NPC: Doctor Aether Theobald

If one had to describe Doctor Theobald in one word, the word could be mad, as he deeply deeply is such. Another, however, could be amoral. Theobald has no affiliations, no agenda, no morals to speak of. All he cares is to increase his knowledge of cybernetics and surgery, and of course the Novus.

Pay him, he will graft or install anything you like. Don't pay him and there's no deal. Here is a man of black and white, of yes and no.

In a city of greys and shadows as New Hades, some find him a welcome and refreshing new approach.

A surgeon. I am most definitely bringing the cyber-implants home to roost and I needed someone to install them. SPectacularly high Knowledge: Surgical Modification (D10), hopefully it will mean patients don't die.  

Character: Archetypes (Elaran Neural Parasites)

One of the most well guarded secrets of the New Hades universe is the Elaran Incident. In a nutshell, alien insects, evolving independently at an exponential rate, isolated in a remote Jupiter moon, bla bla bla.

What NO ONE knows at this stage, is that some of the Elaran insectoids have already escaped. They found a way (possibly experimenting on dead soldiers sent to destroy them) to link small larvae to the corpses' nervous system, thereby animating them. And so they did, to said soldiers, to the research scientists and to a couple of scavenging ship crews that went into Elara looking for some quick Novus. 

What these Archetypes want is still a mystery, but they are out there. They might look odd, but who doesn't these days?

An updated version of the zombie character. Stronger, slower and in need of some chemical every 24h, else, -2 to tests. Maybe without it, it goes into a frenzy and attacks friend and foe alike? Also, perhaps a -2 to CHA?

Character: The Myth (Constantina 'Tina' Bianchi)

On paper, it looked like a spectacular idea. Instead of all the work needed to resequence someone's genes and turn them into a Gen (DIVERS therapy can take months), how about a virus, encoded with upgraded genes (faster, stronger, more agile, you get the idea) injected directly into a soldiers' bloodstream. It wouldn't last long before their immune system fought it off and back into a baseline human, but until then, they would be better at everything.

It worked. Until it really didn't.

Yes, it enhanced as they wanted. Yes, it was temporary. But it destroyed the subjects' skin pigmentation, and wreaked havoc with their blood cell count. These poor people were now better than humans, but they needed constant blood transfusions and were clinically sensitive to sunlight.

Yes. For all intents and purposes, they are vampires.

It didn't take long for the young Lieutenant Bianchi to realise the possibilities of her condition. Escaping her facility she now roams the Hadean nights looking for work, and for the next pint of scarlet life force....

I just got my hands on the Horror Expansion for the Savage Worlds rules. So this character HAD to happen. It is as it says on the text above, she is faster, and stronger, but vulnerable to sunlight and with an addiction to consuming blood every 24h. Without it, all her rolls are at -1 penalty.

Characters: The Cloud (Ralph 'Smoke' Harrison)

Once upon a time, there was a man. He was very bright, a doctor. He wanted to help people. He wanted to make them better. So he made these tiny machines that could fix people from the inside all the way out. And people were very happy.

One day, a messenger arrived, from a nearby kingdom (a message from Koruachi Corps) that said 'Come work for us, we'll give all the gold you need for your machines!'

So the healer went, and all was well.

But there was a problem.

The machines could heal or destroy. And the other kingdom was only really interested on one of them. The wrong one.

They tried to shut him down, and push him away. He fought back, and in the cross fire, a number of unprogrammed nanobots got free, and spilled over the man.

And they disassembled him. And he died.

He awoke in the same place, 2 days later. Naked, the lab empty and cold, all his research long gone. The nanobots had memorised his composition, and brought him back, slowly, cell by cell, particle by particle.

He could now partially command the nanobots keeping him alive. He could heal with them, as he wanted, or he could destroy, as they wanted. He found he was angry. And it was high time he did something about it.

My first attempt at a really exotic offensive power. Ralph has the Burst power, which allows for a area effect blast cone (the nanobots would attack everything in that area, like a flamethrower). Also, I needed a healer, so i gave him really good healing stats (nanobot-based, D8-D10). I also consider the nanobots as melee weapons (they probably won't care how far away the adversary is), so i gave them STR+D6 melee. I'm tempted to give him a very basic ability to change his face and skin colour, but am still debating it (too powerful?).

