Cyberware
NOTE: If you're looking for cyberware gear information, go here
With the advent of tissue cloning and anti-rejection therapies, cybernetic implant usage exploded on the technological scene of the future. Capable of enhancing nearly any organic function or ability, implants run the full range of utility from harmless messaging technology to high-impact combat applications.
As with all technology, cyberware comes with side-effects and drawbacks. Even the most advanced implants are invasive modules that can adversely affect the user's psychological health. Psychological side-effects manifest themselves as damage to a patient's self-identity and empathy. Excessive cyberware users often display symptoms of cyberpsychosis, which involves delusional behavior, paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, and uncontrollable homicidal or even suicidal urges.
In response Mortius Biotechnologies developed its Cyberpsychosis Index, a reasonably accurate way of measuring the effect an implant would have on a customer's psyche. The index has proved the most useful predictor for whether or not a patient can handle a given load of implants. However, as in all matters dealing with the still-misunderstood human brain, there is a wide degree of variability between what given individuals can handle, and what symptoms they will experience.
As time went on and technologies improved exponentially, entire engineered bodies were developed and offered to the public. Rumors exist of clone bodies that have been reserved by corporations for their own security and infiltration use, but it seems likely that such tech would have made its way to the black market clone facilities by now. Conspiracy theorists even speculate that new types of engineered bodies are leaked to the underground facilities first so that corporations eager to save (or even earn) money on research and development can track subject responses to the clones without taking on any physical or legal risk.
At present, the only part of the human body that cannot be replaced entirely is the brain, and even it can be heavily enhanced. It is best to keep in mind, though, that anyone using a body mainly composed of cyberware is never going to win the Mr. Sanity contest, even in New Carthage.
Implanting cyberware is a common outpatient procedure, but not without risk. Quality facilities and capable surgeons ensure that even the most complex units will be installed without secondary infections, bleeding, or other complications. Patients use unsanctioned facilities or "chop shops" at their own (extreme) risk.
Cyberware comes in three grades: low, mid, and high, and functions independently of grade-- a low-grade cyberhand gives the same benefits as a high-grade cyberhand. However, a high-grade hand is less taxing on the mind than the low or mid-grades and comes with an often significantly reduced CPI.
Even the most robust chrome is delicate when not sustained by a living body. The more fragile implants, known as perishables, will degrade to uselessness within minutes of the owner's death. Nonperishables last a good while longer, but the odds of degradation increase significantly over time.
Knowledgeable cybersurgeons can use their facilities to access spec sheets on specific implants, which will detail their installation locations, surgical complexity, and survivability in the event the host dies. The following database provides a general catalog of the most common implant types and their functions.
For a list of cyberware your character KNOWS ABOUT (you never know just what the doc implanted when you were sedated, after all...), use the command:
@cyber*ware
..which will return a list of your cyberware implants and their activation commands.
