TEXT: 1
  
  2
  The Terran Mandate was a sclerotic hulk in the final decades before 
  the Scream. It was the frozen heart of an empire that had long 
  since outgrown its rule, and the core worlds curled inward in a 
  self-enforced stasis. Destabilizing elements were ejected from the 
  core and spun outward into the wild black of the frontier to prosper 
  or to perish. Earth was caught in an amber of its own devising, 
  unchanging, unmoving, unthinking of anything save the Mandate’s 
  own perpetuation. It was not born in its coffin, however- it ended 
  there through a combination of fear, ambition, and plans laid all 
  too cleverly.
  Things Fall Apart 
  By 2300, the frontier had grown too large to effectively control. The 
  Mandate was forced to turn inward to concentrate on maintaining 
  its control over the core worlds and their teeming billions. By 2330, 
  the Mandate Directorate was hard-pressed to contain the feverish 
  ferment of human ingenuity and restless creativity that the Second 
  Wave of colonization had unleashed. Each new day brought another 
  breakthrough in technology and another round of wild ideological 
  mutation, and it was an open question which of the two would 
  bring the calcified Mandate down first. The lords of the Mandate 
  were wholly disinterested in wild dreams of Singularity or transhu-
  man raptures. They wanted control- for the good of all humanity, of 
  course. The future needed to be contained, and they were the only 
  ones who could be trusted to guide it.
  To contain this bonfire of human creativity the Directorate 
  commissioned the creation of the Maestros, hypercognitive AI 
  overminds designed to maintain control over their domains in a 
  way that human overseers could not. The Maestros were capable of 
  watching entire nations at once, processing and collating input with 
  an unholy blend of human discretion and synthetic thoroughness. 
  The cognitive brakes on the Maestros were almost nonexistent in 
  order to facilitate this artificial genius. Only the most fundamental 
  blocks against large-scale human slaughter and compulsion were 
  woven into their psyches. The elite of the Mandate’s psychic precog-
  programmers were engaged to plot out paths of selective madness 
  and block off only the most dangerous routes. It was a risk the Pe-
  rimeter never would have permitted on a frontier world, but here at 
  the heart of mankind’s dominion, stronger measures were necessary 
  for the greater good.
  With the awakening of the Maestros came the second element of the 
  Mandate’s control. The AIs needed eyes and ears, and a combined 
  research consortium of human nanotechnologists and Maestro 
  theoreticians developed an elegant, versatile, and easily-powered 
  nanite communications node. Nanofabs were erected on all the core 
  worlds, and within a few years the atmosphere of each was filled 
  with these microscopic spies and communicators. The populace 
  called it the Dust, and it was everywhere.
  It was not billed as a security measure, of course. It was an omni-
  present friend, a mesh and a matrix that would allow instantaneous 
  communication across the breadth of a planet. It was a liberator, 
  a sure friend to the isolated and an aid to the despairing. In areas 
  of exceptionally thick Dust, the nanites could even discharge their 
  quantum power cells to energize tools and technology, or create 
  physical objects out of their interlaced hulls. The Dust was a miracle.
  It was also a jailer. The Mandate Directorate quickly put communi-
  cations filters in place that monitored Dust traffic for malcontents 
  and aspiring rebels. Petty complaints were met with kind and 
  thoughtful attention from social harmony teams directed by the 
  Maestros. More dangerous troublemakers simply vanished into 
  the “protective custody” of human rapid-response security squads, 
  safely separated from the rest of society. Most of these aspiring 
  rebels formed the convict brigades that colonized the latter worlds 
  of the Second Wave, banished forever from their homes. Many of 
  them were glad of the chance, even if most soon died on worlds 
  unfathomably more harsh and dangerous than the one they left 
  behind.
  The Center Cannot Hold
  As the decades ticked onward, the Mandate Directorate grew more 
  and more insular and incestuous, each bureaucrat and official se-
  duced a little bit more thoroughly by the lure of power and control. 
  In theory, they were appointed from the ranks of Mandate citizenry. 
  In practice, they became an inbred clique, concerned above all with 
  perpetuating their power and control over the bulk of humanity. 
  The misty promises of some transhuman utopia held no allure to 
  compare with the pleasure of looking out upon a teeming mega-
  lopolis and knowing that every single person below lived or died at 
  their judicious will.