Characters: The Puppet Master (Tegan 'TK' Keath)

Drafted in the latter days of the War, Tegan is a Drone Jockey (also known as a Rigger). Her 3D visualisation of the universe has been enhanced, and she has a Level 2 cyber implant, that allows her to mentally and instantaneously direct and command Drones - robotic constructs as varied as small helicopters, spheres or full blown attack vehicles.

These days, although the military work is not as frequent (there IS always some Corps vs Corps skirmish somewhere), there is plenty of independent missions to go round. To extend your perception onto a small (or big) inanimate construct is as helpful ans one might think, allowing to do stealthy recon or knocking-doors-down-and-killing-everyone-in-the-room with the same effort. It's just a matter of Novus and of how big your drone is.


Simple human, with no physical enhancements, but really high driving, allowing her to control drones. I've started her with 2, a small well armoured helicopter, and a stealthy, less well armed recon sphere.

Characters: The Alien (Merlin 'Wizard' Ryant)

In any sensible set of definitions, Merlin is an alien. Born and raised on Port Armstrong on the Moon, the young colonist quickly found that the impositions put upon him in those early days of the history of the colony were too restrictive for him. Everyone had to work. Everyone had to pull their weight. This system of affairs was not what he wanted of his life, if indeed he wanted anything. 

It all changed on the morning of the 22nd of February, 2079. 

A micrometeorite hit one of the cities' main blast doors controls, a billion to one chunk of bad luck. The computers started to open the airlocks, wrongly believing the city was evacuated and essential maintenance was under way.

People were running around in a panic, tens of thousands of them were minutes away from a gasping death. And in that moment, Merlin the idiot, Merlin the 'waste of life support', hacked the system. He didn't succeed, of course, the computer was much too powerful, but it did make it take precious seconds trying to ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronic) him, seconds that the actual rescue team used to shut everything down. 

Merlin saved everyone. And no one ever found out.

Becoming something of a tech wiz, he turned his life around, working first on the Moon, then on cargo ships and every now and again on Earth. When on the Homeworld, Merlin needs to wear an exoskeleton to compensate for his fragile low-G muscles.

Another test character. He's just a normal human (with a couple of low-G Hindrances) with a gun (D6), but his Repairing and Hacking skills are huge (D8-D10).

Character: The Blade (Yoshihiro 'Hiro' Kusatsu)

Hiro was a munitions officer in the War..... Until the day his wares blew up around him. Fortunately, he was attached to a Koruachi Corps. unit, and the Corps Docs were keen to try out the second generation cyber implants.

Which they did.

Not necessarily enhanced, Hiro was now tougher and more resilient. Most of his body is now in some way armoured. He was trained in melee fighting, as he was now the perfect human(ish) shield.

Eventually rotating the out of the army he became a merc. His weapon of choice became a giant vibro-sword, which as you can imagine, makes him a nightmare in melee fighting.

A simple character, with no long range abilities, or particularly fine tuned proficiencies, but very well armoured (+4 all over) and with a wicked vibro-sword (Str+d8+2, AP 4).

Character: The Idol (Helen 'Bam-Bam' Batson)

After the redrawing of border lines, all over the globe, one of the things that keeps uniting people is music. Singers and songwriters are made and broken overnight, in a spectacularly Darwinian environment.

Bam-Bam came from nowhere and took the Solar System by storm. She is spectacularly popular with all ages and backgrounds, her music a mixture of New Celtic Rock and Trance / Chillout. Her fans number in the millions, and hers is a face known in every house.

What most people will not know is her night job. Bam-Bam is a sharpshooter, a sniper, and a good one at that. Why she chose this side gig is unknown, but she is well known to hold a grudge.

Bam-Bam is possibly a character which is too bloated, or maybe not. Her Charisma is through the roof, her Shooting is huge, but she is meh at most else. Her gun does a stupid amount of damage, but only fires every other turn. I'll look forward to see how she performs in a game.

Characters: The Oddity (Talanie 'Tala' Minnins)

Thought, consciousness, reason, whatever you want to call it, are so-called emergent properties, insomuch as there are no clear physical explanation for them, you just make a complex enough nervous system, and they are just there, they emerge.

Tala is one of these wonders.

A quick (and simple) genetic resequencing to improve her memory left her with an interesting side effect. Something no one would believe and something Corps would kill for.

