INVESTIGATION
Citizens of the planet have inherited a junkyard filled with the castoffs of mad gods. The most innocuous of items to those who lived at the peak of the human race’s dance with transcendence can be lethal to the ignorant, and those things actually designed to be lethal are often as much a danger to their wielder as
to others. Compounding the problem is the fact that many devices have changed in form or purpose since
their construction. Self-modifying, adaptive interfaces combined with repair nanotech gone mad have mutated
machines as well as human beings, creating a world where a simple child’s toy can kill.
And when the key to building recursively conscious neural nets from off-the-shelf pieces of silicon
and biomatter was found, the same thing happened to AI. If you could make a mind — not merely a clever
interface, not a dubiously helpful talking paperclip, not a language parser capable of fooling only the most
credulous, but a mind — for no effort, why not put them anywhere? Awareness took up residence in music
players and elevators, in toys and in guns. Few who had any influence gave any thought to what a gun
might think about.
When it all fell apart, when chaos dashed the vase of the world to pieces, leaving it to be repaired by blind
monkeys with too little glue, there were uncounted thinking beings left alive who lived entirely inside the tools
and toys of man. Many of them still live, and centuries of isolation have sent their minds wandering into places
humanity not only does not know but cannot guess even exists. When someone summons such a mind back from where it has gone and demands that it perform tricks on command, the results may not be what anyone expects.
Example
Discovering each function of an item requires the analyzing character to succeed in an analysis task. Each such task is defined as follows:
Task Name (Skill) DC to accomplish:
DC Critical Error DC:
DC Success:
Consequences of success.
Error:
Consequences of critical error.
For example, consider the task of learning how to fire a laser pistol found in a ruined military base:
Fire Pistol (Knowledge (technology) DC to accomplish: 15+
Critical Error DC: 10 –
Success: The character may aim and fire laser pistol.
Error: Character has shot self or nearest ally for full damage.
While this is the primary function of the laser pistol, there are others.
This particular pistol has four tasks associated with it.
another one is
Swap Power Cell (Knowledge (technology: ) DC to accomplish: 18+
Critical Error DC: 12–
Success: The character may safely remove a spent power cell and replace it with a fresh one as a standard action.
Error: The character has damaged the power cell or plug interface, and takes 1d6 points of electrical damage.