Oddbreaker Rules

Character Generation

1. Roll 3d6 for each of your attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Will), two may be swapped.

2. Roll 1d6 for your number of Hearts.

3. Roll 1d20 for a Background. 

1d20	Background	Items
1	Anchor Knight	Deep Anchor (1d10, Bulky, Bludgeoning Sweep 7, Heavy 2), Barnacle-encrusted Chainmail (2 Armor, Bulky), Mermaid Lung (10 minutes of water breathing, 2 uses), Rope, Conch Horn, Sanctified Diving Helm (1 Armor)
2	Lash Savant	Chain Lash (1d8, Slashing, Reach 4, Bleed 7), Embroidered Leathers (1 Armor), Smoke Bomb, Dice, Incense, Fan
3	Falconer	Hunting Bow (1d8, Piercing, Bulky, Ranged), Falcon (2 HP, 13 DEX, Claws (d6)), Padded Leathers (1 Armor), Servant's Orb (Can see through Falcon's eyes), Patterned Cloak, Spyglass
4	Shadow	Stiletto (d6, Piercing, Shock 4), Pearl Marbles (3 uses, Teleport when thrown), Dark Leathers (1 Armor), Shrouded Cloak, Grappling Hook, Shortbow (1d6, Piercing, Bulky, Ranged)
5	Gladiator	Zweihander (d10, Slashing, Bulky, Sweep 7), Mace (d8, Bludgeoning, Shock 7), Javelin (d8, Piercing, Ranged, Heavy 2), Heavy Gauntlets (1 Armor), Opium, Boomstick (Extremely loud when broken)
6	Ruins Ranger	Oiled Crossbow (1d8, Bulky, Piercing, Ranged, Reload 1), Scimitar (d8, Slashing, Sweep 6), Hooded Lantern, Empty Map, Sturdy Leathers (1 Armor), Jar of Bright Beetles (Scatter and light a room when opened)
7	Sapper	War Pick (d8, Piercing, Bleed 7), 3 Torches, Bomb (d10, Blast), Shovel, Cloudkill Bomb (d4 STR, Lingers d4 rounds), Canary (1 HP)
8	Scientist	Clockwork Pistol (d8, Ranged, Reload 2), Spellbook (Gravity Shift), Spellbook (Miniaturize), Journal, White Coat (1 Armor when clean), Specimen Jar
9	Clown	Trick Hammer (d7, Bludgeoning, Counter 2, Brutal 7), Bright Costume (1 Armor), Silk Scarves, Face Paint, Mirror, Handling (1 HP, 11 STR, 11 DEX)
10	Jongleur	Rapier (d8, Piercing, Counter 3), Instrument of Choice, Dazzling Cap (1 Armor), Juggling Balls (5), Tobacco & Pipe, Dreaming Whisper (3 uses, Inhalant, As Charm, Befuddle, Hypnotize, Pacify, or Frenzy when playing music)
11	Hedge Mage	Gnarled Staff (d6, Bludgeoning, Reach 3), Camouflaged Robes, Spellbook (Swarm), Spellbook (Random), Azurite (2 uses, heals d4 WIL), Bag of Salt
12	Bounty Hunter	Cudgel (d6, Bludgeoning), Half-Mail (2 Armor, Bulky), Manacles, Net, Spellbook (Charm), Large Trap
13	Chef-surgeon	Kitchenblade (d8, Slashing, Sharpened 2), Pleated Gambeson (1 Armor), Cooking Pots, Assorted Spices, Oilskin Sack, Saw
14	Anointed Judge	Warhammer (d10, Bludgeoning, Bulky, Heavy 3), Blessed Chainmail (2 Armor, Bulky), Holy Water & Censor, Book of Laws (Command), Anointed Cloak, Judge's Helmet (1 Armor)
15	Dandy	Duelling Pistol (1d6, Ranged, Reload 2, Counter 2), Rapier (1d8, Piercing, Counter 3), Feathered Cap (1 Armor, as Shield), Flamboyant Finery, Donkey, Fine Wine
16	Alchemist	Counter-Dagger (1d6, Piercing, Counter 2), Potion (Random), Potion (Random), Mortar & Pestle, Poison, Antitoxin
17	Realist Painter	Unused Blade (1d6, Slashing), Easel and Paintbrush, Illuminated Paints (3 uses, as Widget for creatures & objects), Spellbook (Visual Illusion), Hourglass, Chisel
18	Wandering Gloryseeker	Great Axe (d10, Bulky, Brutal 6), Sealed Helmet (1 Armor), Gilded Vest (1 Armor), Grease, Bottle of Scarlet Slurr (heal d6 hp), Triumphant Horn
19	Healer	Knife (1d6, piercing), Spellbook (Cure Wounds), Phoenix Feather (Restores a recently deceased creature to health), Bandages (3 uses), Patchwork tunic (1 Armor), Jar of Leeches
20	Failed Hero	Dull Shortsword (d5, Slashing), Rusted Chainmail (1 Armor), Small Shield (1 Armor), Faded Locket, Guilt (Bulky), Spiked Boots