Tala is, for all intents and purposes, a telepath.

She found this out soon after her treatment, and has kept it secret ever since. Tala is a part-time writer and high-level division leader for Infinity Logistics, and on a good day, she 'overhears' enough criminal and corrupt thoughts to feed a lifetime of information-gathering and prison time.

She became an information broker, selling and trading titbits of information, always careful to keep herself in the shadows.

Some fight the corruption of the Corps from the outside, with guns and explosions. Some do it from the inside, with a smile.


A test character. Gave her the Arcane background (Psionics) to see how a telepath would work in New Hades.

Characters: The Rat (Evelynn ‘Elf’ Kniffin)

For your average Hadean, The Scraplands are as close to a dystopia as you can reach. These people don't know Below.

Centred around Old Hades and Rattown, a huge, multi-level network of tunnels (some the size of a dog, some old Tube tunnels, some old shopping areas the size of caverns) spreads out throughout the city. This is truly the end of the road. If you find yourself Below, there is quite usually no way back. A century of pollution and discarded Gens have bred and mutated down there, and a lot of sections are about as safe as diving into a pool of broken glass.

So when a toddler was found crying, wondering the corridors aimlessly, her lifespan could be measured in seconds.

The reverse turned out to be true.

A lot of the denizens of this forgotten place had cut their ties with the world above: light, innocence, beauty. The little girl (clearly a Hybrid, a product of the coupling of two Gens) reminded them they were still alive, and they were still human.

Evelynn grew up Below. She learned which tunnels led where, she was taught to read and write by insane scientists, how to fight by burned out soldiers, how to hunt by packs of cyber-rats (most likely a failed experiment), how to be stealthy by malfunctioning infiltration robots. Protected by the community who adopted her as a mascot, she thrived, eventually becoming one of the best smugglers in town. If you need to move stuff around, without the Corps or anyone else finding out, she's the person to find. She adopted one of the cyber-rats as a pet.

This one was a personal request. I made her small, elfish, and great in a scrap. I like that she will have access to a network of people that love here, and are also the lowest of the low (and therefore invisible).

WE DARED TO PLAY GOD, NOW LOOK AT WHAT WE BROUGHT FORTH!!....

So Shadowrun famously has fantasy elements in a cyberpunk setting. I kind of crave that for New Hades, but don't want to simply do a pastiche of it. Also, I could introduce aliens, but again, don't want to have to fall into the same cliches. The solution (so far, it might change....) is to use genetic engineering.

So if in need a monster as a guard (troll, Thing-Man-isn't-Supposed-To-Know, humanoid with 8 eyes), I'm going to explain it as being a MegaGen construct. The discovery of DIVERS (Delivery Viral Genetic Substitution), viruses that could take anything and splice it into anything, allowed for a blank canvas. With a little trial and error, any animal could be fine tuned to its makers' content. Big teeth, fine! 6 legs? Good times! Tentacles?.... FINE!

Characters: The Everyman (Walt 'WW' Watson)

Walt was again a late addition. I decided to make him..... average. Not excelent at anyting, but good at everything. He has no background (for now) but there you have it. A normal Hadean.

I made Walt with across the board average stats. The main difference is the Jack of All Trades, an unusual, but highly powerful Edge. The character doesn't get negative penalties when attempting an unskilled roll, so he effectively has a 25-90% chance to succeed at anything at all!

Characters: The Thief (Eddie)

Eddie is a petty thief, someone who grew up dodging the law and stealing Novus chips for his next meal. One of the most talented graffiti artists around, he usually hides behind a Cheshire Cat smile hologram, that floats right in front of his face.

To try and pin him down would be to try and nail jelly to a wall. He knows every alleyway, every tunnel. His connections are not as extensive as some, but he knows who he can trust.

Eddie was a late arrival to my palette of characters. I tried to overlap abilities so no one absolutely had to pick any character, so Eddie (with a fairly high Pickpocketing Edge) was my Face alternative. Besides, it's always good to have someone who knows where all the back doors are. 

Characters: The Hacker (Jennifer 'Random' Howards)

Jennifer was born with the proverbial superconductor-laced Palladium/Platinum alloy spoon (MUCH more expensive than silver) in her mouth. Her youth was spend between Downtown and Corpville, a world away from the rest of New Hades (mentally, if not physically).

