TEXT: The Mosquito
  ...Tainted Freedom
  -a cyberpunk genre setting
  for use with the Ex Machina and Hero system RPGs
  ‘alpha’ release – still in writing and seeking suggestions.
  Arcady©2005,2006
  arcady0@gmail.com
  Ex Machina © Guardians Of Order, Inc. All rights reserved. Used without permission.
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  1
  
  ● Content Outline - 02:08:26 PM 11/30/07
  1.
  Primer
   
   
  2.
  Caution – Unpleasant Themes Ahead
   
   
  3.
  Timeline
   
   
  4.
  Anthropomorph / Bioroid Biology
   
   
  1.
  Altered Human Design Logic
   
   
  2.
  Altered Human Fertility
   
   
  3.
  Game stats: Ex Machina | Hero
  4.
  Combat Anthropomorphs
   
   
  5.
  Culture
   
   
  1.
  The Major Cultures
  1.
  Civitas
   
   
  2.
  Soloists
   
   
  3.
  Faithful
   
   
  4.
  Mzuzi
   
   
  5.
  Primals
   
   
  6.
  Drifters
   
   
  7.
  Refugees
   
   
  8.
  Others
   
   
  2.
  Race and Ethnicity
   
   
  3.
  Language
   
   
  1.
  Slang
   
   
  4.
  Fashion
   
   
  5.
  Body Sense and Customization
   
   
  6.
  Reproductive Rights
   
   
  7.
  Ideas - Memes and Discourse
   
   
  1.
  Deviant Discourses
   
   
  1.
  Conspiracy Theorism
   
   
  2.
  Anarchy
   
   
  3.
  Panhuman Unity
   
   
  4.
  Cosplay
   
   
  5.
  Religion
   
   
  6.
  Racism
   
   
  7.
  Shells
   
   
  8.
  Sexual Deviancy
   
   
  9.
  Substance Abuse
   
   
  6.
  Five Cities
   
   
  1.
  New Rome
   
   
  2.
  New Beijing
   
   
  3.
  Jovia
   
   
  4.
  Bath
   
   
  5.
  Station 7
   
   
  7.
  Solar Powers
   
   
  8.
  Business
   
   
  1.
  Major Corporations
   
   
  9.
  Law and Liberty
   
   
  1.
  Government
   
   
  1.
  Government Agencies
   
   
  2.
  Crime
   
   
  1.
  Crime Rates
   
   
  2.
  Getting Away With Crime
   
   
  3.
  Rights in a Criminal Investigation
   
   
  4.
  Criminal Justice / Punishment
   
   
  3.
  Police Organization and Divisions
   
   
  4.
  Labor Rights / Benefits
   
   
  5.
  Travel and Transport rights
   
   
  6.
  Slavery
   
   
  1.
  Anthro-Slaves
   
   
  2.
  Criminal Indenturement
   
   
  7.
  Terrorism
   
   
  1.
  Terrorist Groups
   
   
  8.
  Espionage
   
   
  10. Technology
   
   
  1.
  Holographic Technology
   
   
  2.
  AIs
   
   
  3.
  Cyberware
   
   
  4.
  Genetic Enhancement and Bioware
   
   
  5.
  Energy Weapons
   
   
  6.
  Communications and Cyberspace
   
   
  7.
  Physics Of The Mosquito
   
   
  8.
  Gravity
   
   
  9.
  Inverted Horizon
   
   
  11. New Equipment
   
   
  12. Characters – Game Rules
   
   
  1.
  Combat and Damage Changes
   
   
  2.
  Occupational Temples
   
   
  3.
  Original Templates
   
   
  13. People
   
   
  14. Conflicts / Plot Hooks
   
   
  15. Ex Machina Conversion
   
   
  16. About the Author
   
   
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  2
  
  ● Primer
  If you send enough people to the middle of nowhere you will eventually build a civilization. It was once 
  said that the American west would take a thousand years to settle, and within a generation of that 
  quote the USA was building major cities from coast to coast. Today we often claim mankind will never 
  settle space, or that if it is done, it will take at least a millennium to manage. How long before the 
  future lives up to history once again?
  We are just over 250 years from today, in orbit several miles up from the atmosphere of 
  Jupiter. There lies the free floating station commonly known as 'The Mosquito'. The station was built 
  in stages as a joint venture between the European Union and China. It is one giant space 'mining well', 
  there to enable low risk extraction of valuable gases from Jupiter. These are not the EU and China we 
  know today, the nations of Earth have had over two centuries to change, and few of them have faired 
  well for the cause of liberty, or even what other ideals they stand for in our time.
  The Mosquito long since outgrew the original scope and is now three connected cities on a 
  wheel with 48 spokes (in rows of two) going into the center where they attach to the 'needle'. That 
  needle has a series of processing facilities and space docks on the high orbit end, and dips down on the 
  other end deep into the Jovian atmosphere. It forms a long shaft with robot-manned stations down its 
  length to enable automated extraction at thousands of different altitudes. A fourth city exists some 
  miles down this shaft, skimming the surface of the outer atmosphere before the 'needle' becomes a 
  series of flexible tubeways. A fifth and final city is mounted onto the upper end of the shaft just above 
  a bulb of gas processing and shipping centers.
  The city of New  Rome was meant to house the EU workers under EU law, and New Beijing 
  the same for the Chinese workers under their legal systems. Jovia alongside them was built to house 
  'foreign workers'. The fourth city, Bath, was built as the extreme exotic vacation.
  With the Solar Revolution and the Civil War that shortly followed everything changed. Some 
  26 billion died in the conflicts. That cut the human species by half and leeft space full of ghostly 
  wreckage and scattered survivors as the larger governments pulled their people in. Ties to Earth 
  government and corporate management came to an end, and the cities began to mix in population, law, 
  and culture. This brought the fifth city, 'Station7' - mounted onto the top of the Mosquito. With it came 
  millions of refugees from around the solar system, sending the ethnic balance into chaos.
  Station 7 had been a science outpost built by wealthy Americans and manned with Middle 
  Eastern slave labor. After the revolution it became the Jovian home to the IN (Intersolar Nations) 
  office. With the Civil War, the station was ripped apart by Martian saboteurs and the survivors, 
  lacking life support or power, mounted what was left onto the Mosquito and slowly rebuilt their home.
  Today, with two decades of peace, the Mosquito houses just over fifty percent of the Jovian 
  Federation's (JF) twenty four million souls, the largest single off-planet sovereign  body in the system. 
  Station 7 still houses the Jovian branch of the IN, but the JF government is housed in Bath despite its 
  presence as a tourist hot spot. The nation is young, with some seventy percent under thirty, and maybe 
  sixty percent of that of adult age. They are wealthy, advanced, full of dreams, and ready to rebuild into 
  tomorrow.
  Life may seem idyllic and near utopian on the surface, but there are darker troubled 
  undercurrents to the Mosquito. Rights have their limits, cultures are in conflict, not everyone is free, 
  relations with Earth are troubled, corruption is strong in government and business, and the criminal 
  underground holds a stronger deal of power than it should.
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  3
  
  ● Caution
  The 'Mosquito' setting is a dystopian future setting. It will deal with some very dark and at times very 
  unpleasant themes about human nature. Nothing in this book should be seen as an endorsement.
  A significant aspect of the Mosquito backstory deals with slavery and genocide as the triggers 
  that caused this 'Jovian Federation' to rebel from Earth control. As a result of this, themes in this work 
  constantly refer back to human trafficking and the depressing consequences of subjecting a population 
  to deviant sexual norms. Yes, some unpleasant stuff, but from a somewhat intellectualized perspective.
  A notable fraction of the population living on the Mosquito are the descendants of people 
  bioengineered by their former colonial masters to be 'willing slaves'. These 'setting present day' 
  descendants still carry with them psychological artifacts of that past, including a 'submissive 
  addiction,' that leads to a high rate of depression and suicide among those struggling against it. Again, 
  this is a dystopia, it is not a pleasant place.
  Even after their revolution, issues of human trafficking, indentured servitude, and even 
  outright slavery still haunt the people of the Jovian Federation.
  The perspective of the author is that a population with a need to control others or a need to be 
  controlled is not healthy. With that need is mixed with sexuality it becomes even darker. Some readers 
  may not like this particular take, while others may be uncomfortable with the exploration of the theme 
  itself.
  It is not by accident that the design of the setting made for half of the bioengineered population 
  to be 'somewhat furry' in having animal DNA and features. 'Furry' characters in today's fiction have an 
  unusual propensity for showing up in sexually exploitive fiction, but in this setting, that dynamic is not 
  look at as something fun or desirable, but rather something dark and something used to further expose 
  the nature of what is going on.
  On a second point, as a dystopian future, a good part of the setting tries to pretend to be an 
  idyllic wonderful, perfect place to live. Careful readers might however, notice that these sugary 
  elements might actually be rather unpleasant to live under. There is an element of 'Big Brotherness' to 
  the Mosquito setting, and the discomfort that can create is part of the theme of postCyberpunk genre 
  work.
  Combine the above two themes and that makes for a cautionary note. Presenting what seems 
  on the surface to be a perfect world, and then throwing into it an element of severe exploitation and a 
  sometimes omnipresent society can be jarring.
  Many of the darker themes in 'Mosquito' are problems plaguing us today to one degree or 
  another in our real world, and that itself is a part of why I felt the need to write about them in this 
  way.
  Cyberpunk, and the postCyberpunk subgenre, is about surviving in darkly unpleasant futures. 
  It is there to let us look at scary possibilities and perhaps, through them, reflect back on our own 
  world. Cyberpunk is not for escapists, it is for those who dare to ask if we're driving on the right road. 
  Cyberpunk is for those of us that try to name all the roaches that scatter when we turn on the lights.
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  4
  
  ● Time line
  This time works by assuming 0 for the current year (CY), leaving the exact date to be chosen by the 
  GM or left unstated.
  CY
  Events
  -167 Under corporate and G8 pressure, the UN human 
  rights commission mandates Involuntarily 
  Indenturement as the penalty for all non capital 
  crimes and 'unpayable debts' as a 'humanitarian 
  gesture' to end poverty, alleviate prison 
  overcrowding, and meet blue and white collar 
  labor demands.
  -127 The EU and China begin rival ventures to place a 
  permanent settlement in orbit around Jupiter.
  -116 Construction of 'The Mosquito' begins as a joint 
  venture between the EU and China.
  -109 'The Mosquito' becomes operational.
  -97
  The UN now holds sole power over all legally 
  legitimate Earth military forces.
  -89
  Bath opens as a tourist resort. Human-
  anthropomorph staff grown by Chinese 
  government rumored to be based on designs from 
  Japan's Genki-Neko “Catgirl” pleasure models.
  -87
  EU 'toy-bioroids' copied from the Chinese 'anthro' 
  design go into public release as first 'viable 
  adults' mature. Both governments begin selling 
  'rejects' and 'steriles' to the global 'human 
  services' market. EU and China agree to 'manage' 
  their 'toy-human' populations to be equal in 
  number onboard the Mosquito.
  -86
  First series of 'post-production' children born to 
  'toy altered humans' announced in Bath. Both 
  governments keep strict licensing over 'breeding' 
  a purchased altered human.
  -63
  UN Charter shifts to make member states close 
  in nature to the states under the old US Articles 
  of Confederation. They are now semi-sovereign 
  states in a world government.
  -59
  EU doubles mandatory minimum production 
  rates on their end of the 'Mosquito' without 
  raising wages. Workers shifted to a 6 day work 
  week 'to stay competitive', management salaries 
  boosted tenfold.
  -58
  Chinese workers on the 'Mosquito' notified that 
  1% of their labor pool will be 'recycled' (executed) 
  for every 1% they fall behind the EU production 
  numbers.
  -57
  UN 'absorbs' all non member states and declares 
  itself sole legal authority over any species evolved 
  or engineered from Earth-based DNA.
  -55
  UN declares publication of Solar independence 
  CY
  Events
  and Anthro/Bioroid Emancipation literature to be 
  terrorism.
  -53
  Martian and Jovian colonies demands for seats on 
  the UN rejected. UN cites their status as 
  dependent colonies of Earth bound nations and 
  corporate interests.
  -52
  Genki-Neko Designs of Japan wins WTO suit 
  against China and the EU for patent violation in 
  development of their 'toy-humans'. UN orders all 
  'Neko-violating' altered humans destroyed. China 
  and the Near Earth colonies begin to comply. 
  Outer colonies cry humanitarian outrage. 
  Smallpox outbreak kills over 2 million in Japan.
  -51
  With almost 1 billion 'Neko-violating' altered 
  humans already euthanized colonial outrage 
  shifts in revolt as the final straw is laid to rest on 
  the proverbial camels back. Jovian gas freighters 
  under Martian escort use collision strategy to 
  destroy a US fleet en-route to the outer colonies.
  -50
  UN Consolidates Earth military forces, formerly 
  under control of their individual nation-states. 
  This completes pan-Earth unification.
  -49
  Jovian Emancipation Act passed by the Jovian 
  Revolutionary Assembly – ending slavery but not 
  indentured servitude throughout the Jovian 
  system. Antrhros and Bioroids of age 16 or older 
  at this time are considered the first generation.
  -47
  Revolution ends. Earth governments and 
  corporate interests kicked out of space beyond 
  Earth and Venus. Squatters begin 'attaching' 
  their space modules onto the Mosquito along its 
  service and transit highways.
  -46
  Jovian census notes that 73% of Anthropomorphs 
  have returned to the occupations they held under 
  slavery due in theory to genetic behavior 
  conditioning. Among Bioroids the figure rests at 
  57%. This information continues to be tracked 
  annually and changes little.
  -42
  Jovian Federation established with seat of 
  government in Bath City. Depression and suicide 
  rates for Anthros alarmingly high among those 
  who stay within their original career paths.
  -39
  First 'Altered Human' to win a seat on 
  parliament is 'Chintana', a 'toy-bioroid' of 'Naga' 
  design (snake tail instead of legs).
  -37
  The JF “Integration Campaign” begins by 
  promising free housing to inter-racial couples and 
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  5
  
  CY
  Events
  free university education for their children. 
  Relocation program pushed to give housing 
  discounts to racially mixed communities.
  -35
  IGI terrorists assassinate MP Chintana.
  -33
  Ministry of Applied Memetics declares 'breeding 
  within the same race or ethnicity' a minor deviant 
  meme connected to incest. After one of several 
  objecting MPs is 'proved' to have been in a sexual 
  relationship with his sister, media comment over 
  the issue quietly fades.
  -32
  Second generation Anthros continue to choose 
  careers similar to their parents. Second 
  generation Bioroids choose careers matching 
  parent's original paths under slavery, but 
  statistics expect 40% to change within 5 years 
  and stay that way. Both groups show strong signs 
  of genetically induced behavior, but Bioroids are 
  better able to rebel. Depression and suicide rates 
  among Anthros continue to be three times above 
  the norm for society.
  -28
  Martian scientists release a tailored Ebola virus 
  that kills off every member of the ZF genetic line 
  within their nation's colonies.
  -23
  Martian agents detonate chain of explosives on 
  'Station 3' – sending 132,000 colonists to their 
  deaths as the station falls into Jupiter's 
  atmosphere and the Civil War begins with the 
  declaration by both the JF and Mars that each is 
  the sole legal government for all colonies in the 
  space between them.
  -22
  Warfare between Mars and the JF manages to 
  kill off between 20-30% of the solar colonists. The 
  war makes repeated use of nuclear, chemical, and 
  biological agents, but the simple tactic of 
  sabotaging power and biospheres of civilian 
  populations becomes favored on both sides. 
  Refugee crisis ensues. Several new solar colonies 
  will be built over the next few years out of 
  combining the wreckage from the war.
  -21
  Earth takes advantage of the hostilities to 
  reclaim control of stations between Mercury and 
  the Sun. This brings Mars and the JF to the 
  peace table, but the two sides are unable to agree 
  and merely manage to limit the conflict to the 
  independent colonies in between them.
  -20
  Earth captures Mercury and declares entire 
  population of the colonies there 'surplus persons', 
  sending them 'out the airlock'. Mars and the JF 
  declare an immediate cease fire. End of Civil 
  War. IN (Intersolar Nations) established along 
  the same model as the UN, but without military 
  or police powers. Rather it resembles the UN of 
  CY
  Events
  the 20th century. In the end, neither Mars nor the 
  JF manages to gain control over a single colony 
  beyond their own planetary systems, resulting in 
  several new independent states throughout the 
  solar system.
  -19
  IN solidifies independence of all non aligned 
  colonies and gains the ability to command all 
  military assets of IN members in the sole event of 
  'outside aggression'. In November UN ships en 
  route to Mars are destroyed by suicide agents of 
  the JF, successfully testing the IN's resolve. 
  Much as they hate each other, there is nothing a 
  spacer fears more than Earth dominance. Earth 
  replacement colonists get facilities on Mercury 
  back up to full working order. Earth begins 
  shipping people to the planet in large numbers.
  -19
  UN declares that all 'rebel provinces' will be 
  brought back under control within the decade, 
  and begins a media storm of showcasing long 
  range space nukes. IN reacts by portraying UN 
  media a 'marching up and down the square 
  diplomacy akin to 20th century Communist 
  propaganda.
  -18
  UN representatives make a surprise 
  announcement and agree to a permanent peace 
  with the solar colonies and recognition of all of 
  their many governments. The JF is caught 
  completely by surprise although JF agents note 
  several Martian media sources had the story 
  ready to go an hour before the announcement. To 
  this day what changed the minds on Earth 
  remains a mystery.
  -17
  New Rome Pharmaceuticals begins testing on 
  drug to combat slave-mentality among Anthro 
  population. The JF begins exporting gases to 
  Earth for the first time since the Revolution.
  -16
  Third generation Anthros and Bioroids – those 
  whose parents were born free- begin reaching age 
  of maturity (16). Social statistics begin noticing a 
  disproportionate number of mix-breed offspring 
  between humans and Anthros take on life choices 
  similar to their Anthro heritage – to include high 
  suicide rates.
  -15
  'Freedom Pill' made available over the counter to 
  Anthros. Majority reject the drug due to side 
  effects of mild depression and sexual dysfunction.
  -14
  'Martian' attack on ship convey bound for 
  Neptune nearly starts off a second Solar War, but 
  is quickly proved to be an organized pirate 
  venture. Conspiracy theories abound but are 
  suppressed in the JF media.
  -13
  JF Parliament fails to pass a measure to end 
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  6
  
  CY
  Events
  Indentured Servitude (IS). Activists on both sides 
  note the alarmingly high proportion of Anthros 
  and Anthro half breeds among 'IS-status' people – 
  nearly 40% of which sold themselves into IS-
  status without first incurring debts or demanding 
  apprentice-training.
  -10
  JF government begins media campaign to 
  encourage birth control and smaller families 
  among the Anthros and Bioroids, hoping to 
  eventually push the average age of parenthood up 
  from 17 to the norm among the humans of 30, 
  and the family size from 6 children down to 1.5. 
  Antrho and Bioroid activists claim the campaign 
  is rooted in racial bias, but they are largely 
  silenced and denied media access.
  -9
  Modeling off of 20th century India's campaigns to 
  advance the lower castes, 'Reserved Status' 
  initiative begun to reserve a number of positions 
  in university and civil service jobs for Anthros 
  and Bioroids in half-proportion to their 
  population. For every 2% of the population they 
  make up, 1% of positions in university classes and 
  civil service jobs will be reserved for them.
  -8
  Unusually intense gang battle in a shopping mall 
  in Jovia claims 198 lives – over half of them 
  holiday shoppers.
  -7
  MP Adolpho Chang indited for espionage when 
  his lover is found to be an Earth spy. He is 
  executed 3 months later. Parliament begins a 
  campaign to investigate its members and the 
  media. Activists charge the investigations have a 
  disproportionate focus on “I&I News;” the media 
  house that first broke the Chang story. 7 I&I 
  media execs are found to be 'Earth loyalists'.
  -6
  Parliament passes “Responsible Media Act” which 
  requires a government censor be part of the 
  editorial staff rather than Ombudsmen (post 
  publication) as before.
  CY
  Events
  -5
  Law banning reproduction with a person of the 
  same ethnicity or race barely fails in the JF 
  parliament – by 3 votes. Late session law 
  blocking the Ministry of Applied Memetics from 
  listing same ethnic attraction as deviant passed 
  with large majority.
  -4
  Police break up large scale human trafficking 
  operation in New Beijing and Bath. The ring 
  focused on exporting poor Anthros and Bioroids 
  as well as kidnappees among the squatter towns 
  to Neptune.
  -3
  In January Mars executes thirty one members of 
  the Military Council on charges of spying for the 
  JF. JF government denies any such connections 
  and classifies the incident as a 'purge'. In July the 
  JF threatens a small colony on Iapetus (a moon 
  around Saturn) of harboring pirates. Two months 
  into a naval blockade twenty one individuals are 
  handed over to the JF and the situation 
  disappears from the media.
  -2
  Census data shows over half of all 'Reserved' 
  positions for Anthros and Bioroids are unfilled. 
  Entire GnuGas board of directors assassinated in 
  the course of a single night. Parliament organizes 
  a commission on inter-corporate violence.
  0
  20th anniversary of the peace treaty between the 
  Jupiter and Martian colonies, ending the Solar 
  Civil War. Census notes fourth generation 
  Anthros and Bioroids – those whose grandparents 
  were born free- have begun to reach age of 
  maturity (16).
  'Word' on the street persists to claim that a ring 
  of 'predator' Altered Humans exists in New 
  Beijing. AHA investigation announces the rumor 
  as unfounded, crediting 23 missing persons cases 
  to 'suicide' as a result of 'slave mentality 
  depression.
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  7
  
  ● Altered Humans
  Altered humans come in a variety of different categories. On the JF most of them are descended from 
  the 'toy-humans' made by the former colonial government as slave labor for the tourist and 
  entertainment industry. Today these 'toy-humans' make up about 20% of the population in the Jovian 
  colonies, and are particularly concentrated on the Mosquito itself.
  An anthropomorph  refers to any person of mixed human and animal DNA. Human-anthros 
  are humans with key animal DNA, and general anthropomorphs, called 'Combat Anthros' in the JF, 
  are animals with enough human DNA to make them intelligent and tool using. Bioroids are humans 
  with enhanced DNA modifications to fit some particular ideal of perfection or memetic fetish – such as 
  making people who look like elves, can breath underwater, or have 'space alien' eyes. Bioroids are 
  either 'toy' – made to please others, or 'elite' – made to 'advance' human genetics into a superior 
  species.
  The 'toy-human' varieties are made for the darkest of human interests – to get people who can 
  be exploited for anything by anybody without having to deal with 'ethical problems' (working under the 
  false assumption that the 'toys' are not 'real' people themselves). Combat anthros are made primarily 
  to get 'expendable' military, police, and terror units. Elites by contrast are made as the children of the 
  wealthy elites to put their genetic line 'above' baseline humanity. As a result, elites on Earth tend to 
  have 'advanced' civil rights, but nearly all other altered humans are exploited and oppressed. Even on 
  the JF which gives them equal rights and reserved status, they find they way into the exploited class 
  much more often than other populations.
  Among both populations there is a ratio of 3:1 favoring women due to the industries they were 
  originally built for. The characteristics of Anthro and Bioroid (Altered Human) traits are passed down 
  through the mother only. Through the father an 'activation' trait is passed down turning on these 
  traits or setting their strength. The mother determines what kind of altered human a child will be, 
  whereas the father can be any kind of altered human to enable the children to actively show the 
  mother's full set of traits. With a human father a child will only show the traits at half strength – 
  perhaps a shorter tail, no fur, a human noise and eyes, and ears only half displaced and shaped to their 
  animal nature. A human mother and a bioroid father will produce human children, but their sons will 
  produce roughly ½ altered human children if they mate with Anthro or Bioroid women.
  Anthros have been designed to show the traits of 'cute' mammals – usually cats, bunnies, dogs, 
  squirrels, raccoons, and so on. They will look mostly human, unlike the 'Furry' tradition, without 
  snouts or muzzles. They will have tails, animal ears and eyes, and flatter 'button' noses. Many will 
  display a light non-shedding fur. Minor short claws may also be present, but these are only cosmetic. 
  They tend to be agile, healthy, strong, not too intellectual, and highly emotional. They have been 
  engineered to be social, passive and obedient with a high, nearly uncontrollable libido. They will also 
  show a minor quirkish level of behavior matching that of their animal side. Cats will like small groups 
  and purr, dogs will work in packs, bunnies will be timid, and so on. Anthros were designed for 
  entertainment – as hosts and pleasure beings. They have had a difficult time dealing with the 
  responsibility inherent in freedom and tend to suffer from chronic depression when without a master 
  or other form of strong leadership. These are people after all. They may have been engineered to be the 
  perfect toys, but they still have minds and souls, and they are fully aware of what has been done to 
  them and how it traps them.
  The Ministry of Altered Human Affairs records that 55% of all anthros live under voluntary 
  'anthro-slave' indentured contracts and 30% belong to a 'pack' (about half of whom are both 'slaves' and 
  'pack members' – for a total 70% that have a 'strong bond'). Among that population only 10% of them 
  suffer from chronic depression. Of those not under such contracts 70% suffer from depression, and in 
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  8
  
  one third of cases it is so severe as to make them non-functional. Those who do not suffer depression 
  almost always have a strong personal relationship with some kind of an authority figure. MAHA 
  estimates less than 5% of anthros have managed to avoid depression without having an authority 
  figure in their lives, and all such known cases involve some form of 'mass giving over' of control such as 
  famous SIN-caster racoon Shuyin Rajagopal whose open access Neural Jack and Implant Com allow 
  her to be 'driven' by her fans. While subservience is an undesired meme in the JF, for the anthros a 
  solution around it has not yet been found. Among the bioroid population a similar but less severe trend 
  is seen, with 43% indentured and another 30% in subservient relationships. Rates of depression for 
  them are about half those of the anthro population.
  The 'toy-humans' designed by the Chinese and EU violated the 'Genki-Neko' patent. On Earth 
  and in the inner colonies most of those were terminated on UN orders just prior to the Revolution. To 
  this day any 'Neko-violating' altered human that steps within UN controlled territory is considered 
  property in violation of patent law and terminated without any access to due process or appeal. 
  Unfortunately for the Jovian colonies all of their 'toy-humans' contain the 'illegal' DNA. Even the 
  immunity of a diplomat will have difficulty providing protection over this issue as most police have 
  DNA scanners and will simply kill the violating altered human before checking ID cards. The UN sees 
  Anthros as animals and toy-bioroids as pets, not people, and treats them accordingly. Thus for 
  protective reasons the JF restricts the travel vouchers of all altered human citizens to the outer 
  colonies.
  The look of an altered human will not cost any points, though the further from human norms it 
  goes the more the 'Marked' defect is worth (from 1 to 3). Any anthropomorph is going to be at 3 for 
  Marked – even the ones that just seem to be humans with cat ears, whiskers, and a tail. Some will go 
  as far out as light fur, small claws, the six mammary glands of many mammals, and/or adjusted vocal 
  chords. Bioroids are much more human in features, but may have major changes in structure such as 
  wings, four arms, a tail rather than legs, or even horns and hooves.
  Bioroids began on Earth as a hobby among wealthy elites to produce idealized designer 
  children. They tend to be superior physically and intellectually but a little lacking emotionally. Many 
  of them display traits taken from fantasy such as blue or green skin, pointy ears, bat wings (as a fifth 
  and sixth limb), unusual size, or special climate adaptations (such as the merfolk now common in the 
  sunken formerly coastal cities of Earth or the second lense over the eyes common in places with high 
  UV radiation). Bioroids on the Mosquito where used more in entertainment than practical industries 
  and thus tend to have better emotional development and lack either the physical or intellectual 
  components. Bioroids have adapted better to freedom as they tend to only have a minor element of the 
  slave mentality. While they show higher rates of depression than the general population their rates 
  are not alarming and they do not have the same tendency to sell themselves into indentured status.
  Altered Human Design Logic
  Various forms of 'Altered Humans' were engineered by large corporations and government bodies 
  either as 'improved generations' for the elite social classes, as 'toys' among the resorts and 'places of 
  entertainment', or as expendable infantry and police on Earth and the colonies.
  In the design of the altered humans in JF space, think of the 'corporate use' it would have been 
  put together for by the designing agency some fifty to hundred fifty years ago. Given the economics of 
  labor they were not built as a worker pool, but to provide specialized entertainment without concern 
  for human rights. Primary purposes of these 'altered pleasure humans' was with the music, visual and 
  performing arts, concubine, sports, hosting / majordomo, personal assistant, and related 'individual 
  service' industries. Whatever characteristics they have were built for their mass-market utility -either 
  cosmetic or in functionality- and have only since over time come to have other uses. As gene-
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  9
  
  engineering is not at all an exact science, some few added undesired traits have entered the mix as 
  well - mostly with regards to anthros and their animal DNA.
  As a result of patent violations, those 'entertainment' altered humans created by the EU and 
  China contained 'illegal genes' lawfully the property of the Japanese bio-fetish firm; Genki-Neko. 
  Genki-Neko was like an early dot-com - a small operation providing exclusive toys for the rich and 
  famous on blind-faith venture capital and deeply negative profits. Its design served a specific vice-
  aimed need, but it was also one of the earliest multi-generational stable designs. It was perfect for 
  theft, and the EU and Chinese scientists figured Genki-Neko would fold long before the truth came 
  out, and could be easily paid off if otherwise. They also made the mistake of assuming EU and Chinese 
  clout on the WTO would prevent litigation. But Japan chose to back the small company's claim, and 
  somehow managed to prevail before the WTO. The resulting judgment declared all Altered Humans 
  with any 'Genki-Neko' designed DNA not actually produced through Genki-Neko to be in violation. 
  Owners were to either hand them over and pay damages or destroy them. Few chose to pay... and the 
  Inter-Solar revolution came about.
  On Earth and in some colonies various Altered Humans are still  being designed, but within 
  the JF where they have equal rights under the law, such activity has come to an end and the current 
  populations are the fast breeding descendants of the originally small numbers that staffed the resorts 
  which once entertained EU and Chinese elites.
  Today, most of those descendants still work in the original fields they were designed for, some 
  even selling themselves into indentured contracts, but a notable minority has broken free of their 
  ingrained habits if not the temperament behind them.
  Among the JF anthros the primary lines of design have been felines, rabbits, mice, foxes, 
  squirrels, dogs, and raccoons. As much as ninety percent of anthros come in one of those varieties. 
  Among the bioroids common models mimic fantasy races, mythic human-forms (such as the four armed 
  variant) fairy creatures, and doll motifs (such as the 'Kabuki strain' engineered to be paint white with 
  glossy red lips). There are also winged strains, even though they cannot fly in normal gravity, as well 
  as several varieties built to give an unnatural or exaggerated skin tone or feature set. 
  Altered Human Fertility
  Bioroids and Anthropomorphs on the Mosquito were grown not by individual corporations but rather 
  by the governments of the EU and China. They were kept fertile for practical reasons, as are their 
  counterparts in many other parts of the solar system. Much like American slavery it was cheaper to 
  allow for a home grown population than to import them. Cheaper to let them breed naturally than to 
  keep producing them with modified human eggs implanted into the wombs of women artificially. Vat 
  grown -just add water to get an educated adult- cloning is a concept not available to the Mosquito 
  reality. Cloning is messy, slow, and prone to failure. Cloned or naturally born, you have to wait while 
  they grow up enough to be used, but with natural reproduction you don't have to keep engineering 
  them generation after generation nor provide foster parents for them. Additionally, only the first 
  cloned generation suffers a severely shortened lifespan. Growth hormones can be used to produce short 
  rapid generations while desired traits are bred into the clone-descended population. Excess and post-
  breeding 'units' can be 'sold on' after sterilization to 'aftermarket needs' or recycled into the food 
  supply. After enough generations produces a stable supply, more 'traditional breeding' can be relied 
  upon as the 'product' population is now large enough to be put to commercial use. At this stage you 
  need to suppress fertility during the 'active working' years. Norplant implants today can make women 
  infertile for as long as five years using Levonorgestrel - the USA had a plan in the late 1980s and early 
  1990s to use it on 'welfare moms' in the prison system, as an option to get sentences reduced.
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  10
  
