Wednesday, June 19, 2013

170: Godkillers



ENTRY 170: Godkillers

Omnia pereundum.
– Godkiller slogan

Some transhumans have set themselves up as above and apart from the clanking masses and unmodified flats of transhumanity—Ultimates and exhumans who have declared themselves superior in every form and function. Such arrogance begets enmity, for in a time when the length of a single ego’s existence may be prolonged indefinitely there still remain those that seek to remind others that no one is immortal.

The Godkillers are a sect of assassins, mainly targeting the Remade and certain exotic exhumans. Mainly composed of flats and splicers, the bulk of their numbers are perfectly ordinary individuals who hold a grudge against those who set themselves up as superior to others. Through their network, these individuals commit their resources to the destruction of the Ultimates by bidding against specific targets. The agents of the Godkillers are dangerous specialists, trained in particular skills, methodical in their planning and execution. Few target are engaged directly; the Godkillers prefer to strike from a distance, making use of the weaknesses in their target’s morph or personalities, and staged to look almost like accidents. Most of the Remade never see their death coming.



So far, the Godkillers have claimed five kills—although at least three of those appear to have been industrial accidents. Of course, given the existence of forking and cortical stacks the destruction of an Ultimate or exhuman’s morph rarely equates to the destruction of the ego, so there are several “survivors” of even the most successful Godkiller strikes. One Godkiller squad managed to pry out the cortical stack from the corpse, and is said to have kept it as a trophy; in the other confirmed Godkiller hit the destruction was so total (the Remade was trapped in a tank which was then filled with liquid helium) that even the cortical stack did not survive.

Seeds

  • The Godkiller network has announced a new trial “open season” bounty on one of their targets—a Remade ego broker known as Joaquin the Bastard. The current price on his heads is 250,000 credits…if the PCs can present his cortical stack with its ego intact.
  • The PCs come across the remnants of a Godkiller ambush of an exhuman named Xoras. The ambush was mostly successful, but Xoras’ back-up head is still alive, and calls out to the player characters, offering them whatever they want to reunite him with his back-up body in a bunker on Pluto. If they accept, they’ll have to deal with Godkillers looking to finish the job.
  • Scandal rocks the Godkiller network; it turns out that Mike Cheetimanah the splicer handling the money was using it to launder earnings from a Triad criminal network on Luna. The network has begun to fracture, and a specific faction of outraged supporters hire the PCs to go after Mike with extreme prejudice.
  • A local administrator is subtly encouraging the Godkiller network in the PC’s habitat to target a visiting Remade morph on her way to the Outer Rim—all the better to convince her to spend her resources on overpriced security details and otherwise boost the local economy. One of the Godkiller agents in place to keep tabs on the Remade wises onto the scam and asks the PCs to find the evidence exposing the administrator’s culpability. Once the Remade drops her guard, the Godkiller will have a much easier time dispatching her.

No comments:

Post a Comment