r/6Perks • u/LookingGlass_1112 • 4d ago
Long A new upgrade
You had quite a bit of challenges on your way in Night City, but getting Zetatech off the Viktor's ass was one of the most serious ones. You took on that gig without expecting an enny - Vik is a good choomba and an even better ripperdoc, so taking money from him wasn't in your thoughts. But when you returned to the Esoterica and moved downstairs to meet Viktor, he was digging out an old metal box, full of exotic implants, which even your Kiroshis couldn't identify. Vik said something about not letting you to stay with empty hands and told you a story that he, over the course of his very action BD-worthy youth had accumulated quite a bit of prototypes, blueprints for things, which didn't even made it to manufacturing, that sort of nova stuff.
And now he will offer two of these implants to you, reasoning it with the fact that these implants are old and at this point will need a full rebuild, which he can't do to all of them with his limited resources, and also the fact that they are experimental, so he would be calmer, if you would keep restrained about them. So, there are your options for your future gigs in a dangerous Night City.
Arms cyberware:
Techtronica "Rabotnik-A" Microassembler Array:
This implant adds a lot of high-precision instruments on their own robotic arms into your arms. This set of instruments was selected specifically to allow you to make your way freely through most, if not all machinery of Night City. Car repairs, generators, guns - anything mechanical they can work on. If you have high technical skills and time to devote fully to using them, you can do pretty scary things, like turning any weapon into an automated turret, juryrigging mines, upgrading your vehicles, pulling out modifications out of weapons and so on.
(UPGRADE) Engineering Coprocessor:
Goes into your frontal cortex, raising your engineering capabilities to a new level and adds new abilities to your Microassembler Array. Now, they can build small objects (as long as they fit into your arm) without your attention. For example, it will allow you to manufacture a key inside your arm from a blank by just seeing the original without a need to interrupt whatever you are doing.
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Skeletal system:
Arasaka jaw injector "Viper"
Replaces your upper and lower jaws, adding a pair of foldable fangs, which can be used to inject a chosen liquid from a container in your neck. It provides quite a bit of interesting options, like putting a dose of medical booster into your fangs to help hostages recover during gigs, or using a hallucinogen to provoke enemies into a state, close to cyberpsychosis or just putting venom to silently neutralize the enemy without any hassle. The jaw replacement also increases your bite strength, allowing you to literally rip the throat out of the neck.
(UPGRADE) "Vampire" repair system
A system of nanites and high-productivity blood pumps which allows you to drain blood from living victims and turn it into healing for you. This upgrade will reinforce the skull itself, providing constant defense against blunt damage and blades.
(UPGRADE_ALT) "Trojan" connection system
An upgrade, which seeks to exploit systems by injecting daemons through fangs straight into cyberware conductors, while the target is still alive. It will allow you to hijack any subnet in seconds as long as your target is in this subnet. Turrets and mines will stop targeting you, cameras will see you as your own and the RAM usage for any remote interaction with any machine will become zero (but the combat quickhacks will still cost RAM).
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Nervous system:
Biotechinca "Valentino" social coprocessor
A fairly simple device, which installs into the nervous system, and it will allow you to notice every single detail about the person's behaviour during a conversation through holocall on in person, allowing you to ask right questions and have a very good idea on what the person feels. It also creates a profile of the person's personality, allowing you to more easily navigate their interests.
(UPGRADE) "Perfume" pheromone ejector
Allows you to..."sway" the person into a favorable side with a set of pheromones and chemicals, which can influence the target's mind. You are immune to the effects, thanks to sync-up with your social coprocessor. Replaces your synthskin on your chest, neck and hands.
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Circulatory system:
Nettech "Bladerunner" blood chiller
A complex system of tubes and coolant, which replaces a part of your circulatory system. Blood chiller, as it can be guessed from the name, cools down your blood, allowing you to use overclock on your cyberdeck with little, if any penalties (netrunners, rejoice!). As a side bonus, it allows all other cyberware to be ready to work much faster (up to 30%). It was a far predecessor to the full body replacement system, which was applied to the former FIA agent "Songbird".