  In the colonial era of the Mosquito, Altered Humans from the age of puberty to 25 were kept 
  sterile with Levonorgestrel. This made them ready for "work" in entertainment. Beyond that point key 
  individuals would be placed into community support positions and family production, only to be 
  recycled after their prime 'reproductive years' (generally from 35-45). After the Revolution, 
  Levonorgestrel and controlled breeding were both banned and a push was made to have them seen as 
  real people. In the current year on the Mosquito and JF colonies birth control drugs cannot legally be 
  made to last more than six months between injections and no one can give consent for their use save 
  for the individual using them. For anthros and bioroids however, with their unnatural libidos, the JF 
  government puts them all on birth control until age 16 – their legal age of maturity.
  Among both populations pregnancy almost always results in twins with the pair either two 
  girls or a girl and a boy, but almost never two boys (this is about as common as triplets among 
  humans). It is this twinning that has resulted in the 3:1 gender ratio favoring women. This comes from 
  the original Genki-Neko design and was put into their genes to produce a mostly female population for 
  the Japanese sex industry. Both the EU and the Chinese copied that idea into their Bioroids (EU) and 
  Anthros (China) when staffing the resorts on Bath.
  The basic template is mandatory, and individual family lines will then have different options. 
  Some options may exist that are not on the table – if it is not too far from the human norm or what can 
  be found among mammals or the ideas of realistic science it might exist on a bioroid or anthropomorph. 
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  11
  
  BESM3e:
  Basic Human-Anthro (2 pts)
  2
  +1 Body, -1 Mind, +1 Soul
  3
  Features: Appearance (2), Scent Glands
  2
  Heightened Awareness +1
  2
  Sixth Sense: Emotions
  -2
  Ism: Altered Human
  -2
  Marked: Animal like features
  -3
  UD: Slave Mentality: 3 penalty to resist 
  commands from authority figures or chosen 
  leader, need to be submissive in a group, extreme 
  and distracting libido. Depression if lacking 
  guidance / someone to lead them who actually 
  does command them (1 penalty to all actions, +1 
  per week up to 3).
  Options: (Traits will run in a family and be consistent 
  with a single animal type)
  1
  Tail is prehensile.
  1
  1 additional feature of an animal nature
  1
  +1 claws and +1 teeth (Restricted: Half damage 
  bonus to 5)
  1
  Special Movement: Perfect Balance or Cat-Like.
  1
  Sixth Sense: Lies
  -2
  Owned: Indentured under Anthro-slave contract.
  -1
  Phobia: Fear of being alone
  Basic Jovian Bioroid (2-4 pts)
  2
  +1 Body
  3
  Features: Extreme Beauty (2), one additional 
  cosmetically themed feature
  2
  Heightened Senses: Touch and either Hearing or 
  Sight
  -1
  Ism: Altered Human
  -1-3 Marked: Pointy ears, unusual skin tone, vestigial 
  wings or other unusual traits.
  -1
  UD: Slave Mentality: 1 penalty to resist 
  commands from authority figures or chosen 
  leader, desire to be submissive in a group, 
  extreme and distracting libido. Depression if 
  lacking guidance / someone to lead them who 
  actually does command them (1 penalty to all 
  actions).
  Options:   (if * then also increase Marked to 3 – which 
  is not included in the cost)
  1
  Special Movement: Perfect Balance or Cat-like.
  2
  Four arms and mammaries (popular in bioroids 
  made for India-themed resorts).
  1
  1 additional feature.
  1 or 
  2*
  Glider or Flier (10kph) Restriction: Only in 0.3g 
  or less.
  2*
  Water Speed 2, Adaptation: Underwater, Phys 
  Imp ('dolphin tail' rather than legs).
  -1-3 Owned: Indentured to someone or some group
  -1
  Phobia: Fear of being alone
  0
  Earth Bioroid (+1 Mind, -1 Soul)
  1
  Earth Elite Bioroid: Earth Bioroid plus no slave 
  mentality, rather you are the offspring of a 
  wealthy or ruling class.
  Though human-anthros are usually slightly furred, it is not enough to provide special defense.
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  12
  
  Hero System:
  Basic Human-Anthro 
  (-11 pts)
  3
  Pick one:
  •
  +1 Con, +1 Str
  •
  +1 Dex
  -2
  -1 Ego
  3
  +3 Presence
  2
  +4 Com
  8
  +2 PER for all senses, +1 more for touch (+3)
  5
  Enhanced Sense: Tracking Smell
  10
  Empathic: Detect emotions. PER roll. Full 
  Discriminatory, Smell/Taste Group (ranged sense).
  -5
  Social Lim: Altered Human (8-)
  -10
  Distinctive Features: Animal like features
  - Concealable.
  -15
  Dependence: Slave Mentality: Hard to resist commands 
  from authority figures or chosen leader, need to be 
  submissive in a group. Depression if lacking guidance / 
  someone to lead them. Addiction roll starts at once per 
  day, but moves one step up time chart per day of not 
  'meeting the need.' The need can be met by having a 
  submissive social encounter (being obedient to an 
  authority figure for the full encounter).
  (Very Com, Skill roll Incompetence, Unbreakable 
  Addiction)
  -10
  Psych: Lecherous  (Com, Mod)
  Options: (Some varieties may have some of these – traits will 
  run in a family and be consistent with a single animal type)
  5
  Tail is prehensile.
  var
  1 additional feature of an animal nature
  5
  Claws and teeth (1 pip HKA)
  3
  Breakfall: Cat-Like balance.
  3
  Detect: Spoken Falsehood (Hearing group, PER roll)
  -15
  Social: Indentured under Anthro-slave contract. (V.Freq, 
  Mod)
  -10
  Psych: Phobia / Fear of being alone (Com, Mod)
  Basic Jovian Bioroid 
  (-9 to -19 + var pts)
  3
  Pick one:
  •
  +1 Con, +1 Str
  •
  +1 Dex
  4
  2 skill levels for resisting Slave Mentality Dependency 
  addiction.
  2
  +4 Com
  var
  one additional cosmetically themed talent or minor 
  physical power (15 active pts or less, realism limited).
  7
  Enhanced Senses: +1 PER for all senses, +2 Touch (+3 
  total)
  -5
  Social Lim: Altered Human (8-)
  -5-1
  5
  Distinctive Features: Pointy ears, unusual skin tone, 
  vestigial wings or other unusual traits.
  - Concealability Varies. Noticed and Recognizable, 
  Common Used Senses
  -15
  Dependence: Slave Mentality: Hard to resist commands 
  from authority figures or chosen leader, need to be 
  submissive in a group. Depression if lacking guidance / 
  someone to lead them. Addiction roll starts at once per 
  day, but moves one step up time chart per day of not 
  'meeting the need.' The need can be met by having a 
  submissive social encounter (being obedient to an 
  authority figure for the full encounter).
  (Very Com, Skill roll Incompetence, Unbreakable 
  Addiction)
  -10
  Psych: Lecherous (Com, Mod)
  Options:   (if * then also increase Marked to 3 – which is not 
  included in the cost)
  3
  Breakfall: Cat-Like balance.
  5
  Four arms and mammaries (popular in bioroids made for 
  India-themed resorts).
  var
  1 additional feature.
  5
  Winged Glider (10”) (Only in 0.3g or less., Wings)
  12
  Winged Flight: 10” (Wings (-1/2), usable as gliding (+1/4), 
  Only in 0.3g or less (-1/2).
  3
  Merform: +10” Swimming (12), Gills, Aquatic Movement 
  talent, Physical Disad: 'dolphin tail' rather than legs 
  (Freq, Great).
  -15 
  or 
  -20
  Social Indentured to someone or some group (V.Freq, 
  Mod or Major)
  -10
  Psych: Phobia / Fear of being alone (Com, Mod)
  0
  Earth Bioroid (+1 Int, +1 Ego, -3 PRE)
  15*
  Earth Elite Bioroid: Earth Bioroid plus 'buy off' slave 
  mentality, rather you are the offspring of a wealthy or 
  ruling class.
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  13
  
  Combat Anthropomorphs
  Rare in the JF, combat anthros are actually the normal design used in much of the world. They are a 
  very different sort of creature, being a lot less human and being engineered for war. Combat anthros 
  are built from a mix of predatory mammals and human DNA – to make a smart, animal instinctive 
  special operative. They are short lived, instinctual, and highly predatory. To find the lifespan of a 
  combat anthro take the average for a human and the average for the animal it is based on and average 
  them together. The combat anthro will be two thirds of this. Likewise for the various stages of life.
  They have been made shorter lived so they can grow to physical maturity faster and be ready 
  for deployment in anywhere from five years to a single decade. Their bodies will reach maturity 
  quickly, but the mind goes at the same rate as a human mind, making them easy to train and less able 
  to see the flaw in complex orders – they are as controllable and easy to brainwash as human child 
  soldiers would be, but have adult bodies with animal senses, strength, and reflexes. Various nations 
  hold different patents on different strains of combat anthros, unlike the pleasure anthros on the JF 
  which are all based on an illegal Chinese copy of the Genki-Neko pleasure anthro patent (G-N anthro).
  Further unlike the 'G-N' anthros, they do 
  not look anywhere near human. Where the 
  pleasure anthros look like humans with slight cute 
  animal features, the combat anthros look like 
  humanoid animals from one to three meters in 
  height depending on the animal base. They often 
  lack the ability to make complex facial expressions 
  or even cry. They are not interfertile with humans, 
  pleasure anthros, or bioroids; being too far from the 
  human genome they can only breed with others of 
  their identical strain.
  Combat anthros are used for special forces 
  infantry and the battlefields of the Mosquito era 
  are often filled solely with teleoperated robots and 
  combat anthros. Throughout the solar system, with 
  the exception of those that have escaped, they 
  usually have no more rights than any other 
  valuable 'domestic' animal. They are banned from 
  normal immigration within the JF. If found 
  illegally within JF space they are 'put down' under 
  the jurisdiction of the 'secret police.'
  Combat Anthropomorph (2 pts)
  0
  +3 Body, -2 Mind, -1 Soul
  1
  Features: Fur (1)
  1
  Heightened Senses: Infravision or Tracking Scent.
  2
  Heightened Senses: Smell and Hearing.
  1
  Sixth Sense: Emotions
  3
  +1 ACV
  -3
  Marked: Animal like features
  -2
  UD: Predatory Animal Nature.
  -1
  Short Lifespan with rapid physical maturity
  Options: (Some varieties may have some of these – 
  traits will run in a family and be consistent with a 
  single animal type)
  1
  Tail is prehensile.
  1
  1 additional feature of an animal nature
  2
  +1 claws and +1 teeth
  1
  Special Movement: Perfect Balance or Cat-Like.
  1
  Heightened Senses: Both Infravision and 
  Tracking Scent.
  -1-3 Ism: Severely mistrusted in most societies.
  -1-3 Wanted: Usually hunted by the law in most 
  societies.
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  14
  
  Culture
  On a day to day basis for the average citizen, life in the Mosquito can be fairly normal. The cities have 
  the basic first world amenities and people go to work, fall in love, and raise families without ever 
  looking at the larger picture. Being the sole source of Jovian gases has made the station wealthy. It is 
  openly recognized as a prize it's enemies are not willing to destroy, but rather wish to control or 
  manipulate. That fact makes many of its citizens complacent about their safety, but those with an eye 
  on solar politics know better, the lesson of Mercury speaks all too well that people can be replaced.
  There are five distinct key cultures to be found aboard the Mosquito, and the other Jovian 
  colonies combine to make a possible sixth among the JF. These are known as Civitas, Soloists, 
  Faithful, Mzuzi, Primals, and the JF colonists.
  Each culture has its roots in one of the Mosquito's cities. Civitas -Latin for citizenship- came 
  out of the EU controlled city of New Rome. Soloists come out of the thinking among the people of New 
  Beijing. Faithful are closest to their Earth roots and stem from a mix of pre-Revolution persecuted 
  religious groups. Mzuzi (Swahili for innovators) carry the mixed traditions of Jovia – the former 
  foreigner's quarter when the Mosquito was under EU and Chinese control. Primals are the 
  anthropomorph under culture that grew up after emancipation and primarily in Bath. Each of these 
  groups has a different view on life, ethics, social relations, the meaning of independence, and just what 
  the new push for unity in the Jovian Federation means. While each culture did spring up in a specific 
  part of the Mosquito, they are now much more integrated into the larger culture and other than 
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  15
  
  Primals not entirely tied to specific ethnic groups.
  After each culture is a list of five key memes expressed in simple sayings. While a meme is 
  much more than a catchphrase, it is listed this way to be easy to understand and customizable to 
  individual games.
  ● Civitas
  Civitas have a strong sense of community – viewing society as the ideal above the individual or 
  the family. At their moral core, they believe people should be willing to sacrifice for the good of 
  the community and the needs of the majority. They hold social careers and civic duty above 
  entrepreneurship and business, and stick to the idea of 'The Citizen and the Society' as the 
  paragon of virtue. They've kept to the early ideals of the EU and see its present status as 
  something of a hopeful solar commercial empire as one of decadence. Civitas are most likely to 
  advocate socialist policies and state welfare. To the Civitas, the belief is that only the guilty 
  have anything to hide. Your duty, your life, your soul belong to the community as a citizen. Life 
  is a public affair, and the concept of privacy is anathema to community.
  Key Memes
  1. Active citizenship and community involvement are ideals to strive for.
  2. Greed if the root of evil.
  3. A community tolerates many views in coming to a consensus.
  4. Privacy is for those who have something to hide.
  5. Communal sharing benefits all.
  ● Soloists
  Soloists stem out of the rejection of traditional Chinese culture that came about as a result of 
  the adaptation of capitalism and single child families. They are a very individual driven 
  culture, and view the “Self Made Man” as moral perfection. An ideal soloist rejects family and 
  society and strives to make the best world he can for himself. Soloists value wealth and 
  personal friendly contacts. A soloist is likely to buy an apartment with twice as many rooms as 
  they need simply because they can, and just as likely to find the building old and unclean after 
  only a few years from construction. They want everything new and custom made for them, and 
  tend to enjoy being in the spotlight. They disdain group thinking and any form of 
  authoritarianism. Soloists make the strongest push in the JF for individual civil liberties, 
  pointing to the abuses of UN controlled Earth and the Martian colonies as an example of what 
  can happen if their rights are not secure. Soloists are typically either atheists or agnostic to 
  their ancestral faiths, commonly Buddhism or ancestor worship.
  Key Memes:
  1. Individualism is the cornerstone of liberty.
  2. Wealth and influence are a byproduct of hard virtuous work.
  3. Privacy preserves individual integrity
  4. Tradition forms a barrier to progress.
  5. A rational person knows that everything and everyone has a price.
   
  ● Faithful
  The Faithful have a strong sense of faith, family, and local communities. They are more insular 
  than the other groups and the hardest for JF authorities to come to understand. They come out 
  of the mixing of three key groups. First among these was the large Muslim population among 
  the EU residents. Second were the men taken from American corporate holdings in the Middle 
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  16
  
  East and South East Asia and brought out to maintain machinery on the Jupiter stations. 
  After the revolution these first two factions began to mix, though the complete lack of women 
  among the American slaves caused a significant drop in their second generation numbers. The 
  third major group among the Faithful cultural meme came out of the Korean Christians 
  brought over by the Chinese. Today these communities are secular tolerant with a strong focus 
  on family and education. They are known as the Faithful more for how their roots shaped their 
  meme than for any present day spiritual devotion. But that said, most of them are spiritually 
  active to one degree or another.
  Faithful families push their young to pursue intellectual careers, stay loyal to each other and 
  the faith, and keep under the radar of the system. Many in the community do not see 
  themselves as JF citizens so much as a people getting by in someone else's land. They are loyal 
  to the JF in the sense that it hasn't done them wrong, but they do not see it as a creature of 
  their design.
  Key Memes:
  1. Be faithful and spiritual in all things
  2. The family is sacred
  3. Keep your head down and out of trouble
  4. Knowledge is key, wisdom brings virtue
  5. Protect the community from outsiders
  ● Mzuzi
  Mzuzi is a Swahili word for innovation, and the members of this culture are truer spacers than 
  any other group in the Mosquito. Mzuzi see their identity in their friends and co workers, and 
  are the most open to accepting expats from other communities or colonies. Their roots come out 
  of Africa and Latin America, two areas with strong family traditions, something that carries 
  over for them although in a much more weakened state – their ancestors were after all the 
  ones who willingly left their Earthbound families. Mzuzi seek balance in the larger community. 
  They like to compare the JF to a big table at which all kinds of people have been invited to 
  dinner, and now it is time to get along. Mzuzi culture is a thing in flux. The JF considers them 
  to be something of a viral meme carrier – willing and able to incorporate just about any new 
  concept, at least until the next one comes along. They act as something of a gateway for new 
  ideas into the JF, but also as a screen when they reject anything dubious within days for 
  whatever else might come next. Mzuzi are thus trend setters. They are not so much 
  entertainers as they are the people in a crowd who get it to move in a certain direction. Under 
  the split EU / China era they were largely second class citizens of both, and this is not 
  forgotten, with today's Mzuzi having something of a slight bias against the other two groups. 
  They earned their rights as equals for the efforts during the Revolution, fighting harder than 
  any other group, largely as a result of their people being the ones piloting the bulk of colony 
  controlled ships that didn't side with Earth. While New Rome and New Beijing were filled with 
  the corporate heads from Earth, Jovia was largely absent of anyone with any ties to the planet 
  and it was the Mzuzi who first broke out in violent opposition. Today, despite their erratic 
  meme craziness, no one in the JF would dare question the loyalty of this sub culture, and it is 
  often the last place JF police look for sign of spies – a fact not lost on Earth.
  Key Memes:
  1. Diversity is the spice of life.
  2. Measure your wealth in the quality and quantity of your friends and family.
  3. A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet. We are all brothers and sisters.
  4. Those who fear the future get left behind in the past.
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  17
  
  5. Live in the moment.
  ● Primals
  The Primals are the last major subculture. Where the Bioroid community has largely managed 
  to integrate with any one of the other communities and thus never become it's own distinct 
  culture, the Anthropomorphs continue to have trouble adopting to life under freedom. Primals 
  are an underclass culture, not because they are put down by the others, but because they keep 
  themselves down from the genetic conditioning put upon them to keep them loyal when they 
  were seen as no more than animals. Primal culture is a lot like a BDSM community that 
  consists largely of the submissives. On their own they are often depressed and listless, drifting 
  through life until someone comes to take care of them or they are driven to suicide. Primal 
  culture takes on a number of animalistic traits – but twisted by their slave mentality. Several 
  of them are descended from predators, but they enact this instinct more like loyal dogs – 
  needing the command to be let loose before they can attack or hunt. Primal often fill the ranks 
  of gang and mob lackeys for exactly this reason – they are loyal thugs who will not go beyond 
  the bounds of what they are told to do. As a culture Primals are entertainers and are thus very 
  strong in the arts. For this fact the upper class youth of other cultures often emulate Primal 
  culture in a sort of 'to be cool' manner, although this does tend to insult the actual 
  anthropomorphs stuck in this condition. One key subculture among them are those using drugs 
  or wetware to overcome their submissive state. This group wavers back and forth as the drugs 
  are not safe to stay on forever, and you can lose yourself in the wetware. They become the semi 
  functional primals, always on edge and sometimes risking letting the animal side become 
  dominant when they free themselves from submission.
  Key Memes:
  1. The pack becomes your family, your tribe, and commands your loyalty.
  2. Wealth is the love of those you serve.
  3. Find beauty in your art, live your performance.
  4. Embrace your instincts and passions, you are an animal, not just a person.
  5. A lone wolf is a dead wolf.
  ● Drifters
  With major solar wars in the last 50 years, space in the solar system has grown crowded with 
  the littered remains of human effort. A portion of that litter takes the form of humanity itself, 
  and even within Jovian space there are those flee floating people who have no ties left and 
  exist by their wits on what others leave behind. Drifters make a constant effort to 'get inside' 
  the station. They are tolerated in a number of stable locations along the spokes. In most other 
  areas the station works to keep them from 'clamping on.' Drifters will bring their craft in and 
  try to clamp on, pretending to be free floating debris or sneaking in attached to 'approved 
  traffic' until close enough to 'sneak away'. With clamping, they are hoping for an easy source of 
  energy and air, and if really lucky - to drill a path into the station and disappear into the 
  crowds. Most such drifters are eventually caught and thrown off station, but a few do get by 
  and manage to establish some form of cover or identity. For the station's part, clearing them 
  away is much like clearing bugs off the windshield of a moving car - moments after the wiper 
  does its duty, a whole new set arrives to fill the gap.
  Drifter memes vary, but are usually tied to a few themes:
  1.
  Trust only yourself and maybe your family or clan.
  2.
  Hide from authority.
  3.
  The best solution to conflict is to leave. Never set down roots.
  4.
  Always stay armed.
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  18
  
  5.
  If it keeps you alive for one more day, it was justified.
  ● Refugees
  In some ways a cut above Drifters, and in others a cut below. The Refugees of the Jovian 
  Federation live in a number of 'camps' set up on stations and derelict ships orbiting the planet. 
  The bulk of these people are exiles from minor beltway or outer system colonies unable to 
  qualify for normal immigration and unable to stay at home. This can include combat anthros, 
  memetic deviants, genetically disabled (and / or disfavored), criminals, shells, victims of solar 
  conflicts, and so on.
  The second largest group is composed of people from former Martian or Earth colonies, and 
  their descendants, who for one reason or another were denied immigration. This second group 
  is often quite politically volatile. Not all persons who fled from those territories were denied 
  immigration. This category largely comes from those who's political allegiances were or are 
  questionable, and who for one reason or another could not be repatriated back to Martian or 
  Earth territory. The JF now sees them as a deviant 'ethnic group' who's memes it cannot afford 
  to let into the nation.
  Refugees camps are often multi-generational. State authority within them is typically 
  limited to monitoring station power, assuring basic subsistence support, and providing 
  distracting memes in the form of access to entertainment. Police authority is concerned more 
  with limiting access to technology that would enable an uprising and preventing organizing 
  efforts. JF military patrols to monitor all in and out traffic, but has an uncanny inability to do 
  its job effectively.
  Refugees tend to have very high meme-indexes, and are generally considered 'dangerous' by 
  the Ministry of Memetic Affairs. Deserved or not, the Ministry certainly does work to promote 
  this image among the general population in order to keep down sympathy for their plight.
  Refugee interaction with main JF populations is limited. They can apply for and gain work 
  visas allowing them to enter citizen zones for limited stays. Persons in this status are 
  monitored with locater implants, although these have been known to go missing. Freedom to 
  marry laws within the JF allow them to be 'normalized' through marriage – but doing so often 
  cuts their ties with their own communities and families, at least in the legal sense. Another 
  way of putting that is that marrying a JF citizen will not allow you to bring in your parents, 
  siblings, children, or other relations. Once you marry into the JF, chances are you will never 
  see any of those people again – if you voluntarily seek out contact with people still in the 
  camps, you risk being 'removed' from the JF.
  Overall refugee population is not tracked, but estimated to be about one third of that of the 
  citizen population. They are kept on fifteen stations, most in orbit around Jupiter, one around 
  IO, three around Ganymede, two around Callisto, and the last two built on the surface of 
  Europa. Half of them are little more than giant 'tanker' or 'cruise ships' that have been gutted, 
  'bolted together' and rebuilt for long term occupation. Populations are kept diverse to prevent 
  strong cultural bondings, but are not mixed to prevent cross communication. This second factor 
  over time works to weaken the power of the first factor, and each camp can now be said to have 
  developed its own internal culture.
  ● Other JF Colonies
  The final category comes in the other JF colonies. None of them are anywhere near the size of 
  the Mosquito, with the largest having perhaps a hundred thousand souls. They tend to be filled 
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  19
  