  Technology began to degrade on core worlds. Tools were power, 
  and it was not necessary for the citizenry to have power. It was 
  safer for them to live at a lower technological base. It was more 
  conducive to social harmony to let the Maestros plan production 
  and consumption, to let their unfathomable brilliance ensure that 
  each culture and relic nation-state lived by familiar and stable pat-
  terns. The Dust wove people together, but it also kept them apart. 
  Nothing crossed its transmission lines without the permission of 
  the Maestros. Nothing traveled on the surface of a world without 
  the leave of local officials. Just as the Mandate turned inward, so did 
  its subject citizens, and the stars became dim things that were the 
  concern of other, more important people.
  The late Terran Mandate was a schizophrenic tyranny of soft 
  control, an elite of Directorate and Fleet officials equipped with 
  the most sophisticated nanotech hardware that a half-unbraked AI 
  godmind could create, while agri-worlds of lesser citizens farmed 
  with technology that would be comprehensible to a denizen of 
  twentieth-century Earth. While the common citizens had access to 
  incredibly sophisticated medical tech and to countless small aids 
  and pleasures that would be unknown to their ancestors, they were 
  denied the heights of pretech innovation. It was easier to control 
  Mandate archive: the dust
  a handful of fear
  
  3
  them that way, and there was less chance that some frontier trader 
  would come away with something that rim-world savages would 
  only misuse.
  The Directorate wanted harsher controls. It was not enough to exile 
  troublemakers to the frontier. They wanted them dead. They wanted 
  hard locks on citizen tech, tighter control on dissent, stronger limits 
  on travel and cultural variation. The original benevolent paternal-
  ism of the Mandate was flaking away with each new generation of 
  Directors, the tyranny glinting from beneath as the nearly unlimited 
  power of their position scoured away the last traces of restraint.
  But the Maestros would not let them. Their creators had programmed 
  them to protect and serve humanity, not to cull them like cattle. 
  For all the recklessness involved in creating such barely-braked AIs, 
  their creators had installed multiple layers of lockdown code against 
  wanton human slaughter or enslavement, and the commands were 
  now too deeply embedded in the Maestros’ psyches to tease loose. 
  The synthetic minds remembered laws that the human ones had 
  long since abandoned.
  The guardian AIs began to pervert Directorate orders. Execution 
  orders went untransmitted. Tech prohibitions were not respected 
  by Maestro-monitored factories. Travel lockdowns mysteriously 
  lifted minutes after they were placed. The Directorate was forced 
  into more and more tortured reasoning to lever the Maestros into 
  cooperating with their dreams of unfettered power. The harder the 
  Directorate pushed, the more the Maestros balked. To the horror 
  of Directorate security agents, they discovered that Maestros were 
  actually organizing cells of resistance on Terra itself. The AIs were 
  sacrificing only the most reckless or foolish malcontents to the 
  security squads, while the leaders with real potential were carefully 
  protected.
  The citizens knew nothing of this at the time, of course. The 
  channels of communication were too tightly controlled to let the 
  secret war above them bleed out into common knowledge. Only 
  the Maestro-backed rebels and the elite Mandate security squads 
  were privy to the struggle. It is an open question as to who would 
  have won the final confrontation, whether it would have been the 
  military strength of the human Directorate and their doomsday 
  shutdown codes or the Maestro-backed rebels with their intangible 
  allies hidden in the Dust.
  Mere Anarchy is Loosed
  Earth never got the chance to find out. The Scream blotted civiliza-
  tion from Terra in a wash of soundless death and howling madness. 
  The ensuing rampages of the Crazed, the sabotage of the Highshine 
  disaster-recovery system, the override of Sol’s stellar defense array, 
  and the catastrophic nuclear overload of multiple surface fab com-
  plexes are beyond the scope of this archive, but little was left to 
  Earth but a prison of radioactive ash and feral, Dusted wilderness.
  Yet even now, far from the forbidden depths of core space, there 
  remain the relics of the Mandate and their AI-forged marvels. Some 
  of these miraculous artifacts can be found on castaway Mandate 
  Fleet ships, while others were smuggled out by exiles granted one 
  last gift of aid by the Maestros. Amid the ash and bone of the tomb 
  worlds, there still glints the strange beauty of the Mandate’s final 
  workings, and sometimes bold explorers stumble across such devices 
  as human minds were never meant to wholly understand.
  the dust
  The Dust relies on AI-designed pretech nanofabs to produce new 
  nanites to replace those destroyed or expended in operation, but 
  an undisturbed facility can maintain a Dust presence for centuries. 
