Making less-terrible Cthulhutech-esque RPG

[Mistborn]

Magical Girls

Magical Girls (and Boys) are powered by equal parts love, friendship, determination, and the Necronomicon. While anyone can learn the arcane secrets of the Outer Gods, which seem like magic but are really extremely advanced science, it usually takes years of study and practice. For Magical Girl, manipulation of the greater forces of the cosmos is as natural as breathing.

Magical Girl powers usually manifest between the ages of 9 and 14 and are accompanied by dreams of a kindly old Arab man creepy alien ferret

fixed

(seriouly how did you not think of that first when you though of combinig magical girls and cosmic horror)

[Grek]

Rook is a good name.

I'm not convinced that having damage granularity down to the point where specifically modelling nose strikes vs. left eye strikes vs. right eye strikes is even possible, let alone desirable. The soak roll isn't going to do that, since it's a scalar and not a vector. It produces results like:

"I hit him in the face." "How hard?" "-rolls- Five minus three hits... Two damage."
not like
"I hit him in the face." "How hard?" "I broke his nose."

While I agree that rolling on the Facial Damage table to determine which eyebrow you tear off is going way too far, Soak rolls don't seem to add much, and unless you're planning to also have location based soak rolls, you're removing a lot of the mechanical difference between hitting in various locations.

What would work out well, I think would be to have a forcefield/point defense/AT field based Soak that makes thematic sense to apply to the entire Zord, but still have individual hit points for body parts.

[hyzmarca]

---

Unrelated note: I think that "Rook" is a better name than "Throne" for the Shoggoth filled armors. Because having central command say "Commit the Rooks" and such makes for cool Chess allusions. Also you can show brooding commanders looking at a chessboard where a rook has been knocked over.

-Username17

I picked Throne to keep with the Eva angel references and to provide some a bit of human semi-religious hubristic jingoism, "God is on our side" and all that, as well as symbolizing mankind's gradual but inevitable transformation into a godlike Mythos race (by creating their own angels). Thus the horrific Shoggoth mechs are named after the symbols of God's Justice and Authority,

Rook is okay, it just loses the religious reference.


Indidentally, I'm imagining a heated religious debate between a Catholic and a worshiper of Azatoth about the necessary qualities of an uncreated creator right now, with the Catholic insisting that even though Azatoth is dreaming the universe into existence he is in the natural universe and of the natural universe and thus must have had a higher, supernatural, creator.

[Darth Rabbitt]

/unlurk

"Bishop" has both religious and chess connotations, perhaps go with that?

/lurk

[JigokuBosatsu]

It also has gooey robot connotations.

[hyzmarca]

Or we could name the individual classes after chess pieces.

Thus Bishop is a biped, Rook is a quadraped, Knight is heavily armored or equipped with jump jets.

[Username17]

I'm not convinced that having damage granularity down to the point where specifically modelling nose strikes vs. left eye strikes vs. right eye strikes is even possible, let alone desirable. The soak roll isn't going to do that, since it's a scalar and not a vector. It produces results like:

"I hit him in the face." "How hard?" "-rolls- Five minus three hits... Two damage."
not like
"I hit him in the face." "How hard?" "I broke his nose."

Every location is going to have a list of wound effects based on how much unsoaked damage there is. So a hand strike might just cause you to drop what you're carrying, but it can also take your arm clean off. The amount of unsoaked damage required to actually kill you with an arm hit is much higher than what is required to kill you with a chest or head hit.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

Well, should it even be possible to kill some body frames via unsoaked damage to all locations? Should/could some body frames have the advantage that some of their hit locations will never cause them to die no matter how many unsoaked damage they take to that location? Particularly the robots and mythos creatures seem like they could get some of their "super toughness" from hit location and damage soak jiggery.

EDIT:

I picked Throne to keep with the Eva angel references and to provide some a bit of human semi-religious hubristic jingoism, "God is on our side" and all that, as well as symbolizing mankind's gradual but inevitable transformation into a godlike Mythos race (by creating their own angels). Thus the horrific Shoggoth mechs are named after the symbols of God's Justice and Authority,

Rook is okay, it just loses the religious reference.

Let's be honest though, most people wouldn't follow that part of the symbolism unless you were to explain it in the book like that, but they would get it if all the major vehicles were named after chess pieces, just like in halo the human vehicles are named after animals and the covenant vehicles are named after monsters.