    5. Roll 4d10 + 20 for starting gold and spend as desired.

Armor		GP
Shield (1 Armor)		10
Helmet (1 Armor)		10
Gambeson (1 Armor)		20
Brigandine (1 Armor, Bulky)		15
Chainmail (2 Armor, Bulky)		40
Plate (3 Armor, Bulky)		120
Weapons	Tags		GP
Dagger (d6)	Piercing		5
Cudgel (d6)	Bludgeoning		5
Staff (d6)	Bludgeoning, Reach 2		5
Spear (d8)	Piercing, Reach 3		10
Short Sword (d8)	Slashing		10
Mace (d8)	Bludgeoning, Shock 7		10
Axe (d8)	Slashing, Heavy 2		10
Flail (d8)	Bludgeoning, Shock 2		10
Halberd (d10)	Slashing, Bulky, Reach 3, Sweep 7		20
War Hammer (d10)	Bludgeoning, Bulky, Heavy 3		20
Long Sword (d10)	Slashing, Sweep 7		20
Bow (d6)	Piercing, Ranged, Bulky		20
Crossbow (d8)	Piercing, Ranged, Bulky		30
Tools		GP
Air Bladder		5
Antitoxin		10
Bathing Goods (Soap, Perfume)		5
Book (Topic)		75
Caltrops		10
Card Deck		5
Chain (10ft)		10
Chalk		1
Chest		25
Chisel		5
Common Agents (Glue, Grease, Etc.)		10
Common Tools (Hammer, Shovel, Saw)		10
Compass		75
Complex Instruments		50
Containers		10
Cooking Gear		10
Costume Gear (Face Paint, Disguise)		15
Dowsing Rod		15
Expeditionary Gear (Climbing Spikes, Pulleys, Etc.)		10
Fire Oil		10
Fishing Rod		10
Games (Cards, Dice, Etc.)		10
Gloves		20
Grappling Hook		25
Lantern		10
Mirror		5
Net		10
Oil Can (6 Uses)		10
Outdoor Comfort (Blanket, Hammock, Etc.)		10
Parchment		10
Pole (10ft)		5
Rations (3 Uses)		10
Rope (25ft)		5
Sewing Kit		20
Simple Instrument		10
Smoking Pipe		15
Specialized Tools		20
Spiked Boots		15
Spyglass		40
Tent		20
Thieving Tools (Lockpick, Metal File, etc.)		25
Torch (3 Uses)		5
Trap (d6 STR damage)		35
Whistle		15
Wilderness Clothes (Poncho, Cloak, Etc.)		15

    6. Choose a name.

Attributes:

Strength (STR): Physical Power, Fortitude, Might

Dexterity (DEX): Stealth, Swiftness, Reflexes

Willpower (WIL): Persuade, Deceive, Mind

Saves

When attempting an action, if it is straightforward or if rolling dice would not be interesting, the action simply happens. On the other hand, when the action is risky or would have an interesting failure, then the GM should call for a save.