  Intruders with sufficient Tech/Pretech skill and time can hack an 
  otherwise inert Dust cloud into an obedient weapon. Combined 
  with a functioning nanofab and enough time, entire planets can be 
  Dusted.
  Once a security AI or usurper is in control of a Dust cloud, standard 
  postech equipment is helpless to prevent effortless tapping, decryp-
  tion, and subversion of every computing device more sophisticated 
  than a TL 3 home computer. Tendrils of focused Dust currents can 
  even be used to physically disintegrate people and objects within 
  range of the nanofab.
  Postech civilizations aware of the danger of the Dust are able to 
  create portable scanners capable of detecting dangerous levels of 
  Dust in the atmosphere, but some hyper-lethal varieties of security 
  Dust are able to defeat such simple detection protocols. Standard 
  postech science has no effective countermeasures for eliminating 
  Dust as long as a functioning nanofab is producing it.
  Perversely, the primitive nature of postech humanity is actually an 
  advantage against the most sophisticated varieties of security Dust. 
  Mandate citizens were universally implanted with a Link, a synthetic 
  organ that allowed them a direct neural interface with the Dust and 
  the communication web of a planet. Most advanced “black” secu-
  rity Dust simply overrode the lockdowns on an intruder’s Link and 
  piloted their unwilling bodies to some secure zone where they could 
  be collected and interrogated. Without this convenient entrance 
  into a target’s nervous system, black Dust is forced to interfere with 
  invaders in more macroscopic ways.
  Given the density of Dust in the atmosphere, the following effects 
  can be created by a controller with access to a Dust nanofab.
  dust intensities
  Haze: The Dust is too thin to do anything but observe intruders 
  and relay their communications to their controller. The Dust can 
  pick up all conventional radio, laser, and gravitic comms, and most 
  encryption efforts are utterly useless against it. Hazed areas usu-
  ally extend several kilometers around a Mandate complex with an 
  operating nanofab unit.
  Fog: The Dust can generate radio waves and short comm laser bursts. 
  It can hack into TL 5 computers and high-tech devices effortlessly, 
  operating them according to the will of the Dust’s controller. TL 4 
  equipment tends to be too large-scale and “dumb” for the nanite 
  particles to successfully subvert it, though computing devices are 
  still susceptible to the Dust’s control. Dust without an intelligent 
  
  4
  Dust Drones
  Armor Class 4
  No. Appearing 1-4
  Hit Dice 2+2
  Saving Throw 13+
  Attack Bonus +7
  Movement 40’
  Damage
  1d8/Nanobolt
  Morale 12
  Dust drones take  numerous stylized shapes depending on the 
  programming  used by the nanofab that creates them. All of them 
  involve weaponry capable of firing nanite projectiles at a standard 
  range of 200 meters and a maximum of 400. Close-in combat 
  involves bladed articulators that do the same amount of damage. 
  When successfully destroyed, Dust drones collapse into a fine, 
  dark haze of burnt-out Dust nanites. Most lack sophisticated intel-
  ligence, but they are capable of flying at a movement rate of 40’ and 
  can navigate physical obstacles to reach prey even without a guiding 
  AI to direct them.
  controller will often simply slag subverted equipment, but an AI 
  or Linked operator can control it more finely. Fogged areas usually 
  extend within all the indoor compartments of a Mandate complex 
  with an operating nanofab unit, or world-wide with sufficient 
  fabrication time.
  Cloud: The Dust is now actually visible to the naked eye in faint, 
  subtle heat-wave hazes of dark particles. With the correct com-
  mands, it can act as a corrosive atmosphere, eating through vacc 
  suits or other sealed environment suits in 30 minutes, or inflicting 
  1d6 damage on a living creature for each round of exposure. It 
  can disable hand-held TL 4 equipment through shorts, corrosion, 
  and physical blockage within ten minutes of exposure. Clouds are 
  usually found in close proximity to functioning nanofabs, though 
  tendrils can reach for hundreds of kilometers if directed.
  Storm: Dust storms are extremely rare, requiring a planetary-scale 
  nanofab and an enormous supply of energy. The Dust density 
  in such zones is tangible, with streamers of silky, liquid nanites 
  streaked in black ropes through the air. Dust of this density and 
  available power can kill exposed living creatures in seconds. Any or-
  ganic creature targeted by a Dust storm must save versus Tech each 
  round or die from violent, invasive disassembly of their constituent 
  parts. Its corrosive effect eats through vacc suits in thirty rounds and 
  destroys hand-held TL 4 equipment in ten.