  of loners from one of the Mosquito cultures, with a number of different minor local variations. 
  Key memes of this group will thus vary as a collection of memes from other groups.
  Race and Ethnicity
  The five cultures are no longer tied to the specific racial groups that formed them, and the concept of 
  race is slowly fading in JF society as the idea of unity to a memetic culture replaces it. In origin the 
  people of the station are a good mix of European, East Asian, East African, South American and 
  Middle Eastern, with North Americans forming a small minority.
  Since the revolution the citizens of the Mosquito have been free to intermingle. With 
  government benefits to mixed couples and their children, a common ethnic look is starting to emerge 
  similar to that seen in South America - a sort of 'Euro-Asian' mix with a hint of African and Native 
  American. This accounts for about 35% of the population. Chinese and European make up another 20% 
  each, Middle Easterners make up about 15%, and the final 10% is a mix of odds and ends. About 20% 
  of this total is made from Bioroids and Anthropomorphs - people with enhanced genes or designed to 
  have animal features; in both cases with a primarily entertainment or sexual focus. They are inter 
  fertile with humans, so these traits are slowly starting to show up as recessive traits among the Jovian 
  populations. 
  The bulk of the Europeans came from Italy, Spain, France, or Eastern European nations such 
  as Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Czech and Slovakia. That accounts for about 70 percent of them, with 
  the remaining 30 percent coming from elsewhere in Europe. About 10% of these people were Muslim, 
  and a similar number strongly Christian. Most wee secular.
  The Chinese were mostly Han Chinese – the majority population in China, but about 1 million 
  of their people came from occupied North Korea. That group was heavily Christian dating back to 
  Korea's pre-WWII traditions and formed the first batch of Chinese to jump from Soloist over to 
  Faithful culture. A number of them were later purged during the Civil War for religious extremism. 
  Today about a fourth of the Chinese are actually Koreans in ancestry, and another fourth are 
  descended from other occupied territories such as Tibet, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Taiwan.
  The 'foreign workers' of Jovia came mostly from the countries of Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, 
  Kenya, Uganda, Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Brazil. In a roughly equal mix from African and South 
  America, but with the South American workers being mostly natives and mestizos rather than 
  Spanish. Jovia quickly integrated itself, and today the people there are mostly mixed between African 
  and South American Native.
  Station 7 brought in a large number of male Muslims who were roughly half Arabic and the 
  rest primarily Indonesian or Pakistani. Only a third of the non Middle Eastern Americans from 
  Station 7 survived through the revolution, being primarily Caucasian or Asian. Many of these were 
  later purged (along with Muslims) by the JF for religious extremism. The former Station 7 groups have 
  ended up very small today, largely melting into one of the other races.
  Language
  Nearly everyone on the station is bilingual in both Mandarin and eLatin. eLatin is really a mix of 
  European languages, with the core rooted in English / German and the Romance languages. eLatin 
  grew up out of the melting pot of 21st century EU culture. The name 'eLatin' was given to it in jest by 
  American media and managed to stick before the Europeans were able to come up with anything more 
  formal. While Britain took a long time to integrate into the EU, their language had already been the 
  common tongue of Europe since the WWII era, and it was out of this that other tongues joined in. 
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  Mandarin Chinese on the other hand, is the same language it has been for ages, and has only 
  incorporated the terms of other tongues for pop culture and technology. After these two tongues comes 
  Arabic, spoken as the native tongue of some 15% of the population – nearly all of whom also speak one 
  or both of the other languages. Spanish, French, Korean, and Swahili are the most common 'minor 
  tongues', with accent variations based on South American and African dialects rather then their 
  European forms. Internally among the Faithful culture the mixed use of Arabic and Korean is 
  common, at times in an almost hybrid language.
  ● Slang
  Mosquito slang is a mix of modern words of varied sources with new words. A lot of it focuses 
  on the darker exploitative aspects of the society. Slang is never a reflection of the image a 
  society wants to present to the world, but rather the image it fears is closer to the truth. In 
  that regard, slang reflects the issues the underclasses are concerned with and becomes a tool 
  by which they express that back to their perceived oppressors. JF slang as a result often 
  denotes issues dealing with the altered humans and the troubled nature of their 'not exactly 
  true' freedom.
  •
  Anthro - a human with animal DNA
  •
  Input - attractive female
  •
  Output - attractive Male
  •
  Bride / Groom - a one night stand with potential for more
  •
  Bird - woman
  •
  Wave - the net. Or more precisely, that part of the net that is omnipresent and visible to any 
  wireless user as they move through society - giving and taking data ceaselessly.
  •
  Wavey – Something is wavey if it works around wave, or net, technology. An example might be 
  a billboard that is online and shows information from the wave, or uses the wave to cause 
  every viewer looking at it too see a different, personalized advertisement.
  •
  Peering through water / Wet eyed – someone who's vision is wired to the wave to such a severe 
  extent that they can only see things that are 'wavey' or otherwise 'net registered'. Going Wet 
  eyed is a deviant meme popular in subcultures that want to 'ignore the lowly peon masses.' It 
  can also happen to people with cyber-eyes who get cyber-brain hacked.
  •
  Declaw - to make someone non threatening.
  •
  Catnip - legal psychotropic drugs
  •
  Sniffer - junkie / burned out drug user
  •
  To sniff - to use drugs. Comes from 'glue sniffing'.
  •
  Bloodhound - any anthro that can track by scent
  •
  Pack - your gang, your mates.
  •
  Alpha - lead member in a pack.
  •
  Salung - what you say to someone who makes a joke that just isn't funny in a 'what-ever' sort 
  of way. (Korean)
  •
  Aish - a hostile 'darn it/you' expletive (Korean)
  •
  Ship-pal - a hostile 'f-you' (Korean - references something to do with male anatomy)
  •
  Shag - crude 'meaningless' sex for thrills
  •
  Piggyback - to hack into the sensory perceptions of a SIN-enabled victim.
  •
  Stuffed - killed
  •
  Shell - anyone with a full or near full body cyborg conversion.
  •
  Prey - people you plan to use, take advantage of, or 'shag'.
  •
  Predator - people who 'prey' upon others.
  •
  Fuzzball / Furball - derogatory terms for any anthro. Fuzzball implies 'mental issues'.
  •
  Doll - derogatory term for a female bioroid.
  •
  Toy - derogatory term for an altered human (bioroid or anthro).
  •
  Skins – derogatory term anthros used to refer to others, especially 'baseline humans'.
  •
  Bio-Toy - a derogatory term for a 'Toy Bioroid'.
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  •
  Buzzcut - scalping a victim, the severe form of which is a hate crime sometimes done to 
  anthros - skinning them alive.
  •
  Candyman / Candywoman - broker of licensed prostitutes.
  •
  Candystriper - licensed prostitute. Also known as a 'Lolipop'.
  •
  Seawall - a jammer that blocks out the 'Wave' (net).
  •
  Off-board - being offline. You're off-board anytime you turn off your Com.
  •
  Mummy - anyone over thirty.
  •
  Kitten - a private submissive, slave, or indentured servant - male or female.
  •
  Feral - losing control, going wild over a situation.
  •
  Beltway - the asteroid belt.
  •
  Rockside - on planet.
  •
  Rocky – a person who is from rockside
  •
  Rockos - people who live on a planet.
  •
  Heavens - off planet
  •
  Gnude - wearing clothing that isn't really clothing, such as holo-generated fashions or body 
  paint. In speech, the speaker places a slight focus on the 'not as silent as it should be' "g".
  •
  Brain-chipped - having involuntary persona chips installed. Usually by the state to correct for 
  'deviant' behavior. Also seen in illegal exploitation operations.
  •
  Fuzploitation - media that promotes negative stereotypes of altered humans, particularly 
  human-anthros, as if they were 'cool', 'hip', and to be aspired to. This media is targeted to the 
  depicted communities and the youth market and is believed by activists to be an oppressive 
  tactic of 'the powers that be'. Terms coined in reference to 'Kewl Catz Studios' - a SIN cast 
  production agency frequency targeted by the police for suspicion of using underage and / or 
  brain-chipped actors. (*)
  •
  SIN-noise - stray emotions in a SIN recording that are not part of the desired effect. Filtering 
  out SIN noise is a major task of post-production and SIN recording can be rated by SIN-Noise 
  in much the same way one rates the quality of audio recordings and their ability to sound 'real'. 
  In street speak, any low quality SIN-recording is said to have 'high SIN-noise' even if the 
  reason is for something else. Homemade SIN-recordings are notoriously bad in terms of SIN-
  noise. Certain collectors prefer high SIN-noise recordings as they are actually truer to the real 
  event that was recorded - if Mei-Lin Chaya was feeling hungry for Indian food during the 
  concert, a 'true-recording' would reflect that, but what most fans buy would have that feeling 
  screened out in post-production. (*) Because of the nature of SIN-production and the ability to 
  record feelings as well as perceptions most actors are persona-chipped and the media is often 
  filtered through the recordings of several actors in post-production in order to minimize 'stray 
  emotions'.
  •
  Doggish - 'feeling doggish' is a reference human-anthros use when they feel particularly 
  submissive or unable to be assertive. The reference is over the common assumption that their 
  subservient traits were engineered into their DNA from efforts to match certain aspect of 
  canine brain chemistry.
  •
  Meme-Spam – Unwanted meme-data. Being 'meme-spammed' is how one would describe 
  getting a constant stream of undesired 'meme-advertising'. The concept is fairly similar to the 
  simple 'spam' of the early internet, only with the buzzword 'meme' attached, along with the 
  connotations of memetics. Meme-spam will attempt to shift your values or change the way you 
  'frame' your thinking rather than merely get you to buy a product. In other words, rather than 
  seeing you as the target audience for product X, as spam does, meme-spam tries to make you 
  into the target audience.
  •
  SIN-Spam – The worst form of unwanted data. SIN-Spam intrudes into your sensory and 
  emotional impressions trying to make you sense or feel something 'directly'. All forms of SIN-
  spam are illegal. The name, while evoking the unpleasant image of 'spam', is actually rather 
  mild compared to what is actually involved. SIN-Spam is a form of 'cyber-brain hacking' and is 
  seen in the JF law as a kind of torture.
  •
  Fleabag – derogatory term for an Anthro meant to imply filthiness.
  •
  Flea – An insult that implies the person is an unimportant nuisance. Actual fleas do not exist 
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  22
  
  within the JF.
  •
  Cyberdoll – A robot that looks human. They are actually not at all cybernetic and not androids 
  in the sense that their Ais are limited and not sentient (sentient AIs do not exist within the 
  technology of the world of Mosquito). Cyberdolls can be remotely piloted and hooked to SIN-
  recorders for 'various purposes'. JF law requires that a Cyberdoll cannot simulate a heartbeat, 
  and that it is a misdemeanor offense for a remote pilot of a Cyberdoll to attempt to conceal 
  their nature. A conversation with a Cyberdoll running on its own AI will reveal what it is to all 
  but the naïve, and the Cyberdoll must answer truthfully if asked if it is a Cyberdoll, what its 
  serial number is, who owns it, and / or what its present operating instructions are. Other than 
  for defending those it has been instructed to protect by its owner, it is a felony for a Cyberdoll 
  to be programmed for combat or used in combat.
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  Fashion
  People still wear clothes, and the threads still define the person. Fashion is everything is stating who 
  you are, and in a world defined by memetic power that is even more key than ever before. Your fashion 
  broadcasts your meme, and your meme is the language of who you are.
  Holo-Fashion is popular among the youth crowd, and is even used among spacers to give EVA 
  suits a nicer cut. The technology behind it is described in the technology chapter. The average Holo 
  outfit can be contained in something as small as a piece of jewelry and works by projecting an image 
  within a localized electromagnetic field. They can be distorted in the presence of strong magnets or 
  other electrical fields – and it is something of a prank to 'pants' a person in this manner. The batteries 
  on such suits typically last several days, and the cost to buy the unit is about equivalent to a single 
  nice outfit today. Once you have a projector, you can download outfits or even use a fashion software 
  application to create your own. Perhaps the most notable problem with holo-fashion is that it is not 
  fully opaque, but rather only about 80% opaque, or 20% transparent. In addition it will give off a slight 
  glow making the wearer stand out in dim lighting. These two features make it useless as a means of 
  covering anything the wearer wishes to conceal or for being used to disguise one's appearance. In most 
  cultures holo-fashion is thus limited to accessory rather than primary clothing. Some among the avant-
  guard will wear nothing but a hologram, but even within Civitas culture this is daring.
  Actual textiles among the Jovian colonies are almost exclusively either hemp or synthetic 
  fibers woven out of the many petrochemicals mined from the Jovian atmosphere. Equivalents to latex, 
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  24
  
  polyester, nylon, modacrylic, olefin, acrylic, nytril, spandex, and many other synthetics abound. Body 
  painting or 'spray and paint on synthetic latex' are popular in the youth and fitness cultures. Often 
  body paint is used for everything but the groin, over which a latex cup or cover will be attached with 
  spray on latex outfits. Other than hemp natural fibers are always imports from Earth or Mars and will 
  increase the cost of an outfit by tenfold. That said, hemp is still expensive and primarily used in 
  industry.
  Ex Machina Note: Each natural fiber outfit is considered one minor gadget. For hemp, every three 
  outfits equals one minor gadget.
  BESM Note: A character must have at least Wealth rank 1 to own a natural fiber outfit made from 
  fibers other than hemp. Wealth 2 is required if the character owns more than 5, and Wealth 3 for more 
  than 10. Wealth 4 for more than 100, and Wealth 5 for any amount over 500.
  Hero Note: Follow the same progression as in BESM, but with the Wealth Perk.
  Fashion sense follows labels much as it always has, and everyone wants to be dressed like the 
  current popular icons, who are themselves dressed by the usual crowd of people with questionable 
  tastes and affected accents of the current 'hot-cultures'. At present, it is fashionable to have a 
  Neptunian accent, which resembles something of a cross between Brazilian and Kenyan of the early 
  21st century. Men and women both dress to attract and be as stylish as possible and both will show 
  quite a bit of skin when they can. Women wear brighter colors, but not by as much of an extreme as in 
  20th century America – men can be flashy, but don't tend to it as much as women.
  Professional dress is still a bit more stiff than casual wear, but tends to be modeled off of 
  'spacer themes' – looking like comfortable and thin versions of EVA suits, something like 1950s and 
  1960s science fiction – but usually without the rings unless you're visiting from Saturn, where putting 
  'rings' around your suits is a matter of national pride.
  Fashion trends tend to come into three basic categories:
  ● Futurism
  Futurist fashions focus on the space age, on being cutting edge, on doing the new and meme 
  challenged idea. Futurists will push convention, but not to destroy it. They may wear 
  Saturnian rings, cover themselves in vid-screen embedded clothing (sometimes known as 
  'Spandex-TV'), or even pull from historical notions of 'science fiction' costumes. A futurist tends 
  to have some new edge to their outfit. They may incorporate holo tech, mood-aligned color 
  shifting clothing, light emitting tattoos, and so on.
  ● Traditional
  Traditional fashions evoke some bygone era in their themes. Traditionalists will look back to 
  ethnic, religious, fantasy genre, or socio-political themes of the past. They are usually inspired 
  by one of the cultural roots of the JF, but will sometimes pull from other parts of human past. 
  Traditionalists do not always stick to their own cultures, and it is not at all unusual to see a 
  Caucasian woman in a Hanbok or Kimono, or an Asian man dressed in Renaissance or 
  Swashbuckling themes.
  ● Rejectionism
  Rejectionism scorns the usual social norms behind fashion trends. A rejectionist might decide 
  to adopt the 'gnude' statement of only wearing holo clothes and / or body paint, or even (among 
  a small subset in Bath), nothing at all. They might go 'tribal', and are likely to be tattooed, 
  pierced, hair dyed, carnaval feathered, and so on. Rejectionists might take another fashion, 
  such as a Victorian corset, and add in chaps and a thong. Rejectionism seeks the extreme edge, 
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  rather than the cutting edge. It is challenging, perhaps in beauty, or maybe just for shock.
  ● Mixing Trends
  Nothing is exclusive about the trends in the minds of most people. Unless you're on the fashion 
  hip list, you just wear what looks good on you. You may have a preference, but you're likely 
  going to dabble a little in the other areas when it fits the moment. Maybe your kimono or 
  burka has a vid screen, or you've got chrome and Saturn rings to go with your gnude-holos. 
  Mixing is fairly common, certainly much more common than the 'fashion police' of the elite 
  social scenes would like to admit.
  ● Sensual Appeal
  Good sensual fashion in the JF is all about showing off. The motto is often, the more skin in 
  curves the better, but not everything. You want to show it all off but without showing it all off. 
  Outfits are designed to reveal and hint or create a sense of anticipation over that bit which is 
  left unseen. Even in fuller covering fashion, showing curve and shape becomes important. The 
  JF is not the world of baggy clothing, but flowing ruffles and bell-endings work when the 
  motion they create entices the eye.
  Body Sense and Customization
  The body ideal is close that of classic Greece and Rome – fit and lightly muscled with little fat or hair 
  and clean shaved for men. Mzuzi prefer a thin form on both genders, with a lot of curve in women and 
  tight muscles in men. To achieve this 'Plastic Surgery' of a form is very common – using nanites to 
  improve the body's regulation of fat and go far beyond the abilities of steroids of muscle growth and 
  retention. Nanites can even work surgery of a form to make minor features adjustments, but anything 
  major still goes under the knife.
  Genetic modifications must be made before birth, with the exception of 'gene therapy' to treat 
  for diseases of missing or faulty genetics. You can't walk in to the clinic and have your DNA changed to 
  make your skin blue or to have elf ears – though surgery can give you both of these it won't be in your 
  DNA unless you are born with it.
  Probably over 90% of the population has had some level of modification. Much of it done at the 
  DNA level before their parents or even grandparents were born, but just as often surgery or nanites to 
  change little things about themselves or correct mistakes and accidents in their lives. As a result, the 
  general level of attractiveness and physical fitness is well above the human norm for the 20th century. 
  A visitor from the past might wonder why the so-called ugly people look like movie stars and everyone 
  else looks even better.
  Reproductive Rights
  Not just anyone can have a child in the JF. A form of eugenics has been in play ever since the 
  revolution, officially to prevent inbreeding. By law, any pregnancy must be registered and approved 
  and the mother and father must not be closer than three generations in relation – the same great 
  grandparents. This policy has had the hardest impact upon anthropomorphs and bioroids – who pre 
  revolution tended to be that close or closer with about as much as 30% of their fellow subspecies 
  members.
  Any pregnancy in violation of this policy is terminated, and the potential parents are counseled 
  to stay away from each other.
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  26
  
  Further government action goes into benefits for those who mate across racial lines, in a 
  government attempt to create a new distinctively 'Jovian race'. This takes the form of free housing to 
  mixed couples, free university for their children, and housing discount vouchers to communities that 
  are more than 60% racially integrated (no more than 40% of any one racial group).
  The Science of Ideas  Memes and the Discourse
  –
  There is great power to ideas and ideologies, particularly in an information or post-information age 
  such as that of 'The Mosquito'. Imagine all human behavior as a stream of ideas. Memes are the 
  individual currents or fish in that stream, and the discourse is the stream itself. Already today we can 
  see governments, corporations, and individuals putting a lot of power behind information control and 
  manipulation. Propaganda is a powerful tool, and one the core axioms of the post-Punk genre is that it 
  has become the very currency of social action – the social economics have overtaken material and 
  military.
  Memes work as packages of the ideas that are carried through in culture, they are the genes of 
  a culture – and the better they function to enable that culture the more likely they are to be passed on 
  throughout the population and across time. Memes also herd together – with ideas coming in units to 
  achieve greater stability. Think of the term democracy, and you think of liberty and capitalism – three 
  completely separate memes that could and in fact in some societies have no connection, but at least in 
  the USA they have herded together to become a stronger triplicate. That packaging forms a discourse.
  As the stream in all of this, discourse acts to give it a sort of inertia – making it hard to oppose 
  a given meme that fits the larger discourse without actually working within that very meme. Discourse 
  is all about looking at the pattern of culture and how it filters our ability to see truth. Each of us a 
  product of our discourses, and given the same set of facts will not only reach a different conclusion but 
  accept those facts in different ways before we even begin to draw our conclusions – almost as if looking 
  at an object one of us sees blue and other red before we begin to decide what it is.
  An understanding of memes is much like seeing the trees, but not the forest itself. Discourse by 
  contrast tends to look at the forest and gloss over the trees.
  All of this may be only interesting on an intellectual level in the present day, but the 
  importance of the information age makes the ability to manipulate these memes and their larger 
  discourse a tool of power for those that can manage it. In the Mosquito's era, memetics thus becomes a 
  valuable tool of both government and corporate society.
  On a practical level, memetics and discourse manipulation can be used to keep a society in 
  consent of the control put over it – to keep them from rebelling against their government or corporate 
  masters. It can also be used to push products, religions, ideologies or any other social concept. Just as 
  well, counter-memes can be sown to disrupt any of these things, and much of the espionage of the 
  Mosquito era actually focuses on these wars of propaganda.
  In the Mosquito, the five core cultures each come with their own set of core memes shaping 
  their discourse. Beyond this every faction that operates in the setting has it's own memes it is pushing 
  in an effort to shift the discourse in its favor. Beyond the JF colonies, there is a further plethora of 
  cultural discourses with their own competing memes. While society at the end of the 20th century was 
  coming into an era of globalization and open communication, the Solar Revolution split people apart. 
  You now have widely diverse cultures each with their own highly developed memeticly driven cultural 
  infrastructures.
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  Memetic operations work to manipulate memes through a variety of means. First there is the 
  obvious and direct approach of propaganda. You can advertise, attempt to raise the credibility of 
  carriers of your desired meme while destroying that of counter-meme carriers. You can seek out weak 
  members in a group for targeted meme-operations, getting them to question their assumptions through 
  psychological manipulation. You can disrupt or override communication networks – breaking up your 
  targets flow of information and inserting data to shift them over to your needs. Finally you can even 
  high jack their Nueral Buffers, Wetware Plugs, and SIN inputs to directly overwrite their existing 
  memes. In effect brainwashing them and hoping it sticks long enough to become a natural part of their 
  thinking before discovery.
  Discourses, and by extension memes, have a way of self-proving. Once accepted a discourse is 
  typically seen as always having been really true and the individuals that hold to it become very 
  protective of seeing reality through its filter. Once the world is round, it has always been round, and 
  once your two families have been feuding, you can see they never got along. Once disco is out, it was 
  always uncool. This means that any lasting meme operation has to act on a subtle level and shift its 
  targets through their subconscious. Short term meme connected operations – such as communication 
  disruption, need not be as subtle because they are designed not to shift perceptions so much as confuse 
  communication. In contrast to this, memetic shift often works through the zealousness of the newly 
  converted – memes are often stronger in their new adherents than among those who have long carried 
  them and allowed them subsist into background mental noise.
  In a game, memes can be put into effect by adjusting information given to individual PCs. With 
  any cultural fact or bit of information each player can be told whether or not they have reason to 
  believe it, see it differently, or find ti false. For example, given a statement that a group of Bioroids 
  have been found to be addicted to a drug, one player might be told this drug helps counter the slave 
  mentality and has no side effects, and another could be told the drug is known to have been engineered 
  by Earth agents looking to subvert Bioroid activists, while a third could be told the drug is known to 
  make users more susceptible to the slave mentality of people using key commands. A bit of a blatant 
  example, but if information is always given out in this manner in time the players will be unable to 
  easily detect when a memetic operation is in play. Additionally, this tactic can help to convey the 
  fractured nature of Mosquito society – and can be used to introduce real alienation if the PC have a 
  chance to meet individuals from Mars or Earth who possess radically different memes over not only 
  social values but the history of the Solar Revolution and Civil War.
  A second game use for memetics comes in roleplay. Characters should play up their memes, 
  and play up the buzzword-importance society places on the memetic concept. Overly attribute actions 
  and events to meme based causes, and when speaking in character toss in a few meme-based themes 
  and 'politicized' statements.
  Finally, even if players and their PCs don't take memes seriously, the world of Mosquito does. 
  Following or spreading one meme might be illegal, whereas following another meme might be 
  mandatory. It is the age of the thought police – and without any psychic mind reading powers all they 
  can do is stack the deck with a bunch of police trained to spot people expressing banned ideas and give 
  out a bunch of kudos to people preaching the party line. Put memes into the plots. Police PC might 
  have to bust up a ring of 'deviant thinkers' and PC crooks might find the reason the law is after them 
  is that they have all read a banned book that has exposed them to some idea for which they now need 
  to be 're-educated'.
  The people of Mosquito think they are free, and think they live in a utopia, but that is just 
  another memetic perception. Society is free for everyone who agrees – everyone who has the right 
  memes.
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  ● Deviant Discourses
  When memes herd together they form discourses, larger cultural currents that move through 
  society, emboldened by the strength of their unity. A number of these discourses have a 
  negative effect on social harmony, and in the JF memetic police are used to identify them and 
  limit or eliminate their impact. What follows is a sample list of some deviant discourses, with 
  some of the memes that build them, and how they impact life in the JF.
  ● Conspiracy Theorism
  The oldest of humanity's deviant memes – the perception of a world where everyone is 
  up to something fishy. Conspiracy discourse builds its memes along a few basic 
  principles. First if an idea can be expressed that states some possible secret the truth of 
  which would be harmful to society then it must be true. Second, the more people, and 
  especially those in power, try to resist this idea the more credible it becomes. Third, 
  evidence of the idea's truth need never be more than circumstantial, as the forces 
  opposing it always have the resources to cover their tracks. Fourth, the truth of the 
  idea being revealed will in some manner set us free. Some sample memes running 
  through JF society within this discourse:
  1. Anthropomorphs do not really have a slave mentality. They are merely duping us 
  until they can rise up and destroy us.
  2. Bioroids, and especially the bug-eyed' variety, are not really bioroids, but visitors 
  from another place the government is housing among us.
  3. Mars and Earth are aligned in a plot against the JF, and this is the real reason for 
  the sudden end of hostilities almost two decades ago.
  4. We are all merely people existing in a simulation somewhere, and not actually real.
  5. There is something, something big, living in the gases of Jupiter, and from time to 
  time it gets hungry.
  ● Anarchy
  Anarchy is at its most basic the idea that no government is better than any 
  government. Some anarchists believe individual people can manage for themselves 
  better, and others just advocate chaos and survival of the fittest. Anarchy is also often 
  seen as a severe form of the Soloist culture, but this is not a fully accurate 
  representation. Nothing about anarchists by definition makes them self obsessed, and 
  Soloists are more likely to accept government and authority, as long as it does not 
  dictate to them. Memes that are often found among anarchists:
  1. Government exists purely to put you down.
  2. There is no freedom unless there is total freedom.
  3. Power must be torn down with violent resistance.
  4. Freedom can only be gained peacefully (in direct conflict with previous meme).
  ● Pan-human Unity
  Pan human unity works initially under the simple idea that there should be one 
  unified government for all of humanity, for the good of society. A number of different 
  concepts can float around in this discourse and argue with each other, but they all hold 
  to the initial premise. To the JF, the real threat of this discourse is that it is also the 
  official position of Earth's UN government. Pan-human Unity for Earth means taking 
  back control of the JF.
  1. Nationalism is the root of all human evil.
  2. Identity politics leads to divisiveness.
  3. We are all brothers and sisters. One big family.
  4. Authority is illegitimate unless it represents us all.
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  ● Cosplay
  Cosplay is a fairly mild deviant discourse of no major concern to the government or 
  other established powers. It is deviant in that it distracts from resources and shifts the 
  youth culture away from productive activity. Cosplay is the culture of dress up play. 
  Members dress in fashions and costumes based on characters from popular live action 
  and animated SIN stories, games, Idol bands, actors, and other pop culture themes. It 
  descends from a mix of 20th century Japanese Cosplay and American Trekkie and SCA 
  subculture, but in the world of the Mosquito has become a long term permanent fixture 
  among teen and college age life; although the costumes have changed dramatically over 
  the passage of time. Cosplay members will be split, with about half following a current 
  trend, and another half lagging behind in some formerly popular entertainment meme 
  – like the trekkies of their age. Cosplay deviants are classified by the Ministry of 
  Applied Memetics according to the severity of the meme. Mild members will make it a 
  weekend or convention hobby, moderate members will dress daily in their cosplay 
  outfits, and severe meme deviants become obsessed with becoming their characters.
  1. I can be free by hiding in my new identity.
  2. The 'mundanes' do not understand me.
  3. I am [insert character name here]. The character us my true self, my mundane life 
  is just a shadow.
  4. Human beings live to tell stories. Our imaginations free us.
  5. The only real identity is the one you manufacture.
  6. Imitation of the things you love gives you identity.
  ● Religion
  Much against the wishes of the Faithful community, the Ministry of Applied Memetics 
  classifies religion as a deviant discourse. It is considered deviant as it is not based on a 
  rational 'proof first' understanding of the world, and because it has led to so much 
  conflict throughout history. Religion is officially classified as any spiritual 
  understanding the world, or rather any belief that there is something to reality beyond 
  the physical body. The official stance of the Ministry of Applied Memetics is that 
  science has been unable to prove or disprove the facts of this belief, and given the 
  nature of the scientific method that is likely to never change. Within this discourse all 
  the many faiths found in human cultures have been grouped, including belief in 
  atheism. On the Mosquito religion has no special protections and may not be used for 
  any form of legal shield, attack, or status. Officially, there are no religions.
  This changes if they become severe memes – or rather, 'fundamentalist'.  If a 
  faith becomes too rooted in literal non-rational interpretations of its scriptures it often 
  falls down the path of repressing subordinate members and violently opposing other 
  memes. Some severe religious memes hold that to even know what the name of another 
  religious meme stands for is to know enough about it to have mortally sinned. Severe 
  religious memes are not tolerated within the JF, and with screening done at the 
  immigration level there have not been major issues with this since the merging of 
  colonies at the end of the revolution brought small groups of fundamentalist Christians 
  and Muslims over from Station 7 – with the first group using the second for slave labor, 
  and severe animosity between them. The bulk of both of these groups were 'purged' into 
  the Jovian atmosphere in the years since, and severe religious memes have since been 
  a rare problem.
  ● Racism
  In an era with not just many human ethnic groups, but anthropomorphs and bioroids 
  jumbled into the mess, there is plenty of room for racial, ethnic, and even speciest 
  tensions. This discourse works on the model that one given option is inherently better 
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  than the others and more deserving of the privileged positions within society. To that 
  end all manner of evidence to the contrary is ignored, and all evidence backing the 
  theory is magnified out of proportion. Factors related to social dynamics – even those 
  caused by the racism itself – are instead blamed on genetics or even the will of a divine 
  agent. At the extremes this discourse will try to exterminate the supposedly inferior 
  models, but more often it merely seeks to keep the social structure in such a state as to 
  keep it model at a distinct advantage. Racism also often makes the claim of defense, 
  leading its members to believe they are under threat of oppression by those under 
  them, and thus they have to do what they do in order to keep from being themselves 
  put down. Quite often, once the system is structured to favor a given model the other 
  models will buy into the message as well as actually perform the majority of the day to 
  day operations of the racist engine by keeping their own members down through 
  ostracizing those who manage to rise up and out, claiming they are race traitors or 
  worse. Racism works this way in something of a nasty feedback cycle – with each end 
  used to justify and enable the other. Combating it thus becomes no easy task. 
  The official policy of the JF is one of zero tolerance on racism. The Ministry of 
  Applied Memetics considers it a very dangerous deviant discourse and the government 
  puts considerable resources into combating the issue. With twelve million people of 
  varying ethnicities and subspecies all packed into the same space station, the opinion 
  is that society cannot afford racial tensions. That, however, is not enough to actually 
  remove the problem. There have always been tensions between the different groups, 
  and there is a definite hierarchy that puts Chinese and Europeans above everyone else. 
  Other groups exist in a slightly lower status, with bioroids and anthros at the bottom of 
  the social order, though many bioroids can move up if they are able to seem enough like 
  baseline humans. Note that despite this official position, the JF also promotes specism 
  against 'combat anthros' – animals 'uplifted' to human or near intelligence.
  ●
  Shells
  Chroming is the fashion of replacing the organic with the cybernetic. The far extreme 
  of chroming is to get shelled. A shelled individual has abandoned every last part of 
  their body they could do away with and still survive - which in the era of the JF means 
  you have a brain in a robot 'shell' with built in life support systems. Some of them keep 
  a few other organs - such as natural eyes, reproductive systems, or even a heart. The 
  general appearance of the typical 'shell' is humanoid and somewhat skeletal. While a 
  head might exist with eyes and a speaker, the brain is usually kept in the chest cavity 
  behind radiation shielding.
  Many shells can survive in the cold of space for limited durations. If the brain 
  is kept in a sealed environment the only concerns will be providing nourishment and 
  waste disposal for it, as well as temperature maintenance. For those shells capable of 
  providing enough heat to keep the brain comfortable, nourishment can be found from 
  processing nearly any organic matter. In space drifters and other small communities 
  can be raided for their 'organic value', and the JF does in fact use this as a means of 
  'cleaning' drifters off the exterior 'shell' of the station - turning a blind eye to what it's 
  own shell extremists do 'on the outside.'
  The 'shell' culture is an extremely deviant meme according to the Ministry of 
  Applied Memetics, and the process is illegal in all of the JF outside of New Beijing and 
  a few mining colonies on some of Jupiter's moons. Being Shelled is only illegal in New 
  Rome, but as an extreme meme it is legal grounds anywhere to be evicted or fired from 
  any dwelling or job. The JF government does not employ shells in any public positions, 
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  but it does keep some of them in the military and among some of its 'interspace black 
  ops' teams.
  A number of shells suffer assorted psychological problems. Not so much as a 
  result of becoming shelled, but rather these conditions are what drove them to such an 
  extreme choice to begin with. They may suffer from delusions, be severely iconoclastic, 
  megalomania, fear of people, extreme tech fetishism, anti-religion fanaticism, sexual 
  deviancy, or other 'socially isolating deviant memes'.
  ●
  Sexual Deviancy
  On the JF sexual deviancy is not about your preferred sex or your means and methods 
  so much as it is about your preferred age and the interaction of sexuality with violence 
  and consent. It is not a deviant meme in JF to prefer multiple partners or to prefer a 
  single partner. Nor is it seen as deviant to cross racial, ethnic, or subspecies lines. It is 
  seen as deviant to cross the line between some form of human and some form of 
  animal, but in this regard an altered-human anthro is seen as human. Animal is seen 
  as a combat anthro or non-uplifted animal. Note however that interaction between a 
  form of human and a combat anthro is only seen as a mild deviancy (however, a human 
  who is not racist against a combat anthro is seen as deviant for lacking this racism – 
  and two mild deviancies can stack to make one seen as notably deviant), however a 
  preference for non-uplifted 'regular' animals is seen as an extreme deviancy. Both of 
  these are uncommon issues however as combat anthros and regular animals are 
  uncommon in the JF beyond small pets and fish.
  Crossing the age of consent line, or preferring unconsensual sexual partners 
  are seen as extreme forms of criminal deviancy. Note that age of consent varies 
  between humans, altered humans, and combat anthros. The JF takes a relaxed view 
  when all parties are below the age of consent and of similar age to each other – but if 
  there is someone involved even indirectly who is over the age, that person is seen as 
  criminally deviant.
  Consent can also be blurred in the JF when it comes to indentured persons. If 
  the conditions of their indentured status are structured accordingly, consent can be 
  presumed, and activity therein is not seen by the JF as being deviant (despite such as 
  assumption being absurd by 20th century standards).
  Violence in a sexual context is always seen as deviant, even where consent 
  exists. Consent defines whether or not it is also criminal. In this regard an indentured 
  contract cannot be structured to presume consent for anything but the most mild forms 
  of violence.
  ●
  Substance Abuse
  The use of drugs to induce an altered state of consciousness is perhaps one of the oldest 
  social traditions of humanity. By law the JF allows some minor substance abuse, but 
  strongly monitors usage to prevent over abuse. Alcohol and other drugs cannot be 
  bought on the street or kept in the home other than a limit of 1 bottle of synthetic wine 
  per adult per week. Sale and usage must otherwise be done in the same public place, a 
  place licensed for the purpose. Commonly this includes pubs and nightclubs as well as 
  some brothels and bathhouses. A number of synthetic drugs are available to induce a 
  minor high without risk of addiction (in theory) in addition to strains of marijuana 
  which have been gene altered to remove their addictive qualities. None of these are 
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  smoked or injected, but rather either eaten or drunk.
  Jovian law allows for a light buzz or high, but not being fully drunk or stoned. 
  To be served a mind altering substance one must first submit to a quick test to 
  determine where you fall on the line. If you are over your limit, you cannot legally 
  continue. Officially this is thought to lighten up inhibitions and bring people together, 
  but not let them go over the edge.
  The Ministry of Applied Memetics considers substance abuse to be a severely 
  deviant meme. If you consistently seek out your limit or find ways to go beyond it the 
  state will consider you a threat to society, otherwise your habits will be filed away 
  under your meme profile and may affect your employment or education opportunities.
  ● Five Cities
  Five cities make up the urban side of the Mosquito, each having its 
  own distinctive history and flavor. They are New Rome, New 
  Beijing,  Jovia, Bath, and Station 7. Station 7 accounts for about 
  10% of the population, Bath about 15%, and the core cities about 
  25% each.
  New Rome, New Beijing, and Jovia exist on the main wheel 
  which revolves around the inner needle at a radius of 40 miles, 
  giving the wheel a circumference of 251.3 miles. That leaves each 
  city roughly 41.9 miles long, and in addition, 4 miles wide. The 
  surface area on the outside is therefore just over that of three San 
  Franciscos. 'Up' is considered in, and the wheel spins counterclockwise making the compass directions 
  'spinward', 'planetside' to the left of spinward, 'spaceside' to the right, and ‘counterspinward’, which is 
  usually just called 'backward'. Powerful lights are mounted on the ‘ceiling’ spinning counterclockwise 
  at a slower rate to create the effect of a rising and setting sun for 12 hours of day and 12 of night. 
  There is no actual direct view of space due to the radiation shielding. Heat is maintained internally to 
  82 Fahrenheit at noon and 68 at midnight. Other than New Beijing there is no rain in the cities but 
  there are light clouds. The architecture of each city is laid out on a neat grid with buildings rising as 
  much as 70 floors and often connected to each other above ground as well as below. Transit tubes are 
  all below ground. Lanes for taxis, motorcycles and government vehicles parallel the tubes one sub level 
  up and often run up into buildings and alongside the above ground connections between them. Further 
  transit tubes run up along the wheel spokes to the needle, with elevator shafts alongside of them for 
  smaller vehicles to be carried through. Any vehicle which goes 'up the wheel' must however be 
  equipped to mount itself onto the small-vessel rail system for operation in low or zero gravity. If not, it 
  can only 'go up' by being carried within some other vehicle – and ferries exist for this purpose to move 
  small vehicles from and to the wheel cities and Station 7. Only the Transit tubes operate in Bath. 
  Ground level of all five cities is reserved for foot traffic and bicycles. Taxi and Transit is cheap – taxis 
  are the JF versions of $1 per 3 miles, and transit is 50¢ anywhere inside a city, and $1 to go to another 
  city.
  Each city is connected to its sisters by three highways that run through 
  the forests at the planetside and spaceside edges as well as through the 
  center – 200 meters up from forest ground level for the center and at 
  forest ground level for the other two. There are emergency exits into the 
  forests every three miles along these, but they are not even regularly 
  used by the rangers.
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  Shipping and delivery between the cities is handled by cargo trains on the transit tubes and 
  once in the ‘city proper’ managed by a mix of bicycle, motorcycle, taxi, and air car. All government 
  buildings on all stations as well as buildings that once held the major Earthbound corporations have 
  private underground transit lines to feed in and out cargo from the transit tubes.
  The forests are filled with high oxygen yielding plants on the top level (1 km up from what is 
  ground level for the cities) and farms at the lower level (500 meters up from city ground level). 
  Machinery is placed below the farms. The farms are used to grow foods as well as hemp and bamboo – 
  two plants that can be used for wood, paper, and textiles while being quick growing and easy to recycle. 
  Even with that, there are only six farms total that grow these plants. Primary food plants are those 
  found in what one might think of as Chinese and Italian styles of cooking. No livestock is grown on the 
  station other than salmon, and that only in enough amounts to allow the population an average of one 
  fish per week to ensure sufficient protein. If nothing else, a combat anthro might be quickly found from 
  his unusual levels of protein consumption. The only other non-vital foods grown on the station are 
  coffee, tea, mint, and spices.
  Station 7 was crudely mounted on to the top of the needle some decades ago, and has since 
  been attached in a much more stable manner. It spins at a much faster pace than pace than the wheel 
  cities and a newcomer will likely suffer a feeling of vertigo for the first week to month they spend 
  there. Bath by contrast rests slightly within the atmosphere and does not spin at all. It is the only part 
  of the Mosquito where the gravitational pull is the same direction at that of Jupiter. Around bath is a 
  belt of habitation modules for permanent residents which do spin at a rate similar to that od Station 7 
  and thus causing the same vertigo effect for newcomers.
  ● New Rome – population 3,045,500
  New Rome was the former EU city, and has architecture built to remind its occupants of what 
  classical Rome might look like if they had used steel, ceramic, plastic, and skyscrapers. New 
  Rome's buildings are never connected above ground by anything more than foot paths between 
  nearby construction, though most buildings have landing pads for air cars on the roof, or if tall 
  on the 35th and 70th floors. The streets are full are Mediterranean trees and bushes as well as 
  small parks for people to gather and socialize. Most of these parks include recreation facilities 
  such as pools made to look like ponds, tennis and basketball courts, and so on.
  Urban planning is laid out to maximize the need to use public space. Residential and 
  commercial space is never in the same building, and one often needs to walk through at least 
  one park or open air market to get to work. Street vendors and performers are encouraged. No 
  license is needed to open a small stall other than registering (without fee) to claim the spot you 
  place it in. Monthly lotteries are used for open air street stalls to ensure the best locations 
  rotate through the community. While no measures are taken to hide or zone pubs, brothels, 
  clubs, and other forms of 'vice' entertainment, alcohol served in these places is carefully 
  monitored to ensure compliance with the substance abuse laws (which allow a person to be 
  tipsy but not drunk). This monitoring requires customers be scanned before being served – 
  though some get around this by having someone else order their drink for them. These 
  businesses can be found anywhere other public businesses are found. No zoning laws mandate 
  a certain distance between types of businesses, and it is not unknown for a brothel, school, pub, 
  and church to all be in the same building. That said, schools, churches, theaters, and other 
  places for people to gather get priority of presence in New Rome.
  New Rome has the largest university on the Mosquito, situated in the city center across 
  the street from City Hall on one side and the Colosseum on the other. It is a large campus, but 
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  built vertical so that it only fills a single block. The Colosseum next to it houses all manner of 
  entertainment on the first ten floors and then tops off with a structure built to resemble the 
  ancient Roman Colosseum but used to house much less violent sports such as football (soccer to 
  Americans), wrestling, music concerts, and even theatrical plays. City Hall resembles the 
  ancient Roman Senate, but with twenty additional floors beneath it. It is unique in the 
  Mosquito as the only government building where any citizen can freely walk in (after a full 
  search for weapons) and enter any room in the place and use any resource found therein. 
  Which makes it more like a public library with a grand debate hall than what most people 
  think of as a City Hall. Typically, if the Mayor of New Rome wishes to have a private meeting, 
  she must do it somewhere other than in her official office. However by city regulation, any 
  governmental business of the city must be conducted in public (excepting business between 
  New Rome and the governments of other JF cities or the JF national government).
  Housing in New Rome tends to be communal. Individual rooms are either shared like 
  dormitories or barely more than enough to hold a bed and a dresser. As much as possible, 
  windows face to the outside, communal hallways and between rooms (to intentionally make 
  privacy difficult). Rooms and even apartments often lack doors, or if they have them may still 
  lack locks. It is impossible to find a studio or one bedroom apartment within the city. The city 
  was built to drive you into the public for most of your needs. The room you sleep in will share 
  communal kitchens, dining rooms, living rooms, and bathrooms with those of many other 
  families, like the long houses of south east Asia. If you live in New Rome, you must get used to 
  sharing every aspect of your life with others. Most people in the SIN casting business live in 
  this city, as there are no privacy rights in New Rome.
  New Rome it would seem does not even understand the concept of privacy. In an 
  extreme of the 'public life of the socialist ideal' what doors exist are installed after market. At 
  most, sliding panels or curtains may be included for aesthetic appeal, but an open walkway is 
  the norm. In a controlled environment, wind and dust blowing in are not major concerns – so 
  there is no need for a door when all of life is to be shared. The multi-family shared homes offer 
  no privacy, even in sleep. It is not too unusual to go to sleep and wake up in the morning with a 
  'new friend' having chosen your room at some point in the night as a place to sleep.
  The above said, New Rome has adopted since the revolution to accept that rooms with 
  doors on them in homes should not be entered without knocking, and if they have locks, not at 
  all without an invitation. Persons of cultures other than Civitas almost always add doors to 
  their homes – usually with locks, though many Mzuzi do not use locks or even doors.
  Public space is maximized with parks, sidewalks. Rapid transit is kept underground or 
  in arial tubeways. Police here smile and remind you to 'have a nice day citizen' in their bright 
  and cheery uniforms as they casually stroll seemingly unarmed through the living room you 
  and ten other families share during their morning beat. And if there aren't birds chirping in 
  those trees, they've probably piped in music of birds chirping. But do not assume these police 
  are not dangerous – with increased public exposure into homes, there is a much lower 
  tolerance for those who abuse that exposure. New Roman police will react with greater force 
  than in most of the JF to violent crimes on residential space. Such criminals are less likely to 
  survive making it to court than in any other part of the JF.
  Ground level roads in New Rome have no space for anything but foot traffic. 
  Motorcycles, taxis, and the like all operate in above ground tubeways or in a web of 
  interconnecting sublevel tunnels. The transit system is hyper complex and extremely fast. 
  Public transit will always outpace the roadways of private transit – by intentional design. 
  People only rely on taxis or private vehicles when they have 'too many' packages or need to 
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  35
  
