Wednesday, March 18, 2015

77. Neotenic Elephants

Elephants had always been on the short list for uplifting. Their natural intelligence and sociability made them seem like obvious candidates. Their long gestation periods, and requirements for space, as well as their low numbers and associated genetic homogeneity, however, made uplifting difficult in practice.

One Somatek team had a clever solution. A neotenic elephant, never developing beyond childhood, will stay small, around one meter tall and 140 kg in weight. The trunk can be both strengthened and made more dexterous, giving them an agile, grasping limb. Their general cuteness is an added bonus: it was predicted they would be more accepted by society than other uplifts.

It was as the team was moving from physiological work to mental and social, the beginning of the uplifting process proper, that the Fall occurred. Some of their members and data were evacuated from Earth, but the elephant uplifting process had been dealt a mortal blow it has yet to recover from. Only the physiological blueprints remain, in the form of a neotenic elephant morph.

Mechanics

Neotenic elephants are biomorphs [Expensive 20,000+]

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack
Aptitude Maximum: 30
Durability: 50
Wound Threshold: 8
Advantages: +5 SOM
Disadvantages: 1 arm, quadrupeds have a difficult time in microgravity (–30 to Free Fall Tests)
CP Cost: 20

1 comment:

  1. I can just see the strange looks this one would get. Interesting to think that so there are so many weird, strange things in the transhuman world but this would be a blast from the past. A Fall veteran could walk past a neo-octopus, a Venusian glider, and a brain-box synth only to collapse in PTSD tremors after seeing what he takes to be a neo-elephant.

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