Thunderson & Sons Powered Arms and Armour

"Congratulations on your induction, sir. Many members of the Ironclad Order use our work and are well satisfied."

"We make the "Thunder Child" style of actuated plate, exclusively. Guild-standard titanium alloy and synthetic muscle strong enough to carry its own weight plus an additional 250 lbs. Protection without sacrificing mobility."

"Lets discuss armament. We usually recommend a weapon for soft targets, a weapon for hard targets, and at least one backup."

"For soft targets, you can't go wrong with a half-inch caliber, belt-fed, machine rifle. A bit bland, I will admit, but it will never let you down. Or perhaps you would prefer our gas-fueled flame thrower. Brutal, but undeniably effective."

"For hard targets I usually suggest a 6 inch recoilless rifle. Many swear by it. Its the most powerful armament we make, and we offer a wide range of warheads, giving the weapon a great deal of flexibility. If you are looking for precision, my second son's inch-caliber long-rifle is second-to-none, with an effective accuracy out to mile and enough power to threaten plate."

"For backup, many of our clients swear by my third son's quarter-inch rapid-fire gun. That one can be mounted on the head or wrist. Not a precision weapon but volume of fire can provide its own accuracy. A tear-gas dispenser is another popular option, especially if you are concerned about being mobbed."

"Very good sir. Hail the House of Many Suns."

Flourishing

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Ethics for Tomorrow"

Prior to commencement, growth rates were well below replacement. We estimate deployment of 1,000,000 units would be necessary to bring birth rates back up to 2.5. Re-investment of suitable units from each batch can negate need for acquiring "wild" units, but will take 10 years at minimum. Enough variety is present that a genetic bottleneck is not expected to become a problem.

The savings on support costs from the removal of extraneous material, combined with the value of trace elements recovered from said material has reduced upkeep and maintenance costs by 17%. Transplantation of extraneous material also offsets costs. Life support equipment remains our most significant cost.

The most successful hormone treatment sped development by an average of 4 weeks, but increased failure rates by 32%, representing an overall reduction in per-year production and is therefore not recommended. Improvements in nutrition and preventative treatments have reduced overall failure rates to 14%.

At this point, our primary problem is the assimilation of batches into the population. Adoption rates are not sufficient to handle more than 1% of each batch. State-run communal care and education is cost-prohibitive. A massive influx of youth will cause demographic instability and the exposure of our project will become inevitable.

Icthyons

Chemistry and materials science are difficult below the waves, breeding is slow but reliable. Breeding has taken the Icthyons from territorial catfish bullying smaller species for food to gracefully whiskered inheritors of a thousand useful creatures, well-bred and good breeders.

Symbiotes for health, parasites for control. Squid for hunting and barracuda for fighting. A good home is made by waste-eating snails. Octopuses as living tools. Everything is alive or was part of something alive.

The Icthyons have not spared themselves from their great breeding projects. Modern Icthyons are healthier, smarter, more ruthless, and have shorter lifespans than their ancestors, changes introduced through generation after generation of careful matchmaking.

It takes eons to breed stock into a new form. Innovation is virtually impossible, iterative improvement virtually inevitable. Icthyon culture prizes links to the past, and incorporates anything new slowly and thoroughly. Over the course 10,000 years, crab-silk was slowly bred from a disposable and temporary string, to sturdy fabric, to a woven sheets rivaling steel, and so over the course of 10,000 years, knotwork became increasingly sophisticated and fell out of favor, silk fashion became increasingly sophisticated and fell out of favor, and now silk armor is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Father Dagon, Mother Hydra

The deep ones are not worshipful, they acknowledge no gods. There are, however, those who they must respect. Mother Hydra, the great conglomeration, feeding tendrils groping upwards from Laurentian Abyss, grabbing some things and releasing others. Father Dagon, the giant, floating along the North Pacific Gyre, eating and growing and demanding more. Sister Echidna, which wanders the arctic, spitting monsters ashore. Brother Koshei, recently recovered from below Lake Baikal and held with caution and foolhardiness by the USSR. These are the subjects of deep one one art, the ones worthy of idolization.

Of course, words like "Father" and "Mother" are the result of a clumsy translation, as neither Dagon, Hydra, nor the deep ones have any sort of sex or gender. They are not family, but they are the closest thing.

The deep ones may have been human once. Ancient corpses, lost at sea, may have drifted into the clutches of an amorphous blob, a massively parallel genetic computer, and ancient meddler in natural history: a shoggoth. Once it had a sample of human DNA a shoggoth could have spent millenia "digesting" it, endlessly mixing and remixing it with all the sealife samples it had gathered before. If a viable combination were found, it would not be hard for the shoggoth to bud off an example of that creature, and release it into the sea.

But although the shoggoths made them, they are uncaring, and the deep ones have spent their whole lives immersed in the dream of Cthulhu.

COLD DIAMOND

PROPOSAL SUMMARY:

The planet is changing at too great a rate. Our choice is between extinctions. Extinction by plague and privation, or extinction by rapid adaptation: the transformation of humanity into an alien being suited for life on our alien planet. Previous experiments have already established the efficacy of progenitor methods of hypnosis in deep-brain modification. With progenitor assistance, the USSR can finally create a New Man.

PROPOSAL STATUS: ACCEPTED

PHASE 1 COMPLETE
REPORT SUMMARY:

Successful subjects display virtually unlimited pain-tolerance, perfect self-control, and an increase in empathy paired with a decrease in sympathy. Subjects typically experience a degree of dissociation from their pre-treatment lives, which can be advantageous in cementing new identities. 

~65% of subjects suffered a mental breakdown during the process, rendering them unfit as subjects and unable to carry out any other duty. The causes of these breakdowns remain unknown. No pattern has been established.

Loyalty is a problem. Successful subjects cooperate and obey only when incentivized to. In the next stage of the project we will be attempting to induce deference to authority.

Its Alive!

The guide brings the sacrament in a shot glass. It takes effect almost as soon as I down it. The scales fell from my eyes and I saw the hundreds of writhing things that were hiding underneath.

The stars a thousand cold uncaring eyes and the sky a single black eye in which the stars were mere flecks. Many-tongued trees lap at the sun and shove each other into the shade. In the darkness of the woods some small, scurrying thing is devoured by a larger, scurrying thing. In the darkness between the stars something larger is devoured by something larger still. On and throughout everything a thick veneer of bacteria, always and forever the exemplars of life.

"Behold" intoned the guide "Shub-Niggurath."

Drones

Brain-lace interweaves the brain with a superconducting mesh, forming a new network of connections. Acting as an interface between the brain and traditional computer systems, brain-lace serves as a basis for plug-and-play augmentation. Universal ports allows cybernetics to be swapped out with a simple hand tool, with the brain-lace smoothing out the acclimation process. The most significant of these is is skillware: ROM chips imparting knowledge or skills that could be changed from day to day.

These innovations restored the practicality of human labor. Brain-lace had made humans the perfect chassis on which to run robotic parts and software, making humans a cheaper option than building from scratch, and more adaptable too. The early-adopters quickly dominated. Corporations wealthy enough to subsidize brain laces for their employees soon had the best engineers making products sold by the best marketers, overseen by the best managers, all run by the best executives.

But, suddenly, skill hardly counts for anything. Skills can be gained and lost at any time. What employers want is what can't yet be induced by chip: loyalty. Successful employees are those who can compete with tireless robots and never break step with company policy. Humanity has replaced robots, in more ways than they ever wanted.