  leave the city.
  Parks and plazas are everywhere, with many playgrounds, stands to speak on with 
  benches gathered around for people to stop and listen, artificial ponds with beaches complete 
  with simulated waves, courts and fields to play sports in, open air coffee houses, com signal 
  boosting and cameras everywhere so you can always know exactly where your friends are, open 
  air markets, and every other means they can devise to make life a public affair.
  The Garden of paradise in New Rome is everywhere, and it comes on with an 
  oppressive weight upon anyone not accustomed to 'public life'. New Rome puts you out there, 
  lacking in privacy. Strangers will walk into your home without a second thought. People will 
  expect you to be involved in every little affair the community undertakes. You will be taxed of 
  most of your income to support programs you may not even be making any advantage of. 
  Others will discuss your personal business openly. There are cameras everywhere, and they 
  are always on. The city was defined by the Civitas, and remains under their sway more so than 
  any other city keeps to its original culture.
  However since the Revolution, New Rome have had to deal with the concept of private 
  ownership of people and property. The slaves of the state now belong to individual masters. 
  You can no longer just hop on a bicycle and go where you need to go. At least, unless it is one of 
  the majority that belong to the city government. Taking what clothing is lying around is now 
  an issue of theft unless it was marked with a Civitas tag. Civitas free love and communal 
  sharing can receive a notably violent reaction from those outside the culture – and police will 
  support those defending themselves. Some doors have begun to be locked.
  For their part, Civitass in the city of New Rome have taken to signaling their status with 
  implant coms that broadcast their nature to their fellow citizens. They mark 'Civitas property' 
  with tags or com signals – making it free for anyone to use as long as it isn't taken out of the 
  city for longer than a 'short trip' (what that means depends on how the item is usually used). 
  They have learned to give the 'alieni' (outsiders) a little space.
  But such tolerance only goes so far. Every aspect of the city is built for public life, and those 
  who bring privacy in with them will face a difficult time as they are taxed to fund the public 
  sphere, taxed to buy 'Civitas property' for public distribution, taxed to fund the cameras put in 
  their homes, and fail to find any place to be suitably alone.
  ● New Beijing – population 2,945,000
  New Beijing was put into place by the Chinese government, and has a very different feel from 
  New Rome. Every effort has been made with New Beijing to minimize the ability of any large 
  group of people to gather. While the streets are lined with trees there are no public parks. The 
  average block consists of a large central building that houses apartments up top and 
  businesses down below. Ringing this building will be a number of smaller buildings that were 
  intended to hold convenience shops, small centers of regulated vice, eateries, police boxes, 
  primary schools, and pickup / delivery stations. The second floor of all of these buildings with 
  hold a two person wide walkway to the central building, many of these still have the waist high 
  divider for to and from traffic. Today the small buildings will hold nearly any type of business 
  that finds the space useful. Every central building holds two aircar landing pads on the roof. 
  Formerly one was reserved for government and police, but today they are usually both open to 
  regular traffic needs.
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  36
  
  New Beijing has no public space or culture beyond the bare minimum needed to keep 
  the flow of humanity going. The streets are narrow - three lanes total with the middle going to 
  the dominant direction at a given time of day, and no space for foot traffic. It is the only city 
  with ground traffic, whereas other cities use sub levels and overhead tube ways. 
  The design is such that a person under the Chinese government rarely had to leave 
  their block unless they were going to work in the needle – which accounted for about half of the 
  population. Transit lines in New Beijing all work to funnel people towards the elevators and 
  'up / down' transit lines that go to the needle. From these central spots other lines will take one 
  to the highways that connect the city to New Rome or Jovia, or perhaps back out to some other 
  point in the city. Traffic on these highways can continue under the city without interruption, 
  and the -only six- entrances and exits all have large stations for the former Chinese 
  government to conduct immigration checks on anyone entering or leaving. Today these stations 
  serve as the largest open markets with a lot of new construction built to let people wander 
  about freely but with minimal social contact. New Beijingers are so used to this traffic funnel 
  that even in giving direction between two points only a few blocks apart they will start from a 
  transit station and describe only the path to the destination from there.
  New Beijing's layout puts a lot of small alleys around each central building, and even 
  the main roads on the grid are often not much wider than the alleys. None of these roads have 
  sidewalks, and it is the only city on the Mosquito that allows motorcycle and taxi traffic at 
  ground level – which serves to strongly discourage a street culture. Its streets are the most 
  dangerous in the JF. During Chinese colonial government any non-political crime committed 
  'outside' and off of commute hours was officially -not- investigated, no matter how many 
  witnesses there were. Inside a building however, received extreme attention.
  All of the buildings in New Beijing can be sealed off, and dividing walls can rise up out 
  of the streets to isolate blocks when needed. In the days of Chinese rule these buildings could 
  then be pumped full of gases to 'cleanse' problem zones or make examples while minimizing 
  'extraneous losses' In the modern post revolution, the machines that pumped that gas have 
  been gutted and left bare - even though that space and machinery could have been used to 
  cheapen air filtration. Today this ability to seal off sits unused and often in intentional 
  disrepair, though the raising of streets is still functional as it is used to lift up low risers (3 feet 
  hight) to determine which direction gets the third lane at what time of day.
  The post revolution era has added police to the street, but it is actually more dangerous 
  than before thanks to the modern freedom to put your business in any of those lower floor 
  surrounding buildings. Today people often have to regularly walk those alleys whereas before 
  they were only there to get you from home to transit station.
  Other than the markets at the six stations there is nowhere in New Beijing that one 
  can set up a street stall to sell their wares. Even in the areas that now house night clubs one 
  has to go from small diner to coffee house to club to get a snack between parties. Every public 
  theater in New Beijing dates to after the Revolution, and most of them are small, never hosting 
  live events. They do however, make the best places in the Mosquito to find pre-SIN pre-
  Holo-3D cinema.
  There is one small university in New Beijing, holding perhaps a fourth of the students 
  of the one in New Rome. Primary and secondary education is still limited to the neighborhood 
  schools, and the culture of the city mostly favors the apprenticeship method. That said, today 
  the New Beijing university has a focus on the visual arts – with the only full college program 
  for painters, sculptors, and graphic designers in the JF. This university is crammed out by the 
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  37
  
  'backward' end of the center just before the forest wall and separated by the highway gate to 
  Jovia with only a single block of alleys holding small art galleries, tea and coffee shops, and the 
  odd vice oriented establishments. Artists come here to all be different together, and New 
  Beijing is the place to be if you want to be just as different and individual as everyone else.
  The contrast between New Beijing and New Rome could not be more severe. It is all 
  about the management of urban space to create order along a desired ideology. New Beijing is 
  the Capitalist Utopia. It is all about wealth, power, privacy, and individualism. Power of the 
  privileged and distract the masses with luxury. New Rome is the Socialist Community Utopia. 
  It is all about equalizing the citizenry and bringing together the diaspora to create the ideal 
  public life. New Beijing maximizes private space at the expense of public, New Rome 
  maximizes public space at the expense of private.
  Despite the oppressive outdoor nature of New Beijing, inside it holds the most 
  luxurious homes anywhere off Earth, with the smallest apartment starting at 3000 square feet 
  and the average at 5000. Some even take a whole floor of the building they occupy. Most New 
  Beijing home windows are mirrored so that light gets in but not out, increasing privacy while 
  allowing for greater light energy efficiency. A New Beijing home will always be wired with 
  luxury in mind, under the idea that you should never have to leave unless you need to go to 
  work. A built in entertainment and Com system can be assumed, and most buildings will offer 
  a choice of robotic or human (usually altered human) maids. Nearly all of your needs can be 
  delivered to your door, and even your trash can be sent out through a private chute.
  The layout of the city remains as it would require downing too many homes and 
  business to change - and those who prefer the 'soloist' culture of 'independence from obligation 
  to society and others' have flocked to the city for the luxury and -privacy- it affords.
  That luxury and privacy are extreme. Under China New Beijing built up a wealthy 
  population of capitalists and armed them to the teeth with 'private – toys.' Genetically 
  engineered anthropomorphs for concubines / maids / servants / tutors / nannies / pets (often all 
  in one engineered slave in order to minimize the numbers of different human contacts), media 
  entertainment centers, luxurious homes with saunas, CGI-views of beautiful landscapes, all 
  the latest SIN-tech, imported Earth goods and hardwood furnishings, sound and shatter proof 
  walls, windows, ceilings, and floors, corporate level computer and data access tech, every 
  wondrous home gadget possible, and so on. New Beijing'ers had every toy imaginable. They got 
  Marie's cake, but it still didn't stop the revolution.
  As long as they never left their homes unless they had to for such work that couldn't be 
  done by telecommuting, they lived in private gardens of eden. But step outside and they 
  entered into a nightmare hell of darkness, cold unpredictable rain, uncontrolled violence with 
  thugs openly sanctioned by the state, and a constant fear that around every alley they would 
  face death, the arm of the state, or both.
  After the revolution the streets were cleared of the government thugs, and real police 
  moved in, but given the layout street crime actually went up.
  It is also the only city that, until the revolution, had no churches, no open-air shopping 
  (you got everything delivered and could send your anthro out as a private shopper), no 
  restaurants, no meeting halls, no night clubs, and so on. Pre revolution New Beijingers tended 
  to meet their mates online through government run dating services, and were often encouraged 
  to stay single and make contracts over ownership of children. 'Pleasure of company' could be 
  had through anonymous sources ordered from the privacy of home, or in house anthro slaves. 
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  38
  
  Post revolution, local soloists make for awkward dates as they are a bit more self obsessed than 
  other JF citizens.
  As a final measure of ‘isolation culture’ New Beijing (and the forests between the cities) 
  is the only place in the JF and possibly the only place off Earth where it rains. And it rains a 
  lot, at least 2 hours a day in random intervals. The rain is not, primarily, the product of clouds, 
  but of the waterworks in the city as built by the Chinese. It was intentionally randomized to 
  prevent the inhabitants from being able to plan around it and stay street active without getting 
  wet. That it also created enough condensation for occasional rain clouds was an added bonus. 
  After the Revolution and a lot of hot debate from the residents of other cities the rain was left 
  in place as a part of the city’s distinctive character. Not only does it rain in New Beijing, but 
  the lights are always just slightly dimmer and the “sun” (lighting) rises an hour late only to set 
  an hour early.
  With its Chinese roots, pre revolution New Beijing had zero known Muslims among the 
  population. Today however it houses the largest community of Faithful within the JF due to 
  the architecture's ability to allow you to be completely ignored by your neighbors.
  ● Jovia – population 3,019,500
  Jovia presented a puzzle to the original designers of the Mosquito. It was built to house the 
  foreign workers and had to do so in a manner that satisfied both the EU and the Chinese and 
  did not serve to make the residents feel greater loyalty to either side. The original design left 
  every third block undeveloped. The developed blocks all held exactly four buildings exactly 30 
  stories tall and painted, going clockwise from spinward-spaceside, sky-blue, white, yellow, and 
  then lime-green, always in the same pattern. To this day, an address in Jovia refers to block, 
  color, and then apartment number. The apartments inside were all built to exactly 800 square 
  feet with two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a small living room. The ground floor of all 
  buildings was reserved for commercial space, and the 15th floor for office space. Each floor 
  would then hold two communal kitchens. All roads where the same width and built for 
  pedestrian or bicycle traffic. All buildings were further connected by a walkway and motorcycle 
  lane running alongside the 15th floor. Transit stations came up from the underground on the 
  spinward-planetside corner of all of the vacant blocks. The highways had 12 entry / exit points 
  – one on each side where the city met a forest and two more evenly spaced within the city. 
  Parking for such being entirely 'underground'. At each of these highway spots an elevator and 
  up-bound transit tube would carry traffic to the needle.
  After that, a budget was alloted to allow the future residents to fill in the vacant blocks 
  to their own desires, and local government was left up to them, with a garrison of mixed EU 
  and Chinese police to keep them from 'getting out of line'. The majority of people brought over 
  to the station to live in Jovia came from South America and Africa, and they used most of the 
  empty blocks to build parks, plazas, open markets, dance halls, churches, mosques, and 
  entertainment centers. The original city design had no schools or universities, and it still lacks 
  a university, though primary, secondary, trade school, and junior college education centers 
  have been spread throughout the area – often by filling in the first three floors of one of the 
  vacant blocks, and then leaving steps, escalators, and elevators on all four sides up to the roof 
  which houses some open air function – vaguely resembling an Aztec pyramid from the outside. 
  The city's many two year trade schools that can be used to transition on to apprenticeship – 
  and about half the student body of these are corporate or small business indentured.
  Jovia is now somewhat in between New Rome and New Beijing in the feel it leaves you 
  with. You can live somewhat privately, but cannot fully escape your community. That serves to 
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  39
  
  keep people socializing and working together but without giving them a need to be political 
  about it. With every dwelling built to the exact same dimensions and layout there is reduced 
  competition over homes and less of a sense of class in Jovia. However, it can also make the area 
  feel something like 20th century track home suburbia. With the need to fill in their own space, 
  the people of Jovia were the first to come together into a culture of their own, the Mzuzi, and 
  separate from their Earth roots. Life in Jovia is all about cultural innovation and experiencing 
  new things. Startup businesses prefer to be located here for the image it brings them, and new 
  trends or fashions are often first spotted in Jovia's gathering places – despite the community 
  nature of New Rome. While new Rome is all about a public life, and New Beijing all about a 
  secret life, Jovia is all about an original life. You come to New Rome to join the group, to New 
  Beijing to escape it, but to Jovia to start and define it.
  ● Bath – population 1,791,700
  Bath was built to be the most luxurious resort spot in the entire domain of human existence. 
  So much so that the very staff working there was gene engineered to fill the role. The Chinese 
  supplied the human-anthros and the EU supplied the toy-bioroids, both built to please the 
  most pampered and exotic tastes among the wealthy members of mankind. The city is built as 
  a largely vertical enterprise with no more ground space than San Francisco – a diameter of 7 
  miles in an upright standing (like a drinking glass) cylinder that does not spin with down at 
  the base. The buildings average 40 floors and are interconnected every 10 floors. Every roof 
  also holds an air car port. This makes the city seem much smaller than those on the wheel – 
  but that is because permanent residential space actually exists on a spinning ring outside the 
  city and reachable by angled shafts coming out of the city center. Inside the city, about half of 
  the space is taken up with luxurious gardens and a long weaving interconnected pool with 
  bridges running over and under. Natural gravity is fairly light in the city (0.3g) and as such 
  nearly all of the JF's winged bioroids resides within Bath – the only place they can actually fly.
  Most of the residential space on the ring was built in the dorm fashion – to give the 
  altered human slaves a place to sleep and breed and spend just enough time to avoid low 
  gravity decay. Today most of this has been converted over to apartments – but the entire place 
  does still have the feel of being very much inside of a giant winding building with millions of 
  doors on each side of a central corridor. About half the apartments have private facilities, and 
  the other half still use the old system of communal kitchens, bathrooms, and nurseries. For 
  having such luxury in the city core you must then be willing to sleep in nearly Spartan 
  conditions.
  While the city core may have once been full of an extremely decadent mix of vice and 
  luxury with hotels, casinos, bathhouses and brothels none of this has been converted to 
  housing due to issues of gravity. It has however been converted to just about every form of 
  active time purpose a population might need. That conversion includes government as Bath 
  holds the seat of parliament for the Jovian Federation, operating out of what was once a luxury 
  hotel. Transportation within Bath is served by three underground transit lines in concentric 
  rings and a number of air car taxis. Elevators can take people and cargo up or down the needle.
  ● Station 7 – 1,198,300
  Built by American corporations, Station 7 gets its bland name from being the seventh of 
  thirteen stations to be placed in Jovian orbit by that nation. Of them, 4 were lost in the wars – 
  3, 6, 11, and 12. Most of them were built as either research, housing, or military platforms. 
  Station 7 was research and housing. It was made as a cylinder with a 2 mile radius spinning 
  fast enough to generate 1g at the ground habitation level. Under that level exist ten sub levels 
  of machinery and a final outer level full of labs, telescopes, and test equipment. About half of 
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  these labs were destroyed during the Revolution. The station originally had a second cylinder 
  mounted on to it making it look something like a weight lifting dumbbell. This second cylinder 
  contained the stations food and oxygen generation needs – which oddly enough included two 
  large cattle ranches. That second cylinder now lies somewhere deep within the Jovian 
  atmosphere crushed by pressure into a small ball, if not burned up into its molten elemental 
  parts. The present remaining station was mounted on to the Mosquito, and half of the land 
  space within was converted over to farm and forest land. To further meet the JF's needs, the 
  surviving station 8 was made into farmland – its population having been wiped out when 
  power was cut during the war long enough for it to drop to 'background space temperature'. 
  That station now keeps a near orbit to the Mosquito.
  Station 7 is the only station whose streets do not use a perfect grid pattern. A grid 
  exists cutting the station into twenty segments, and these were then auctioned off to American 
  contractors for development each thus has its own style an in many ways they resemble an 
  American suburb. The grids lay out such that there are four going from planet side to spaceside 
  – the 'vertical' of the cylinder, and then 5 wrap around the inside of the cylinder such that the 
  first touches both the last and the second. They are labeled from numbers 1 to 4 going vertical 
  and A to E going around the cylinder. The bulk of commercial and business development rests 
  on grids 'A3', 'B2', 'C3', 'D2', and 'E3' – meaning that A3 and E3 touch forming the 'downtown'. 
  It is also the only place on the Mosquito where shopping resembles an American mall rather 
  than open markets, street store front, or large department stores where each floor is split to 
  open space between different vendors (an open market inside a building). No building in 
  Station 7 can be over 30 stories in height by JF regulation. Most of the former single family 
  homes were torn down after the revolution with apartments built over them. Today there are 
  only some 2000 single family homes built in the American suburb style, but at 1800 square feet 
  – with their own fenced in little bit of space around them they form the most exclusive property 
  in all of the Jovian Federation and exist in two neighborhoods in grids 'C1' and 'B4' – 
  surrounded by farms. Many of the elites of national government in Bath keep their private 
  homes here, as do the wealthiest members of the nation and its top celebrities.
  The apartments on Station 7 were built to resembles styles from American or middle 
  Eastern cities. You will find something looking like a metallic Victorian next to a semi-pyramid 
  with an attached minaret for the call to prayer. Other buildings might resemble styles from 
  ancient Persia, New York, modern Iraq or Turkey, the American Southwest, or New England, 
  and so on. While they might resemble these roots, they are built to a different scale and of 
  more modern materials – much like the theme cities of Las Vegas. The apartments on Station 
  7 range in size from 750 to 1500 square feet and can be found as studios on up to three 
  bedroom affairs. Normally one will have a private bathroom, living room, and kitchen, but 
  communal models exist as well.
  Within each grid the streets can wind in any number of patterns with numerous alleys 
  further connecting them. Unlike New Beijing post war construction has placed many small 
  thin woods and vegetable gardens around these so-called alleys, making them a lot more 
  visually exposed. Ground level traffic is reserved for foot and bicycle, but along the main grid 
  roads a second level 50 meters up holds taxi and motorcycle traffic. On the inside of the grids 
  the core arteries of these will tend to keep the second level road which will slowly lower down a 
  ramp into exists for parking designed to make any given destination within two blocks of a 
  vehicle. Transit tube traffic in Station 7 stops everywhere the grids have an intersection point 
  – making it a lot less accessible than some of the other Mosquito cities. Typically one takes a 
  taxi to the transit stop, and goes from there.
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  41
  