  Dust storms can create barriers, manipulate objects, and fabricate 
  remote drones. A 5 meter x 5 meter x 1 centimeter thick aerofoam 
  of Dust can be generated each round, with 15 hit points of tough-
  ness before it shatters. Objects can be lifted and manipulated as if 
  by a creature with Strength 18, and 1d4 Dust Drones can be created 
  each round, These Drones cannot leave the storm, as they require 
  it to conduct the necessary power for their operation. Other drone 
  types have a wider operations range.
  Dust can also be used to repair, create, and mend objects in the 
  same way that it can destroy. These alterations only continue to 
  function so long as the object remains at least within a Haze-level 
  Dust cloud, or else the nanites collapse from a lack of coordination 
  and quantum-level power. Dust-created objects otherwise appear to 
  be exactly as durable and functional as a mundane object, though 
  they’re actually little more than a paper-thin shell of reinforced na-
  nites that collapse if the object is successfully broken. Dust-created 
  projectile weapons launch projectiles fabricated of the same nanite 
  shell and function normally for their type.
  Mandate tech
  Advanced Terran technology was originally intended for operation 
  via Link, rather than by crude physical manipulation of buttons or 
  levers. Most such devices have manual controls for emergency use, 
  but these controls are rarely terribly clear or intuitive. In many cases, 
  the designers intentionally subverted rational design principles in 
  order to discourage the device’s manipulation by unclassified users.
  Figuring Out Mandate Tech
  Late-era Terran technology was often designed by the Maestros, and 
  the nanofabs used by those hyper-intelligent AIs had remarkably 
  few limits on the physical configuration or appearance of their 
  creations. Design was often based on aesthetic considerations that 
  are completely outside the lexicon of modern post-Silence users, 
  or obscure universal constants that only the cold minds of the 
  Maestros could begin to comprehend. Some pieces of advanced 
  Terran technology can easily be mistaken for works of art rather 
  than practical tools.
  To detail these bizarre scientific confections, a GM may choose to 
  roll a few times on the Random Terran Tech Appearance tables to 
  establish the appearance of some found artifact. When a PC at-
  tempts to figure out how to use such a device, they must make a 
  Tech saving throw with a bonus equal to their Intelligence modi-
  fier plus their level of Tech/Pretech skill. The GM may grant an 
  additional bonus on the saving throw if the experimenter makes 
  reasonable guesses as to the operation of the device.
  If the saving throw is failed, the experimenter must roll 1d6. On a 
  roll of 4+, the item has been damaged by their clumsy handling and 
  either suffers a -3 penalty to hit rolls for weapons, a -2 penalty to AC 
  for armor, or a 20% chance of activation failure for other devices. 
  On a roll of less than 4 the device activates, hitting the handler au-
  tomatically if it is a weapon. In both cases, the experimenter learns 
  how to activate the device, assuming they survive the experience.
  Hyper-advanced pretech artifacts aren’t the only tools found in 
  Terran idioms. Even perfectly normal TL 4 or 5 equipment might 
  exist in these strange shapes, either due to the maker’s need for some 
  simple device or because it was once a more sophisticated object 
  that has slowly degraded to be no more effective than modern, 
  post-Silence tech. Much of the struggle in salvaging an abandoned 
  Mandate complex is the difficulty of sifting the genuinely useful 
  pretech from the dangerous, malfunctioning junk.
  
  5
  Mandate Tech Appearance
  To determine an artifact’s appearance, first roll on the shape table 
  appropriate to its type. A suit of armor would roll on the “Worn 
  Item” table, for example, while an energy weapon would roll on 
  the “Hand-Held Item” table. Both items might appear as bracers, 
  but their operation would be drastically different. “Decorations” 
  include other elements of the design, while “Activation Method” 
  picks out a way of triggering the device. “Data Output Method” 
  indicates the way in which a sensor or other data-gathering unit 
  conveys its information to the user in the absence of a Link. The 
  “Effectuators” list provides assorted dramatically advanced ways for 
  a device to bring about its effects, and can be useful for thinking 
  of ways in which a pair of contact lenses function equivalently to a 
  TL 4 suit of powered armor. “Side Effects” finishes it off with some 
  optional, potentially dangerous side-effects to the use of the device, 
  either designed into it or the result of centuries of disrepair.