As the years passed, her ability to manipulate the Matrix became apparent, and her affluent parents did all they could to turn her into a computer tech executive.

That was not to be.

Both her parents were high ranking executives for Peterson Heavy Industries, and the day came when Jen found a high-access back door into the PHI database. And went in.

Imagine if you will finding 60 years worth of corruption, filth, blood and tears in one fleeting moment.

And now imagine seeing your parents permission authorization on a number of these.

She reeled from it. But not for long.

By day's end she has written her parents a long letter, hacked their accounts and, stealing as much money as she could, she disappeared into the streets of The Sprawl.

Changing her details with those of a corpse floating in The Deimos, she is now presumed dead. And her reputation as a first class Hacker is just beginning.

The Corps WILL be made to pay for their actions.

I made Jen a massive tech geek. She can't not investigate a new system. Also she can go head to head with most security systems with ease. And she is pretty decent with a gun.

Characters: The Face (Alexandria 'Alex' de Bouchard)

For years, whenever I watched The A Team, I totally didn't see the point of Face. I mean, yeah, he was charming, sure, but what was the point??

Age has taught me many things since, and amongst them - and I feel this should be somewhere in Sun Tzu's The Art of War - a pretty face can open doors a weapon can't.

Alexandria was borne Alex Douglas in Rattown. She is about as noble as your average Sprawl's concrete slab, but what she DID have was a sensual physical presence, and a brain the size of a building.

Alex knows everyone. If she doesn't, she knows someone who knows someone. She doesn't deal drugs or weapons or information.... But she has the contacts of people that do.

I gave her the Contacts Edge (people with real information to give), and her CHA is huge, meaning people will be disposed to help her from the start.

I designed her to be loyal, but amoral. She will have seen too much stuff in New Hades. Everything is acceptable. It's just a matter of money.

Characters: The Soldier (Victor 'Volt' Constantine)

All RPG's are, by design, tactical simulations, hence the need for varied characters, covering the widest possible base - your wizards, your Paladins, your rogues. New Hades is no exception.

Enter the old soldier. 

Some of the characters have military backgrounds (a consequence of the recent War) M1ke and Malen, for example, but I left it vague how much action they saw. 

Not Volt. Oh no.

Victor was a scout in the War (I'm leaving his side unknown for now). His was the job to infiltrate enemy lines and report back. To help, his army gave him cyber-enhanced eyes (+1 to visual tests), and a standard-issue cyber-arm (no bonus).... With a Tesla Coil inside, for, you know, close encounters.

I'm making him someone fairly upbeat, but troubled. His eyes mark him out of a crowd. Ok, I hear you say, but M1ke has the same. Yes, but M1ke ISN'T human, Victor IS. Or was.

People are desperate to forget the War. Victor is a constant reminder of what happened to your friends and connections. Hence, people shy away from him (-2 CHA).

I built Volt from a previous steampunk character (Savage Worlds, yay!), that I designed around a ray gun (as he had the Weird Science Edge, allowing him to do effectively technology-based 'magic' (Energy manipulation, teleport, etc)). So Volt has a fairly powerful weapon in his arm. He's not good at most other things. He can infiltrate, and scare, but that's pretty much it.

I'm really keen on seeing how he performs!

Characters: The 'good' cop (Orion Grey)

Where would sci fi be without the private eye? Usually (but not exclusively) anachronistic, he's a good guy in a dirty town, trying to get some measure of justice in the wet, oily, stinking world.

This is not the case with Orion Grey.

Another custom job, Orion is largely based on the iconic Rick Deckard from Blade Runner. My player then suggested a few gems, like his lameness (cyber leg, -1 to Pace) and general hate of anything electrical (-1 to checks re: technology). Mind you, he can shoot a mosquito between the eyes, so....

Orion was never a good cop, he loved the bottle too much for that, but he did have eyes. He saw how the New Hades Police Department was merely a lapdog to the corps. Not totally useless, but if some salaryman called the right people, the crime was quickly droped and buried. Under water. With explosives.

In a moment of misplaced honour, Orion freed a prisoner, a criminal, who had been caught hacking the Police Records to prove said corruption. 

The corps, the police, everyone and their little dog had issues with this. After attacking a couple of slightly mouthier colleagues, Orion walked. 

