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Razides, Techrones, the Cairath...the universe does not contain so many gestalts of flesh and machine without a reason, as Sorcerors of Cybertechnology know. Of all physical changes which can happen to a human being, cybernetic limbs and metal parts are most attuned to a part of Metropolis; the sprawling Machine City, birthplace of technology, the city of Tomorrow, of steel. Machines represent the rational and the constantly advancing; mind over matter, driving onward into future advances, without heed for the emotional responses of morality and fear. And in the machines themselves, there is a harmony of perfect precision, which by incorporating into their own bodies, Cybertechnologists seek to emulate.
This Lore is studied mostly among the Proto-Techrones, spiritual humans who seek the grace of robots. Other lone madmen study it, developing living war machines and sentient engines that run on human meat. Since the first legends of clockwork men, through Mary Shelley, Charles Babbage, and William Gibson, the Lore has developed. The greatest surgeons and electricians of the Illusion try to incorporate Cybertechnology into the Illusion, though the Lictors fight them every stage of the way. Cybertechnology is a sub-lore with elements of Madness (the human body) and Time & Space (the machines).
The Sorceror opens a mirror or window, through which, if the Sorceror is in the presence of machines, the Machine City of Metropolis can be glimpsed. While the Illusion is down, the Sorceror can see the hearts of any machines or electronic devices present, intuitively understanding how best to operate, fix and improve them. They perceive all living things as organic machines, and gain a certain amount of automatic surgical and medicinal ability as well.
The Sorceror gains skill in Motor Mechanics, Electronics, Computers, certain science skills, and First Aid equal to their effect roll for the spell. They also add 1/2 the effect of the spell to their skill in gun-related and piloting-related skills.
This spell has two effects. First, the Sorceror can mix machines and the human body using surgery. This spell must be cast as an operation, with the mechanical parts built or provided beforehand. However, they need not be parts that could conceivably actually work..the wheels of an old shopping cart could be fused into someones chest as extra limbs, a telescope could replace someones eye, someones flesh ripped off and the metal hull from a tank stitched in its place with steel twine. The Sorcerors effect roll determines how successful the operation is. If the roll fails, the subject dies. If the effect is acceptable (1-5), the subject is crippled and unable to properly control the new bodypart, which malfunctions or acts with its own will. If the effect is normal (6-15), the subject lives on in discomfort and periodic pains. If the effect is good (16+), the subject has sensation in and total control over the limb, and may even display unforeseen abilities.
The spell can also be used to manipulate machines from a distance. The Sorceror must either be able to visualize the machine, down to the blueprint, or possess a piece of it. They can then adjust its workings, causing it to start and stop, or create unpredictable gremlin-like effects. The sorceror cannot, however, cause the machine to do things it was not designed to do; i.e., a car cannot levitate or repair a flat tire, and a computer can only do hacking and the like, not electrocute people at its keyboard.
A Cybertechnologist can summon many creatures from Metropolis and the environs, including Metromortes, Compostates, and the like. Use of this spell also includes the knowledge of how to summon creatures by _building_ them (unless the creatures have unattainable organic parts), which requires the same spell roll, but takes weeks longer.
The following are some of the different beings, and the required effect to summon them:
| Techrone | 5 |
| Zeta-Techrone | 10 |
| Menhir | 15 |
These creatures are described in the KULT rulebook. Techrones are tall, thin creatures made of metal, with various extensions and tools connected to them. They are meek, quiet and have machine empathy. They are not true robots; inside them are some flesh parts, including a blue-pink brain-like organ and, usually, a few kidney-like glands. They are not human.
Zeta-Techrones are Proto-Techrones -- obsessed humans -- who have gone too far in their efforts to emulate the machines. They are the Furies of the cyborgs. All of them that remains is a brain and some clusters of nervous tissue and bloody matter.
The Zeta-Techrones brains are clearly visible within glass or plastic housings inside their metal bodies. Their bodies were clearly once android-like, but as their Mental Balance has sunk they have become distorted into twisted pieces of junk, scrap iron and cables connected in roughly gorilla-like or insect-like shapes. They look like crude efforts to make cyborgs in the shape of human freaks. Almost all of them have a set of scythe-like appendages which they use to attack.
Zeta-Techrones roam Metropolis and the future Illusion in a state of hate and fear, afraid of the real Techrones who will weld them into the gears of giant machines. Their red artificial eyes glare from eyestalks beneath their brains and they make horrible glass-shattering screams before they attack.
Menhir are true robots -- without living parts -- which come from beyond the Illusion. In the Illusion, they are large machines at least 12 to 15 tall, of varying appaearance, but always surrounded by pipes and tubing. White, ashy smoke rises from their smokestacks. Those with Schizophrenia or who see through the Illusion see the Menhir as a enormous coiled shape, similar to a cross between a fetus and a maggot, made out of gray, stained materials. Menhir come to the Illusion and Metropolis to feed.