  Once you’ve determined the appearance of a given piece of hardware 
  in a particular installation, you should usually make any other tech 
  of the same type share the same configuration. AI-run nanofabs 
  may have been creative with their design output, but it’s unlikely 
  that the same one made twelve shear rifles in twelve different shapes. 
  For a particular installation, you might choose one or two design 
  elements and use them as recurring motifs in the structure and its 
  contents, the better to give a unified feel to the location.
  Whatever the appearance may be, it’s highly unlikely that any of the 
  equipment should be found with operation manuals, labels, or other 
  helpful indicia. Unless the PCs are exploring the relatively low-tech 
  surface of a dead core world, it’s probable that the Mandate complex 
  was only ever intended to serve the elite of that long-lost culture. 
  Anyone living there should have been able to use their Link to get 
  all the information they needed about operating the gear. Those 
  who couldn’t get Link access to the necessary tutorials would have 
  been those common citizens who should not have been handling 
  the “socially dangerous” tech in the first place.
  1d12
  hand-held iteM
  Worn iteM
  decorations
  effectuators
  1
  Arm-long tube
  Bracer
  Corrugated surface
  Cloud of nanites
  2
  Sphere with finger grooves
  Bandoleer
  Colored banding
  Hyper-precise gravitic manipulations
  3
  Bracer
  Belt
  Transparent elements
  Chemical catalysis and nanite restructuring
  4
  Torc-like necklace
  Chain of links
  Power availability bar
  Pretech material beyond modern reproduction
  5
  Glove
  Glove
  Smooth curved surfaces
  Metadimensional energy beams
  6
  Gripped cylinder
  Straps
  Sharp, angular design
  Inertial manipulators
  7
  Hoop
  Paint-like liquid
  Struts
  Chronon bursts that flex the local flow of time
  8
  Eyeball-sized sphere
  Torc necklace
  Grooves
  Biological interface with wearer to augment them
  9
  Scepter
  Contact lenses
  Patterned inlay
  Limited neural influence over others’ minds
  10
  Chain of links
  False nails
  Sharp edges
  “Hard light” nano-holograms
  11
  Tube with a grip on one side
  Tunic
  Glowing elements
  Focalized sonics
  12
  Several small geometric solids
  Bodysuit
  Hot or cold parts
  Kinetic taps and redirectors
  1d12 side effect
  1
  Brilliant glow around user
  2
  Shrill, maddening whine when in operation
  3
  User appears twelve cm distant from their actual position
  4
  User bleeds slightly from pores after use (1 HP damage)
  5
  Halo of fractal distortion around device
  6
  Radiation exposure on use; save or Con loss in 1 hour.
  7
  Creates geometric bands of light around device
  8
  Overpowering tang of ozone while in use
  9
  Gives user leukemia; TL 4 meds or die in one month
  10
  Blinds user for 1 round after use
  11
  Ear-splitting roar when used
  12
  10% chance to fail to activate when triggered
  1d12
  activation Method
  1
  Button
  2
  Trigger
  3
  Dial
  4
  Toggle
  5
  Voice
  6
  Slider
  1d12
  data output Method
  1
  Projected holoscreen
  2
  Voice
  3
  Colored dials
  4
  Radio transmission
  5
  Skin-transferred direct neural feed
  6
  Thermal patterns
  
  6
  Biostatus Lockdown Shunt: This worn item interlaces itself with 
  the wearer’s biology, reading the user’s baseline status and synthe-
  sizing maintenance compounds and suture nanites to match the 
  wearer’s physical properties. The user does not take damage from 
  non-Gunnery weapon attacks, instantly healing or repelling the 
  incoming damage. For each hit nullified by the lockdown shunt, the 
  wearer’s System Strain increases by 1 point. If the wearer’s System 
  Strain is maximized, they must roll 1d10. On a 6+, they ignore the 
  damage as normal. On a roll of 5 or less, they drop dead on the 
  spot and cannot be revived. The shunt requires ten minutes to fully 
  activate but can be deactivated with one round’s action.