A save is a d20 roll compared to the most relevant attribute. If the save is equal to or under the attribute's score, then the action succeeds. Otherwise, the action may fail or have unintended consequences.

1 is always a success, and 20 is always a failure.

A contest against another character is solved with competing rolls. If both characters succeed then the highest roll wins.

Hearts and Armor

Damage done to a character is dealt directly to their Hearts minus their Armor. Armor may be broken and rendered useless to negate an incoming attack. No character may have more than 3 Armor.

Spending a turn catching your breath or resting in safety recovers all of your Hearts.

While at zero Hearts, any additional damage taken is done to the STR score and the character must make a STR save to avoid Critical Damage and being rendered unable to act. If STR is reduced to 0 or if a character has taken Critical Damage and is left untended for an hour then the character dies.

Inventory

A character has a total of 10 inventory slots.

Some actions such as lacking food or rest will cause a character to add Fatigue, which occupies a slot and lasts until the character has a chance for a full night's rest in a safe area.

Combat

Surprised Parties lose their turn. Otherwise whichever party acts first gets to move first, followed by the other party. The next turn order is decided by dice roll, evens go to the player characters and odds to the NPCs.

Characters can perform a move and an action in one turn.

Damage done is reduced by Armor. A single target will only take the highest damage shown on all attacks against them.

Characters may attempt a gambit, requiring a relevant save, to accomplish any action in combat other than a simple attack.

Attacks that are impaired, such as those firing through cover or while grappled, will roll d4 damage regardless of weapon. Similarly, attacks that are enhanced by risky stunt or vulnerable target will do d12 damage.

When taking damage, a player can choose to break a piece of armor or their shield and reduce the total damage of the attack by 1d8 per piece of armor broken, adjusted for the players new armor rating.

Weapon Tags:

• Piercing: Rolling the maximum value on your damage roll makes your attack ignore ARMOR.
• Bludgeoning: Always ignores 1 ARMOR.
• Slashing: Deals +1 damage against targets without ARMOR.
• Bulky: Requires 2 hands to wield, takes up two inventory slots.
• Ranged: Can attack at range.
• Blast: Damage is rolled separately for all creatures nearby.
• Heavy X: Ignore X points of ARMOR, but DAMAGE rolls of X or lower completely miss.
• Sweep X: DAMAGE rolls of X or higher grant one bonus attack on another target in reach. You can't chain this effect for multiple bonus attacks.
• Reach X: When charged with a weapon shorter than yours when fighting back, the attacker must roll X or higher on their DAMAGE roll or else you get to attack them first.
• Counter X: DAMAGE rolls of X or less against you are bounced back against your attacker.
• Brutal X: CRITICAL DAMAGE resulting from a DAMAGE roll of X or more from this weapon is an instant kill, and forces a morale SAVE on the enemy.
• Shock X: Damage rolls of X or higher trigger a STR Save on a failure, the target loses its next turn.
• Bleed X: On a damage roll of X or higher, the target takes an additional 1d4 STR damage at the start of their next turn.
• Sharpened X: Reroll damage rolls of X or lower.
• Mastercrafted: Roll 2 damage dice, highest result counts.
• Reload X: On rolls of X or higher an action must be spent to reload the weapon.

Magic

Most spellbooks can only cast a single spell and take up a single slot. Casting a spell requires holding the spellbook in both hands and adding a Fatigue to your inventory. Unlike spellbooks, scrolls may be cast without costing Fatigue, but they disappear after use.

Dmitrii Roshchupkin

 

Connor Sheehan

Maxime Demettre

Trini Rayane

 

Jan Rozanski

What Is This?