Which isn't to say that you can't do it, but most folks don't even know about there being 9 types of angel in the first place, and Thrones and Powers and stuff don't register to them as being a kind of angel at all.

[name_here]

We could give some things special rules for damage to different hit locations. Ideally we'd want a graceful way of handling targeting a destroyed hit location. Obvious one is move up increments on the hit location chart until you reach one that hasn't been destroyed.

We could just name the Shoggoth mecha after pagan gods. Front the chapter with the Self-Aware Colony quote from Alpha Centauri

Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind.

[Chamomile]

Let's be honest though, most people wouldn't follow that part of the symbolism unless you were to explain it in the book like that, but they would get it if all the major vehicles were named after chess pieces, just like in halo the human vehicles are named after animals and the covenant vehicles are named after monsters.

Which isn't to say that you can't do it, but most folks don't even know about there being 9 types of angel in the first place, and Thrones and Powers and stuff don't register to them as being a kind of angel at all.

This is true, but not every reference has to be something that every player will get, so long as not-getting it doesn't prevent them from interacting with the world as effectively as someone else. I didn't know what the Sephiroth actually was until way after I played FFVII, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the game.

[hyzmarca]

Magical Girls

Magical Girls (and Boys) are powered by equal parts love, friendship, determination, and the Necronomicon. While anyone can learn the arcane secrets of the Outer Gods, which seem like magic but are really extremely advanced science, it usually takes years of study and practice. For Magical Girl, manipulation of the greater forces of the cosmos is as natural as breathing.

Magical Girl powers usually manifest between the ages of 9 and 14 and are accompanied by dreams of a kindly old Arab man creepy alien ferret

fixed

(seriouly how did you not think of that first when you though of combinig magical girls and cosmic horror)

The Crawling Chaos has many forms.


Anyway, we need our metal hero to go with the magical girl.


Symbiotes - Symbiote were originally bizarre predators found in the deepest depths pf the oily oceans of the Dreamland's moon possessing unique metamorphic properties, natural energy projection, and high durability. Union bioscientists captured a female and genetically altered her offspring so that they cannot survive outside a humanoid host.

The symbiote enters the body through the back of the neck, leaving a distinctive scar that anyone who knows about symbiotes will recognize. Once inside the body the symbiote wraps itself around the spin and extends tendrils into the host's brain. In its natural state the symbiote is a creature of pure instinct, incapable of higher reasoning. Once attached it hijacks the host's cognitive abilities and becomes fully sapient.

Symbiotes are designed to be docile and compliant. Ideally, the relationship between the two is a partnership with host is firmly in control. However, the symbiote has access to all of the host's memories and can perfectly impersonate him. If it fully takes over, no one would notice.

In combat, the scar on the back of the hosts neck bursts open and releases a writing mass of tentacles, mouths, and unspeakable things that wrap around the hosts body and harden into armor, which never looks the same twice, and a variety of weapons.

There is no age restriction on symbiote use, thus most hosts are adults, but not all humans are compatible and the symbiote cannot survive for long outside of a host. When the current host dies the symbiote loses all of its higher cognitive ability and instinctively seeks out the nearest compatible host. Thus the rare teenage host has a much more traumatic version of the Hal Jordan origin story, being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a brave super-soldier dies.

Symbiotes carry the memories of all of their former hosts with them. For those who have gone through many hosts, this can get a bit confusing.

Symbiotes are rare and expensive so the Union is willing to conscript accidental hosts. Removal, unfortunately, is not a survivable option.

Source material: A little bit Guyver, a lot Stargate SG-1, and some DS9 Trill, with a bit of Earth: Final Conflict skrill thrown in, and various Tokusatsu. Mostly goa'uld, Trills, and various armored heroes.

[hyzmarca]

Lets take about adventures.

We seem to want to have three distinct phases to the game, the detective phase, the superhero phase, and the mecha phase. There should be two ways to swap between them, Total War and Power Rangers.
In Total War mode you make a least one character for each phase and swap between them. In Power Rangers mode you play detectives who are superheroes who pilot giant robots.
Groups can, of course, drop any phase they don't want, producing a variety to play modes.
Detective/Mecha PR style = Big O, for example.



