GUMSHOE Space – the Cybe

Cybes

You are a genetically and cybernetically altered being, originally from human stock. You are the results of super-soldier experimentation undertaken during the Mohilar War. In all likelihood, you served in the war. If not, you’ll need to explain why you didn’t, which you can either do immediately or reveal at an appropriate moment in the course of the series.

If you’re like most of your kind, you consider yourself a new species, homo amplius. About 70% of cybes fall into this category. Cybes of this persuasion seek to build their own settlements and cultures. If you count yourself among them, you envision a utopian cybe society based on the principles of self-determination, mutability of body and soul, and personal freedom. Attempts to found such societies have proven rocky so far. When outsiders point this out to you, you might reply that human societies you’re doing much better than homo sapiens was a single generation after it first evolved. Among fellow cybes you might be willing to admit that the tenuous social connections fostered by Cybe ideology make for volatile societies—especially when the innate aggression installed in your genes by Combine geneticists is taken into account. You are nonetheless determined to lay the foundations for a perfect society. Since the cybes intend to render themselves effectively immortal through additional modification, they’ll be living with the results of today’s political developments for centuries to come. If you’re a member of this dominant faction, you call yourself an amp or evolver.

About one in ten cybes consider themselves to still be human. They resent the notion that they might be anything else, reject political separatism, and seek full integration with human societies. Other cybes contemptuously refer to them as “vestigials”; they call themselves “integrationists” and label the so-called amps as “transers.”

Cybes can reprogram their abilities at will, at the cost of personality drift; see the Neural Rewiring ability, p. 53.

Translation devices render your speech patterns as slightly stilted and robotic. You may speak in a staccato rhythm or a montone, or avoid the use of contractions.

Cybes abandon their human names to affirm their identity as a separate species. Their names are metonyms: English words that reveal their (self-perceived) best qualities or capabilities. They may seem blunt or boastful to others. Older cybes append the vowel u to the English word, which stands for Unit. Younger cybes drop this convention. Pick a name from the sample list of on p. 273, or use it as inspiration for a similar name of your own invention.

Boosts: Culture (Cybe), Bullshit Detector, Virology

Suitable Drives: Altruism, Atonement, Avenger, Bleedism, Chronicler, Combinism, Comradeship, Derring-Do, Entrepreneurial, Exploration, Faith, Hotshot, Justice-Seeker, Nowhere Else To Go, Professionalism, Pursued, Programming, Role Model, Scientific Inquiry, Tech Hound

Unique Drives: Integrationist, Social Engineer

Species-Specific  Abilities: Enhancement Integration, Neural Rewiring

Cybernetic Compatibilities: All

Cybernetic Clashes: None

Viroware Affinities: All

Viroware Susceptibilities:None