  ● Solar Powers
  There are three main power blocks in the system.
  T
  United Nations - population 28 billion, 13 on Earth, 3 in orbit or moon.
  The UN has established global government and turned all of the former nations into 
  confederated states - meaning they have near full local autonomy, but no military rights and 
  must adhere to UN resolutions over trade, territory, rights, and dealing with 'foreign powers'. 
  Colonies off Earth are organized into their own states with slightly subordinate status to those 
  on planet - being less powerful the further they are from home. Earth is normally in the 
  business of offloading its people into the space colonies in a major way, moving as many people 
  as possible every year. However in the two decades after the Solar Revolution the flow went 
  the other way as the planet rebuilt up from half its current numbers. Officially the UN 
  recognizes no other government as having legal authority over the human species. It sees the 
  outer colonies as 'rogue provinces' that will eventually be brought into line. UN space starts 
  with Earth and goes inwards toward the Sun.
  w Mars - population 1 billion.
  A military state that does much to buffer the JF and the UN against each other, and possibly 
  play them off against each other as well. While well armed, Mars has been proved to not have 
  the resources to take the rest of the system. Martian control starts with Mars, and faces the 
  natural buffer of the Asteroid Belt to keep it contained. Mars uses breeding farms akin to those 
  used to produce the early anthro and bioroid populations and has as a result tripled its 
  population since the wars, with 2/3s of all Martians being between the age of 15 and 22. It is 
  still at less than a third of its prewar population.
  s
  Jupiter - pop 30-32 million, 12 million of which are on 'The Mosquito'.
  The Jovian Federation exercises control over Jupiter and her moons. Ever since the wars, 
  Jupiter has been home to vast stretches of 'ghost ships / stations'. Most of these lack the power 
  and air to be repopulated, and as the JF has chosen not to force breed its population up it will 
  be many decades before all the 'land' is recovered. JF studies estimate that with no more 
  construction than providing life support the nation could safely expand out to a population of 1 
  billion merely by retaking empty stations, and that is given that half of all Jovian stations 
  were lost into the atmosphere during the wars. Pre-war Jovian construction was just big, with 
  the UN planning to move a massive proportion of humanity to the region around Jupiter. 
  Because of their economic power they hold sway over nearly all the colonies in the outer 
  planets, but this influence is no stronger than a powerful state over the 'banana republics' 
  indebted to it. Jupiter has the effect of keeping the outer planets and rogue colonies from 
  'organizing'.
  Other powers:
  O Asteroid Belt - pop unknown (maybe less than 2 million).
  The Asteroid belt is full of small independent mines, pirates, freebooters, anarchists, and 
  wreckage. It was also the resource used to build much of the construction in the outer system, 
  and as such there are empty mines, gutted rocks, and lost machinery everywhere - much of it 
  built on older technology. The net result is that the Belt is the best place to go to get lost, if you 
  can figure out how to survive.
  c
  The Outer Systems – population in the low millions.
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  42
  
  Human activity was only just beginning to really expand into the outer solar system when the 
  revolution kicked off. The stations here are small. Mostly outposts, with a few smaller cities for 
  habitation and resources. Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and beyond are all smaller colonies 
  of no more than a few million each that are economically beholden to Jupiter, Mars, and the 
  UN in one way or another. The presence of the Jovian Federation has however, kept them from 
  falling under the military sway of any one power. That said, many of them are hotbeds of 
  intrigue as different powers work to gain sway over them.
  ● International Law and Diplomacy
  In the old days nations had embassies and everybody knew that you didn't arrest a diplomat 
  and you didn't force your way into an embassy. All of that went away the day the second 
  national power put up a permanent settlement in space.
  In space, it only takes a small amount of lethal virus to wipe out a civilization. On the older 
  stations, a power failure could send everyone to their end. One computer virus or one viral 
  meme could send everything into chaos. Causing mayhem was just too easy.
  As a result, there is no solar settlement that won't search anyone coming aboard down to 
  the internal level, if possible. Many will restrict the flow of data into and out of their borders. 
  Even diplomatic 'papers' (data really) and personal will be searched if it moves across or into / 
  out of a single 'state line'. The old era concept of diplomatic immunity is today, very limited.
  In the classic sense you needed diplomatic protection to facilitate communication. In the 
  early space age, most communication was no longer in person, diplomats no longer served that 
  vital role when heads of state and their ministers can communicate directly over data lines. 
  Hacking has since weakened this ability, and diplomats are now back in use to a limited 
  degree, which party having the rely on its own lines and systems to be secure enough to reach 
  its own diplomats, who then communicate in person. Immunity now extends only to one's 
  official acts done as a representative of one's government, and to freedom of movement into and 
  out of foreign territory. Beyond this, all that protects are local laws and a sort of 'international 
  peace'. A diplomat who commits what is seen as a justly defined crime will face prosecution, 
  and while this does expose them to risk of 'kangaroo courts' few states will risk that option if 
  they fear it will lead to retaliation.
  Embassies throughout the solar system are almost always actual foreign ships 'far-docked' 
  around the stations of the host nation. In the JF these ships will not be docked with the 
  Mosquito, but around 'Embassy Corner', a small station set up purely for this purpose. Travel 
  from this point to the heart of the JF is strictly on government vessels. The JF reserves the 
  right to limit who can travel, and under what conditions and level of search. For unfriendly 
  states such as Mars and Earth this is usually limited to 'full meat uncybered pure humans' 
  who get the joy of traveling nude after a full medical scan with their 'documents' limited to the 
  contents of a transparent folder and any data files that the JF has “fully” scanned. For friendly 
  states such as Saturn, even 'shell' bodyguards are allowed to come along for the ride after 
  scanning for explosives.
  ● Business
  A number of corporations operate on the Mosquito, and even the mining of gases is still a multi-
  corporate affair. There is no single large mega player controlling everything, but rather a vast array of 
  competing interests. Government keeps it this way, breaking up any corporation that grows too big.
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  43
  
  By JF law, no single corporation may employ more than 1/10 of one percent of the  population, 
  control more than 10% of the market in its given industry, nor more than 1% of the national GDP. Any 
  corporation which exceeds these numbers is split. If by its nature it must exceed these numbers it gets 
  nationalized and becomes a government agency, with private stocks converted to government bonds.
  In that regard the JF government after the revolution nationalized the public Wave providers 
  (ISPs), public police (which were private on Station 7 but already government elsewhere), all hospitals 
  and public emergency response (which again were only private before on station 7), the stock exchange, 
  port authorities (private on station 7, already national elsewhere), and arbitration / mediation courts.
  By contrast the JF cannot control everything it would like with regards to foreign corporations, 
  but it does place limits on joint ventures between foreigners and locals, restricting them to foreign 
  businesses that fit the same percent model in their countries as their JF partner is required to 
  domestically. Joint ventures are then encouraged by gaining access to domestic tax rates and very low 
  import / export tariffs when compared against fully foreign companies. As laws vary throughout the 
  solar system, some foreign companies cannot enter into joint ventures simply because they come from 
  nations where they are required by law to be mega corps or monopolies.
  Competition among Mosquito corporations can get fierce and even become violent, something 
  not heavily discouraged by the state. Official policy wants JF corporate culture 'lean and fit' – strong 
  through competition with the weak members weeded out. But they must also remain small and 
  focused, unable to challenge the state or individually manipulate society.
  Despite this, JF corporations are expected to work together and cooperate when facing any non 
  JF competitor. Like the Korean Chaebols – they form industry groups and inside that group they will 
  circle each other like sharks, but then school together in a common onslaught when the foreigners 
  show up. Mosquito corps can be killing each other one day, and then come together in surprising 
  harmony then next when faced with a foreign challenge - especially one from a Martian interest.
  This strategy descends out of the Jovian Federation's paranoia of the mega corporations that 
  once ruled it in the name of Earth powers. Nothing scares the JF more than a large corporation with 
  the power to control the private lives of its workers – the situation common back in UN territory.
  This poolng against foreigners can get tricky when it comes to competing loyalties companies 
  face in terms of joint ventures between a JF company and its foreign partner. It is not unknown for 
  this loyalty conflicts to turn violent.
  The primary industry on board the Mosquito is the mining of Jovian gases. Under this a 
  number of assisting industries exist – from teleoperated robot maintenance crews, high altitute 
  aerospace, deep-dive aerospace, solar aerospace, internal shipping agents, routing coordination, 
  robotics manufacturing and repair, and so on. Quite a number of different tasks are involved in the 
  process of getting the gas from planet to solar highway.
  Not all of the gas is exported in raw form however, and the JF also ships out quite a bit of 
  plastic and synthetic fibers made from petrochemicals present in the atmosphere. Again, a number of 
  connected industries fall out of this.
  The next major industry on the Mosquito is leisure – providing entertainment for foreign 
  tourists as well as each other. The nation has a healthy SIN development industry. With the largest 
  population of 'specialized entertainment' anthros in the solar system this industry has a strongly 
  'adult' angle. That characteristic also holds true for other forms of leisure and tourism – with legal 
  prostitution, brothels, bathhouses, exotic dance and music clubs, as well as just about any other vice 
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  that can be imagined. As long as the nature of the business is generally victim less and does not violate 
  the JF substance abuse laws it can be found in likely abundance. The work force in the leisure industry 
  is heavy on indentured servants and features a disproportionate number of altered humans as they 
  were actually designed for the purpose in the colonial days when Bath was the premiere resort for the 
  wealthy elites from Earth.
  w Major Corporations:
  J-Petrol : Gas exporters, HQ in New Rome.
  GnuGas : Gas exporters, HQ in New Beijing.
  HempDyn Foods : major food producer, using hemp based products.
  J-Bean : Coffee / Tea producers, also produce legal recreational substances (drugs).
  Mandarin Properties : New Beijing developer / real estate corp.
  Blue Water Freight : Foreign shipping company (Neptune)
  Crystalline Shipping : Foreign shipping company (Saturn)
  Fatima Research : Station 7 gas-research company
  Dollz : broker of 'concubines' specializing in bioroids. HQ Jovia.
  Private Pets : broker of 'personal assistants' specializing in anthros. HQ New Beijing
  Feral Dreams : SIN-casting company with all 'anthro' actors.
  Paige Three : Bath HQ'd modeling agency.
  Athenians: Specialized New Rome male model/escort agency. Models must be 
  athletic, strikingly handsome, at least college educated, and pass regular moral 
  character exams. The idea is to sell the 'Classical Greek Ideal' as a model or escort.
  Bootz : Popular anthro nightclub in Jovia.
  Downside: An ultra-hip 'underground' club in New Beijing. Downside is known for 
  moving its location regularly. VIPs are told, everyone else has to find it.
  Yangtze beltway Rocks: Foreign mining company from the asteroid belt.
  Nelson Fixes it: A joint-venture mercenary company with operations in the mid-solar 
  system that often hires JF 'talent'. The foreign partner hails from Neptune. Nelson 
  is one the few JF companies employing large numbers of combat anthros.
  Sunyi Provka Design: A classic case of the problem of the JF's small company laws. 
  SPD is the brand label for Ms. Provka, a celebrity home decorator whose ideas for 
  home living are simply too popular for her own good. The company has been split 
  three times by the JF, and in two of those cases the split companies have faltered 
  without Ms. Provka's name on the label. The third has benefited from being in the 
  hands of a popular former assistant from her SIMcast show on interior decorating; 
  Mz Fluffy – a very overweight male rabbit-anthro with perhaps even more charisma 
  than Ms. Provka.
  Large 'en Charge: Large produces cybernetic male enhancements. Need more be 
  said?
  Wavy Gravy: An online community popular among teens in Jovia. Wavy Gravy 
  manages get togethers, dating, and other teen-culture elements.
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  ● Law And Liberty
  Civil rights are not as 'advanced' as in 20th century America. The right  to speech can be infringed 
  upon by the government when it deems your message unsafe for the general welfare of society, and 
  police have a general warrant ability to search or detain. A notable percentage of the population exists 
  under the status of indentured servitude – a status whereby they become property in exchange for 
  having debts paid, getting training in a profession, as criminal punishment, or even simply in 
  payment. By law such servitude cannot extend beyond five years save as punishment for a felony 
  which allows for up to ten years. Any crime that would warrant further punishment in most societies is 
  dealt with via execution among the Jovian colonies. Indentureds lose their civil rights for the duration 
  and considered wards of those who hold their contracts. They may be treated in any manner that does 
  not cause permanent injury.
  Citizens do not have a right to be armed with projectiles, and even police are limited to guns 
  with low penetration ammunition and nets given the space environment. Actual projectile weapons 
  will only be seen in the hands of terrorists or foreign saboteurs, as even local criminals value keeping 
  their air. Melee weapons are also illegal beyond what can easily be seen as a tool or utensil, but police 
  can and do carry lethal weaponry, as does the criminal element given the ease of manufacture. 
  Projectile weapons are a practical concern - much like you wouldn't want them on a modern day 
  shuttle.
  Social law is lax. With Bath having been a pleasure stop on the old 'solar highway' The 
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  Mosquito still has an active sex trade and a very lax view on social morality - despite also having a 
  high presence of Muslims. Though the secular and the religious societies may not agree with each 
  other, they have learned how to live and let live.
  Government
  The government of the Jovian Federation (JF) is a two house parliamentary system with a judicial 
  code that works close to the model used by the Napoleonic Code. The upper house of Parliament is a 
  very small body with only 2 members from each of New Rome, New Beijing, and Jovia, one more 
  member from Station 7 and Bath each, and a final member elected from among the other JF colonies 
  around Jupiter. One member of the upper house is chosen annually by the lower house to be the Prime 
  Minister, with no single person able to serve in the position for more than 7 years.
  The lower house has 100 members chosen through mutli-party proportional representation. 
  That is, people vote for what political party they support, and each party then gets a percentage of the 
  house based on the percentage of the vote they won. Parties then each use their own methods to chose 
  who they send, with the caveat that they method used much be publicly admitted to and resolved 
  before the general election.
  In legal matters the Upper House deals with military and international laws as well as judicial 
  appointments, and the lower house deals with general law.
  As for the judicial system and the Napoleonic Code, this means that the JF has no concept of 
  Common Law or precedent in law. Rather they have a code of laws enacted by the MPs (Members of 
  Parliament) that seeks to set out the rules and philosophy of law, and individual judges use that as the 
  authority in deciding cases – merely finding a rule and trying to apply it.
  Governmental structure and function largely follows the principles of 'Federalism' in that each 
  city has a lot of individual sway over its local territory. The needle and all connecting space between 
  cities however is under the direct control of the national government.
  Cities pass their own laws with regards to standards of culture and proper public / private 
  behavior. While they have quite some discretion over these topics they are limited in that they must 
  recognize a national body of rights designed to insure the interests of all the major cultures. This 
  means for example, that while New Rome can remove the right of privacy it cannot take away the right 
  to property. It can however, include a number of local codes designed to make shared property easy to 
  maintain.
  Laws dealing with criminal matters, slavery and indenturing, religion, reproduction, business, 
  education, immigration, weapons, censorship, memetics, and private ownership are settled at the 
  national level. Laws over privacy, personal space, decency, zoning and construction, traffic, public and 
  private space, net and com access, and taxes go into local hands. Taxes forms a complication in that the 
  national government taxes each city based upon its population – ensuring every city has a certain 
  minimal taxation level. Each JF colony not attached to the Mosquito itself is considered a city for the 
  purposes of these arrangements, however individuals outside of a recognized settlement or Mosquito 
  city fall directly under the control and taxation of the national government.
  ● Government agencies of interest
  There of a number of groups within the government that characters in a Mosquito story are likely to 
  come into contact with. The following gives a short description of some of them.
  ● Immigration
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  If you go through a space port chances are you are going to have to deal with 
  immigration. Any ship that crosses into or out of the range of JF space will be required 
  to make it's first stop at a border station. Here a scan of the cargo and passengers is 
  made to check for dangerous biological agents (such as viruses), known individuals the 
  JF is seeking, and anything particularly out of the ordinary. Passengers will be 
  offloaded here, and if all their 'papers' (digitally speaking) are in order can make their 
  way through JF space on a local shuttle most likely within the hour. Space traffic being 
  what it is, such an event usually happens once or twice daily at most, but no more than 
  once per month is likely from any one given point of origin. So if you need to go to 
  Earth in a hurry, you might have as much as a thirty day wait, but if all you need is 
  anyplace but here it could happen within a day. Cargo ships on the other hand will be 
  sent on to the ports of various stations where their containers can be offloaded and they 
  can continue about their business.
  Going through Immigration begins with a viral and DNA scan to see if you 
  need to be medically quarantined. The bad side of this is that if what you have is highly 
  dangerous you are likely to be killed and burned to ash, and you may cause all your 
  fellow passengers to meet the same fate. More than likely however, you will simply be 
  given a host of shots and passed on to a strip search, x-ray, and the memetic analysis. 
  Under memetic analysis a one hundred question interview will be sent your way from 
  which you will get a basic meme-index put into your file rating you with a 1-10 scale on 
  key memes to government considers important. Any rating 8 or above will be denied 
  entry into the JF. If you have been in the JF before your index will be compared with 
  your last check (most likely conducted during your exit interview) and a new set of 
  numbers meaningless to most people will be placed in your file to reflect the 
  government's opinion of how travel affected you. That record may very well impact 
  your ability to travel again in future. Cheating a memetics test will require successful 
  contested skill checks – your ability to persuade with the tactic you try versus their 
  ability to resist that aided by their knowledge of memetics.
  As noted, immigration conducts the same interview on those wishing to leave, 
  in addition to checking their travel passes. In this case, even a dangerous meme is 
  often allowed to leave, but a classified meme may get your travel pass revoked.
  Anyone coming in either direction is also put through DNA screening and this 
  information is then kept on file. That DNA can then be crossed checked at any crime 
  scene and by any police officer on the street without need for a warrant. Despite this, 
  every year a small number of people are found to have faked their DNA files with 
  immigration – either to cover crimes or to 'get in' without being left to the squatter 
  communities. Because of this immigration has a large internal affairs budget, but it 
  has yet to manage to wipe out corruption or whatever else is responsible.
  ● Secret Police
  If you really mess up you might find yourself facing a visit by the secret police. These 
  are the guys who come in the middle of the night in booted black uniforms and take you 
  away for interrogation. You can expect a very dehumanizing process that gets worse 
  the less your answers match their assumptions. The secret police are -not- a part of 
  normal criminal law, nor even the policing of normal discourse and memetics law. They 
  stick solely to areas of major national security. If you meet these people it means you 
  have been doing something involving a foreign power, terrorism, or treason. Conspiracy 
  theorists also claim that finding the aliens living among us will also get you a meeting 
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  with the secret police, but such an idea is not taken seriously by any sane citizen. If you 
  ever meet the business end of the secret police and get away; get far away – leave the 
  JF for good.
  ● Ministry of Disease Control
  As a small enclosed system the Mosquito has little practical ability to tolerate the 
  outbreak of an epidemic. The ministry has broad discretionary power in JF society. 
  Official policy places zero tolerance for any dangerous communicable disease. Persons 
  at immigration found to have such will be denied entry, and if they have nowhere else 
  to go they will be cremated and then dispersed into space – kill the biohazard, and then 
  get rid of the particles just to be sure. Many secure facilities onboard the Mosquito 
  routinely scan people for known biohazards upon entry. This includes any government 
  building, any transit station, port of entry, shopping mall, hospital, and major business 
  building. Any disease which cannot be cured and can be transmitted is treated with 
  zero tolerance. Thus the official infection rate for AIDS, Herpes, and similar ailments is 
  zero. Over JF history, less than a handful of people have turned up inside the Mosquito 
  with one of these. Other JF stations, while under the same policy, often have less 
  practical ability to enforce within their smaller environments, but rely on smaller more 
  known populations to give a sense of security.
  Curable infections with high fatality rates are treated with harsh quarantines 
  until cured, and incurable infections with little to know fatality are treated in a 
  number of way depending on how easy they are to transmit and how much resources it 
  takes to maintain the victim v what ‘practical’ benefit that victim has to society.
  The Ministry of Disease Control is not a friendly or kind sector of government. 
  Its open presence is an area is usually treated with fear if not panic by the locals, as 
  with the broad discretion it carries the Ministry often takes a ‘torch it first, inspect it 
  later’ approach. People in the JF fear disease, but the fear the cure as well.
  ● Ministry of Altered Human Affairs
  MAHA works to track the numbers and welfare of the JF's Altered Human populations. 
  They are tasked with finding ways to keep these groups 'meme-healthy', happy, 
  productive, and well off while also ensuring they do not become a danger to the rest of 
  society. MAHA works closely with the police's AHU (Altered Humans Issues Unit) and 
  is a popular target of both ALF and IGI terrorists.
  MAHA assigns its case workers to target populations of Altered Humans attempting 
  to 'better their lives' according to its own idealistic notions of what people need done for 
  them. MAHA will conduct 'field visits' on a regular basis and keep 'case files' on each 
  member of the JF's Altered Human population. It will try to find 'pack leaders' for lone 
  anthros and 'family bonds' for bioroids. Often, MAHA will even get its nose into the 
  dating and mating habits of the Altered Humans in an attempt to 'parent them'.
  MAHA is also responsible for advocating for the civil rights of the Altered Human 
  populations. The ministry does this through speaking to Parliament, giving legal 
  counsel to Altereds over matters of civil rights, and acting as a mediator in 
  indenturement contracts.
  Roughly three fourths of MAHA case workers are themselves Altereds, although the 
  agency is by regulation lead by a staff of five, three of which are human, one an anthro 
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  and one a bioroid.
  Many Altered Humans view MAHA as an intrusive ministry. Bioroids in particular 
  tend to take exception to the way it can often treat them as children needing guidance 
  and protection.
   