For a sample total war adventure we start out as police detectives investigating the mysterious death of an aspiring fashion model. During the course of the investigation the PCs learn that the modeling agency is really a front for the Black Goat, and loyalist Goatspawn are using it to turn innocent young women into youma. The deal model found out about this and was silenced before she could reveal the truth. This leads to a running gun battle with a group of youma, which might involve heavy weapons.

Then we switch to the superhero phase. The detectives are outclassed and radioed in for backup. Their call was forwarded to a high-speed orion transport in LEO, where a group of magical girls are on-class for rapid deployment. In five minutes they're prepped and in position for a sub-orbital HALO insertion. They hit the DZ with inhuman accuracy and proceed to engage the youma. The hunters become the hunted and the magical girls chase down and defeat the youma in a protracted fight with some some fire support from the detectives. But as the last one falls it opens a portal the size of a skyscraper. One of the Dark Young comes through.

We then switch to the mech pilots of the 41st Anti-Kaiju battalion. They've been suited up and ready to go ever since the original youma sighting and have been following the battle. Now they're just itching to kick ass. An electromagnetic catapult hurls the gunboys into the middle of the city, where they land with surprising grace despite the massive g-forces that the pilots have been subjected to. They proceed to kick giant monster ass. The girls might assist with some colossus climbing.

You can also do this entire adventure PR style by making a team of magical girl police detectives who pilot gunboys.

[Grek]

I think the best way to handle character generation is NOT to have everyone be identical like that where they have 1 investigator, 1 superhero and 1 mecha. Instead, you get to have "character" classes that determine what organization your characters are from, how many characters you get and what you deploy in each stage:

Organization	Detective	Superhero	Mecha
A Private Citizen	A citizen-investigator	That citizen providing intel from Mission Command	That citizen in his personal Gunboy mecha
Throne Command	A wizard, scientist or wizard-scientist	Same guy, using Magic/his shoggoth	His kid in a Throne mecha
Magic Girl Program	One Magic Girl	That same Magic Girl	A full team of Magic Girls
The Union Military	A platoon of MP goons	A supersolider dropped in from orbit	A squadron of jet planes or an artillery battery
The Anti-Kaji Garrison	An elite commando team	The commando team plus a tank	The Garrison's Gunboy mecha

[hyzmarca]

I think the best way to handle character generation is NOT to have everyone be identical like that where they have 1 investigator, 1 superhero and 1 mecha. Instead, you get to have "character" classes that determine what organization your characters are from, how many characters you get and what you deploy in each stage:

Organization	Detective	Superhero	Mecha
A Private Citizen	A citizen-investigator	That citizen providing intel from Mission Command	That citizen in his personal Gunboy mecha
Throne Command	A wizard, scientist or wizard-scientist	Same guy, using Magic/his shoggoth	His kid in a Throne mecha
Magic Girl Program	One Magic Girl	That same Magic Girl	A full team of Magic Girls
The Union Military	A platoon of MP goons	A supersolider dropped in from orbit	A squadron of jet planes or an artillery battery
The Anti-Kaji Garrison	An elite commando team	The commando team plus a tank	The Garrison's Gunboy mecha

I'm really not sure how to balance that.

[Grek]

It is not that complicated. I suspect you've not really given it enough thought. Let's take the investigative phase for example. There are four things that need to get done:

• Interrogate witnesses (especially suspects) to find out what they know about the crime.
• Collect forensic evidence from the crime scene in order to ID the perpetrator.
• Know relevant bits of occult lore about the spells, creatures and gods involved.
• Cordon off the area to keep witnesses and evidence in and to keep civilians out.

So, every class gets to be good at two of these things. Magic Girls gets Occult Lore and Talking to People Nicely, the Army gets to CSI the crime scene and to cordon off the area, the Private Detective knows how to talk to witnesses and collect evidence, and so forth.

The actual mini-game would be kinda like the After Sundown hiding mechanic, where each piece of evidence has a base amount of time to discover it and a TN. Each player announces how long they're going to look at a given thing for evidence before giving up and moving on to something else. Then they make a skill check vs. the TN to find the significance of that bit of evidence. Net hits on this test decrease actual time to some fraction of the base time. If they spent at least that long looking at that piece of evidence, they learn what it means. But if they don't figure it out in time, the evidence is ruined, the witness forgets, the suspect flees the country, another crime happens or the cult accomplishes what they're trying to do. Cordoning off evidence and taking people into custody can delay those first three from happening before someone gets to investigate them, while the later two are basically there to give the players a second chance to find more evidences or to move the plot along if the players are really inept or just really unlucky.