In normal cases, the Menhir cannot enter the Illusion physically. They must first possess an inventor or Sorceror of Cybertechnology. With its innate possession ability or magic, the Menhir implants a blueprint in the inventors head, a blueprint which will actually make the Menhir, although on the surface it looks like whatever the inventor is looking for -- a cold fusion reactor, a perfect cotton wheel, or any revolutionary new machine. Unless the inventor makes EGO and PER rolls with good effect, they think they have had the breakthrough themselves. Each week the urge to build the Menhir becomes stronger; to resist it, the Sorceror must make an EGO throw with effect higher than the Menhirs EGO throw effect, which increases by one per week. Finally the Sorceror builds the machine, which may take any amount of time, depending on their skill and resources.
Once incarnated, the Menhir (which does in fact have the desired machines abilities as well) begins to suck energy from its surroundings. All Menhirs create terrible pollution, which effects everything within a one-mile radius (or wider if the Menhir is large) with a gradual poisoning. The Menhir can also use its Telekinesis to kill would-be saboteurs. As the life of the Illusion dies around them their EGO grows, usually by one point per week. When the Menhir has doubled its EGO its spirit abandons the machine, leaving it a useless wreck which, on inspection, cannot be determined how it ever worked.
Some Menhirs, however, never leave the Illusion, and live on in Russia in the form of ancient nuclear reactors, due to an alliance with the Razides there.
POT 1d5 per week, cumulative. Attribute losses are permanent but total (not cumulative).
| CON=2/3 | Weakness, coughing & shortness of breath. Dry feeling on skin. |
| CON=1/2 | Asthma-like symptoms, mucus. Skin irritation; mosquito-bite-like spots and mild rashes appear. (-2 COM and CON) |
| CON=1/3 | Serious hacking coughs, symptoms of longtime cigarette smoking and asthma. Most likely bedridden. Skin appears as if badly sunburnt with wide rashes. (-5 COM and CON) |
| CON=1 | Victims flesh peels and rots. Terrible itching; maggots may breed in the wounds. Bloody hacking coughs; lung cancer; tuberculosis (-10 COM and CON). |
| CON=0 | Death |
This spell can also be used in combination with surgery to remove implants and metallic prostheses from human bodies without killing them.
The Sorceror becomes capable of seeing through Time, seeing the future extension of a current type of technology. They can understand the workings of machines that will not be invented for thousands of years, and can -- if they make an EGO throw and do not forget the revelation -- reproduce those advances in their own work. Modern people will call them geniuses. The Sorceror can also predict the effects that different sorts of technology will have on a society or culture, even the world, although this rarely stops them from implementing their discoveries.
The Sorceror turns a harmless addition to the human body, such as contact lenses or fake nails, into a full-scale cybernetic invasion of anothers body. This can be done from a distance, unlike other cybertechnology, as long as the Sorceror has had contact with the items before.
If the Sorceror makes a higher effect with the spell than the victim does with an EGO throw, the Sorceror can determine how the implant works its way into the persons body, altering them. Glasses can become electronic implants which then work their way into the brain. Orthopedic braces may become a metal exoskeleton and dig into the body. The Sorceror does not control the persons actions, but they control the changes. The changes take place over a period of 24 hours and are permanent. They cannot, however, affect a larger portion of the body than the limb or area of the implant; for example, fake fingernails could turn into a cybernetic arm, but not spread to the rest of the body. Humans with a mental balance near zero will tend to rationalize away the changes. The person can be killed in the process, if the Sorcerors spell roll has an effect of 15 or more.
The Sorceror gains control over all metal objects in the area they envision. To cast the spell, the Sorceror must have some item from the area, such as a cog from a battleship, some metal shavings from the factory, etc. They can not only cause them to misbehave or turn on and off but to physically move, levitate, or internally redesign themselves in ways they would not normally be able to. If the Sorceror wants only to use the spell for attack, they can form guns and other weapons if their effect with the spell is 10 or more, form grenades and explosives if their effect is 15 or more, or otherwise attack with bludgeoning objects and flying metal (as if they had Telekinesis with an EGO equal to their skill in the spell).
If the Sorcerors effect is 20 or more they can also produce complicated effects with magnetism, electricity and radioactivity.
The Sorceror makes a machine self-aware, giving it something of a soul (or, if they have any ability in the Lore of Death, resurrecting a human soul into the metal body). The Sorcerors effect determines how much sentience the machine possesses; an effect lower than 15 creates a thing with more or less animal intelligence. The new life form can breed with other machines, and is indeed a new species. The Sorceror does not have any control over the new thing, unless the machine they cast it on was designed and built by them, in which case it will follow their orders (unless the Sorceror for some reason did not design this feature). The GM must determine the new beings statistics and personality. Such creatures usually gain some form of self-locomotion and feeding, to begin with. They have all the normal senses as well as infra-red vision and the ability to sense heat, magnetism and electricity.
If the Sorceror has made an effect of 15 or greater, the true Frankensteinian miracle of Artificial Intelligence has been reached. The resulting creature has a humanlike soul, and even a Mental Balance (which starts at zero). It is under no control of its caster, and is capable of becoming Awakened or even undergoing physical changes, although its normal form is whatever the machine orignally appeared like. As it realizes the terrible Reality in which the Sorceror has embodied it the being may become resentful and hate the day it was created.
Written by Jason Thompson aka Knygathin Zhaum <jason@SONIC.NET>