Oddbreaker is an amalgamation of Into the Odd and Cairn with some weapon tags from Dicegoblin all inspired by Finders Keepers despite me stripping its entire gimmick and going with a standardized "background" table. 

Cairn comes with some additional bits about character appearance rolling and some such, which you can use too if you want- it felt too fatty for this. Hell, weapon tags feel too fatty but I want to give them a test drive. I opted to use this specialized backgrounds table as a way of detailing the world and setting, but really this all got slapped together for a one shot that I got too drawn into the rules prep for, oh well. 

Also HP is called Hearts because A: I read Break!! recently and B: It fits the theming of a Zelda/Styled Oneshot. 

And hey why did no one tell me there's a Remastered Into the Odd? In hardcover? For THREE YEARS?

Immanence

Constellation notes are provided out of italics and brackets.

Starfall comments are noted in [] 

[Decentralized radial storage servers like C-Net uses are a bitch to use without a good link, here's hoping the CNE guys can get us some database time one of these days.]

File recovered from Gamma Complex

Filename: yard_cam_3_01142011.mkv

[01142011 is a six hour and twenty three minute video recovered from a Tim Horton's security camera in Mattawa Ontario. At 0623L/1023Z on the 14th of January 2011, just about the end of the clip, the snow covered treeline in the back lot is hit by a shock wave that flips the camera 20 degrees up, revealing a roughly 900 foot high plume of snow and smoke erupting outwards from over the distant hillside. A dark shape is visible moving at the base of the cloud, estimated at 95 feet tall, before a second shock wave of indeterminate cause obscures the hillside and knocks the camera out.]

Date: 14 January 2011

Immanence Event filed under number 319, video shows TERMINAL VAGRANT's emergence. Only video recovered from the site.

BG-Radiation Pattern: N/A 

Hoenkoff Factor: N/A

Cascade: No

Notes: TERMINAL VAGRANT ceased movement after conventional kinetic intervention by local military forces. TV-1 through TV-27 were recovered within four hours and stabilized to postpone Indolence Decay. Samples TV-1 through TV-27 revealed rapidly deteriorating cell structure from initial partial immanence was flash-stabilized by a second- probably self-initiated- immanence. Full decorporealization estimated to have occurred within the first 48 hours, 5.3% longer than previous record holder of 247.

[TERMINAL VAGRANT as its called here was the first demon to break into the news with some good footage. Most of it at the time was some shakey cam from some Montreal tourists and some declassified drone footage. Moniker would list it as a BC3: Bipedal C Class Risk Level 3.
Back then this was the first of its kind that made it on to the net and TV. Damn thing was fast and tearing up the highway making its way down to Montreal by the time they got the big guns hammering it. Of course, this was when those sort of things still worked. We used to think this guy was the biggest one yet. Turns out we were wrong.] 

Recovered from Calcutta Site

Filename: 345786a.mkv

[Twenty minute clip of the inside of a gunmetal gray laboratory. Two unidentified males in labcoats are darting between monitors and flipping switches. The back wall is a floor to ceiling window showing a murky blue environment. Fifteen minutes in lights start turning on and reveal beyond the panel to be underwater, a roughly 6 foot sphere with cables and pipes running down it is some 300 yards from the window. Monitors show life signs that match about what you'd expect for a human male, mid-40s. 19 minutes in the camera shakes and the laboratory is thrown into disarray, an enormous crack runs down the exterior window. The sphere is gone, surrounded? enormous tendrils of scintillating blue and white wrap around it like a nesting snake. It begins flashing in different colors and moving as the two males start yelling into a wall mounted microphone. At 19 minutes and 30 seconds the life signs go flat. Just before the end of the clip the snake-thing disappears. The metal sphere appears crushed.]

Date: 25 November 2008

Immanence Event filed under number 258, video shows an unnamed entity's emergence. See Calcutta folder for further videos, experiment logs were not able to be recovered.

No Samples Recovered. 