  ● Ministry of Applied Memetics
  The ministry works to track all of the various discourses running through society and 
  the memes that build them. For every meme they find they assign a -1.0 to 1.0 scale 
  rating where a -1 is highly desired and a 1 is highly deviant. They also perform random 
  sample testings of the population as well as any individual registering to vote, enter 
  university, gain government employment, or going through the criminal justice system. 
  For every meme they chose to test on a person they assign a 1-10 scale. Your strength 
  is then multiplied by the scale of the meme and the values for all your memes are 
  added together to form what is called your 'meme-index' or 'MI'. The system is 
  structured such that what the ministry presumes is a perfectly normal person will net 
  a score of 0. A highly positive score indicates a person they will flag as a threat to 
  society, while a highly negative score indicates a person very much in line with favored 
  JF discourses and thus likely to be favored for key benefits. Personal from the ministry 
  are employed to conduct interviews for immigration in addition to a wide variety of 
  government agencies. They are not allowed to take private clients but their general 
  data is available to the public and used by private memetic engineers in corporate 
  testing. If you take on any corporate job in the JF the meme test you get will likely 
  have been downloaded from the ministry shortly before and adjusted to match the 
  corp's needs.
  Crime and the Underworld element
  The more organized the society, the more organized the parasites that feed upon it. Crime in The 
  Mosquito comes in many flavors, with varied levels of organization. From independent idiots, to street 
  gangs, and up to two competing mafias the streets of the cities on the Mosquito have their problems. If 
  that was not enough, off station adds in an array o smugglers and pirates, many of whom connect back 
  to station life through organized crime.
  The top of the food chain is held by two groups that made the jump from Earth to station 
  through their respective two nations, the EU and China. On the EU side you have the Zutreffend 
  Familie (True Family, aka ZF) which originally formed as a skin head group in Germany, but long ago 
  abandoned its racist themes for economic practicality. The sole remaining racist theme in the group is 
  the refusal to accept Romani (Gypsies) among the membership. Otherwise members today include 
  Catholics, Protestants, even a few Jews and Muslims. After the Revolution, it has even spread out to 
  include Chinese and the other ethnic groups. Up until 28 years ago the ZF was entirely one large 
  genetically connected family with many interracial marriages in its past. 28 years ago Martian 
  scientists tailored an Ebola virus to specifically target that genetic line and managed to completely 
  wipe the family out in the space of two days throughout all the Martian colonies. Sensing the end was 
  near the family's members on the Mosquito quickly began advancing former non-related allies into 
  'made members' and their own hired geneticists to remove the particular strand of DNA from the next 
  generation of children. During the Civil War ZF enlisted en mass and many of them worked in highly 
  decorated suicide missions against Martian holdings. Back on the home front a whole new generation 
  was just being born through surrogate mothers and fostered by the newly 'made' allies. Today, that 
  generation is just coming into adulthood, and can no longer be DNA targeted. Related by history, they 
  no longer share common DNA. As for the Ebola virus, it never made it back to the Jovian Federation 
  out of mistrust, with the Jovian Federal government suspecting any such virus might not be limited to 
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  just that one family by the time it reached the Mosquito, given the animosity between the two nations. 
  The ZF's main focus is on smuggling, with a particular skill in human trafficking. They are based out 
  of Jovia but also work heavily on Station7 and Bath. Given the lax social laws there is little for them to 
  do in the realm of a potential underworld sex trade – any crime they might come up with is likely 
  already legally available (or truly horrendous in scope and victims). They do however operate a 
  number of speakeasies allowing for binge drinking beyond the legal limit as well as the sale of 
  psychotropic drugs (other drugs are not illegal in Jovian territory).
  On the other side of organized crime is the Gnu-Tong, a strange group that came about when 
  China finally overwhelmed India in the information technology sector during the 21st century. The G-T 
  does most of its work in the virtual world, with a focus on information crimes such as cracking and 
  targeted viruses. They also trade heavily in SINs of illegal memetics and are frequently employed to 
  facilitate the rapid spread of memes and other information the government has chosen to suppress. 
  This is an info-mafia, working in what is perhaps the most valuable asset of the memetic age. With a 
  black market of ideas, if you need to know it, or you need it known, or you need to forget it, or get it 
  suppressed, the Gnu-Tong are the people to go to. But in the same vein if they come for you, you can be 
  erased -forgotten and removed- in a way that the crude physical death delivered by the classic mobster 
  could not hope to compare to. The G-T has no genetic connection among its members, but does conduct 
  all of its internal business in Cantonese using the traditional character set that was used for writing 
  Chinese before the Communist Revolution. The Gnu-Tong does nothing to disrupt the spread of a 
  common meme among technologists that it is really run by a hundred year old true sentient AI, 
  something the government is quick to note as a scientific impossibility – no more possible than them 
  being run by goblins and dragons.
  Rumors persist of the existence of a third organized crime group within the Faithful 
  community. These rumors are backed by that community's ability to consistently acquire banned 
  books. Further backing it has been the presence of a number of killings all seemingly conducted with 
  knives believed to match those used by the ancient assassins among the Persian empire, with metals 
  testing proving it has not been the same knife and forensics claiming not the same size of person. 
  These killings are rare, and span nearly a century. If there is actually any organized body behind these 
  two trends no one in the community has as yet broken the secret and even Faithful police have had 
  nothing to offer.
  The Zutreffend Familie and Gnu-Tong thankfully have almost completely separate spheres of 
  operation, or in a nation of twelve million things would get very bloody very fast. The same is not true 
  of the many street gangs present throughout the JF. The typical street gang is composed poor and 
  socially disenfranchised of teens and young adults whose external social connections are weak at best. 
  The membership will be fairly small – within a scope where all of them know each other on a socially 
  intimate level, as if a family. They will live in relative proximity to each other and operate around their 
  home turf. Given those dynamics they will also tend to be surrounded by competing gangs who live in 
  the very same neighborhood. Each of them will likely control no more than a single block or housing 
  complex and doing as much as walking down the street can be a death sentence.
  Social theory holds that these people come from backgrounds that give them few to no 
  legitimate economic opportunities and as such they seek activity in illegitimate markets, namely on 
  the street. Criminal activity will tend to be small scale robbery and assault, extortion, and retaliation. 
  Forced prostitution rings are also common, particularly among school aged gangsters who will force 
  weaker students to turn tricks for other classmates through them – a practice made famous by 
  Japanese high school gangs in the late 20th century. They will also trade in low level illegal information 
  and psychotropic drugs. Both the ZF and the Gnu-Tong will use them as hired help and for 'end user 
  retail distribution' as they are easily sacrificed.
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  The average gang will be led by a charismatic human and consist of no less than half human 
  members. Typically they have a number of anthropomorphics on hand to do the things they can't get 
  each other to do as well as intimidation or prostitution. Often being jumped by a couple of rough 
  looking anthro-girls is the first contact a victim has with a street gang.
  Beyond the structured groups life in the Mosquito has the usual assortment of individual 
  criminals. The profile of the average criminal is generally someone not well educated and lacking good 
  common sense. Smart people just don' get caught, and don't commit the kinds of crimes that call 
  attention to themselves. The educated citizen steals office supplies from their employer, runs and 
  embezzling scam, or downloads illegal memes, the idiot robs the convenience store of two bags of 
  diapers, a beer, a bag of chips, and ends up killing the guy behind the counter in the process. This was 
  true in the 20th century, it was true in the Middle Ages, and it is still true in the era of the Mosquito. 
  The smart criminal who robs the museum of that rare priceless artifact or robs a bank with a plan 
  stronger than a ski mask, a flechette gun, and a bus pass for the getaway accounts for perhaps one in 
  every million crimes. The fact of life in the world of criminal justice is that nine out of ten criminals, if 
  not more so, are below both average intelligence and education.
  The final form of underworld activity that threatens the Jovian Federation is piracy. Pirates 
  live throughout the solar system among the wreckage of pre war colonies long since abandoned, as well 
  as mined out asteroids, corporate stations that were cheaper to leave behind than dismantle, and even 
  stations they have built themselves. A persistent meme in nearly every solar nation holds that a giant 
  pirate city exists in space 'just beyond that dark spot' nobody goes to. Serious memetic engineers and 
  government agencies give the idea no credit though, as pirates do not seem to enact that level of 
  cooperative behavoir. The favorite target of a pirate is in fact a believed to be weaker pirate.
  Most pirate attacks work by looking for small vessels with something valuable and little 
  military escort. Pirates will hang out in space ports listening to rumors and conversations in bars 
  about who is carrying what when and where and then make for an interception if they sense a weak 
  target. In effect, they are like wolves constantly on the edges of the herd looking for straddlers to pick 
  off.
  ● General Crime Rates
  Overall crime rates are similar to their 20th century European equivalents, which means that 
  for Americans they are actually alarmingly high for everything but homicide – which is about 
  1/3 of the 20th century American norm. You are about twice as likely as a modern American to 
  be assaulted, swindled, raped, burgled, or otherwise a victim of violent crime. These items, 
  known as 'scheduled crime' present a significant problem to JF society. With the rarity of guns 
  however, the final element of homicide tends to be much lower. While it takes more energy to 
  kill with a knife, bow, or fist than it does with a gun, the real dynamic over this is the lack of a 
  culture that generates an over reaction and desensitization to the threat of violence.
  Street crime is the most problematic in New Beijing, where the architecture works to 
  aid the issue. By contrast the high security nature of buildings there make home invasions and 
  other forms of break-in notably rare. Bath has the most such invasions, with many of its home 
  built by changing old dormitory construction into apartments it is very easy for an unknown 
  person to get as far as the front door of your apartment without being seen. New Rome by 
  contrast, while fully open and often having no lock on the homes, has such strong social 
  connections that a stranger rarely makes it through to your property without being identified 
  by ten or more people. The joke in New Rome is that if you need friends, try to break into 
  somebody's house – you'll meet all the friends you need on the way in, and by the time you get 
  there you'll likely have been set up for a blind date with your formerly intended victim. Reality 
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  is not so rosy, but the joke gets a laugh out of people in the Soloist culture who find much of 
  that city so abhorrent. Station 7 has a slightly higher homicide rate than elsewhere, but not 
  alarmingly so. Residents there have a bit of the 'protecting my turf' mentality of the former 
  Americans that set it up, which leads to be more likely to escalate violence.
  As has always been the trend, poor underclass people are the most common victims of 
  crime, and yet the media only reports crime featuring middle class victims of underclass 
  aggression. Statistics makes you ten times more likely to be a victim of crime if you are poor or 
  otherwise conduct a notable portion of your business on the street. The least likely victim of a 
  crime is a middle class young adult woman – this is also the most likely victim to be reported 
  in the media, making the public feel they are the most likely victims. The most likely victim is 
  a young unemployed underclass adult male, though such crimes are almost never media 
  reported and largely receive poor police attention. It also true that many victims of crime on 
  one day are the perpetrators of crime on the next, and vice versa, which in areas where police 
  are of a different class, ethnicity, or subspecies from the victims can motivate them to 'under 
  investigate.'
  i
  Getting Away with Crime
  Given DNA scanning, facial recognition, Altered Humans that can track through scent, and all 
  manner of advanced tools in the hands of police it might seem impossible for crime to be 
  anything more than one time events of passion in cases that are quickly solved. That, however, 
  is far from the actual situation. As policing and the tools of the state advance, so do the tools 
  available to those working against it.
  DNA is a fairly fragile thing, and quite easy to destroy. Much of it becomes useless simply by 
  being exposed and no longer attached to a living being. The problem however is that as long as 
  one single chain of DNA survives intact evidence can be traced back. On the JF where every 
  person onboard the station save for a few squatters who have not previously come in has their 
  DNA on file, this could in theory make any case easy to solve. It does in fact lead to most 
  unplanned crimes of passion coming to quick resolution, but most other criminals take simple 
  steps to keep their DNA out of the trail of evidence.
  DNA detection is an opposed skill check between disguise on the part of the person 
  trying to hide, and Police Sciences [Forensics] for the detective. Use an Easy target number for 
  finding DNA that has had no attempt conceal, and Very Easy for getting the DNA off of a body 
  (living or otherwise) or significant portion of a body (a limb).  Lesser parts such as a hair with 
  intact roots, saliva, sexual fluids, skin flakes, etc are what is covered by the opposed check or 
  Easy target number.
  Proper protective clothing is a big first step. Something synthetic and non porous will 
  work wonders for keeping DNA from getting loose, but it only takes a single strand of hair or 
  flake of skin to give you away, so clothing, in BESM terms, can only provide up to a Slight 
  Bonus on any Disguise attempt for DNA (3 for Ex Machina and Hero). A full on space suit 
  might work, but is going to be rather conspicuous outside of the needle or a space dock. Even 
  with such a suit however there is still a likelihood of DNA contamination when the suit was 
  put on, so it will give an Extreme Bonus (5 for Ex Machina and Hero) rather than being 
  ‘Monstrous’ at the location where the suit was put on or off, and Outrageous otherwise (8 for 
  Ex Machina and Hero).
  It comes down to destroying the DNA. This can be done with disinfectants – be they 
  biological, chemical, or even nanite. Using normal ‘household chemicals will give a Slight 
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  Bonus (3 for Ex Machina and Hero) in a spray or Significant (5 for Ex Machina and Hero) if 
  washed down thoroughly. Biological agents will give a bonus of 1 for every hour after the crime 
  before investigation, and nanite kits will provide a bonus of 2 per hour (same in Ex Machina 
  and Hero). Biological kits and nanite kits must be ‘bought on the street’ through the black 
  market – consider each kit to provide 3 uses and cost a day's middle class wages for bio, a 
  month's for nanite. The other means all are all common enough in regular shopping, though 
  they will heighten suspicion if the character is already under investigation and buys them in 
  bulk.
  Another method of hiding is simply waiting. Mosquito is a sealed environment in space. 
  Cleanliness is not only next to Godliness, it is vital for survival. Everywhere you go there are 
  little bots running around cleaning up messes and decontaminating. Any sign of smoke or 
  sudden temperature rises will trigger sprinklers. Air is constantly being forced to flow through 
  recycling at a steady pace. Everywhere on station, there is constant automated cleaning. For 
  every hour past the occurrence of a crime, add a penalty of 1 to a chance to recover DNA (2 in 
  Ex Machina and Hero). This time penalty stops the moment police have a chance to seal off a 
  crime scene. In many buildings that can be done through automation before police even arrive. 
  They can turn off public cleaning bots, lock doors, and so on. Other areas will require police to 
  get there and keep people and bots out, while turning off private cleaning bots manually or 
  through local private networks. Either way, once police have control of a scene, decay rate of 
  DNA shifts to a 1 penalty every 3 hours if evidence was something simple air and micro-
  organisms could eventually deal with (skin cells blowing away for example) or 1 penalty every 
  month otherwise (an assumption, which may or may not be wrong, that eventually, a poll of 
  blood, even if left there, will become useless).
  Hiding your DNA won’t prevent image based identification. There are camera’s 
  everywhere on the JF and if you don’t take measures to avoid them you can assume an 
  Average Target Number (9- for Ex Machina and 11- Hero) chance your crime will be recorded. 
  Without effort to Disguise there is the same chance (but a second task roll) a camera got a good 
  enough angle to ID you itself using facial recognition software without any human 
  involvement. If this fails human observers who know what you look like can make Perception 
  checks to reliably recognize you. That is again an Average task modified by the amount by 
  which the cameras failed their roll – on the idea that if the cameras couldn't pull it; it was 
  because the image was at an angle or resolution also difficult for a human. Further, if the 
  human knows you well they get a Slight bonus (2 in Ex Machina or Hero), but if they only 
  know you slightly they have a Slight penalty (2 in Ex Machina or Hero). If they just know you 
  in passing that penalty is Significant (4 in Ex Machina or Hero).
  If the criminal attempted a disguise the check for the camera and for the human are 
  done as opposed checks with the modifiers above included into any for disguise.
  Disguise modifiers can come about in a number of means. Wearing holo tech masks as 
  well as physical masks to keep your face from being seen gives your disguise a boost of Slight, 
  Significant, or Extreme (1, 4, or 6 in Ex Machina and Hero) depending on poor, average, or 
  good quality masking. A stocking or ski mask that fails to cover shape would give only a Slight 
  bonus (1 for Ex Machina or Hero) for computer software, but the ski mask which covers 
  features, shading, and color would give a Significant bonus (4 for Ex machina or Hero) for a 
  human observer. Wearing a holo mask of a cube over your head would give an Extreme bonus 
  (6 for Ex Machina or Hero) against both if viewing a recording, but in person would only give a 
  Significant bonus (4 in Ex Machina or Hero) against a human as it is slightly transparent. 
  Wearing an actual physical box or something like a suit of plate mail armor would give an 
  Outrageous bonus of (8 in Ex Machina or Hero) to your Disguise against a human viewing the 
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  recording, but is not perfect on the theory that some other factor might give you away. 
  However that same tactic would be perfectly foolproof against the cameras – preventing them 
  from even making a task roll.
  What all of that means is that the camera needs to see some aspect of the shape of your 
  face. As long as it can find something it has a chance, even if that chance is very small. By 
  contrast a human needs to see body language, expression, and shading / color. As long as a 
  human can get one of those she will have some chance, even if small.
  Note that if the perception check is made, but only barely, then you have a match 
  which is not sufficient for proof in court – it just lets the police know who they need to keep 
  following. If the software makes the ID and does it by 2 or less there will be other people in the 
  database as well as the valid target, though it will put the valid target in a most likely list of 
  1d8 suspects out of three times as many total. If the software fails by 2 or less the same thing 
  occurs except there is a 50-50 chance the valid suspect is in the less than likely list or the list 
  cannot find priority. With human observers this problem only occurs if they happen to know a 
  bunch of people who look similar to each other – or the suspect list is of a different subspecies 
  or ethnic group from the observer and the observer does not have regular positive contacts with 
  that other group (in effect, having a lot of interaction with people of another ethnic group only 
  helps you tell them apart if your interaction is positive – if it comes from a position of racism 
  you actually use that interaction to create stereotypes and understand them even less than 
  before).
  If you remove the cameras or turn them off there is of course no ability to get a match 
  from facial recognition nor for somebody to view a recording later. It takes use of the 
  Electronics (Security) skill to find and take out all the cameras physically, and it can usually 
  also be done via hacking online.
  That doesn’t prevent the problem of witnesses however. Eyewitnesses can make 
  reliable ID’s with a successful Difficult Memory (a substat of Mind) check (a Perception roll at 
  -2 in Hero). If you had a disguise in effect, it is an opposed skill check between you and the 
  witness. All the same modifiers apply to this check as did for the camera recognition. Given 
  how low stats are in BESM and Ex Machina and how few common people are trained to 
  observe, the chances of getting a good witness ID are actually fairly low, which is realistic. 
  Note that this assumes the police have a lineup, a picture of the criminal they can show to 
  witnesses, or the witness has the ability to give a picture to the police. It also allows for the 
  witness to describe enough for a reliable police sketch, and then once the criminal is found with 
  that, to make a solid ID.
  However, the witness first has to be an eyewitness. Assuming you tried hide your 
  actions, the witness must get through your Stealth (Concealment) check using Perception 
  (another substat of Mind), unless your crime was sufficiently high profile that everyone 
  noticed. At that point police merely have to deal with issues of intimidation by the criminal or 
  criminal’s allies against the witnesses.
  Plastic surgery can change appearance enough to be unrecognized by facial software, 
  though you will have to keep changing your look with every identity you establish and after 
  every crime – which can become medically problematic.
  Many altered humans can track by scent, and every person has a distinctive scent they 
  can recognize. The JF will uphold such identifications in court, and this makes adding anthros 
  to the police force in particular a popular choice. Disinfectants and odor sprays can hide scent 
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  from them however, giving a penalty of from 1 to 7 to their roll depending on the strength of 
  the masking odor (weak –1, moderate – 3, strong – 5, overwhelming – 7).
  Professional criminals, who are exceedingly rare, employ all of these measures to hide their 
  identity. Many of them are also prepared to blackmail or bribe investigating officials to 
  whatever reasonable limit they can. They are also not above targeting police who make them 
  for hostile counter measures, but rarely go after judges or prosecutors. You can intimidate 
  individuals, but in the JF once it reaches the level of ‘the system’ the state is not going to back 
  down. Shooting judges just makes you more of a target without removing anyone who knows 
  who you are. Less rational criminals however might do so out of anger. Violence against these 
  'institutional' figures in the JF is likely be met by showing the criminal the outside of an 
  airlock without the benefit of a trial first.
  Intimidation of judges and others in the court system however can if successful result 
  in shifts in the trial process that favor the criminal. Assume modifiers equal to the amount the 
  intimidation or bribe was made by for a judge, cut in half if the individual is in the courtroom 
  in a significant role but not the judge. If unsuccessful however they can have an equally severe 
  opposite result. Remember that the JF does not use Common Law and there are no juries, 
  merely lawyers and judges with the judges finding fact and applying a law as in Civil Code 
  countries (what we today call nations based on the Napoleonic Code). As a result, there is no 
  jury to tamper with, only the prosecutors and the judges.
  j
  Rights in a Criminal Investigation
  In any investigation of a crime, regardless of which side the characters are on it is important to 
  know what the rights for citizens and suspects are. Here is a list of ten basic criminal justice 
  rights as a citizen of the Jovian federation understands them. They should be helpful in 
  inducing a larger pattern:
  1.
  Reasonable suspicion is needed to detain and search in public. Arrests or searches on 
  private property however require warrants or exigent circumstances - defined as 
  pressing emergency circumstances, such as a crime in progress, preventing immediate 
  injury, preventing the destruction of evidence, and so on.
  2.
  Warrants are general in nature - police do not need to specify what they are looking for 
  and where in specific on the property or person(s) they expect to find it. For Americans, 
  this is the opposite of what the US Constitution says – it is the model the American 
  revolution accused Britain of.
  3.
  Private Property cannot be seized without a warrant and / or an arrest, or if it is found 
  actually on an active crime scene (as opposed to nearby or just seemingly related). 
  Property not seized can be held long enough to search, but no more.
  4.
  No-knock (charging in without notice)  and secret warrants are both conditionally 
  legal. Warrants are not secret when searching occupied property or persons. They are 
  typically secret in the investigation of data. No-knocks are only allowed in the face of 
  violent threats or to prevent destruction of evidence.
  5.
  Police cannot use lethal force save for in defense of themselves and others from a 
  threat reasonably perceived as lethal or to prevent massive harm to the station itself. 
  Normal arrests require non-lethal force.
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  6.
  Due process at law is guaranteed to all citizens. Non citizens may be detained as 
  needed for the security of the state. Thus, refugees in the off-station camps do not have 
  this right. Citizens must have a trial in a reasonable amount of time.
  7.
  Citizens cannot be forced to self incriminate or otherwise testify against themselves. 
  Neural buffers are considered part of an individual and thus barred from involuntary 
  access. Non citizens have no such right, nor do those arrested as part of an officially 
  declared terrorist investigation.
  8.
  There is no form of confidentiality with any party other than the barrister representing 
  a suspect / defendant and any operatives assigned by the Ministry of Applied 
  Memetics. No spousal privilege, nor privilege for religious figures, private 
  psychologists, or any others.
  9.
  Privacy laws in some cities adjust these rights. In New Rome police may enter any 
  place without notice and search any person or property with only reasonable suspicion. 
  They still require warrants to search data.
  10. Punishment cannot be excessive in proportion to the crime. The Death penalty is 
  reserved only for the most extreme cases of individuals who cannot be rehabilitated 
  even with memetic reconditioning. This is not to say some police won't let some 
  particularly troublesome criminals find their way to wrong side of an airlock.
  Just because all of those rights exist, does not mean they will all get respected, particularly 
  when there are significant differences of social class or other biases involved.
  w Criminal Justice
  Many criminals, in fact most of them, do not get away with their crimes. The system is just too 
  good at catching up with people and holding them accountable for whatever the state defines 
  as deviancy. The JF however, has no prisons. Criminals are usually ‘chipped’ with encrypted 
  Neural Buffers to adjust their behavior and then indentured into the workforce in whatever 
  harsh task is deemed fitting of their crimes, skills, or other pressing needs. ‘Chipping’ causes a 
  person to be unable to think clearly about topics too similar to the memes that drove their 
  deviant behavior, and be unable to reenact that behavior or anything too similar to it. It will 
  also control against any seriously deviant memes, and record and transmit a record of any 
  serious breaches of the law. The process also prevents a person from rebelling against their 
  servitude or from otherwise fleeing JF control. This is done by inducing painful migraine like 
  headaches and eventually triggering seizures or blackouts. Anyone with active Com can sense 
  if a person in their presence is currently ‘chipped’, making privacy over the status nearly 
  impossible.
  If for some reason a person cannot be ‘chipped’, such as their body rejecting the surgery 
  to implant the specialized Neural Buffers, they will be recycled, their body put back into the 
  ‘biomass’, more than likely as fertilizer in the forests. This problem is 'virtually unknown,' nut 
  in theory possible.
  Sentence lengths for indenturement under ‘chipping’ are similar to sentences given out in 
  20th century nations, but crimes are judged not by how severely they hurt an individual victim, 
  but how severely they have hurt society. Thus much of what 20th century America called ‘white 
  collar’ crime is punished more severely than so-called ‘blue collar’ crime. Killing one person is a 
  class ‘B’ felony, but swindling the life savings of a community is a class ‘A’ felony, whereas it 
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  was barely a misdemeanor in 20th century America.
  Police Organization and Divisions
  P
  SIU - Special Investigations Unit
  SIU investigates unusual crimes. This can include issues of terrorism, espionage, mafia, 
  political crimes, serial killers, as well as any crime that shows a highly organized conspiracy or 
  seems to originate from criminals well above and beyond the statistical norms for deviancy. 
  This can includes things such as an organized jewel heist, professional net-crackers, 
  assassination or kidnapping of a public figure, foreign incursions, and unusual mysteries. Due 
  to its rarity in the JF, homicide also falls with the jurisdiction of SIU.
  t
  SVU - Special Victims Unit
  SVU deals with crimes involving victims that need special psychological care - sex crimes, 
  children, domestic violence, and similar victims of abuse. SVU work is hard as it deals in some 
  of the worst crimes human beings can commit upon each other and more often than not has 
  living victims. SVU police are thus themselves subject to constant review and psychological 
  analysis and must commit to regular weekly therapy. These units have a very high turnover 
  rates, with about half of all detectives being reassigned within a year due to the stress of the 
  work. Remaining SVU police tend to be very highly dedicated as well as very jaded about 
  human behavior. By JF regulation at least 50% of all SVU detectives in any department as 
  well as within any individual unit must be female and no one ethnicity can make up over 50% 
  of the unit. In addition, male detectives under the age of 30 are restricted from working SVU. 
  Most SVU units also seek a balance of cultures and socio economic backgrounds even though 
  these aspects are not part of the required mandate.
  t
  AHU - Altered Humans Issues Unit
  AHU cops deal with crimes involving 'Altered Humans' as either suspects or victims. Altered 
  Humans being Bioroids and Anthropomorphs. They have been trained to deal with the special 
  memetic issues involved in dealing with Altered Human psychology. In particular they have 
  been trained to work around and not take advantage of the special programming that was built 
  into these populations - the heightened libido, slave mentality, and occasional animal instincts. 
  AHU often works together with SVU in sex crimes as well as SIU when dealing with hate 
  crimes. By mandate of the JF parliament 30% of the unit is composed of native born Altered 
  Humans. The unit also contains a number of psychologists and memetic engineers. AHU is the 
  only division of domestic JF police with access to heavy weaponry, as dealing with the 
  discovery of Combat Anthros comes under their jurisdiction. Such incidents are however very 
  rare, and as such AHU police are normally armed the same as regular officers.
  r
  Gang Task Force
  GTF works the streets managing issues with low level typically underclass street gangs. GTF 
  police are themselves often from the same backgrounds as the suspects they investigate and 
  work to deter the effects of gang activity as well as keep kids out of the gangs. In this manner 
  they are often in a mixed role of hard core street police as well as social worker. More often 
  than not GTF police know those they enforce the law over on an intimate level, having grown 
  up together or in one or two generations before.
  u
  Vice
  With such lax social rules where prostitution and many drugs are legal it might seem Vice has 
  nothing to do. They do however, investigate crimes of excessive substance abuse as well as 
  violations of the censorship and memetics laws. With legal prostitution crimes involving sex 
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  workers fall under other divisions as appropriate.
  w
  SWAT
  There is no concept of a 'SWAT' division within the JF. In the 20th century USA SWAT was 
  formed to combat terrorism and that role is filled by SIU with a more detective oriented focus.
  Labor Rights
  Officially eighty percent of labor and service sector employment is unionized. With 20% percent 
  unemployment however, and half of those union members, it is powerful, but not as much as it might 
  at first seem. The right to unionize is guaranteed in the JF government charter precisely because that 
  right was denied by the both the EU and Chinese governments before the revolution, even though both 
  had strong labor traditions in their early history. In fact, even as they now both use primarily slave 
  labor serving wealthy elites back on Earth, each nation still identifies itself with the label 'socialist' or 
  'people's republic'. The JF considers that an official hypocrisy to the point that JF media is not legally 
  allowed to refer to either Earth government using the labels those governments use for themselves.
  Labor unions have ensured the JF population is almost 65% middle class with a decent 
  standard of living, and that the 5% who could be considered wealthy only control an estimated 30% of 
  the total wealth. The unions have also ensured a 35 hour work week with half of all workers allowed a 
  3 hour siesta at midday following the Latin tradition.
  Unionization has also ensured guaranteed housing, free primary and secondary education, free 
  health care, insurance against layoffs, welfare for those unable to work, and to those few who qualify; 
  low cost university education. To get this it has had to accept indentured servitude for apprenticeship 
  and a tax rate second to no other nation in the solar system. It is estimated that 70% of a workers 
  economic value goes to the state to pay for services. Much of this might still not be possible if it weren't 
  for the fact that the JF is the sole government able to get access to the valuable resources of Jupiter. 
  The nation is thus very wealthy in an era where fossil fuels have been fully depleted on Earth. After 
  all, plastic comes from fossil fuels in the form of petrochemicals, and Jupiter is now one of the only 
  sources of such materials which, even in the age of fusion, drive the economies of humanity.
  As noted, there is 20% unemployment in the JF, and most of those people live within the 
  Mosquito itself. This figure does not include squatters, but only actual citizens. Unionization has 
  ensured a government that meets their basic housing and food needs – albeit under the worst of 
  conditions. People living 'on the dole' are given access to communal chow halls and dormitory living 
  unless they are unable to work, in which case they are given decent lower class housing and food 
  allotments.
  Travel and Transport Rights
  Travel inside the cities and between them is fast and cheap. There are few private vehicles and most 
  people rely upon rail lines and taxis. The cities today are connected by three highways and three 
  transit line tubes. In addition 48 spokes run up to the needle, though half of these come out of the 
  forests and are only open to government use. Along the way up many of these spokes have small 
  stations - originally built for service, in the wake of the refugee crisis after the Civil War many of them 
  grew into small villages and towns - built from the wreckage of ships mounted onto service docks along 
  the transit shafts.
  Between colonies however is another matter. To leave any colony and travel another requires a 
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  free travel pass. Within the JF most people of middle class or better status can easily acquire a pass to 
  move freely through the Jovian Federation. Squatters who have built their homes all along the 
  Mosquito and the ruins of other colonies have no such passes and are thus trapped where they now lie. 
  They can come into the colony itself, but lacking papers have limited movement – being only able to go 
  within low security public places like parks and limited shopping, based inside transit stations such as 
  an overnight convenience store, but not an actual mall, public street, or full on retail outlet.
  Anyone can be treated at a hospital, but a visitor does need papers. As well most areas of 
  government or business require papers and the level of security access on this will vary. However, 
  every citizen has access to the public forums through which the Mps (Members of Parliament) 
  communicate with their districts.
  Travel outside the JF requires special permission based on where you plan to go, what you 
  plan to do there, and how long it will take you. It is harder for women to gain travel rights, but easier 
  if it is just a tourist visit. This law comes out of the paranoid sense of preservation that develops in a 
  low population isolated community. Anything beyond a one month plus travel time trip for a woman 
  will require her to prove the strength of her JF community connections. Women with children who do 
  not come with them have the easiest access, and young single women can almost never gain travel 
  rights – save for tourism to strongly allied IN member states, like those around Saturn and Neptune.
  For other citizens, the UN controlled inner colonies are blocked for all Anthropomorphs with 
  nearly no exceptions – certainly none the public has ever been made aware of. Inner colony travel for 
  other citizens is still difficult, requiring a reason that the JF government finds appealing. Most such 
  travel is restricted to trade ships and government missions, and then only people deemed 'expendable' 
  are given a travel pass, as the UN has in past taken valuable people hostage.
  The JF government accepts no more than a half of one percent emigration rate (60k), as in up 
  to one percent of its citizens may leave in any given year, but only if one and a half that number 
  immigrate in from the outside. So for every two people allowed to permanently move away, there must 
  first be three who moved in. Outer colonials have the easiest time of getting approval to immigrate in, 
  followed by political refugees from Earth and other inner colonies. Martian and apolitical Earth 
  immigrants are rarely trusted and usually placed in camps. The JF never allows any of its citizens -to- 
  emigrate to Mars, Earth, or an Earth controlled colony if at all possible. If someone can be proved of 
  planning to do so they will typically be 'recycled' if they cannot be reeducated. The JF would rather 
  have you dead than have you defect.
  Immigration is strongly controlled and strongly screened for deviant memes and undesirable 
  connections. That said, The Ministry of Immigration estimates that as many as one tenth of one 
  percent of immigrants every year manage to 'disappear' from the system before being fully processed 
  (as much as 60 people per year), and perhaps one twentieth of one percent of all tourists never actually 
  leave through any official channel. These two figures have long been considered a public scandal and 
  are blamed for every incident of terrorism or other political crime that happens. Conspiracy theorists 
  argue this figure is invented in order to make an excuse for such crimes without dealing with the social 
  forces that actually caused them.
  Those who 'fail' at immigration are put into refugee camps alongside those who came in various 
  'historic waves' triggered by wars and economic crisis in other parts of the solar system. Once people 
  wind up in refugee status, they are likely to stay there for generations. While 'missing' immigrants are 
  blamed for numerous internal crimes, refugees take the blunt of the blame for anything that happens 
  in the space around the JF colonies, such as large scale accidents, ship bombings, satellites that decay 
  into orbit 'before their time', slave rackets, and so on.
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  Slavery
  Slavery was supposed to have been wiped out in the first world at the end of the American Civil War. 
  For a while at the lawful level it was. There was still slavery throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle 
  East, and much of this was fully legal up to and into the 21st century. As well illegal slavery, 
  particularly in the sex industry, continued to be alarmingly popular in the US, Europe, and Japan, 
  with strong organized crime networks to keep it going. At the dawn of the 21st century America began 
  to change its understanding of rights in response to new forms of threats. The key concept that began 
  to evolve was that Constitutional protections did not apply to actions taken outside of US borders, even 
  if those actions were against American citizens. In time globalization coupled this with growing 
  competition from emerging markets and even rapid outsourcing of labor by American companies failed 
  to keep pace with the tactics of nations like China and India. What had become unprofitable during 
  Industrialization became once again a means of competing – slave labor. The only problem was the 
  Constitution, but this could be worked around by taking action on foreign soil. The actual system that 
  evolved was more akin to a mix of indenturement and serfdom – people were worked at wages barely 
  able to feed and cloth them, with no right to travel, quit, or otherwise leave the labor pool. Larger 
  pressures could then be used to keep the local economies down, so that the wage paid could remain 
  consistently lower than that needed in competing nations. From this other forms of slavery soon 
  evolved, and the leading nations all began to find ways around the civil rights they had so carefully 
  built up in the proceeding centuries.
  By the time of the Mosquito, the shell game is long over, and UN control has largely removed 
  any civil rights for anyone on Earth. Earth bound corporations and government openly trade and breed 
  slaves to handle their needs, and the JF estimates as much as sixty to seventy percent of the planet's 
  population exists in some form of bondage. While the industrial revolution made it cheaper to hire 
  workers at less than living wages than to care for 'dependent coerced labor', innovations of the new age 
  have complicated this picture. Classical slavery is still largely uneconomical when it can be either 
  replaced with automation or cheaper labor, but conditional slavery and non-labor focused slavery 
  however continue to thrive.
  Indentured Servitude is a conditional status of temporary servitude to another. A person in 
  Indentured status has clearly defined limits to how they can be used, housed, fed, educated, and 
  punished. Outside of the bounds of this they are still people with legal rights. indenturement is 
  commonly used to gain training for a profession in return for laboring within in a junior position, or 
  rather, apprenticeship. It is also common as a means to punish all but the most severe criminal 
  offenses, and to pay off debts. The JF cannot afford prisons, so any person who can be 'rehabilitated' is 
  brain-chipped and indentured for a time to work off their crimes, and anyone who cannot be 
  rehabilitated is 'recycled' – put to death with their biomass then used as fertilizer. The definitions on 
  this can get rather creative though, and you are 'rehabilitatable' as long as the government can find 
  something to do with you. During the civil war, the worst of society got the chance to lead landing 
  parties on Martian colonies. The few who survived got their freedom.
  Another common form of indenturement is voluntary servitude. Considered a deviant meme by 
  the Ministry of Applied Memetics, it is tolerated as a means of keeping the suicide rates among the 
  anthro population down, as no method other than letting them serve has as yet been successful. In a 
  world where few forms of entertainment or labor are proscribed, the indentured works as a symbol of 
  status. A human toy, someone you can use and abuse at your own leisure. The private and corporate 
  owned 'slaves' in the world of the JF are thus not a 'worker pool' in the sense of traditional hard or 
  even skilled labor, they are a source of entertainment and 'social leverage'. This is where the role of the 
  'voluntarily indentured' comes into play in the JF. They are the toys of others.
  In the current year, people can even be genetically engineered to be such slaves, which in fact 
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  61
  