The other two stages can be worked out similarly.

[Lokathor]

I wouldn't count Cordoning off the area as being... in any way a thing that PCs would care about personally doing.

That's gruntwork bullshit. I know it's gruntwork bullshit because never in a crime show has the main character(s) personally cordoned off an area and then kept people from going in and out.

NPCs from some local organization do that. It doesn't even have to be a fully named organization, it can be just "the cops".

[hyzmarca]

I'd still prefer it if mixing and matching was easy. We really don't want to create a scenario where any combination is badwrongfun. But I'm terrible and crafting mechanics so I'll leave that to others. I'm much better with fluff and general ideas.

---

Lets talk out technology and aesthetics.

I'm imagining that the Union uses a lot of biotech. Rather than gleaming metal spires or the clean white apple store look, everything is squiggly and slimy. Brick and mortar construction is still common, as are glass and steel, but along side it you have skyscrapers made out of flesh and apartment buildings that are alive.

The modern personal computer is a portable multipurpose device that look like octopus tentacles. They have limited self-mobility and can be worn as a belt, a necklace or an armband and have suckers that allow them to attach themselves to a variety of surfaces.

They all come with a standard neural interface port which is compatible with most neural net implants for AR interface, supplemented by a touch-sensitive bio-luminescent display, voice recognition, and gesture recognition.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I'm imagining that the Union uses a lot of biotech. Rather than gleaming metal spires or the clean white apple store look, everything is squiggly and slimy. Brick and mortar construction is still common, as are glass and steel, but along side it you have skyscrapers made out of flesh and apartment buildings that are alive.

The modern personal computer is a portable multipurpose device that look like octopus tentacles. They have limited self-mobility and can be worn as a belt, a necklace or an armband and have suckers that allow them to attach themselves to a variety of surfaces.

They all come with a standard neural interface port which is compatible with most neural net implants for AR interface, supplemented by a touch-sensitive bio-luminescent display, voice recognition, and gesture recognition.

Perhaps these things should be cyborgs -- using the advantages of metals, plastics, and ceramics where they're really useful, and using organic stuff to interface with humans (or other biological members of the Union) "more comfortably"

So, our organic building has a metal or ceramic exterior, but the interior areas are soft and pink.

The part of the computer you interact with might look like a small octopus that you interface with by having it attach to your nerves, but the heavy mathematical lifting and analysis is done by something like a more traditional sci-fi computer attached to the octopus's brain. It might be some quantum thingamabob, but there's no real reason it couldn't be a modern solid-state computer if you're mostly doing things that we can easily do now with a smartphone or something.

Chromatophores (the things chameleons have) illuminated by ambient light are probably going to be more common than a neural interface with the visual portions of the bran for small computers that are not worn on top of your head, because if you didn't want to be able to easily attach and detach it, why would you bother making it an independent organism?

Medicine is probably a better candidate for more-or-less pure biotech than most fields.

[Username17]

There is a fourth important minigame: Highschool. The Majokko and Pilots and Summoners and such are all in Highschool, and they have to survive in that environment. So part of what you're going to do is to be doing 90210 bullshit and also periodically getting attacked by agents of the King in Yellow.

Now you can play Total War and just have multiple characters, or you can play some segment of minigames and play characters who participate in those.

Character Type	Highschool	Police Procedural	Super Heroes	Giant Monsters	Sample Character
Cultist	X			X	Shobijin
Pilot	X			X	Shinji
Summoner	X		X		Ash Ketchum
Guyver	X		X		Shō Fukamachi
Psychic	X	X			Yuki Saiko
Undercover Agent	X	X			Misato Katsuragi
Majokko	X	X	X		Usagi Tsukino
Power Ranger	X	X	X	X	Kimberly Hart
Cyborg		X	X		Alex Murphy

Obviously, extra archetypes can be written up. I think ideally, you'd want to have 4 archetypes playable in any kind of game you happened to be playing. When it's determined exactly what the other races do, I think some pretty weird combinations are possible. A Maclonic Deep One might be playable in Police Procedural and Giant Monsters game, while a Goat Spawn sorceress could be playable in Police Procedural and Superheroes mode.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

I'm imagining that the Union uses a lot of biotech. Rather than gleaming metal spires or the clean white apple store look, everything is squiggly and slimy. Brick and mortar construction is still common, as are glass and steel, but along side it you have skyscrapers made out of flesh and apartment buildings that are alive.

