NPCs

Some novacrab workers are dual-purposed in security roles.

Typical security troopers are low-rez recruits assigned to military, police, or security details. They might be a generic military draftee, an inner-system beat cop, a hypercorp hired guard, a cheap Extropian security contractor, or an autono- mist mutual-aid security volunteer.

You are a sifter, part of the community of mobile miners on Mercury. Given the extreme temperatures between Mercury’s day and night, you and the other miners have just a small window in which to move, unpack, mine, sift, pack, and move to catch up with the Terminus again. Your job is to make sure the tech runs like clockwork, even on this non-stop, round-the-clock schedule.

Singularity seekers can be found in advanced research facilities, archaeological sites, gatecrashing teams, or poking around anywhere they think they might latch on to something that will let them move beyond the current options offered by transhuman existence.

While many animal handers hold legitimate jobs training and working with smart animals of various persuasions, some are also involved in criminal activi- ties, using their menageries as informants, pickpockets, and lookouts.

Firewall is not such a bad organization. There are days when you wish them well and other days when you wish they would reign in their self-righteous behavior and let themselves see points of view outside of their own paranoia. This unusual participant-observer attitude makes you an ideal double agent.

You are immersed in the social cliques and glitterati lifestyle of the inner system elites. You specialize in being the ideal companion, offering witty banter and entertainment and providing for all your client’s wishes and desires.

You consider yourself a Solarian “native.” Like the solar system orbits around its star, so do you circle the sun, drifting in its magnetic field and bathing in its glorious light. Your work as a solar researcher from Ukko Jylinä is not just an assignment, it is a passion.

Slender morph of Chinese genotype with facial nanotats streaming tears down his face.

Some missions are so challenging that the saboteur is certain to be caught or killed. In cases like this, anarcho-sabs send a suicide beta fork.

While the wealthy elite of the inner system reside in hyper-augmented biomorphs, the poor and unfortunate are forced to sleeve into cheap synthetic morphs because they can afford nothing else, or worse yet they must sell themselves into indentured bondage for the privilege of getting a synthmorph at all. Mainstream society views this underclass with disdain and pity.

Even at the pinnacle of transhuman technical achievement, devices still need troubleshooting and maintenance. Whether it’s malware on your muse or involuntary ring of a hand laser, tech support is there to help. With the omnipresence of high technology, tech support types are ubiquitous in all but the remotest regions.

The gates have opened a new frontier to transhumanity and you are ready to step through and face the challenges such opportunities bring. You are a professional gatecrasher, eager to experience new worlds first-hand, despite the dangers—or even because of them.

You’re a tenured professor of Computational Archeology, but you prefer to spend as much time as possible out in the field, studying both alien and obsolete human data systems. You’re equally at home retrieving data from a vinyl LP scavenged off Old Earth as building an interface to power up and operate ancient alien computers.

You escaped Sweden for Titan during the Fall as an egocast and got fast-tracked for a morph by volunteering for a term in the civil service. You had been a post-doc student using remote probes to perform hydrographic surveys of Titan's methane lakes—from your office on Earth. You ended up assigned to the militia and later transferred to the police.

Many military organizations, governments, and hypercorps continue to keep scientists on hand who are experts at analyzing and teasing apart the relics of the TITANs. Many of these are kept on for insurance and security, whereas others are actively attempting to reverse engineer TITAN technology for their employers’ own uses.

Typical security troopers are low-rez recruits assigned to military, police, or security details. They might be a generic military draftee, an inner-system beat cop, a hypercorp hired guard, a cheap Extropian security contractor, or an autono- mist mutual-aid security volunteer.

You are a “49er” or Sze Kau, a rank-and-file soldier for one of the big triad syndicates. While you have already sworn the traditional oaths of loyalty, your power in the organization is still limited. Due to the patronage of a 438, an influential and established triad boss, you hope to advance soon within the syndicate when you have proven worthy of your patron’s trust.

You were privileged enough to devote your life to intellectual pursuits and fortunate to live long enough to embrace uploading, but it was pure luck that you survived the Fall. Your inadequate ability to respond was only highlighted by a group of thinkers calling themselves the ultimates.