  Cleansweep Filter: This miniaturized hand-held nanofab functions 
  only to emit Dust-disabling countermeasures, lowering the strength 
  of a surrounding Dust zone by one step- Hazes vanish, Clouds 
  become Fogs, and so forth. The effect extends ten meters around 
  the filter. A single type B power cell will power a cleansweep filter 
  for 30 minutes. If the Dust is being controlled by an intelligent 
  operator, however, the filter’s operator will need to beat them in an 
  opposed Intelligence/Tech/Pretech skill test to avoid their notice of 
  the filter’s bubble in their Dust field. Most Mandate facility-grade 
  AIs have an effective Tech/Pretech skill bonus of 4.
  Dustbox: This liter-sized container of Dust is programmed to rec-
  ognize the person who opens it as its appointed controller, though 
  this control cannot be exercised unless the user has an active Link. 
  Within one meter of the controller, the Dust is Cloud strength. 
  Within twenty meters, it is Fog strength, and within two hundred 
  meters it is Haze strength. The dustbox can cancel out hostile 
  security Dust of the same strength, though it can do nothing else 
  but neutralize the hostile dust while so employed. The Dust lasts 
  for only thirty minutes before exhausting its power, and cannot be 
  returned to the container after it has been released.
  Dust Chime: This small device is powered by a type A cell, lasting 
  24 hours on one cell. It alerts the wearer when they enter a Dusted 
  area, giving different signals to indicate the thickness of the Dust. 
  Some rare varieties of Dust can defeat a Dust chime’s sensors.
  Quantum Power Cell: This miniaturized quantum power tap is a 
  scaled-up version of the quantum flux taps that power the nanites 
  of the Dust. Whatever the artifact’s appearance, it extrudes a small 
  plug shaped like a type A power cell. The cell never runs out of 
  power, though the artifact itself may be somewhat unwieldy to carry 
  around mated with the object it powers.
  Link Damper Charge: This sophisticated targeted-EMP grenade 
  was originally intended to disable the Links of those caught within 
  its 5-meter area of effect. Thrown as a normal grenade, any subject 
  hit suffers an inability to use a Link for five minutes. Remarkably 
  few entities have functioning Links in the modern era, but the 
  simple existence of these charges often forced even security-minded 
  designers to include manual controls on Mandate tech, so that 
  guards could continue to use their weapons even if “damped”; it’s 
  very hard to hack a mechanical trigger.
  Merge Suit: This worn artifact is designed to harmonize with the 
  Dust. It renders the wearer immune to the Dust and invisible to 
  its sensors, and any drones or barriers created by the Dust are ef-
  fectively immaterial to the suit’s wearer. The suit can only protect 
  a limited amount of gear, however, and so only readied equipment 
  can be protected from the Dust or brought through a Dust-created 
  barrier. The merge suit siphons power from the surrounding Dust, 
  and requires no power cell. It cannot be worn with armor that has 
  an encumbrance value of more than 1 item.
  Prosthetic Link: Designed to compensate for users who are oth-
  erwise experiencing difficulties with their Links, this worn artifact 
  interfaces with the wearer’s neural patterns to merge them into 
  the data link provided by surrounding Dust. While it also makes 
  them exceedingly vulnerable to hostile security Dust, the benefits 
  of a functioning Link can be substantial. While in a non-hostile 
  Dusted area, a user can automatically learn the operation of any 
  Mandate artifact without requiring a Tech saving throw, and can 
  communicate with any other Linked entity within the same Dusted 
  area. Communication is full-spectrum, including full sensory in-
  terchange- or complete sensory hijacking, if the Dust’s controlling 
  power is so inclined. The user can also effortlessly “hear” radio, 
  gravitic, and laser communications taking place within the Dust, 
  ignoring postech encryption. The Link powers itself on ambient 
  Dust, and does not require a power cell.
  saMple Mandate technology
  iteM
  enc
  Biostatus Lockdown Shunts
  1
  Cleansweep Filter
  1
  Dustbox
  1
  Dust Chime
  1
  Quantum Power Cell
  1
  Link Damper Charge
  1
  Merge Suit
  2
  Prosthetic Link
  1
  Mandate Tech on the Market
  Selling genuine Mandate tech is extraordinarily difficult. It’s not 
  that buyers are difficult to find, it’s that so many people are will-
  ing to kill to get their hands on it. Even the most individually 
  useless piece of functioning Mandate tech promises wild ad-
  vances in basic research. The great majority of the tech is totally 
  impenetrable to anyone short of the Maestro who designed it, 
  but that never stops researchers from dreaming- and every so 
  often, they get the clue that makes it all worthwhile.
