283. Wisps

Unearthly, glowing shapes float smoothly through the walls of the station. Everyone present sees them, yet they never appear on images or footage. Their drifting is almost random, but they drift closer and closer to brains and cyberbrains. If allowed to come close enough, they will fly into a head and curl up inside.

Wisps seem to exists only in the minds of those who perceive them, suggesting they are hallucinations, yet their forms and locations are consistent between multiple viewers, suggesting some degree of reality. The exact nature of ghosts has proven difficult to pin down. The leading hypothesis is that they are a form of asynch mind-attack, but the examination of victims has been unable to find any of the usual traces of aggressive memetics. The other hypothesis is that they represent some new form matter, but this has been impossible to substantiate.

Every wisp is unique in appearance. Generally, however, they resemble the translucent, glowing skeletons or exoskeletons of alien beings.

Mechanics

Wisps do not interact with matter, and can pass at will through any barrier. Their slow speed and roundabout movement pattern means they approach characters with an effective speed of 1/10.

If a wisp enters a characters head they suffer no apparent ill effects, but the wisp "marks" them for exsurgents. Exsurgents will not attack that character unless attacked first, but will attempt to infect them with their strain of the virus.

282. Cyclopes

Cyclopes were the foot soldiers of the TITANs. They were the closest thing the TITANs had to a conventional army, using our abandoned and captured military equipment against us in the late stages of the Fall.

Cyclopes got their name from the large wide-angle lens that serves as their face, but they are otherwise human in shape and size. Having a human form allowed them to navigate human environments, use human weapons, and drive human vehicles. Cyclopes used human weapons, crewed human vehicles, and even wore human exosuits.

Cyclopes can still be found patrolling the TQZ. They rarely have the chance to capture military equipment, but can often be found using recovered zone stalker gear, patrolling in small squads.

Mechanics

Cyclopes are robots [-]

Movement Rate: 4/20 Max Velocity: 20 Armor: 14/12 Durability: 40 Wound Threshold: 8 Mobility System: Walker
Enhancements: Access Jacks, Enhanced Vision, Light Combat Armor

A cyclops AI typically has the following skills: Beam Weapons 50, Fray 50, Infiltration 30, Infosec 40, Kinetic Weapons 50, Perception 50, Pilot (All) 40, Seeker Weapons 50, Spray Weapons 50, Unarmed Combat 50

165. Tall-Dogs

TITAN bred tall-dogs wander the deserts of Mars, ranging far from the TITAN Quarantine Zone. Physically, tall-dogs resemble the maned wolves of old Earth, walking on stilt-like legs. They also, however, have toothless jaws and meter-long, prehensile, blood-sucking tongues.

Tall-dog behavior is defined by their apparent lack of consciousness, with behavioral patterns that remind many of insects or robots, not mammals. They are nonetheless social, although they do not form any permanent or even semi-permanent packs. Tall-dogs maintain contact with each other through constant ultrasonic howling, sharing information about themselves and their surroundings. When they are in a secure position they will attempt to breed. They are hermaphroditic, so each member of a pair will impregnate the other, then they separate. Like normal wolves or dogs, they will dig a den to give birth in, although they always give birth to twins. Tall-dog pups grow almost as fast as they can be fed, usually reaching maturity in a month.

They hunt primarily through ambush. If one picks up the scent of prey, it will follow from a distance, staying out of sight and following the scent trail, while howling to draw other dogs. Once enough dogs have joined, they rush the target, piercing it with their tongues and killing through rapid blood-loss.

Sequencing of the tall-dog genome has revealed a disquieting fact: the dogs do not seem to have been engineered, but rather, even their most extreme traits were formed, somehow, through selective breeding.

Mechanics

COG 5 COO 10 INT 10 REF 20 SAV 5 SOM 20 WIL 10
INIT 8 SPD 2 DUR 35 WT 7 DR 53 LUC 20 TT 4 IR 40

Skills: Perception 80, Unarmed Combat 60, Infiltration 60, Fray 60, Freerunning 50
Enhancements: Bioweave (Heavy), Claws, Echolocation, Enhanced Vision, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Enhanced Respiration, Temperature Tolerance

Sleights: Unconscious Lead (Constant)
Movement Rate: 6/40
Attack: Tongue 1d10 + 2 DV, AP −1
Armor: 3/4

160. Rage and Terror

In the early phases of the Fall, before anything was known of the TITANs, the world simply seemed to be getting worse, and weird. The planet was in a state of ecological turmoil, with animals being pushed out of their normal habitats and into contact with humanity. Some actions seemed definitely beyond what could be explained by desperate hunger, increased competition, or diseases such as rabies. Rats occasionally swarmed from drains, attacking even large groups of people, family dogs might suddenly run off in terror, biting at their former friends and never trusting them again, and many people lost their eyes to birds.

The culprits were animal-oriented basilisk hacks, inducing in their victims a frenzy of rage and terror. They had simpler effects and operated on less complicated brains than those of humans, so the hacks were commonly made by basilisk weeds. Apparently there was a hack for each species, and even today it is best not to take animals into TITAN zones.

Notes

Inspired by Arthur Machen's The Terror.

159. Basilisk Weeds

Basilisk weeds have been modified in two ways: first, to grow quickly and reproduce in great numbers, and second, to grow in ways that create basilisk hacks. Every aspect of their forms, from the veins in their leaves, the fractal patterns of their branches, the flow of their bark, and even the sound of wind through them, has been engineered to erode human minds. Basilisk hacks are precise things, however, and the basilisk weeds don't always grow in quite the right way to produce their full effect. Most often, basilisk weeds simply induce a feeling of vague dread, anxiety or confusion.

The majority of the basilisk weeds were, and hopefully are, on Earth. They would grow in terrible groves the locals learned to avoid, and those who wandered into forests would become confused, disoriented or catatonic, and never come back out.

Mechanics

Whenever a character views a basilisk weed, flip a coin. Heads, the character simply feels a sense of dread, tails they are effected by one of the incapacitating input type basilisk hacks.

156. Limpets

Limpets are some of the least intelligent TITAN creations, with simple, hungry minds, but this has not prevented them from becoming the most deadly. Their tactic of ambushing in large swarms has claimed thousands of wanderers since the Fall. In sufficient numbers they can overwhelm even military vehicles.

Limpets are rough bowls approximately 5 - 10 cm in diameter. The interior of the bowl is lined with powerful muscles and a unique, semi-organic form of fractal digits. The exterior is a tough but flexible shell. They do not posses eyes or any other typical sensory organs, but sense t-ray and radar very well.

Limpets attack in groups, although they do not cooperate beyond an instinct to swarm. They will attach themselves to outcrops or bury themselves in the ground, and when a target comes within range, leap dozens of meters at them. If they hit their target, they use the outer ring of their fractal digits to attach themselves, while the inner core begins to disassemble. While attached they look something like the animal from which they get their name.

Mechanics

COG 5 COO 20 INT 5 REF 20 SAV 5 SOM 15 WIL 5
MOX - INIT 7 SPD 1 LUC - TT - IR - DUR 40 WT 8 DR -

Mobility System: Hopper (4/20)

Skills: Fray 50, Freerunning 60, Perception 50

Notes: Armor 12/12, Mobility System Ionic, Radar, T-Ray Emitter, Fractal Digits

An attached limpet does 1d10 DV per minute. They can be pried off with a SOMx3 test, doing 1 DV to the attached victim as the limpet takes tissue with them.