  was the very purpose of creating the anthropomorph populations as well as many of the different types 
  of bioroids. While slavery is no longer legal in the JF, the people gene engineered by it make up twenty 
  percent of the population. Indenturement does continue to be legal, as an effective method of handling 
  training, the criminal justice system, and the unique psychology of the altered humans.
  t
  Anthro-Slaves
  Voluntary indenturement is so common among the Altered Human population that the term 
  'Anthro-Slave' has come into common use and a standard set of contracts have been created by 
  the Ministry of Altered Human Affairs. The standard contract will contain the following terms:
  t
  Annual or bi-annual renewal terms wherein the contract must be renewed by both 
  parties consent and the Ministry's approval.
  p
  The indentured cannot be resold to another master without consent.
  T
  The indentured is to be well cared for and 'kept happy'.
  T
  The indentured must be allowed safe sleeping quarters and a healthy amount of daily 
  sleep (normally at least 8 hours).
  s
  The master must complete a seminar on Altered Human psychology (in practice this 
  has become one of those 8 hour fly by night things).
  h
  Allowed forms of discipline must be spelled out in the contract and cannot include 
  anything resulting in permanent injury.
  a
  Any sexual duties must be spelled out in the contract – to include who has control over 
  consent and 'granting access' to the indentured. Typically an indentured contract uses 
  the clause to prevent abuse by noting that the indentured retains full right of consent. 
  However, where there is a demand there is always a supply.
  H
  The indentured must be allowed normal access to medical and police services.
  T
  Restrictions on freedom of movement within the JF must be agreed to on the contract.
  R
  Divisions of income the indentured generates must be spelled out in the contract. In 
  law, at least ten percent of gross income must be paid to the indentured at each 
  renewal period and the end of the contract. Note that if the contract is renewed the 
  master can take back that tend percent to 'manage it' until the contract does end.
  m
  Religious demands of either party are often written into the contract, along with a 
  clause voiding the contract if MAHA deems the indentured is subjected to 'excessive 
  conversion' attempts.
  The Anthro-Slave contract system has become so common that not only are well over 
  half of all anthros and bioroids living under it, but many other forms of indenturement copy 
  portions as well when setting their terms, particularly within the leisure and service industries 
  where the workers enter their contracts 'voluntarily' (as in; pressured by debts).
  w
  Criminal Indenturement
  The second most common form of indenturement is for convicts of the criminal justice system. 
  This individuals have been wetware chipped to be 'meme-corrected' and obedient and can be 
  used in much harsher manners than other forms of indentured servants. Some of them may 
  even be sent into battle during military conflict. The government uses them for their skills and 
  manual labor as well as research subjects, but rarely employs them in entertainment or public 
  service where they might break free of their chipping and therapy and become a threat. If the 
  nature of their crimes was not generally threatening to other citizens exceptions to this might 
  be made if they show a high value for those industries. Criminal Indentureds may not be 
  permanently injured by their service unless they were violent convicts and their sentence listed 
  them as 'expendable'. In such cases they may be used for dangerous research, exploration, 
  station maintenance, or 'black ops'.
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  >
  Owned Defect
  The owned defect is used to represent a character who is indentured. Criminal indenturement 
  is the 3BP version of owned. That should also be used for any illegal form of slavery a character 
  is under. Use the 2BP version if the indentured has little to no control over self-consent with 
  regards to the owner. This is standard for an Anthro-slave contract. Use the 1BP version for 
  such things as apprenticeship forms of indenturement where it is largely a contract requiring 
  continued employment. 
  Terrorism
  Terrorism is a rare threat to the Mosquito, but one it works to prevent as if it was a real and constant 
  danger. Terror tactics were heavily used in both the Revolution and Civil War by all involved parties 
  and in space their effects can be extremely devastating – with the populations of whole stations wiped 
  out in a single explosive strike. The mere hint of a terrorist presence is enough to bring down the full 
  weight of JF police and military power. The example of Mercury has also shown the people of the 
  Intersolar Nations that the UN is fully willing to kill every last man, woman, and child in order to 
  capture a valuable resource, and no location in the outer colonies is more valuable than the Mosquito.
  To this end a lot of work goes into counter terrorism efforts and such work forms the basis for 
  much of the strict laws on travel as well as the assurance that incoming cargo and passengers are very 
  well searched. Inside agents among the  Zutreffend Familie have found that even with smuggled 
  imports they conduct severe searches and have their own plans for countering terrorism, after all a 
  strike on the station easily endangers the lives of all. The JF does however, have a few domestic groups 
  it has been unable to fully root out.
  ● Terrorist Groups
  ● Anthro Liberation Front (ALF)
  This group seeks the total liberation and elevation out of any form of bondage or 
  servitude of all anthropomorphic humans (such as JF anthros) as well as humanoid 
  animals (such as combat anthros). To this end they have staged attacks on dormitories, 
  boarding houses, brothels, and other places used to store indentured anthros. They 
  have also been known to attack prominent people who keep anthro indentureds or 
  servants, pastors willing to perform mixed marriages, and even supply centers for the 
  birth control given to under-aged anthro girls.
  Once very popular in the public imagination, even if feared, the group has lost 
  a lot of its credibility in the wake of an investigative SIN cast that seemed to prove the 
  ALF leadership is actually composed of pure humans who feel they are doing what is 
  best for 'the animals' – while the anthro members end up doing the harsher field work.
  The ALF is in a constant state of conflict with IGI, but has been known to work 
  with pirate groups and to even covertly import combat anthro strike teams.
  ● In God's Image (IGI)
  This violent group holds to the basic premise that all genetically modified life is heresy 
  and must be purged. With 20% of the population in the JF a mix of bioroids and 
  anthros the IGI has many targets. They are fortunately small and stuck to the fringes, 
  for their attacks have often been very brutal in nature. They favor attacks on 
  maternity wards and primary schools where they can 'remove future generations of 
  heresy'. Failing that they go after pregnant women of the anthro or bioroid subspecies, 
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  63
  
  or pure humans who 'mate' with them. They have a special hatred of humanoid 
  animals (combat anthros), but these are banned within the JF limiting this anger to 
  rhetoric.
  Espionage
  Espionage is a constant fact of life in the solar system. The importance of memetics has made the push 
  and pull of ideas a game more vital to the survival of nations than ever before. Spy networks riddle the 
  system and agents loyal to just about cause can be found just about everywhere.
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  ● Technology
  Background Technologies Chart:
  A.I.
  Experimental
  Cyberware
  Mature
   Personal Energy Weapons
  Experimental
  Genetic Enhancement
  Mature
  Iconic Cyberspace
  None
  Memory Uploading
  Experimental
  Nanomachines
  Experimental
  Neural Buffers
  Mature
  Neural Jack
  Mature
  Robots
  Mature
  Sensory Interface (SIN)
  Mature
  Space Colonies
  Mature
  Vehicle Energy Weapons
  New
  Virtuality Networks
  Mature
  Wetware Plugs
  Obsolete
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  The solar system has been settled for some time, and the human race has begun to settle into the long 
  age wherein it will face the limits of Einstein's understanding of the world. Until a new paradigm, a 
  new meme, or discourse can be found on how the world works humanity is trapped in the solar system, 
  left to fight over the resources of a single system and hopefully, somehow, survive. Where Einstein took 
  us past Newton, none have emerged to take us past him.
  The science of Mosquito is 'hard science', which is to say there are no teleportation rays, no vat 
  grown clones, no AIs, no subspace, no psionics, no solid or even opaque holograms, and none of the 
  other 'magic gizmos' of soft science fiction.
  Fusion provides power to the system, an the gases of Jupiter are vital for both this and for 
  extracting elements to replenish the effects of the 20 and 21 centuries had on Earth. Ever since the 
  Revolution the issue of sending these gases back to Earth has been a touchy one. One filled with a lot 
  of economic and espionage tension - much as with the games played over the Middle East today with 
  Oil.
  Those gases also fill the system with petrochemicals, and while power has moved on to Fusion, 
  these are still vital in plastics and textiles – core technologies of both the present age and the age of 
  Mosquito.
  ● Holographic Technology
  Hologram technology works off of an advancement of early 21st century Helio-display 
  technology. The device creates a current of charged air particles and in the case of the 
  Mosquito-era an electromagnetic field contains these roughly around the user. The charged 
  nature allows for a crude display over a wide area (such as cloudy shapes over the body) or 
  could be focused for image display (such as in multi layered holographic 2D monitor displays). 
  Thus what the people of the JF think of as hologram technology is not actually a pure 
  hologram. It is not the manipulation of light, but rather charged particles in the air – or 
  shaping glowing gases. The actual images displayed with this technology are 2D and not 3D, 
  but can be displayed into 'empty' air. The particles are harmless and the charge in them 
  quickly fades. Portable devices can be battery powered. Stable devices may sometimes even be 
  powered with fusion reactors. The technology is not fully opaque, but rather about 20% 
  transparent. When displayed into a simple 2D display electromagnetic fields are not needed for 
  containment. Otherwise, when wrapped into some shape that shape can be disrupted or 
  distorted by disrupting or distorting the field.
  Holographic technology is commonly used for advertising, computer display, covering 
  windows, filling in doorways (such as a privacy screen), and a number of other uses including 
  clothing. The clothing can be as an illusionary outfit, or can be addons to clothes to generate 
  stylistic light effects.
  ● AIs
  AI technology has produced smart machines, able to simulate many of the aspects of 
  intelligence needed for limited tasks, but not true awareness. The idea of a machine that can 
  feel is something still left to the unreal. 
  AIs defy logical science. The problem with technology is that it does what it is told, it 
  cannot be illogical, it cannot be creative, it cannot be original. You cannot tell a computer to do 
  something it does not know how to do, or something it has been programmed to not do. 
  Consider that a computer can master Chess – that is mathematical, but it cannot master Go – 
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  that is not logic based. It takes an organic brain to master Go.
  At most, an AI can be used to perform complex calculations, predictions, deductions, 
  and so on. AI pets are common – little toy robot dogs and cats for example, as well as cleaning 
  and butler bots, pleasure toys, and other household items. AIs manage home environments and 
  security, run mass transit, plumbing, security cameras, and so on. As there are not true AIs, 
  there are thus no androids.
  ● Cyberware
  Cyberware is fairly advanced, but not so much for fashion as for medical need. Outside of the 
  brain the bulk of the body can be simulated through a machine. Signals for touch sensitive can 
  also be put into such cyberware, but there is always something about it that is not quite real. 
  Under JF law full body borg conversions are illegal. Anyone with such will be taken off the 
  streets and shipped away to some military station somewhere. Most limb replacement is on the 
  prosthetic end – no better than the natural limb in terms of strength or agility. Actual 
  enhanced limbs are very rare and legally restricted only to citizens with no criminal record. 
  Even among this class of people those with reinforced skeletons are rare.
  Sensory enhancements are the most common form of boosting cyberware, and with lax 
  privacy laws and shielding on government buildings few restrictions exist on such technology. 
  Smartskin dermal modification is common, but Chameleon Smartskins are illegal outside of 
  those indentured to the police, government intelligence, or military. The same condition exists 
  on plating and nanofibre skin.
  Outside of government use Cybernetic weaponry is completely illegal and police have 
  authority to terminate anyone caught with it – making it rare even among the criminal 
  element. After all, it's one thing to be caught with something illegal and get arrested and have 
  access to lawyers, it's quite another to be killed on the spot without the ability to raise 
  objection. Better to get your illegal weapons through in other manners.
  Neural Jacks are nearly universal, and mandatory for most careers. Even blue collar 
  work such as operating heavy machinery requires them for the obvious reason of jacking into 
  the bot that does the lifting. They are not typically used for accessing the internet though. 
  Their primary function is to give people access to the wetware needed for complex tasks, to run 
  machinery, and as a feed for any Neural Buffers used to store data for immediate brain access. 
  SIN decks also connect through Neural Jacks, and as this is one of the primary means of media 
  entertainment in the world of Mosquito, anyone who wants to stay current has a plug for this if 
  no other reason.
  While Neural Buffers and SIN technology exist, they are merely data and impressions, 
  and the mind itself cannot be uploaded in full anymore than one could mix water into oil. The 
  faithful claim the soul is missing, the scientific note the different nature of the data; both agree 
  however, that it is just not possible to copy whatever it is that makes a person alive. The limit 
  of Neural Buffer technology is the ability to store one Persona Program (four slots). That gives 
  a record of knowledge mixed with emotional triggers, but not the inner essence. They have 
  been known however, to cause delusions of being someone else in users who overindulge.
  Ex Machina has rules for Cyberware, and in Hero or BESM these things can be built using the 
  normal power design or Attribute rules. If it can be detached safely, it is an Item in BESM 
  (Focus in Hero). If not, the fact that it is cybernetic is just 'cosmetic' from the game system's 
  point of view.
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  ● Genetic Enhancement and Bioware
  With the existence of anthropomorphs and bioroids genetic modification is obviously advanced. 
  That said there are no cloning vats and no 'gene changing on the fly'. To change your DNA, you 
  have to get it done before you're born, before you're even conceived. A clone, once designed, 
  cannot be grown instantly into maturity. They are typically placed in donor wombs and 
  brought to term naturally. From there they are born as infants and must grow up at a natural 
  pace. A first generation clone has a high risk of a shorter lifespan, though modern medicine 
  works well to counter this. This model of cloning was first done in the 20th century with 'Dolly' 
  and time has managed to perfect the process and lower the number of failed clones to almost 
  zero.
  So the question becomes, just what can bioware and genetic engineering achieve? 
  Science has managed to graft on animal traits to humans and vice versa, as well as even blur 
  the line between plant and animal. All of that had already been achieved by the end of the 20th 
  century, the difference now is that the ethical battle over human gene tampering has long been 
  won by those favoring it. It is now more effective, more potent, and less risky. While science 
  can mix non mammals with humans the results have been dim psychologically and always 
  resulted in sterile offspring – thus making it prohibitively expensive to do. Bioware can grow 
  replacement limbs for transplant after an accident, but these are usually non-enhanced clones 
  and can takes months or years to grow to sufficient maturity, which is why cyberware tends to 
  be the preferred option.
  As for enhancements, anything added to the body which is not identical in DNA risks 
  rejection. The further away from your DNA it is, the more likely rejection will occur. Generally 
  speaking an improvement such as a muscle graft or additional but identical limb is working in 
  the same DNA and thus not very problematic, but something like actual cat ears or fur is a 
  whole different pattern of DNA and so very risky.
  Ex Machina has rules for making Bioware. In Hero and BESM3e Bioware is built using the 
  Powers or Attributes rules respectively.
  ● Energy Weapons
  On a personal level such weapons are simply not efficient. There are no ray guns, blaster 
  pistols, light or plasma swords or any of that stuff. The limits of energy weaponry on a personal 
  level comes in at MAD weapons – microwave technology for causing pain, and lasers that can 
  cause blindness if they manage to target the eyes but are otherwise not very useful as 
  weapons.
  At the vehicular level it is largely the same story. It is more practical in space to build 
  a mass driving device than a giant ray gun. If you want to destroy something just send a nuke 
  or even a moderate sized rock moving at one tenth of the speed of light and you will cause all 
  the chaos you need. Many weapons are designed to target and take out electrical systems to cut 
  power from an opponent, and common tactics also involve trying to shear off an enemy's fusion 
  reactor or biospheres and coming back when they freeze to death or run out of air. With space 
  you don't flashy attacks, just ones that work. Likewise you don't want to destroy their ship or 
  station, you want to capture it for your own use. Only the terrorist, the last resort attack, or 
  the clumsily executed plan will fully destroy what is a potential resource.
  ● Communications and Cyberspace
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  Communications in the Mosquito relies upon the net. Nearly every citizen has glasses or even 
  an optic or neural implant that can allow instant net access. It is not an iconic net however, but 
  is rather more akin to an advanced version of our modern net, one that can follow what the 
  user watches in the real world and feed information on it, as well as have it's own list of 
  interconnected machines that do not map to real space anymore than today's web does. So 
  there is no 'Gibsonian Cyberspace'.
  Com technology is ubiquitous. Everything and everyone is connected to the 
  communications networks, and being truly offline can actually be dangerous in the sense that 
  machinery may become blind to your and trample right into, through, or over you without 
  registering your existence. The offline, in a sense, do not exist.
  Running a game in the net is more simplistic in Mosquito than in many Cyberpunk 
  RPGs. Use skill rolls, and handle the action real time alongside that of other players. Treat the 
  scene as you would someone browsing or hacking on the modern day Internet, but with a little 
  flourish to the descriptions. Much of the data is seen 'overlaid' in the outside world through 
  cybernentic vision enhancements or direct neural transmissions to create 'hallucinations.' The 
  Com enabled person looks at a 3 by 4 foot white board on a wall and “sees and hears” an image 
  with text there, while the offline person next to them simply sees a white board. Likewise, 
  Icons might appear around objects to add information and context to them, arrows might 
  appear in the air to point the way to a destination, and so on. Imagine a 'HUD,' or 'Heads Up 
  Display' of data bars, text, and icons, appearing around wave-enabled objects and people, that 
  other wave-enabled people percieve.
  Gaming through that is not going away to some other place called cyberspace, it is just 
  interacting with the world around the character. There is no cyberspace, because everywhere is 
  cyberspace. It is the person who is offline that is special – they will not see or hear much of 
  what the online person sees and hears. Hacking it, coding it, or otherwise interfering with it is 
  simply a matter of using the game system's built in computer manipulation skills.
  ● Physics of the Mosquito
  The forces that enable the Mosquito to stay where it is and do what it does are rooted in the 
  simplistic nature of complex Newtonian physics.
  As a whole, the station is something of a spinning wheel with a long flexible tail 
  dangling down into the planet below but never going all that deep. This cable is built using the 
  nanotube technology first used by NASA and others around the turn of the 21st century, and 
  has a very high tensile as well as shear strength. Atop the wheel, a few miles up, a bulb of gas 
  processing plants and shipping docks have been placed originally to isolate foreign shipping 
  from the Mosquito's population. It is on top of this structure that Station 7 was mounted, and it 
  acts to keep the smaller city of Bath from upsetting the center of mass.
  The core wheel based cities act as a counter weight with the center of mass (or pivot 
  point) in orbit well above the atmosphere. It is the very presence of such a large 'counterweight' 
  in orbital space in the form of the spinning wheel that keeps the structure stable and acts to 
  prevent the structure from being pulled down into the Jovian gravity well or shaken apart by 
  forces down there. With all the mass up above the atmosphere, tidal forces are minimal.
  Jupiter has a negligible to non existent Delta V to its winds, meaning little to no 
  change in acceleration. The wind there is nearly constant and unchanging. That means that 
  the tail dipping down into the planet is actually dealing with almost no wind forces – you could 
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  say the tail does not wag the dog it comes out of.
  Thus the needle does follow along with a constant rarely changing Jovian wind, but not 
  up or down. The station has the ability to fire rockets and move itself about for minor 
  corrections or to chase something of interest, but this is not used regularly. If the needle does 
  get bent by an atmospheric force; Archimedes principle, allows the gas pumps to still have 
  upward suction regardless of the severity of this curvature. The pumps will work to suck out 
  gas, even if the needle 'whips around'. Of course, given the near lack of Delta V, there will be 
  no whipping. 
  • Gravity
  Gravity is a vital element of an Earth evolved animal's survival. Without it our muscles and 
  bones decay – becoming so weak and fragile that we can break like fine glass and be unable to 
  power the workings of our own biology. Artifical gravity, however, rests firmly within the realm 
  of 'wiz-bang comic book science' and firmly outside the realm of realism. Sure, there are 
  theories that with perhaps the power of a black hole to fuel you, you could provide enough 
  gravity to get a boulder to glide slowy down 'if it felt like it', but such extreme amounts of 
  power are not available to the people of the Mosquito.
  Given that, centrifugal gravity is used to simulate the effects of gravity, although it too 
  has its own issues. Centrifuge systems work by putting everything on a spinning wheel, with 
  the people standing on the inside, heads pointing to the center. You can feel the effect at many 
  amusement parks, as well as discover the core problem it faces – namely that if you do 
  anything but stand absolutely still you will notice your head is moving faster than your feet. To 
  counter this you need a very large radius, with the hope that you will be dealing on a scale in 
  which a human sized individual won't notice the then slight difference between their head and 
  feet. You now want the wheel spinning fast enough so that at the end of this radius gravity is 
  no more than that on Earth, and you hope that in doing so you can still construct buildings of 
  moderate height with enough gravity at the top to not be unhealthy for long term habitation. 
  As an alternative you could build on several concentric rings each spinning at a different speed, 
  but you will then need to figure out an easy way to travel between them.
  This wheel system is used on the Mosquito, but not the concentric rings. The radius of the 
  system comes to a little over 40 miles, and the three cities are built at the end of spokes, with 
  machinery and forests to recycle air in between them. If a tree falls in one of these forests by 
  your hand, the philosophers can debate all they want over whether or not it makes a sound, 
  but you won't care very much when the authorities send you out an airlock.
  By contrast most of the city of Bath does not spin, but is lower down the needly and 
  partially in the Jovian atmosphere. Thus the name comes from the idea that it is 'taking a dip' 
  into Jupiter. At it's height, it manages about 0.3g's through the city core. Not enough for long 
  term safety, but good for visits. At the city core elevator shafts go down and then out to 
  habitation modules which ring the city and do spin at a rate fast enough to give just under 1g 
  and at a 'V' angle built to counter the problems of the 0.3g pull from Jupiter.
  ● Inverted Horizon
  On Earth objects in the distance seem smaller and the horizon line is caused by a combination 
  of this and the curvature of the planet. On the Mosquito you still have the smaller scale at a 
  distance, but the curvature of the ground goes up rather than down, resulting in no actual 
  horizon line. The further away something is the higher up it will appear, until it is eventually 
  something you will see up in the sky that you look down upon as if you were way above it. In 
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  the core cities on the wheel the scale is too large to actually get the full effect of this, and a 
  slight haze has been put into the atmosphere to cut the line of sight down to about 3-4 miles, 
  well before any curvature is strongly obvious. On station 7 however though the air is the same 
  air (even if it can takes months to circulate that far) as in the rest of the Mosquito the scale is 
  small enough that you can often see the opposite side straight above you with a rim and spokes 
  blocking some of line of sight. This causes a sense of vertigo to newcomers to smaller scale 
  cylinder stations. 
  The unusual horizons give anyone new to station life a -1 to any skill roll involving 
  targeting at long ranges. This hold true even in the core cities on the Wheel as the effect, 
  though slight, is still there.
  ● New Equipment
  Given the location of the Mosquito in space, with its somewhat different technological and socio-
  political setup, a couple of new 'toys' need to be added into the game to make Mosquito work for 
  gaming.
  ● Weapons  BESM
  –
  BESM3e game stats for weapons remain as described in the book. Buy weapons with points using the 
  item attribute. Illegal and hard to obtain weapons require the proper Organizational Ties (if granted 
  through an agency such a police issue gun) or features (weapon license, dealer contact).
  ● Weapons  Ex Machina
  –
  All prebuilt weapons in the Ex Machina book, as well as the improved list of Table 10-3 should have 
  their Max Damage multiplied by three. This reflects the more dangerous nature of the 'hard science' 
  genre The Mosquito tries to fall under. The effects and reasons for this are explained under 'Combat 
  and Damage Changes' in the Characters and Game Rules chapter.
  ● Weapons  Hero
  –
  Hero system game stats for weapons remain as described in the books. Weapons are bought using a 
  character's resource pool. Illegal and hard to obtain weapons require the proper Perks as listed on page 
  88 and 150 of Dark Champions
  The following are common new weapons on The Mosquito, to reflect the effects of the gun ban.
  BESM
  Ex Machina
  (do not multiply damage of these 
  new weapons by 3)
  Hero
  Short Bow As per BESM rules.
  As Long Bow but damage 22.
  As 'Light Bow'.
  Compound 
  Bow
  Consider this a Long-Bow, 
  Double Curved.
  As Long Bow but damage 34.
  Treat as Long Bow 
  with Compound 
  modification. 
  Compound bows at 
  10” to range.
  Repeating 
  Crossbow
  As Light Crossbow, damage 2, 6 
  shots (Ammo-1), and no 
  activation.
  As Crossbow but damage 28, 6 
  shots, and no slow.
  As Crossbow but with 6 
  shots.
  Hand 
  Crossbow
  As per BESM rules
  As Crossbow but damage 18. 
  Very easy to conceal.
  As Light Crossbow.
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  String based weapons will wear out if left strung for too long. In Ex Machina, for every hour 
  the weapon is left strung reduce its damage by 1. For Hero, do the same every 6 hours. This is 
  permanent until the string is -replaced-. Short bows are easier to conceal than long bows, and 
  compound bows can be disassembled and reassembled, although doing so will take several minutes.
  In Ex Machina all string weapons are minor gadgets.
  All Firearms cost one more Major Gadget than listed in the Ex Machina rulebook with the 
  following exceptions:
  •
  Non Lethal Ranged Weapons all cost as listed in the main book.
  •
  Flechette Pistols, MAD, and Water Cannons cost as listed in the main book.
  •
  Sniper Lasers cost 2 extra Major Gadgets and are powered by a gun-clip battery.
  All projectile based firearms except for the weapons listed above are extremely illegal in the 
  hands of civilians and will be met by police who kill first and investigate later. A similar response will 
  great anyone using a laser sniper, biological, chemical, or nanite warfare which is air or water born or 
  contagious.
  For lethal guns issued to law enforcement and military only the following ammo types are 
  normally available:
  •
  Hollow Point, Sensor Bullets, Rubber, and Wooden.
  •
  Hollow Point ammo is the standard for law enforcement with the other options available as 
  needed.
  Note that nanite weaponry is experimental to the point that it officially does not exist... Any 
  nanite based weapon should be considered to cost three extra major gadgets beyond whatever other 
  cost it takes to build it in Ex Machina.
  ● Gear
  All natural fiber based equipment and clothing costs one minor gadget, or if it already had a 
  cost, one additional minor gadget. This includes Hemp even though that is grown on the Mosquito. All 
  synthetic fiber clothing and equipment has its normal cost, which for clothing is, in game terms at 
  least, normally free. Holo clothing costs no gadgets (is free), but violates the decency laws in the cities 
  of Jovia and Station 7 if worn as the only clothing covering the lower vitals. Doing that in New Beijing 
  is frowned upon, but the city has no laws over the issue because the city values privacy so much. Bath 
  and New Rome have no policy either way.
  Nanofabricators, Accelerated Growth Tanks, Metamorphosis Tanks, and Mind-Alteration 
  Machines do not exist. Nanodocs however do.
  DNA breakdown kits can be acquired 'on the street' in spray cans. They are illegal to make or 
  posses and count as a Minor Gadget. They will release sterile bacteria that will eat away all DNA in 
  the covered area before dying off withing a few hours. Spraying a person with the spray will give them 
  a very short lived flu. Nanite versions of the spray also exist. DNA can also be destroyed with freezing, 
  heating, UV radiation, and general decomposition, however these methods will all likely leave small 
  amounts of DNA around and it only takes one single strand for even early 21st century police to make a 
  match.
  Robots are common, and some varieties such as street cleaners, home vacuums, ID scanners, 
  surveillance bots, pleasure toys, and 'pets' are ubiquitously everywhere. Androids and true AIs 
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  however, do not exist. No machine can be told how to do something it does not know how to do, or to 
  break its own programming, and as such there are no AIs. Robots are otherwise bought as per Ex 
  Machina's rules.
  “Mecca Compass” - The Mecca Compass will find the 3D direction of and distance to Mecca. It 
  operates similar to GPS, using a network of satellites throughout the solar system that take a signal 
  from Mecca and use it to find their own location and then relay that on to those further out – each then 
  computes it's distance, accounting for the delay in time of the signal it received and how that has 
  shifted its position, and then continues to pass the signal on. “Mecca Compasses” see the signal 
  anywhere in the solar system that can pick up a radio signal and then point to Mecca inside of a 
  spherical 3D display with a readout for distance. The user can also get the data output in any digital 
  format, and the compasses have become one of the primary means of solar navigation.
  The “Freedom Pill” is a drug that removes the submissive nature of altered humans as well as 
  suppressing the common phobia over being alone. It can be taken in eight hour doses but results in a 
  mild depressed state (-1 on relevant rolls), which becomes increasingly severe over time (an additional 
  cumulative -1 per day up to -7) and at five days of use can lead to feelings of suicide (daily soul stat 
  checks to avoid an attempt). It also results in sexual dysfunction / loss of drive. This penalty lessons by 
  1 per day after stopping use (detox) with suicidal feelings leaving when it goes above -5 and other 
  effects leaving at 0. Doses are 'mundane' gadgets. The pill is legal but unpopular.
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  ● Characters & Game Rules
  The Mosquito is a more dangerous place than the typical tri-stat world. When 
  lethal force is used, people die in the Mosquito setting. To reflect that the point 
  scale is much lower and characters are encouraged to put more into skills.
  All characters should choose which one of the cultures they come from.
  ● BESM3e
  Use the benchmarks for 'Heroic' on table 2-2, page 9 of BESM. Characters 
  should be built on between 150 to 200 points. Consider 175 an ideal number. Skills 
  should specialize where possible, and buying multiple specialties for the same skill 
  is encouraged.
  The attribute Tough is restricted to half the number of ranks allowed for 
  other attributes. Further, 'Not So Tough' should be considered common. Most 
  characters should have multiple Organizational Ties. Owned is also common to reflect indentured 
  status or in less severe form, employment contracts.
  ● Ex Machina
  The average character stat should be 5, and the average skill known to professional training 
  should be 4 (which gives a 5 to the specialization). This makes a skilled check in a specialty 10- on 2d8. 
  GMs should not allow more than one stat above 6, and none above 8 without serious consideration for 
  the implications. The average person still remains with the Ex Machina listed benchmark of 4.
  Ex Machina characters built for the Mosquito should be built on 45 to 55 points. Assuming 50 
  points and defects, characters should have a balance of about 30 of points in stats, 10 points in 
  occupation templates, mundane attributes, species templates, or gear (to include cyberware), and the 
  rest in the ‘Highly Skilled’ attribute. The character should have enough final skill points to get 3 to 5 
  skills at rank 4 – which given initial starting skill points will take about rank 4 in ‘Highly Skilled’ if 
  one focused their skills narrowly.
  Skill ranks in Mosquito should be assumed to go up to 7 and not 4.
  The attribute 'Tough' is not allowed in a Mosquito campaign and the defect 'Not So Tough' 
  should be assumed to be common. Some GMs may even chose to assign 1BP of this attribute to all 
  characters on a mandatory basis. This reflects the grittier nature of life in the 'Mosquito'. It is a hard 
  genre, and cinematic effects should be avoided or downplayed. Special attributes may no be taken 
  unless part of Cyberware, bioware, a species or occupational template, or the GM feels the way they 
  are used in that case fits within hard science and the Mosquito setting.
  The Cred attribute is in use, along with the Organizational Ties attribute. Where 
  Organizational Ties represents power in structured groups like corporations, gangs, or the 
  government, Cred represents cultural influence. 1Pt/level Cred is reputation with a culture outside of 
  the Jovian Federation, 3pt/level is Cred with one of the JF cultures, and 5pt/level is JF Wide Cred. 
  Having JF Wide Cred is not always better than having more local cultural Cred – think of the 
  difference between being a national figure and the guy everyone in the barrio goes to. Sometimes the 
  smaller version of Cred has more power because it is more direct. You can think of the difference 
  between Cred and Ties like the difference between social status and membership rank. A famous 
  celebrity has Cred, a corporate CEO has Ties.
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  ● Hero
  Hero system characters should be built on Heroic scale, 75 points plus disadvantages. Double 
  the normal limit is allowed for social and psychological disadvantages. Vulnerabilities and 
  Susceptibilities are not generally appropriate – save for with unusual allergies. PD and ED may not be 
  made resistant. Equipment is not purchased with points unless it is bioware or cyberware.
  ● Bio and Cyber
  Bioware technology is very limited. Most bio-enhancements are inborn as a result of being an 
  anthropomorph, bioroid, or having one of these as an ancestor. Outside of this only the most limited 
  applications of bioware are allowed. Cyberware is uncommon, and anything with a purely combat 
  function is unknown – what cyberware is available comes out of medical science. However almost 
  everyone has a Neural Jack, with Neural Buffers and Wetware both common additions. Most Neural 
  Buffers stay in the range of one slot, but some persona addicts go up to the full four needed to store a 
  persona internally.
  ● The JF Citizen Template
  Unless there is some special unusual aspect to a character, all 
  people on board the JF should have these elements (some of which 
  are already included in other templates):
  1
  +1 Features (neural jack)
  [0.2] 2 skill point in Languages-1 to be bilingual (eLatin and Mandarin)
  Options: The following cyberware is very common:
  1
  +1 Features (neural buffer) [this maxes at rank 4]
  1
  +1 Features (implant com)
  2
  Gadgets (up to 4 slots worth of wetware chips)
  Combat and Damage Changes
  For BESM3e and Hero use the normal combat and damage rules. The 
  changes in this section apply to Ex Machina only.
  The default assumption of The Mosquito in combat is that Wound Difficulty Penalties are in use, along 
  with Shock, Critical Injury, and Catastrophic Damage.
  In addition all weapon damages should be multiplied by three from what is listed on Tables 
  10-2 and 10-3 or anywhere else the Ex Machina rulebook lists damage for pre-built equipment. This 
  does NOT change the damage of the Special Attack, Massive Damage, Natural Weapon, or other 
  damaging attributes. Just assume the equipment lists are weapons with more levels of Special Attack 
  than the book assumed.
  As a pretty severe change to the norm in Ex Machina the reasons for that need to be explained. 
  The scale for Mosquito has been set to match the idea that a critical hit with a light handgun (1.5% 
  chance) should cause a victim to need to make a soul stat check to avoid death. On a 5 average stat 
  scale the normal Health Points will be 50, so a handgun needs to do 50+ damage on a critical and not 
  the 16+ACV in the Ex Machina book. If all the damage ratings of prebuilt equipment are multiplied by 
  three the light handgun will now do a max damage of 24 and average around 15. On a critical hit it 
  will do 48. After you add the average ACV of 5 this becomes 53, enough to risk death. The normal hit of 
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  15 will also be enough to require a shock check and start bleeding. There is however, little risk of death 
  from this because if the victim takes no more injuries they will not bleed to death for another 85 
  minutes (out of combat), or 850 minutes (14 hours, 10 minutes) if they get first aid. Most people can get 
  medical attention in that time, and real handgun injuries that go untreated are likely to kill sooner 
  than that, though only rarely instantly – which is what this change more or less manages to achieve.
  Occupational Templates
  First a look at the templates from Ex Machina and how they play out in the Mosquito, and then on to 
  new templates.
  ● Hacker
  Given the pervasive nature of Com and internet technology aboard the Mosquito, with almost 
  everything from lights to toilet paper dispensers, from ID scanners to transit routing being 'on 
  the wire' or 'on the band' (as in wireless Com); Hackers are vital to the station's well being, and 
  destructive hackers one of its greatest fears. The career choice is more favored among Mzuzi 
  than other cultures, but not by a wide margin. Mzuzi tend to this path for the networked 
  nature of it. By contrast, Faithful also chose to be Hackers for an almost opposite reason – it is 
  a path where you can be invisible and not have to deal with other communities in a direct 
  manner. When building a Hacker keep in mind that Mosquito Cyberspace works through the 
  Virtuality Net and is not Iconic.
  ● Idol
  Primals flock to the Idol path en mass. They were designed for it, and they excel at it. Primal 
  idols tend to be in direct entertainment – singers, dancer, SIN stars, and the like. Political 
  Idols by contrast almost never have Primals among their numbers. That path is favored by 
  Civitas more than others, who by their memes tend to be driven towards the public life. 
  Soloists do not take well to the Idol path. On the Mosquito the Idol path is fitting for those in 
  politics, media, and  entertainment. It can be everyone from a courtesan (or see the Courtesan 
  template) to an MP. Sports figures can also fill this role, but only in the sense of those who 
  spend their focus not on athletics but on schmoozing the public. Idols are also found among the 
  wealthy socialites who spend their lives going from party to party. Idols in mass entertainment 
  in the JF fit the name Idol much better than they do Celebrity or Star, being made products 
  rather than discovered talent.
  ● Some of your Organizational Ties should be switched to Cred instead.
  ● Investigator
  Mzuzi and Civitas are more apt to go into investigatory careers than other cultures, although 
  Primals may go into team focused investigation ops due to their enhanced senses. The 
  anthropomorph heightened sense for emotions and in some cases rooted out lies also tends to 
  give them an investigatory edge, but unless well partnered this is countered by their slave 
  mentality. The ideal choice seems to be the Bioroid from either the Mzuzi or Civitas cultural 
  path. The JF does allow for private investigators, and there are a number of them throughout 
  the Jovian colonies. Corporations will also often employ their own investigators, and there is 
  the obvious role for this path among the police and intelligence community – to include the 
  secret police. Journalists tend to come from this path, and it needs to be noted that the people 
  who do the leg work in media are -not- the ones whose faces you see on the SIN deck. 
  Government censorship is the most common point of frustration for a journalist, especially 
  since the “Responsible Media Act” put the censors on the editorial staff – screening your stories 
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  before they are allowed to be aired. Not that ex government intel operatives will always be 
  stuck with travel restrictions and government handlers monitoring their activity.
  ● Outside of police and military, Gun Combat can be assumed to be non lethal 
  weapons, flechette pistols, or replaced with archery.
  ● Driving is most likely motorcycle or can be replaced with a boost elsewhere.
  ● Medic
  A doctor in the Mosquito is likely to be even more specialized than those we have today, with 
  the fields of genetic engineering and cybernetics having split medicine along a number of new 
  paths. Further complicating the issue is the presence of bioroids and anthropomorphs, 
  introducing whole new issues with blood types, genetics, transplants, and even anatomy. 
  Medics are still well paid, and the choice is popular among Soloists who still value community 
  respect. Every culture manages to draw people into the medical career, even Primals. A 
  disproportionate number of gynecologists are Muslim women due to the sensitivity of that 
  community – it being improper among them for a woman to go to a male gynecologist.
  ● Street Punk
  Street punks abound in all of the Mosquitos cities, and people in 'the life' come from the 
  underside of every culture. Primals are almost always going to be thugs or other low levels in 
  the street community. Civitas will be those who try to organize and believe they are looking out 
  for the community, and a similar thinking flows out of Mzuzi who live on the street. The Soloist 
  culture is a popular ideal on the street with it's 'look out for me' perspective. Many street lifers 
  attracted to this culture will actually end up working against their own interests by supporting 
  those with wealth and power from the same culture who will be the least likely to help their 
  underlings. The street life isn't entirely the illegal life, it is rather more the life of those on the 
  margins, and as such is full of many desperate Primals, unskilled laborers, streetwalkers, and 
  so on. Note also that while low level criminals might be street punks, organized crime is rarely 
  led by such figures.
  ● Street Samurai
  The Street Samurai is going to be very different than in an Earthside location. On the 
  mosquito cyber implanted weapons are nearly non existent and guns are ultra rare. These 
  people will instead tend to be skilled in unarmed or melee combat to even such fields as 
  archery or needler guns (shooting tranquilizers or poison darts). One specialized variant of the 
  Street Samurai that is going to be very rare, but might occasionally be encountered among 
  foreign infiltrators is the terrorist, who is likely to specialize in demolitions or chemical agents. 
  Military and police, as well intelligence operatives will by contrast fill the ranks of 'Samurai' 
  with people who do in fact know how to use guns, personal armor, vehicular weaponry, 
  explosives, and terrorist tactics. Most of these people will either be in the employ of the 
  government or of an older age and no longer in their physical peak, making the knowledge 
  more intellectual than practical. People with extreme skills – the ability to build explosives out 
  of nearly anything, use chemical agents, and conduct terror ops are not likely to ever be fully 
  let go by the government. After they retire they face strict travel restrictions and the need to 
  regularly check in with a handler for the rest of their lives. The Moquito encourages a strong 
  level of competition among its corporations, and this does turn violent from time to time. As 
  long as there are no civilian causalities and no damage to the property of third parties the 
  authorities tend to turn a blind eye. For these operations a number of corporations have their 
  own security details. Others will contract out due to budget issues if involving themselves in 
  this kind of competition is not a part of their standard operations. All of which means corp 
  work for the independent samurai tends to be a counterstrike after somebody else has forced a 
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  corp to get nasty.
  ● Any gun skills can be replaced with unarmed, melee, or archery skills. If not, they 
  can be optionally assumed to be focused on Flechette Pistols and other non lethal 
  weapons. High speed projectile guns are rare.
  ● Remove Tough from the template, this attribute does not exist in the Mosquito 
  setting.
  ● Suit
  Suits fill the ranks of society in a thousand different shades. You have business people, mob 
  bosses, political workers, legal experts, and anyone else who lives by making deals. Soloists are 
  attracted to the field for the wealth and influence, but will lack satisfaction unless they can 
  rise into strongly independent positions. Primals largely cannot function in this world at all 
  due to their submissive nature, and even bioroids from other cultures fair poorly here. That all 
  said, every other culture has its suits, and in great supply. The good ones stand out and excel, 
  but most end up little more then cubicle farmers – lower level management handling a cadre of 
  office workers somewhere.
  ● Tech
  Even more vital to space life than Hackers, the tech is a ubiquitous part of life in the JF. For 
  the masses of tech workers this field means you work, build, or repair the machines that mine 
  the gases of Jupiter. In the early days of the station perhaps eighty percent of the community 
  fell into this category, but with successive generation over the last century that number has 
  gone down, and now accounts for only somewhere between ten to twenty percent. This is not to 
  say there are less techs now than before, but rather than the population has grown and 
  civilization has come to what was once only a 'mining town in space'. In the current year many 
  techs work in fields that have nothing to do with mining. Machinery is everywhere, and 
  somebody has to be around who can build or repair it when the robots don't know what to do. 
  The lonely nature of tech work makes it disfavored by Civitas and Mzuzi, but equally preferred 
  by Soloists and Faithful; albeit not for the same reasons.
  ● Gun Combat can be assumed to be non lethal weapons, flechette pistols, or replaced 
  with archery.
  ● Teleoperator
  From taxi cab drivers to deep space pilots the world of The Mosquito is full of Teleoperators. 
  This path is most favored among Mzuzi and Soloists. Mzuzi have the tradition of coming from 
  the city which was first able to muster its ships during the revolution, and Soloists are likely to 
  enjoy the low level of interpersonal dependency. With nearly no private vehicles inside the 
  Mosquito beyond the size of a motorcycle there are countless taxis with plugged in drivers to 
  man them. While the transit trains can be run by semi-AIs, leaving small scale free moving 
  traffic in the hands of machines tends to result in massive accidents every time a dog, crazy old 
  man, or other unplugged and unpredictable variable enters the roadway, so actual human 
  operators still drive anything that can move freely. While a computer can make judgments of 
  priority based on logic, a human can make it based on need, and that too favors them for taxi 
  drivers who might still want to help that kid get to the hospital to see his mom before dropping 
  off the businessman, or help a pregnant woman in labor without reducing her to a series of 
  equations. So even though these people might choose this path for the low interpersonal 
  requirements, it is precisely because of their interpersonal ability that the path still exists. 
  That said, countless additional teleoperators sit in offices within New Rome, New Beijing, and 
  Bath remotely driving robots operating on the outside of the station's hull, inside the gas 
  facilities and pumps of the needle, or even flying about the upper atmosphere of Jupiter 
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  looking for things of interest. At this level of the field, the job truly does lack a need for 
  interpersonal contact, favoring instead those who can multi task for multiple bots and think in 
  3D through camera eyes not their own.
  ● Unless dealing with a military Teleoperator, Gun Combat and Heavy Weapons can 
  be assumed to be non lethal weapons, flechette pistols, or replaced with archery.
  Original Templates
  ● Memetic Engineer
  Society shifts, fads come and go, culture evolves, and people are driven by supposedly unseen 
  forces to take up new paths, follow some new ideology, buy some product, resist some idea, or 
  fall into line. You however, are there pulling the strings when it all happens. The 'active 
  psychologist' of the future, you understand the inner working of memes and discourse – you 
  work to ensure the package will survive transmission, spreading the new meme through your 
  target and shifting human thought over to the needs of your client. Maybe you just need 
  everyone in a key demographic to watch a certain event on a certain day, or maybe you need to 
  insert a new religion for the next few generations. Either way, it's all just a question of the 
  scope of your variables.
  2
  +1 Mind
  10
  +2 Highly Skilled (list below), +1 Sixth Sense (interpersonal dynamics), 
  +1 Heightened Awareness, +3 Organizational Ties (Significant)
  2
  Rank 1 Contamination: Memetic Spread. Max rank is 4. Requires 
  repeated successful interpersonal persuasions. This attribute is -ONLY- 
  available to those with special Memetics training.
  -
  +2 Cultural Arts, +2 Social Sciences (Memetics), +2 Interrogation 
  (Psychological), +1 Etiquette (two specializations)
  -1
  Memetic Engineers face repercussions for going rogue, but as theorists 
  they are not as close to the specific data that makes an issue sensitive
  ● Memetic Operative
  You work in the field, doing the actual dirty work to spread a new meme. You know how to get 
  people to challenge their assumptions. You know how to make them think it was their idea. 
  You know how to make a seemingly clear message become utterly confused and scrambled 
  before it reaches target, or take utter jumbled chaos and make it clear as crystal.
  2
  +1 Soul
  10
  +2 Highly Skilled (list below), +1 Sixth Sense (interpersonal dynamics), 
  +2 Heightened Awareness, +2 Organizational Ties (Significant), Combat 
  Technique (Judge Opponent)
  4
  Rank 2 Contamination: Memetic Spread. Max rank is 4. Requires 
  repeated successful interpersonal persuasions. This attribute is -ONLY- 
  available to those with special Memetics training.
  -
  +1 Cultural Arts, +1 Social Sciences (Memetics), +1 Intimidation, +2 
  Interrogation (Psychological), +1 Etiquette (two specializations)
  -2
  Owned: Memetics operatives face very hostile actions when they go rogue.
  ● Memetic Police
  In other times you might be called the thought police, or even less kind names. Your job is to 
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  move through the trends in society and find toxic memes before they have a chance to fully 
  develop, stamping them out for the good of all. In rare cases you may have to target and 
  destroy a fully organized, fully developed, memetic intrusion. Your foes can range from college 
  dissidents to foreign insurgents, even hapless domestic servants can serve as sources of 
  memetic invasion. You control the ideas running through society, you keep it safe.
  4
  +1 Mind, +1 Soul
  12
  +2 Gadgets, +3 Highly Skilled (list below), +1 Sixth Sense (interpersonal 
  dynamics), +1 Heightened Awareness, +2 Organizational Ties (Moderate), 
  Combat Technique (Judge Opponent)
  -
  +1 Cultural Arts, +1 Social Sciences (Memetics), +1 Intimidation, +1 
  Interrogation (Psychological), +1 Area Knowledge (City), +1 Street Sense, 
  +1 Urban Tracking (Academic and one more specialization), +1 Unarmed 
  Attack or Unarmed Defense
  -1
  Red Tape
  ● Spacers
  Trade between the colonies keeps the whole system running. Somebody has to be out there, in 
  the cold of space, keeping the ships moving. Some few people simply choose to live in space, 
  going from station to station as independent traders, or perhaps pirates, others live their lives 
  on giant cargo vessels or gas ships – the truckers of the Mosquito era. Such people in fact live a 
  lot like future truckers, working for a union of some kind and traveling from port to port, 
  making small stops at way stations along the way like 20th century truckers visiting a truck 
  stop for pleasurable company, food, a game of cards, and a little bit of 'special cargo' – the sort 
  the boys at the dock offload first, before they stamp your manifest. Even in the future, things 
  have a way of 'falling off the back of a truck'.
  -2
  -1 Body
  8
  +2 Gadgets, +2 Highly Skilled (list below), +1 Organizational Ties 
  (significant – Shipping Unions)
  -
  Spacers are allowed to take the special attribute “Special Movement: Zen 
  Direction.” A character must have bought into at least eighty percent of 
  this template to be allowed to buy this attribute.
  -
  +1 Piloting, +1 Foreign Culture, +1 Area Knowledge (JF System, Solar 
  Highway, or Outer Colonies), +1 Navigation (space), +1 Wilderness 
  Survival (Asteroid beltways, Station Squatting, or some other solar 
  environment that has things to be scrounged), Street Senses (Spacer 
  Stops), +1 Language
  -
  OPTIONAL SKILLS: Many Spacers will have Acrobatics, Mechanics, 
  Gaming, and /or Street Senses (Squatter Towns).
  -1
  Not So Tough: Weak bones from long exposure to low gravity.
  ● Park Rangers
  Yes, there actually are large forests of high oxygen quick growing trees and plants on the 
  Mosquito. They clean the air and give it that fresh scent that keeps the mind at peace. You 
  manage them, patrolling one of the forests between the three core cities of the Mosquito 
  looking for squatters, criminals, or even teens out on a party. You keep the trees healthy, 
  monitor the air quality, and function something like an armed EPA. Without you, everybody 
  dies.
  4
  +1 Body, +1 Soul
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  7
  +1 Gadgets, +2 Highly Skilled (list below), +1 Heightened Awareness, +2 
  Organizational Ties (Moderate – Forestry Service)
  -
  +1 Animal Training, +1 Area Knowledge (One forest), +1 Navigation 
  (Forests), +1 Riding, +2 Wilderness Survival, +2 Wilderness Tracking, +1 
  Archery
  -1
  Red Tape
  ● Squatters
  After the Civil War countless refugees were allowed to attach the remains of their ships along 
  the edges of the Mosquito. Many of these people eventually became a part of JF society, but 
  just as many have by choice or circumstance remained outside the system. Nameless, living by 
  wits end, you survive on handouts or the kind of day to day labor even the street will not 
  perform. You have no legal rights, no recourse against abuse, but you are still free. Squatter 
  communities are attached somewhere along the outside shell of the Mosquito, usually along the 
  spokes of the wheel, and each community has its own rules of survival and social hierarchy.
  -4
  -2 Body
  6
  +1 Gadgets, +2 Highly Skilled (list below), +1 Heightened Awareness, +1 
  Cred (Squatter Community)
  -
  Squatters are allowed to take the special attribute “Special Movement: 
  Zen Direction.” A character must have bought into at least eighty percent 
  of this template to be allowed to buy this attribute.
  -
  +1 Area Knowledge (One Squatter zone), +1 Climbing, +1 Mechanics, +1 
  Stealth, +1 Street Senses (Squatter Towns), +1 Urban Tracking
  -5
  Ism: Squatter 2, Not So Tough 3: Weak bones from long exposure to low 
  gravity.
  ● Terrorists
  Be it ideology, military, or even corporate contract, the terrorist works to use chaos and death 
  to create the largest impact with the least amount of resources used. Everyone in the solar 
  system denies using people like you, and everyone of them claims every one of their opponents 
  supports you.
  0
  +2 Body, -2 Soul
  14
  +3 Gadgets, +4 Highly Skilled (list below), +4 Organizational Ties 
  (Moderate – Terrorist Cell)
  -
  Character may have a cyberweapon – some kind of melee item, nonlethal 
  or low velocity projectile. It is an instant death sentence if it is discovered, 
  and such discovery is trivial and very likely, but it can be bought and is 
  common for short suicide mission insertions by foreign interests.
  -
  +1 Burglary, +1 Demolitions, +1 Driving (Car or Motorcycle) or +1 Pilot 
  (VTOL and small Spacecraft), +1 Electronics (Security), +1 Military 
  Sciences, +1 Poisons, +1 Gun Combat (any) or +2 Archery, +1 Unarmed 
  Attack, +1 Unarmed Defense
  -3
  Wanted: The State
  ● Cops
  Somebody's still got to walk the beat, show up to bag the body, arrest the perp, and stand 
  around waiting to get shot at. This template assumes an experienced cop with good training, 
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  81
  