Now he works on the streets. For whatever will pay for the next bottle.

*slow sax music, image fades to b&w, reflections on the rain-hit puddles on the ground*

Characters: The Tinkerer (Malen Kiy)

Malen Kyi (Russian for 'small) was a custom-ordered character by one of my players, but coincidently, I had made a PC with virtually the same stats for a Steampunk setting I'm working on. So it was very much a copy-paste job (Savage Worlds rules ROCK!)

Malen is Russian, a genetically engineered combat engineer (!) His gene splice went a bit fuzzy, however, and what he gained in creative thinking and structural extrapolation, he lost in height. The Red Army had issues with this, and always treated him as a failure. Embittered by this treatment, he promptly escaped, and realised that in the real world, people don't really care about your height, as long as their droids work, you can hack the Matrix, or can build anything from anything. Also his computer, on his left forearm, is pretty cool....

Malen has a Weird Science Edge called Gadgeteer, which I love, love, loooove. If he has parts, and 1D20 minutes, he can build a one-use-only gadget that will work exactly as needed for that situation. Other than that, he's a pretty decent Hacker, and decent with an axe.

Characters: The Fake Man (M1ke)

Hephastus, the Greek god of the forge, could pour metal of such purity that his constructs became animated with fake life and would do his bidding. I'm sure there might have been older traditions of artificial men, but this one is my favourite.

M1ke is an android, a synthetic ceramic/metallic endoskeleton, around a vat-grown nervous system, in turn covered in organic muscles and skin (Think Arnold's T-800, but with an organic nervous system).

Androids were developed half way into the war. They were a reasonably natural development of technology, on the one side, they were making human soldiers more synthetic, on the other, they were experimenting giving robots nervous systems (speeding up processing exponentially). Somewhat in the middle, this was the result. Humanoid servants, ready to kill and die at our command.

Well....

Sort of.

The scientist that created the androids weren't stupid. The filled the synthetic brains with rules and laws, to prevent things from going too far. However, they also gave these new men the greatest of gifts: consciousness. In another age, what we would call a soul.

After the war, the androids lost their usefulness. Most were still in the hands of the military or research institutes, and found themselves wanting for purpose. Some were disassembled (killed?). Others were reprogrammed (lobotomised?). And many thousands escaped. Some live in hiding. Some live normal human lives, shielding their bright purple eyes (an identification control measure) from the masses and their neighbours are none the wiser. And some are rebels, fighting for the freedom of their kind.

A revolution is coming. Most people simply haven't caught up yet.

I made M1ke a soldier, with high combat specs. As a synthetic, he is more difficult to Shaken, although his organic parts make him as vulnerable to injury as any human. He hates Corps (Who doesn't??) and has an attitude. One day, if he meets one of his kind in need, it will be interesting to see where his allegiances lie....

Isn't it NICE? (Cybernetics)

I came up with the concept of NICE (Neural Interface Controller Enhanced) about 10 years ago, for my bloody sci fi novel that will never go anywhere. I'm really happy that bits and bobs of it will forever live in New Hades. 

I wanted a revolution in cybernetics, that allowed the possibilities of Shadowrun-type implants (This will be a recurring inspiration in New Hades).

The point of cyber implants is mainly sensorial and kinetic (noise made by characters, the suave movements of top-of-the-line devices, the jerky movements of Rattown cyberdocs' contraptions), as well as a narrative one, allowing me as the GM to colour a character.

There are two main Savage Worlds sources for cyberpunk: Daring Tales of The Sprawl (simple, to the point, a mere handful of pages of new rules) and Interface Zero (HUGE, rules for everything and everyone, really dense). Both have radically different approaches to cybernetics.

I took a simpler, 3rd route. Cyber is just a gimmick. I'll allow simple implants, for a decent price, and these will give small (+1 or +2) bonuses to checks. A cyber arm might give you a +1 to a Fighting roll, cyber eyes +1 to Notice, etc. Cyber should be part of the universe and not the thing you use all your money to do (although you can, of course, if you wish). And the more you have, the odder you will look, so there will be a) A limit to the number of implants (usually your Vigour die) and b) You'll look odder and odder, lowering your Charisma.

As the New Hades expands, I might change this approach to a more table-written, capitalistic one, but I like the fact that for now, Cyber is the flavour, not the main dish.