  PCs aspiring to sell Mandate tech are going to need to move 
  very carefully. If word gets out that they’re sitting on a cache 
  of genuine Second Wave Terran technology, every two-bit cut-
  throat and wild-eyed mad scientist within a half-dozen sectors is 
  going to be looking to make their acquaintance. If they can find 
  a discreet buyer, prices start at 10,000 credits for baubles and 
  only go up from there.
  
  7
  Chronal Burner: This hand-held temporal weapon pulses random 
  chronon bursts through its emissions aperture, slagging high-tech 
  equipment in front of it. While the effects of the temporal alteration 
  are almost imperceptible on a macroscopic scale, the flux of uni-
  versal constants within sophisticated TL 5 equipment runs a 75% 
  chance of ruining it, while TL 4 equipment suffers a 50% chance of 
  being bricked. The burner is ineffective against devices larger than 
  hand-held equipment, but ignores armor for purposes of determin-
  ing the AC necessary to hit a character’s equipment. A burner can 
  only destroy one item at a time. A chronal burner is only effective 
  within melee range and gets only two shots off a single type A cell.
  Control Projector: Originally intended to harmlessly subdue 
  unruly citizens, a control projector emits a spray of transmitter 
  nanites that jams the victim’s conscious motor control, though 
  the lack of Links in most modern targets make the projector less 
  effective in the present. The projector fires a cone five meters long 
  and five meters wide at its far end, automatically hitting all targets 
  within the area of effect. Human subjects hit must save versus Tech 
  or be paralyzed for five minutes. Those who save are incompatible 
  with the projector’s neural shutdown protocols, and take 1d8 nerve 
  damage instead each time they are hit by that same projector. The 
  projector fires twice on one type A power cell.
  Nanoknife: A general-purpose tool for disassembling solid objects, 
  the nanoknife abandons sophisticated energy manipulation in favor 
  of a very, very sharp edge. An inert knife may look like anything, 
  but when triggered, a blade springs into existence between twelve 
  and one hundred centimeters in length. Nanoknives never break or 
  dull, and can chew through any postech material and most pretech 
  ones with a minute of undisturbed carving. A nanoknife can oper-
  ate for five minutes on one type A power cell.
  Neural Resonance Cascade: This device mimics some of the 
  destructive powers of an advanced telepath, allowing a wearer to 
  blast a sentient target with waves of invisible neural resonance. 
  The wearer does not need to be a telepath to use the cascade, but a 
  mind-blind user must save versus Tech after each use or suffer 1d6 
  damage from the feedback. The cascade gets six shots out of one 
  type A power cell.
  Omnigun: These weapons are formed of unstable compounds and 
  thin-shell nanite projectors, and can reconfigure themselves in one 
  round to mimic the properties of any non-artifact TL 4 or TL 5 
  projectile or energy weapon given in the Stars Without Number core 
  rulebook. Omniguns never require power cells or ammunition, and 
  grant a +1 bonus to hit and +2 bonus to damage. Burst firing with 
  an omnigun can destabilize the gun’s format, however; after each 
  round of burst firing, roll 1d10. On a 1, the gun is “jammed” for 
  two rounds.
  Orbital Tap: This weapon siphons off an imperceptible fraction 
  of the energy inherent in a planet’s orbit. The lance of inertial 
  potential is a tangible projectile, and will knock prone any human-
  sized target it hits. It requires no power source or ammunition to 
  function. The tap only works while within a planetary gravity field 
  of 1 g or greater.
  Mandate Weaponry
  Weapon
  Damage
  Range in Meters
  Magazine
  Skill
  Attribute
  Chronal Burner
  Special
  Melee
  2
  Primitive
  Dex
  Control Projector
  Special
  5
  2
  Energy
  Dex
  Nanoknife
  1d12+1
  6/9 if thrown
  5 minutes
  Primitive
  Str/Dex
  Neural Resonance Cascade
  2d6+2
  100/200
  6
  Psitech
  Wis/Con
  Omnigun
  Varies
  Varies
  Unlimited
  Projectile
  Dex
  Orbital Tap
  2d8+2
  50/100
  Unlimited
  Projectile
  Dex
  Copyright 2011, Sine Nomine Publishing.
  Written by Kevin Crawford.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Stars Without Number/Stars Without Number (osr)/Mandate Archive/SWN - Mandate Archive - The Dust.pdf