrific.
Two of them stood above the rest. One of them, Maxwell Anderson Mercer, was gifted with the power to see the future. He saw the glories and horrors of the centuries to come, and created the Aeon Society to allow humanity to learn, eventually, from its mistakes, to allow it to progress. Another, his dear confidante, his friend, Michael Daemon Dhonigal, sought to give humanity the power to fight its own fate, to use the knowledge to better the world.
Human Enhancement
The Aberrant War was both a blessing and a bane to transhuman movements everywhere. On one hand, the Novas, those beautiful mad gods, had been a source of such pain and loss and had destroyed so much. On the other hand, it was human enhancement that had counteracted it. Without cognitive enhancements, the plans of the mad Sphinxes would never have been detected. It was cyborgs who were always at the front fighting the twisted sub-aberrants. At the worst of the backlash, humanity saw human enhancement as a necessary evil. Now, it is much more than that, something accepted, mainstream, sometimes even embraced. Nanotech surgeons and the increasing capability of integrated machinery have made enhancement surgery and body reprofiling ever-easier. Once limited to the rich and the military, now human enhancement has become something accessible to the middle classes of the world.
The potential exists for a drastic reevaluation of the meaning of humanity due to ever-advancing technology. But as long as the memories of the Aberrant War exist, it will never happen. Human enhancement is accepted and even desirable, but actual alteration to the human body plan is not.
Augmentation
Most standard augmentations are built via either synthetic tissue (biological enhancement) or advanced "dry" materials (cybernetic enhancement). The synthetic tissue method of augmentation is much more cost-effective but lacks the level of sheer power that cybernetic modification can provide. Most combatants tend to prefer "dry" cyberware, the exception being the Norca, who use genotyped bioenhancement to minimize interference with their psi mode.
All systems are self-healing and self-diagnosing, although not all are self-powered. Heavy cybernetic enhancement generally requires dedicated power sources-implanted fuel cells are the most common. Due to (relative) vulnerability to cyberkinetics and electrokinetics, counter-subversion systems are found in all implant systems, although military grade ones have heavier protection and are often backed with anti-subversion bioapps.
Psions
Psions are an artificial Inspired posthuman, created in the Doyen-gifted (and later reproduced) Prometheus Chambers. As an artificial induction of an Inspired subtype Psions are extremely common (anywhere from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 100 people have the potential to become Psions, allowing for a population of roughly 12 million to 120 million Gifted)
Pre-Aberrant War Psions existed but were rare. The US originally had Project WINTERGREEN, which had identified the potential of psychomorphs (Psions/Psiads) and was working on a method to create them, but work was slow without Doyen-derived biotech. Project Pandora similarly had some success, but not much, and until the Doyen came along with their gift Psions were virtually nonexistent.
Superiors
Superiors are an artifical expression of the Paramorph Inspired subtype, with control over probability and time. The Superior project is not fully understood, for all that multiple countries have hit on the process. What they do know is that Superiors are noetically inactive, inexplicably capable, and gifted with superhuman capability and some degree of "luck" although the true extent of their power is not known yet.