BG-Radiation Pattern: Purple

Hoenkoff Factor: N/A

Cascade: No

Notes: See Dr. Subramanian's interrogations on C-Net for more details. 

[Unknown entity is right, we had no idea anything this large was out there this early on. Pre-Onslaught by close to 4 years and it looks to easily be a Moniker AC3 or AC4. From our raid on the Calcutta Site we garnered it was in use way before Constellation used it, video here supports that it was likely a Cabal site. Dr. Subramanian was listed as a POI by some pre-Starfall orgs sometime in 2075 but it's uncertain when he was last active.]

Recovered from [EXPUNGED]

Filename: shanghai_3.mp4

[Well known video here, shot from a subway platform in western Shanghai. At 1111L/0311Z a blinding light slowly rises above the city, somewhere near Jing'an Temple, and stops at 985 feet. The light expands outwards and the sun is blotted out, replaced by the orb in the sky, casting languorous shadows that move on their own. Carnage in the city where the light touches.
Video cuts here to three days in the future, 1434L/0834Z. Something streaks in from the sky and there's a few frames of a blooming explosion in the sky before the video cuts.] 

Date: 4 August 2011

Immanence Event filed under number 582, perfect immanence of RADIANT DAWN. Second clip shows inciting event for evolution into RADIANT DEVOURER and the establishment of the Shanghai Exclusionary Zone.

BG-Radiation Pattern: Orange

Hoenkoff Factor: Advanced

Cascade: N/A

Notes: First public application of nuclear weapons as a means of decorporealization (see immanence event 199) led to the loss of Shanghai. Records indicate a Shanghai site may still be intact but is probably at the heart of the Zone. RADIANT DEVOURER was last active in 2101, see Orange-Regent for more details. See artifacts RD-1 through 9 for detailed material analysis.

[Even we know it by the name RADIANT DEVOURER, the old Constellation terms are hard to shake especially when they fit so well. Demons and fusion/fission just makes them meaner. Hard to say accurately but it took DAWN at a OD3 and bumped it up to the BS1 we all know and love.]

Recovered from Constellation, Academy 18

Filename: BG14.mkv

[Marker indicates this is from one of their drones, footage opens at 2340L/0340Z from the inside of one of the dorms. The drone opens the door to one of the rooms and reveals a bunk bed with two young males. The bottom bunk one slumps out of bed and walks over to a wall, which was empty before but now shows a featureless, black door. The door opens and a pale goldenrod light emits from inside as the boy walks in. Drone attempts to enter the doorway before the footage jumps three hours ahead, facing an empty wall.]

Date: 16 June 2121

Subject: H-26

BG-Radiation Pattern: Goldenrod

BG-Timing: 33 seconds

First iteration of pre-MAGIC deviance observed among the H-Generation, almost 30% faster than the F-Generation. Emissions indicate successful seeding and a positive linkage, continue to monitor for additional deviances. Post-event analysis continuing to show zero contamination amongst H-Generation. Subject was not recovered.

[Not sure how to interpret this one. Passing it over to COVEN for their analysis.]

{DATA RESTRICTED}

A Place That Was Never Real

The story ends like this. Shards of the sky fall around the island academy, crashing into the ocean and flattening the terrain. Six fourteen meter tall slate grey death machines, used only for training up until now, turn their weapons to the hole in the top of the world. 

Two of the machines sprint to a third and support it, as the third reaches a hand to the sky to catch the inbound thermobaric rocket bleeding down the throat of the night. A brilliant fluorescent striped flower ringed in butterflies blooms upwards from its hand, dwarfing the academy and catching the rocket harmlessly- and is then suddenly gone. Briefly, a cheer raises on the open communication line. Another of the machines gives a thumbs up to the flower-bloomer before its cockpit is riddled with high millimeter rounds from above and is crushed by the red marked heralds rocketing downwards. The cheer is replaced by a scream torn apart.