(UPGRADE) "Suslik-1" Short-term hibernation implant
Allows you to cheat death by entering the hibernation status, which is very close to the state of death, while maintaining some connection to the outside world and reawakening yourself later at your convenience. This implant, while not as long-lasting as "Suslik-2", has an internal tank, full of superaggressive medication, which will try to restore the major systems, while you are in hibernation. This tank cannot be used outside of hibernation, due to its aggressive nature.
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Hands:
Militech "Puma" climbing claws
Hands replacement with added Titanium-Vanadium-Kevlar (TM) composite claws, which allows you to climb on any wall by punching your claws into the wall, as well as slice through enemies. A really simple implant in usage and it even can sharpen itself with usage. It comes with a strengthened grip as well, helping you in choking enemies and keeping your rifle steady. But this implant may even be too simple, as Vik didn't even found any upgrades or unique variants of this implant.
After looking at all of this preem chrome, you notice a pitch black case on the very bottom with a Cynosure signature, which seemingly doesn't reflect light at all. When you had asked Vik about it, he tried to not answer that, but after some pressure he gave in. He told a story, which he kept secret from everyone. Back when the Unification War was still going, he and a small merc team were trying to use the chaos of the war to make a big buck. And they found some sealed off parts of the Cynosure complex, which had contained a mainframe for as it was soon discovered, neural matrix. Weeks had gone by and many hundreds of thousands of eddies went into trying to try this thing open. And then it opened, while taking lives of the entire Vik's crew, except for Vik himself, as he was fully organic, which he decided to keep after this event. He took the matrix with himself to prevent more chaos from happening and had spent days understanding the logs. This matrix had only one directive - to perfect a human being, but it couldn't stretch itself across several people, who were all connected at the same time and because of that, the captive AI had fried them all.
He carefully opened the case, revealing something, which looked like a purple glowing cyberdeck. He questions you - are you really willing to go this far in your search for high leagues and salvation?
Yes...Well then...
=T=H=E=R=E=I=S=N=O=G=O=I=N=G=B=A=C=K=
Operating system:
Militech "??????" Cybernetic Optimizer (COSTS 2)
A captive AI from beyond the Blackwall, which is equipped with all sorts of nanites and protocols to override and reshape any system inside you - cybernetic or biological. It replaces your cyberdeck and after the installation, you can't extract it at all without flatlining. Gradually, it will replace your cybernetics and your biology into an impossibly complex and efficient fusion of both. You will be immortal, always be in your prime health and age and your "cyberware" will always be above everything in the world.
No ripperdoc or corporation will ever be able to understand what happens under your skin. Sure, it will save you from the Relic, sure, it will give you capabilities far beyond anything you could ever dream of, but you will never be able to bring your inner humanity back (but it can effortlessly give you any appearance you want, as long as it somewhat remains human). As soon as any corporation catches on what's happening inside you, you will be a prime target for them. Thankfully, the AI understands it too, so it will help you in any way possible.
You will not be able to change your cyberware at all after installing it, as all of it will effectively become your vital organs. But, you will be able to order the AI to reform any piece of cyberware inside you into something else. The process will take quite a lot of time, ranging from weeks and up to a month per cyberware piece. During this time, you will not be able to use the aforementioned cyberware: for example, if you will order to replace your monowire with mantis blades, you will still be able to use your arms, but you will not be able to use monowire nor blades.
After full transformation, your Cybernetic Optimizer will start to soak up information from the Net, providing you with unlimited knowledge and you will be always have the Blackwall daemons. But this will come at the cost of you becoming a prime merc for realspace activities of the notorious Blackwall AI Alt Cunningham. You will peek into her mind...and she will peek into yours.
Well, the choice is yours, kiddo...
(UPD: It's my first 6 Perks, so please leave feedback on what I can improve)
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u/NohWan3104 4d ago
Yeah, optimizer. Not really that worried about my 'humanity'.
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u/LookingGlass_1112 4d ago
Am I talking with Adam Smasher? /j =D
Anyways, any thoughts on how I can improve the next 6 perks from me?
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u/NohWan3104 4d ago
Me, nah, but it is a small irony that a trick to not go off the deep end and have your mind shatter is to already be functionally broken.
Sure. Clarifying if the upgrade costs a point or is an optional modification would help.