The modern personal computer is a portable multipurpose device that look like octopus tentacles. They have limited self-mobility and can be worn as a belt, a necklace or an armband and have suckers that allow them to attach themselves to a variety of surfaces.

They all come with a standard neural interface port which is compatible with most neural net implants for AR interface, supplemented by a touch-sensitive bio-luminescent display, voice recognition, and gesture recognition.

Perhaps these things should be cyborgs -- using the advantages of metals, plastics, and ceramics where they're really useful, and using organic stuff to interface with humans (or other biological members of the Union) "more comfortably"

So, our organic building has a metal or ceramic exterior, but the interior areas are soft and pink.

The part of the computer you interact with might look like a small octopus that you interface with by having it attach to your nerves, but the heavy mathematical lifting and analysis is done by something like a more traditional sci-fi computer attached to the octopus's brain. It might be some quantum thingamabob, but there's no real reason it couldn't be a modern solid-state computer if you're mostly doing things that we can easily do now with a smartphone or something.

That works really well.

Chromatophores (the things chameleons have) illuminated by ambient light are probably going to be more common than a neural interface with the visual portions of the bran for small computers that are not worn on top of your head, because if you didn't want to be able to easily attach and detach it, why would you bother making it an independent organism?

I want it to be able to detech easily, yes. I was thinking more like a Shadowrun style datajack for an interface (maybe with a little bit of Ghost in the Shell thrown in), something that you casually plug in or disconnect as necessary. Wireless can also work for DNI. Possibly justify it as commonplace by saying that neural net implants prevent Yith possession in addition to letting you surf the internet with your mind.

Medicine is probably a better candidate for more-or-less pure biotech than most fields.

Medicine is going to be a really interesting field if we've got Herbert West's reanimation formula and Deep One immortality gene splicing.

Nanotech could be replaced with synthetic bacteria, a bit slower than sci-fi magic nanotech, and a bit yuckier-sounding, but essentially realistic.

[RadiantPhoenix]

That works really well.

As I mentioned, the idea is that you play to the strengths of the different technologies. Organic stuff is soft and squishy, so you put it where you want things to be soft and squishy. Metals and such are hard and strong, so you put them where that's what you need. The fact that it would probably give early-20th-century people nightmares is a plus.

I want it to be able to detech easily, yes. I was thinking more like a Shadowrun style datajack for an interface (maybe with a little bit of Ghost in the Shell thrown in), something that you casually plug in or disconnect as necessary. Wireless can also work for DNI. Possibly justify it as commonplace by saying that neural net implants prevent Yith possession in addition to letting you surf the internet with your mind.

Yeah, I was thinking of justifications for why you'd want to put a squid between you and your brain computer, and I think the best reasons are:

• You don't need brain surgery every time you want to upgrade or just switch to a different type of specialized computer design
• If someone tries to hack your brain, they have to get through the squid first, but if you notice, then you can jettison the squid and stop it.

Nanotech could be replaced with synthetic bacteria, a bit slower than sci-fi magic nanotech, and a bit yuckier-sounding, but essentially realistic.

The yucky-soundingness gives it that Mythos feeling

One of the things I was imagining was a modded leech replacing hypodermic needles -- you stick a pouch on it, and put it on your arm, and it does the whole, "find vein, {inject medicine/draw blood}, seal wound," thing autonomously.

[hyzmarca]

The Union (Human I): An eclectic Federation consisting of most of Earth's nations dedicated to the defense of the planet. Though some of its member zones are ultra-racist hellholes, the Union in general is highly inclusive, open, and accepting. Heavily transhumanist, willing to make compromises to survive and thrive. Makes heavy use of mythos-derived technology.

The Lemurians (Human II): Human purists formerly led by Randolf Carter III, the Lemurians want to "purify" and claim the Earth.


Velusia (Yig I):Absolute Theocracy dedicated to the worship of the Serpent god and ruled by Toth Amon, an honorable but ruthless sorcerer king. He's highly competent and plays the long game. Is currently fighting a civil war against Serpent Command. Controls Mexico and Central America.