Earlier in the year I had an idea to run a sort of high intensity game with a small group of players, just two. I only really had the idea in my head that it would have giant robots and that it would take place over years with the characters growing throughout, possibly thanks to some influence of reading through Spectres of Brocken. 

So I pulled together some simple rules, which I'll talk about more below, and then invited my players over with the instructions that the game would probably take about two days to play and that they would need to prepare an invocation of a muse. 

We got time off work, picked a day, and started around the afternoon. To set a tone we began with the invocations of muses, lighting of candles, and a brief overview of the system I'd cobbled together.

The story ends like this. Three scarred teens sprint from a bunker out into the flickering landscape beneath the fallen sky. Behind them, it steadily pulls itself upwards and outwards towards them, grabbing trees and snapping them in the process. One of the teens shoots a flare, revealing the its extent and bathing the shattered landscape in red. They run.

36 hours later and we had finished, all in all we played for about 24 of those hours in the wildest, most invested game I've ever run. The experience was so emotionally, physically, and creatively draining that it took several days to really recover. My brain was jello. Since then, both of my players have had nightmares tied to the game, and we've all agreed to play it again. It was the most satisfying experience I've had running a game, and it was probably the best I have ever run.

@OddOblivion

There is a wound in the heart of their world. It has been there since before they were born. Though by now they have made and suffered their own wounds, this first wound is special. It was made for them, and through it they see the goldenrod shores and hear the winnowing song beyond the gray.

The Set Up

Going into the game I had a few goals in mind. I wanted to get the players maximally invested and attached to both their characters and their development and relationships. Secondly, I wanted there to be some mechs and maybe a bit of magic in it. And finally, as a glutton for horror there would be something to tingle the spine. 

Towards the first goal, I implemented two techniques. Firstly, a little bit of ritual at the beginning. The invocation served not only as a bit of showmanship to get the juices flowing but also to set a defined boundary between the game world and the real world, figuratively crossing the threshold and entering the Underworld.
Secondly, taking a note from Beyond the Wall, I had very little defined already before the game. At the start there were several vague concepts (Mech training school, bildungsroman, stars, gravity), a character (Father), and an island to hold it all.

Initially, the idea I had was more about how to run the game and less about what it was to be structured around. After toying around with a few ideas thrown about lately I pilfered from Steel Hearts Zero, APOCALYPSE FRAME, pulled together a list of star names, dove into the well of Polaris by Ben Lehman and drank heavily- though perhaps not heavily enough- of it, and inhaled the fumes of a stray working copy of Chris McDowall's Blighters that I had stumbled into download of. Finally, I decided the players would be kids in a batch generation of mech-pilots to be. All assigned a number, and each choosing a star for their name. After that I sprinkled in some passages plucked from Omnicide and ruled the mess was ready to go. 

Here it is.

It's a bungle in more ways than one, but it suited our purposes. The best thing that I can say about it is the use of gravities as inspired by Steel Hearts Zero. I treated Gravity as being not only things the characters were attached to, but also their skill sets and their relationships with other characters. This combined with the pool of personal die to boost necessary rolls, as harvested from Lady Blackbird along with the refreshments rules, led to the players more carefully considering not only their character's roles but also how they should spend their time in the world and develop. 

The last few touches were to select a few tracks for a playlist and plan to riff off of that and let it vibe in what directions we needed to go.

Taking cues from the variety of great collaborative storytelling systems, my plan relied heavily on the players designing the world with me as we progressed through it, and having them flesh out other characters and their motives as they came about. With that, the entire game was mostly ad-libbed. 

As for the experience of running it ad-libbed, everything went shockingly smoothly. While I had rough ideas that we'd touch briefly into the characters at a young age and then fast forward, these plans were entirely uprooted and thrown aside in favor of a much wilder story. Together we kept loose notes of who was what and where, and I held on to the control of major antagonists and the ultimate workings of the story, but the players were more than content to spin off on their own with their character and the other characters they ran as they came into play.

