Body Modifications

The prevalence of body augmentation in different communities

Whole-body (or majority-body) technical and biological augmentation is uncommon in Core space and Cosmopolitan communities, though not stigmatized. It is typically restricted to enthusiast subcultures and instances of medical necessity. Within the Diaspora, opinions vary.
Most Metropolitans and Cosmopolitans enjoy a small complement of personal, medical, or professional modifications, augmentations, and enhancements: tailored Panacea cells for warding off disease, subdermal aural netting with linked omnicasters for communicating, hyperspectral ocular modifications to enhance their vision, embedded pay chits, basic redundancy modifications, cortical shielding, and so on.
On Diasporan and Core worlds and among the Cosmopolita, it is notable (but not rare) for people to have visible, clearly inorganic body modifications, augmentations, or prosthetics. If they’re visible, it’s usually because the owner wants to make a fashion, aesthetic, or otherwise political statement. Most colonists have a small complement of personal and professional modifications, similar to those found among Metropolitans, but with slight differences: localization for harsher climates, more aggressive Panacea systems, and so on.
Heavily modified people tend to be survivors of terrible accidents or attacks who need modifications to live, people who have opted for extensive augmentation to better manage a chronic or genetic condition that would otherwise significantly impact their quality of life, or people who work in a specialized field and have opted to (or been “encouraged” to) undergo extensive modification to perform their duties.

Types of body modifications and their purposes

Generally speaking, subdermal or internal augmentations are small enough not to be too physically taxing, but the more extensive their modifications, the more difficult it is for their body to manage without significant chemical, internal, or external support (e.g., integrated battery packs, power lines at workstations, etc). Union’s Utopian Pillars mandate that modifications or prosthetics, when licensed from a private entity, are wholly owned by the user, and must be able to function as intended and at full capacity without support from its fabricator.
Even with the most extensive modifications, some environments remain hostile to human life. Because of physical stress, the risk of damage to organic matter from radiation, and energy limitations, it is not yet possible to modify someone enough that they can survive sustained exposure to hard vacuum. It is possible to extend the time people can survive in a vacuum, but these biological modifications are usually only found in Cosmopolitans, naval personnel, and other people who are at considerable risk of hardvac exposure.

Attitudes towards extensive body modifications in different cultures

Aesthetic biomodifications are common enough, depending on cultural and countercultural practices. Light aesthetic biomods are usually additive and can, on Core worlds, be obtained everywhere from expensive private clinics to street-side kiosks. These include changes to skin color tint, patterning, eye color, hair color, piercings, scarring, feathering, tattoos, hair, fur, and so on. Heavy biomods like secondary limbs, tails, changes to digits, and so on, are rare – usually only found in countercultural cliques – and prompt people to take notice even on Core worlds.
Various subcultures are interested in extensive augmentation – androidism – from transhumanist movements and disability rights groups to android cults and nihilist machine-adherents. The discourses and practices that exist in these communities vary wildly, and common dialogue around androidism is lacking outside of technical, academic, medical, and other specialist settings. On some worlds, people with extensive modifications may face prejudice; on others, they might be welcomed.

In Lancer, an android is someone with a corpus that is at least 90 percent synthetic.