Serpent Command (Yig II): A ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. They're bloodthirsty, impatient, insane, and incompetent, and that makes them incredibly dangerous. Currently attempting to overthrow Toth Amon and take over Velusia.

Rl'yeh: Deep Ones loyal to Cthulhu and the Star Spawn. Feel betrayed by Dagon and Hydra. Controls much of Australia and New Zealand

Shubby: Dark fertility goddess. Pissed off because some of her children betrayed her. Controls the Abyss and can teleport giant monsters to Earth.

Mi-go and Boreans

Cthonians and White Apes

Moon Beasts and Ghasts: Angry revanchists who want revenge for a long-lonst war.


I think that we have somehow ended up more more factions than Cthulhutech had, but at least they have the potential to ally with each other when convenient.

The Lemurians might ally with the Union, Valusia, or Serpent Command against any of the non-human factions, though would immediately turn on them once the non-humans are defeated.

Serpent Command will ally with anyone, but will inevitably betray them.

The Union is extremely pragmatic and not adverse to compromise.

I think we could reasonably have many situations where two factions team up against a third, at least for a short time, and that makes things more politically interesting.

[hyzmarca]

That works really well.

As I mentioned, the idea is that you play to the strengths of the different technologies. Organic stuff is soft and squishy, so you put it where you want things to be soft and squishy. Metals and such are hard and strong, so you put them where that's what you need. The fact that it would probably give early-20th-century people nightmares is a plus.

Motels in the future don't have magic fingers beds, they have magic tongue beds.

I want it to be able to detach easily, yes. I was thinking more like a Shadowrun style datajack for an interface (maybe with a little bit of Ghost in the Shell thrown in), something that you casually plug in or disconnect as necessary. Wireless can also work for DNI. Possibly justify it as commonplace by saying that neural net implants prevent Yith possession in addition to letting you surf the internet with your mind.

Yeah, I was thinking of justifications for why you'd want to put a squid between you and your brain computer, and I think the best reasons are:

• You don't need brain surgery every time you want to upgrade or just switch to a different type of specialized computer design
• If someone tries to hack your brain, they have to get through the squid first, but if you notice, then you can jettison the squid and stop it.

Those are very good reasons. I just wanted to be able to type "her computer slithered up her arm and slid itself into her dataport."
Planned obsolesce is still a thing, and you wouldn't want to be caught with last year's squidputer. You'd never live it down.

Nanotech could be replaced with synthetic bacteria, a bit slower than sci-fi magic nanotech, and a bit yuckier-sounding, but essentially realistic.

The yucky-soundingness gives it that Mythos feeling

Yeah. The Lemurians should have the clean and sterile ipod look in their tech, and should be a lot more like us, though with heavy emphasis on AI drones. The Union should be just gross enough to seem almost inhuman.

One of the things I was imagining was a modded leech replacing hypodermic needles -- you stick a pouch on it, and put it on your arm, and it does the whole, "find vein, {inject medicine/draw blood}, seal wound," thing autonomously.

That sounds good.

You might also have an engineered heartworm that scrubs cholesterol out of your arteries. There's plenty of room for gross medical tech.

[Lokathor]

There is a fourth important minigame: Highschool. The Majokko and Pilots and Summoners and such are all in Highschool, and they have to survive in that environment.

Cyborgs can go to Highschool.

Particularly if it's 2097 and people know about aliens, then cyborgs can go to highschool.

[zeruslord]

The yucky-soundingness gives it that Mythos feeling

Yeah. The Lemurians should have the clean and sterile ipod look in their tech, and should be a lot more like us, though with heavy emphasis on AI drones. The Union should be just gross enough to seem almost inhuman.

I don't think we want to position the Lemurians as being significantly more human/sympathetic than the Union. If the fundamental difference from the Union is their refusal to cooperate with non-humans, and a resulting emphasis on robots, we should turn that up to 11. They don't have cats or dogs - what self-respecting human would invite an animal to act as a parasite? They don't engage in bio-modification. Instead, they layer themselves with technology: AR goggles, pocket AI companions, robo-pets, sterile white-plastic tron clothes. Give them a taboo not just against bio-mods, but against visible organic matter; other than their faces, everything is hidden behind plastics, and even the face is behind glass. Maybe even pull a bit from Asimov's Spacers, with physical presence an unspeakable violation. It should be as creepy as the Union, but instead of visual horror, more about mental inhumanity.