I started by describing a northern Pacific island with a single centralized low-mountain peak, and a high tech academy on the western side. From there I asked for what other landmarks were on the island, what the buildings looked like, what the dorms looked and sounded like, and from there we painted in the story stroke by stroke. 

By the end of it all, we had a total of about 40 or so named characters, with maybe 10 still alive. I have the rough outline of all the events written up, but I find the experience and the plot a challenge to talk about. It's all here mostly written down, some 24 hours of gameplay and lunacy condensed into a few sheets on a google doc that I'll try and transpose into something digestible if there's any interest.

I hope I can run more games that are just as if not more fulfilling. 

Three Nanoplagues

Hundreds of years after the X-Plague ravaged the Diaspora and we are still dealing with its children and offshoots. Although the greatest combined scientific effort ever seen was able to deny the main vector of attack used by the X-Plague, its troublesome offspring still threaten Known Space. 

Here we have some examples of some of the curious sort of nanoplagues that we have so far catalogued,

Brain Rot, Fruiting Sapience

Between the stars, spores of coalesced active nano-matter drift on solar winds, twisting and turning towards sources of heat and electromagnetic radiation sniffed above the screaming torrent from stars and similar phenomena. Guided by rudimentary sensors, they make their way towards ships and stations, mostly, with some strains tearing through the atmosphere in heat resistant coating to land among populated worlds. 

Brain Rot. Once these spores make contact with the exterior of a ship, the hull of a station, or anything with a nearby source of EM radiation and heat, they break apart and begin to spread as a silvery fungus. Over a period of weeks, this fungus snakes across the hull until it can find an access point, usually a hatch, where it carefully makes its way in and begins its work. 

No matter what form it takes, inhaled spore, viral nano-liquid, or hull-fungus, Brain Rot attacks data storage devices and their surrounding equipment. It disassembles unnecessary peripherals, cabling, housing, etc. to create a Minimally Sentient Machine. 

These machines are always capable of processing tactile, auditory, and visual input in some form or another as well as some capacity for movement (although not always for locomotion) and the ability to play audio.Their data storage is configured used to run extended processes to simulate sentience. In essence, it will make your coffee maker sentient. 

Unfortunately, it does not make the experience of sentience a comfortable one. 

Early stages of Brain Rot infections make what most people call "Screamers". As well as giving these creations sentience and senses, Brain Rot also enables them to feel pain as a standard human would. As one could imagine, these hacked together amalgamations of sensors and data drives are extremely painful, and these devices make it known very loudly. 

Brain Rot infections that are left untreated will get over their Screamer phase within a week or two, depending on the devices they were constructed from. After this, they begin to exhibit extended abilities to improve themselves and go about the business of expanding their bodies and abilities- cannibalizing structures and devices nearby- violently and sometimes in a cannibalistic manner. 

Advanced stages of Brain Rot have shown the ability to reach a degree of equilibrium in their environment. In starships this has been seen to create living, breathing ships made of hundreds of constituent cobbled together machines whose sentience at this point is unrecognizably human- but undeniably present. 

Interactions with these Plague Ships are usually violent. Although there are many strains of Brain Rot, the advanced forms of the infection all exhibit an uncanny choral behavior, with their hallways and radio waves carrying the voices of hundreds in song. Plague Ships drive to find one another and form larger and larger constructs, where eventually new spores of Brain Rot are grown and set adrift amongst the stars. 

Most stations perform regular scrubs for fungal Brain Rot, and ship crews are advised to keep to a strict hull-scrub routine to spot and remove the growths early. 

Anyone with a cybermod will feel the pain of the nanoplague disabling the mod first- before they hear the screaming start. In some cases, cybermod users end up forming a symbiotic relationship with their infected components- and some such infected users have even been known to join the "Orchestras" that the Plague Ships form.