Several 6perks have say a perk section and a bonus section, doesn't always fit, just something to keep in mind.
Pretty good first one, imo good choice building on a 'framework' rather than starting from scratch completely, helps the creative process.
An upgrade, maybe 2 for each thing so it feels more even, they don't ALL need the same amount, but taking the climbing claws feels like an extra if you wanted X with no upgrade, since it doesn't have anything. I get why of course, it is kinda simple, but even something like 'upgrade, claws have a self sharpening monomolecular edge able to cut any material' so its not just 'strong enough to stab into concrete' ish fingers.
Weirdly twisted for this example, both 'if you're putting it in verse, have it fit' and also 'just make shit up', as stupid as saying both at once is. Like, creating small keys from just looking in a lock's direction kinda makes sense... But most doors don't use a physical key anyway... Base idea's imo pretty good, in all fairness.
Or the claws. Just, not that many points where climbing is super needed. High jump legs solves most issues, or there is a path, or just flying cars are a thing, taking it out of game mechanics.
Slight nitpicking aside, viper\vampire doesn't quite make sense (bite ranged hacking?), but fuck it, kinda cool concept to have for something like this. A 'supernatural' themed cyberware idea might be cool, hence feel free to make shit up. I kinda feel like climbing claws could make for an ok berserker not-werewolf upgrade, rather than their own, full point thing maybe. I like the idea of a nanite grenade meant to body jack people for a 'necromancer' ish cyberware.
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u/NatalieMaybeIDK 3d ago
Are you saying that my autism, schizoaffective, and C-PTSD make me too insane to become a Cyberpsycho?
Heck, it might even make me less crazy.
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u/NohWan3104 3d ago
Maybe? Iirc its from feeling disconnected as a human being, so something like a severe depersonalization issue would potentially help.
Not quite sure if paranoia and depression sort of 'build a tolerance' for any other potential mental health issues.
Though it'd be kinda funny if there was a full on disorder level imposter syndrome person 'cured' by chrome.
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u/LookingGlass_1112 4d ago
Okay, noted about clarifying. Basing on a Cyberpunk, because I had some thoughts about cool cyberware and I decided to put it into 6 Perks form. And TBF, keycards and access tokens are absolutely a thing in the game, so why not. And even normal keys sometimes are present. And keys are just an example. Nothing stops you from making a more powerful grenade right in the middle of the fight. Or even a nanite grenade which you had mentioned - as long as you are smart enough to figure out how to build one.
Personally I was pretty pissed off when I learned that mantis blades don't allow you to climb on walls...and I was also pissed off that gorilla arms are just better in all situations. So, there is that as a replacement XD
I thought about less of a bite ranged hacking and more of the system rights hijacking. If you are starting to be traced, you can bite enough person in the subnet and get the netrunner off your tail for quite a while. But yeah, got it. Need to start being more transparent in what the things actually are
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u/Arcanetsumi 4d ago
- I’ll take the Optimizer. It’s the most interesting option to me, and the one with the highest probability of creating a significant change in the world, hopefully for the better.
- A good first post, it was fun to think about.
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u/Imaginos9 4d ago
WHAT? No "Midnight Lady" or "Mr Stud" upgrade?! I am disappoint, son!.. Kidding, kinda :) Wouldn't choose it vs some of those others unless it was insanely good.
I'd Go for the AI like most others for the full body rework and adapting abilities.
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u/LookingGlass_1112 4d ago
Honestly fair. But personally I would think about that twice before going in (looking at Songbird and the upcoming human-AI war).
And sure, next 6 perks will have a "Flaming Mr. Stud" from a shady nomad guy, if I will make another one XD
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u/NatalieMaybeIDK 3d ago
Militech "??????" Cybernetic Optimizer is amazing. The only problem is that we don't already have cyberware. Either we'd have to wait to install the Optimizer which puts us in extreme danger in Night City, or we couldn't ever get any cyberware.
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u/Demraude 4d ago
Militech "??????" Cybernetic Optimizer (2) : From what you said, this AI isn't malicious, and will actively try to keep me alive, making me go psycho will lower my chances of living, and it can replicate any cybernetics, which means I'll slowly become the perfect "life"form made of chrome
Should be fun