149. Police Fog

The thin mist saturating many habitats is acutally its primary police force. A type of utility fog, police fog is usually deployed to entirely permeate public spaces. Its use is often seen as heavy-handed and indicative of a police-state.

On its own, any given fog-bot has only basic functions, able to attach to its neighbors, relay information, sense its immediate surroundings, and emit tiny amounts of light. Working together, however, the fog becomes capable of many tasks. The fog can rapidly coalesce, impeding sight and even movement. Combing the poor senses of each bot produces thorough and fine-grained surveillance of the filled area. In addition to mesh-based communication, they will often relay messages through light or ultrasound, making them difficult to jam. Each unit can emit colored light, which, when coordinated, allows them to form signs and holograms.

Engineers are working to add even more functionality, including fire-fighting, and neutralization of hazardous materials.

107. Bone Mites

Weaponized nanotechnology produces horrific corpses, that is, if there is a corpse left at all. Dissasemblers might be programmed to dissolve organic matter, but leave clothing and equipment perfectly intact, or dissolve only keratin, removing victims' nails, hair, and skin. TITAN nanoswarms are, if anything, more humane than their transhuman designed counterparts: they are fast and thorough.

The TITANs, of course, developed autonomous, self-sufficient and self-replicating nanoswarms far beyond what has been achieved by transhumanity. When the TITANs suddenly left, nanoswarms, like many other autonomous, intelligent, evolving and/or replicating TITAN tech, began growing, spreading, and changing. What the bone mites could have originally been intended for is a mystery,

Much like colonial swarms, bone "mites" (nanites) are eusocial, although as TITAN tech, their intelligence may be much higher. Whereas colonial swarms build their hives out of any locally available materials, bone mites use mammalian bodies (they have been noted to ignore avian and octopus uplifts). Specifically, the mites induce a form of fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva in their victims. Once the victims have been paralyzed through ossification, the mites begin burrowing through the bone, forming tunnels and chambers much like an ant colony.

The mites do not kill their victims. In fact, they seem to take specific actions to keep their host alive, leaving the brain and supporting tissues intact, regulating their activity like medichines, and importantly, making slow changes to the structure of the brain. This last action has suggested to researchers that the mites have goal, that they do not live in ossified bodies because they have to, but because they need to use transhuman brains as a substrate for their own calculations.

Mechanics

Victims of bone mites lose 1 point of SOM, COO, and REF per hour. Once any of these attributes reaches zero, they are paralyzed. From then on, victims take 1d10 SV per hour until killed or rescued. Medichines prevent progression, but nanophages are required for total immunity.

While hunting for new hosts, treat bone mites as a nanoswarm. During infection, bone mites can be treated as a nanotoxin.

Notes

Inspired by SCP-439.

106. Colonial Swarms

Despite the continuing fears, it has proven to be difficult to create nanoswarms that will last long once released from their hive. Guardian swarms, power loss, fluids, sticky substances, magnetic fields, radiation, stray cosmic rays and even the occasional ravenous amoeba steadily whittle down their numbers. It is to the consternation of many nano-engineers, then, that an unknown designer has successfully created and released a wild artificial nanoswarm: autonomous, reproducing, and stable.

The swarms seem to be modeled on honeybee colonies. They created hives: spheres of foamed plastic through which the nanites can percolate. The hives are riddled with microscopic bubbles, sealed vacuums that are excellent environments in which they can replicate. Larger bubbles will contain stores of usable feedstock. The hive will also contain a much larger space towards its center, commonly called the conference center. The nanites gather en masse, using their lidar to signal each other, exchanging information on sources of feedstock and energy, making decisions democratically, like bees.

Plot Hook: Scavengers occasionally raid colonial swarm hives for small but pure portions of elemental feedstock. One man is found dead of an apparent disassembler attack, apparently in the middle of breaking into a particularly large hive. Firewall believes the colonials have either been corrupted by TITAN-tech  or evolved their own defenses; either way, the players are tasked with the investigation.

99. Glutton Mites

Glutton mites are one of the only Chimeran insects with left-handed proteins. Their tenacity in maintaining their niche is perhaps due to their metabolism, based on a water-hydrogen peroxide mix. One of the principle ways the mites use hydrogen peroxide is fordigestion: the mites secrete nearly pure hydrogen peroxide to burn through organic matter before they eat the remains.

The mites have appeared as novelty bioweapons in some black and red markets. They are kept freeze-dried in small vials until the warmth of a body rouses them and they begin digesting through flesh.

Mechanics

Glutton mites are treated as disassembler nanoswarms, targeting only organic matter. [Expensive].

85. Nanoseeds

Protean swarms are the current peak of light nanofabrication technology, but nanoseeds occupy a reliable niche as inexpensive, single-use fabricators. Nanoseeds consist of compacted pellets of dormant protean nanites. Unlike with protean swarms, nanoseeds come pre-programmed with a single blueprint and enough stored energy to produce it. Plant the seed in a suitable substrate, let it cook, and and come back in a few hours to brush the dirt off your new piece of gear. Protean swarms give you more bang for your buck, but nanoseeds are small and relatively inexpensive. Gatecrashers, scavengers and nomads of all types often carry small packs of seeds as backup for vital equipment.

Mechanics

Nanoseeds work only once, have no means of mobility, and cannot be reprogrammed.

Nanoseeds are nanoswarms [Cost of Equipment]

84. Dirt™

Pound-for-pound the most popular nanoswarm in the system, it is Dirt™ that allows Earth's plant-life to flourish on Mars, just as it once served as the backbone for the Saharan reclamation projects. Dirt™ can be mixed into hydroponics, mixed into soil, or even serve in place of soil, all while acting as simple medichines for plants. Dirt™ will kill harmful microbes, support beneficial microbes, sequester toxins, hold water, accelerate composting, and deliver nutrients, seeing to it that your plants' health is served from the molecule up.

Mechanics

Dirt™ is a nanoswarm [Low]

Plot Hook: Dirt™ is also very effective at breaking down bodies. Remnants of a firewall agent are identified in a Martian dirt-farmer's compost. The farmer is the obvious suspect, but is unlikely to have been able to have killed the agent themselves. How far might Dirt™ go to secure nutrients for its plants?

55. Survites

Nanofabrication eliminates the necessity (though not the convenience) of harvesting complex chemistry whole. The hungry cornucopia machines may require only raw elements, but they require it in abundance. Survite nanoswarms help make it possible for transhumanity to survive on scattered dead rocks.

Set a hive on the ground and leave it to cook. Survites will filter through regolith and rock, relaying their findings up the chain, back to the hive. The longer the hive works, the farther it can spread its network, building comprehensive geological maps. Survites and survite hives are one of the most popular pieces of nanotech in the system, used by Consortium mining concerns and Brinker prospectors alike.

Mechanics

Survites are nanoswarms [Moderate]