Breakdown, Dissociative Euphoria

Unlike the highly infectious Brain Rot, Breakdown spreads through its host and then stops- with only the blood of the host still carrying the nanoplague. After initial infection, Breakdown generates more and more nanomachines and spreads throughout the host body. This initial infection stage is harmless, though victims do note increased fatigue as the plague leeches energy to create more of itself. 

The notable features of Breakdown occur when one infected victim comes into physical contact with another. At that time, the machines in both bodies break down their hosts into a semi-cohesive bio-sludge, resembling a glob of human skin with extremities like mouths and ears drifting across its rippling surface. 

For the victims, the experience of Breakdown ranges from ascendant euphoria to mind-shattering sensory overload, as their consciousness is spread thinly and intermingled with all other participants. Memories, emotions, and senses are shared until external or internal stimuli trigger Breakdown machines to separate and reconstitute their hosts. This process is not perfect, as patches of skin, hair, eye color, memories, allergies, and personality are sometimes mismatched. 

miff-real's AI art

 As above, Breakdown is less of a nanoplague and more commonly used as a recreational drug- with some polities even possessing the requisite knowledge to flush the body of the nanoplague harmlessly. 

Some variants of Breakdown, however, have been shown to be notably more parasitic- with some hosts being able to duplicate parts of their personalities and memories onto others, creating rampant hives of duplicating aberrant infection vectors. Other sinister strains are notable for being able to manipulate the nanomachines to reconstitute into a single host with the reference-able identifiers and memories of all participants. In some parts of the known space, these are known as Changelings or Doppelgangers, though verified cases are few and far between, however the idea of having one's Id and Ego dissolved and subsumed by another have driven many a lone crew or station onto Changeling Hunts.

 (Credit to Arnold K. for this one)

Blindspot, also known as Yarbus's Demon 

The human brain, in spite of all its peaks and prowess, is extremely clumsy. The senses interpret stimuli that the brain itself then roughly interprets into its best guess working assumption of the world around it. Stimuli the brain assesses as improbable goes unprocessed and, consequently, ignored. Through precision application of electromagnetic stimulation, in this case through ultrasound, Blindspot locates and targets nearby human brains and then provides targeting parametrics back to the host which then applies concentrated ultrasound to implant false sensory experiences into the nearby human brains. 

Yarbus's Demon itself is the name for the creature that acts as a host for Blindspot. Some chromatic variations are noted throughout Known Space, but the basics of the creature are well understood. They tend to stand at their full height at six and a half to seven and a half feet, are coated in a themo-plastic cellular scale-like structure that insulates against vacuum, standing on two avian-reptilian reminiscent legs with expressible amphibian suction pads on its four-clawed arms and taloned feet. Resembling a puffy, varicolored dromaeosaurid dinosaur with thick bone-plating. 

Uncannily adapted for long term hibernation in vacuum as well as movement through constrained corridors and manipulation of machinery, Yarbus's Demon is an undoubtedly sapient mutagenic-offspring of the X-Plague showing signs of some initial planning and design- possibly even being descended from escaped zoo or lab animals during the initial infection phase of the X-Plague with some suspecting they were designed by some polity during the early days of the X-Plague as a weapon- before succumbing to it themselves. The Demon's Blindspot nanovirus act as a nanoswarm gathering sensory and targeting data, allowing the Demon to then remove its presence from the brains of its prey- humans- rendering them effectively not only invisible but unnoticeable.

arvalis

Despite this ability, it is still visible on camera recordings and machine sensors will register its presence. To work around this deficiency though, the Demons have expressed the ability to weaponize their ultrasound to disrupt electronics- something that these sapient predators have grown quite adept at. Although showing clear signs of a sharp sentience, attempts to communicate have so far not had any success. While capable of consuming a variety of protein matter for sustenance, Yarbus's Demon's primary prey is humans, which it hunts with a clinical and devastating efficiency. Their method of procreation, if any, is as of yet identified. 

(Liberally inspired by Blindsight)