Re: [HOE] Cyborgs and cyber prosthetics (long)

["Kai Tave" <kaitave@harborside.com>]

At its very basic level, Spirit loss is a balancing device for scrappers and
cans.  Any attempt to justify it is going to run into the same problems that
arise when discussing Essence loss in Shadowrun, or Humanity loss in
Cyberpunk 2020.  What if my character loses a hand and gets a simple metal
hook?  Does that cause Spirit loss?  What if my character was abducted and
was turned into an infiltrator-class cyborg while under constant sedation?
He doesn't really KNOW that his right arm was replaced by a lookalike
prosthetic, so should he still lose the Spirit?

Well, yes.  It's there to act as a balancer, requiring someone who wants to
take tons of cybernetic implants to give up something important in return.
The justification in the game world ITSELF is a little shaky, but out of the
game it makes sense.  To the best of my knowledge, NO system that uses an
Essence/Spirit/Humanity/whatever loss system for cybernetics has ever
addressed the hows and the whys in a satisfactory manner.

Anyway, there was an attempt at explaining Essence loss once a long time ago
on a Shadowrun-centric forum called the Dumpshock BBS that can, I feel, be
used as an way to explain Spirit loss from major cybernetic implants in
Deadlands.

Every living being has some sort of "spiritual side".  Some folks call it a
soul, some call it an aura, some call it psychomorphic resonance in the
aetheric plane.  Whatever you call it, the fact is that the physical self
and the spiritual self are inexorably tied together.  What affects one
generally affects the other.

Evidence for this is presented in HOE's explanation of g-ray induced
mutations.  A person exposed to high levels of normal radiation wouldn't
begin to display immediate and dramatic mutations or deformities like the
sort caused by exposure to high levels of g-rays.  Radiation-induced
mutations take several generations to display; the most likely result of
exposure to high levels of normal radiation is cellular damage, possibly
leading to a terminal illness.

However, g-rays work the way they do because the bypass the physical side of
a person's self and affect the spiritual side directly.  The g-rays twist
the spiritual side, warping and damaging it.  This, in turn, causes the
physical side to warp as well.  Thus, high concentrations of g-rays are able
to cause physical mutations in people via direct exposure.

Right.  Now, for this theory to hold water, we have to assume that
straight-up DAMAGE to one of the sides (either through physical trauma,
illness, or what-have-you) doesn't change the other side in any fundamental
way.  Living beings are designed so that if they lose limbs or get sick,
their spirits won't wax and wane along with them.  A terminally-ill cancer
patient's spirit can be just as strong as when he was completely healthy.
Likewise, if someone's spiritual side were to be attacked directly, though
the pain might carry through to the physical self, there wouldn't be any
EVIDENCE of such trauma.  Even if the damage to ones spirit is enough to
kill the person, the physical self displays no evidence of any damage at
all.  It appears to onlookers like the person just stopped living.

So where is all of this going?  Joe Example is a pitfighter in Junkyard.
He's pretty good at what he does, but there's always somebody better, and
one day Joe meets that somebody, a scrapper going by the name of Grinder.
Joe loses the fight, getting not only his ass handed to him but his right
arm as well, courtesy of Grinder's cyberlimb with buzzsaw hand attachment.
Nurse Molly tells Joe that she can stop the bleeding and patch up his stump,
but that she can't reattach his arm.

Joe has a choice now.  Right at the moment, though his physical side feels
like shit, his spiritual side is still going strong.  Missing that arm
doesn't really affect the spiritual side that much because only the physical
side took the lumps.  Now, Doc Ratchet offers Joe a discount on a new
handcrafted cyberlimb.  If Joe takes this cyberlimb, then what will happen
is almost the exact opposite of what happens when someone is exposed to
g-rays; in this case, the BODY is "twisted" and the spirit follows suit.  In
this case, Spirit loss is incurred.  If you take too many cybernetic
implants, your spirit becomes so twisted and changed that it basically
collapses in on itself, causing the death of the person.

So, to sum up, clean removal doesn't do anything (simply losing a limb), but
actually changing one of the two in some permanent fashion (cybernetics,
g-rays) causes repercussions in the other "side" of your self.  That's where
Spirit loss comes from.

--Kai Tave