  lower the skills for a rookie. Mix with the investigator template for a detective grade police 
  officer.
  4
  +2 Body
  12
  +2 Gadgets, +5 Highly Skilled (list below), +1 Heightened Awareness, +2 
  Organizational Ties (Moderate – Police Force)
  -
  Character may have a cyberweapon – some kind of melee item, nonlethal 
  or low velocity projectile
  -
  +1 Area Knowledge (your beat in the City), +1 Driving (Car or 
  Motorcycle) or +1 Pilot (VTOL and small Spacecraft), +1 Law (Criminal), 
  +1 Police Sciences, +1 Interrogation, +1 Street Sense, +2 Urban Tracking, 
  +1 Gun Combat (pistol, nonlethal weapons or flechette pistol) or +2 
  Archery, +1 Ranged Defense, +1 Unarmed Attack or Unarmed Defense
  -1
  Red Tape
  ● Mobster
  Organized crime goes along with organized society. You're a made man or woman in one the 
  Mosquitos more professional underworld factions. More than a thug, you understand the 
  political end of the business – how to be an operator and work your connections to get the job 
  done. You've advanced beyond just being muscle. For mob thugs use the Street Punk and 
  Street Samurai templates.
  4
  +2 Body
  12
  +2 Gadgets, +4 Highly Skilled (list below), +4 Organizational Ties 
  (Moderate – Mafia)
  -
  +1 Area Knowledge (your territory in the City), +1 Etiquette (Lower 
  Class), +1 Intimidation, +1 Street Sense, +1 Urban Tracking, +1 Gun 
  Combat (nonlethal weapons or flechette pistol) or +2 Archery, +1 Ranged 
  Defense, +1 Unarmed Attack or Unarmed Defense
  -2
  Owned
  ● Pirate
  The plague on life in the Mosquito era, you've got your territory along the space highway, or 
  around a particular favored planetary body, comet, or asteroid field. To the IN and UN you are 
  a pure threat – a cancer to civilization keeping progress, trade, and communication from 
  reaching their deserved potentials. You know better, every herd needs a wolf to pick off the 
  weaker members and keep it lean, fit, and better able to survive hardship. That wolf is you, 
  and what you do only ensures the herd's continued property.
  -2
  -1 Body
  8
  +3 Gadgets, +5 Highly Skilled (list below)
  -
  Pirates are allowed to take the special attribute “Special Movement: Zen 
  Direction.” A character must have bought into at least eighty percent of 
  this template to be allowed to buy this attribute.
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  82
  
  -
  +1 Area Knowledge (JF System, Solar Highway, Pirate Hideouts, or 
  Outer Colonies), +1 Intimidation, +1 Wilderness Survival (Asteroid 
  beltways, Station Squatting, or some other solar environment that has 
  things to be scrounged), +1 Street Senses (Spacer Stops), +1 Gun Combat, 
  +1 Ranged Defense, +1 Unarmed Attack, +1 Unarmed Defense
  [+1 Navigation (space), +1 Piloting, +1 Language, +1 Foreign Culture or 
  Military Sciences] OR [+1 Archery or Thrown Weapons, +1 Melee Attack 
  or Heavy Weapons]
  -
  OPTIONAL SKILLS: Many Pirates will have Acrobatics, Mechanics, 
  Gaming, and /or Street Senses (Squatter Towns).
  -4
  Wanted: The State, Not So Tough 1: Weak bones from long exposure to 
  low gravity.
  ● Jovian Divers
  Rare though it is, from time to time somebody needs to actually go 'down the needle' and enter 
  the Jovian atmosphere in person. You're as rare as a 1960's astronaut, and every terrorist in 
  the solar system has your name somewhere on the top ten list. Every kid in the JF wants to be 
  you when they grow up, and every groupie from here to Mars wants to get in your bed and then 
  broadcast the experience. The Jovian Diver Program (JDP) has about 20 people in it with your 
  skills, and that's it. While there are plenty of Spacers who skim the surface in tourist ships, 
  you go as deep as modern technology will allow, making the observations and insights no Robot 
  would ever think to make. Some might say exploration can be automated but you know better – 
  robots have no soul, they will never suffice to teach mankind about the wonders of the 
  universe.
  8
  +2 Body, +1 Mind, +1 Soul
  50
  +4 Gadgets, +3 Highly Skilled (list below), +4 Organizational Ties (great 
  – JDP), Special Movement: Zen Direction, +4 Cred (shark – Media), +2 
  Wealth
  -
  +3 Piloting, +2 Area Knowledge (Jupiter's Atmosphere), +2 Navigation, 
  +1 Etiquette, +1 Physical Sciences, +1 Language (all Jovian Divers are 
  Fluent in eLatin and Mandarin)
  -
  OPTIONAL SKILLS: Many Spacers will have Acrobatics, Mechanics, 
  Gaming, and /or Street Senses (Squatter Towns).
  -6
  Famous (everywhere), Owned (The JDP owns you fully)
  ● Slave
  Emancipation ended slavery among the Jovian colonies, and unless you are being kept hidden 
  away somewhere the word 'slave' is not a fully accurate description of this role, but it might as 
  well be. More than likely you are a long term indentured servant. Possible an anthropomorph 
  who sold herself under a dubious contract in order to find direction and stave off depression. If 
  you were lucky, you got a kind and responsible master, but many of your peers have no such 
  luck, and your contract could just as easily be sold on to one of their masters with a turn of 
  fate. As a slave you can be ordered to do as your master desires other than being forced to 
  violate the laws of the JF. You can be mistreated and punished, but not permanently harmed. 
  By law you cannot be branded, but many people who voluntarily put themselves into servitude 
  get a brand by their own choosing.
  0
  No Stat mods
  9
  +1 Features (appealing or unusual look), +1 Highly Skilled
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  83
  
  1
  Features: Tracking device implanted – your master and the state both 
  can instantly know your location.
  -
  +1 Domestic Arts, +1 Seduction, +1 Etiquette, and 4 skill points
  -4
  Owned by a master 3, Confined Movement: Pain if travel to places master 
  has restricted
  -2
  OPTION: Marked 2 (slave brand)
  ● Courtesan / Concubine / Socialite
  You are beyond being a high priced prostitute. You provide men with a glimpse into luxury, 
  into the life of pleasure and social grace. Even in an era of gender equality and lax social 
  constraints you are the vital outlet that gives social contact with discretion and without 
  complex commitments.
  4
  +2 Soul
  8
  +2 Features (extreme beauty), +2 Highly Skilled, +1 Sixth Sense 
  (interpersonal dynamics), +1 Wealth, +1 Cred (High Society)
  -
  +1 Domestic Arts, +3 Seduction, +1 Etiquette, +1 Gaming, +1 
  Interrogation (Psychological), +1 Performing Arts, +1 Visual Arts,
  ● SIN caster
  24/7, you're your own reality show. Everything last thing you do, see, feel, touch, even think is 
  online for the world, or at least your subscribers, to see. The cost 'to get you' is the current year 
  equivalent of today's subscribing to an online video game or premiere cable channel. As long as 
  you keep it interesting, your ratings will hold and you can keep your fame going. Get dull 
  though, and you will be yesterday's fad. On the JF, anthropomorphs and bioroids are very 
  popular for SIN caster shows given their distinctive personalities. Government censors have 
  analyzed every last part of your pre-show life history and psychological profile and at least one 
  person there on your regular cast works to keep you 'memetically in line'.
  2 +1 Body
  9
  +2 Features (appealing or unusual look, neural jack), +1 Organizational 
  Ties (Moderate – Media distributor), +1 JF Wide Cred (or more if your 
  show is popular), +1 Highly Skilled
  1
  Broadcast SIN: SIN Recorder and implant Com – both involuntarily 
  always on, and 'detectable' (Anyone with a SIN connection or Com link 
  can always instantly know where you are and what you are doing, 
  provided they pay your media outlet's subscriber fee).
  -
  10 skill points chosen in a unified package to fit the theme of your show – 
  something the government censors and memetic engineers would approve 
  of (porn, athletics, “party animal”, and “everyday guy” are most popular).
  -4 Famous (National to JF), Owned by media company, Red Tape
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  84
  
  People
  ● Detective Cara Feng
  Feline Anthro Cara Feng hails from the back alleys of New Beijing where as a 
  youth she ran with an anthro-street gang. After a string of petty thefts Cara 
  managed to break free of her 'pack leader' / primp with the help of a 're-
  education chip' and a six month stint doing 'community service' at a luxury 
  resort in Bath. Returned to her former home, she found her 'pack mates' 
  missing – the lead killed by a rival gang and her 'sisters' trafficked off station 
  by the Zutreffend Familie. Frustration and depression led Cara into the hands 
  of Xiuhui Prochazka.
  Throughout the JF there are those who take in lone anthros, house 
  them together, and provide them with a sense of 'pack unity'. Some of these 
  people abuse and exploit their charges, and some of them are like that old 
  woman in every neighborhood who collects and pampers all the wild cats. Ms 
  Prochazka, a former cop of Civitas background residing in Jovia was one of the 
  better ones. Cara indentured herself to the woman and collected her shattered 
  psych back together. More importantly, Cara learned and won th trust and 
  respect of Xuihui and her friends among the police.
  Within a year, Cara found herself in the police academy hoping to follow her new 
  master. Her intuition and former life on the streets have allowed Cara to quickly excel and 
  move up to the rank of AHU detective.
  As a detective, Cara is known for her street smarts and ability to win the trust of 
  suspects even during interrogation. Where the typical SIU detective might be a bit of an 
  obsessive compulsive, AHU detectives tend to be empathicly focused dealing in the dynamics of 
  people. Cara is a shining example of this trend, more connected and empathic than even most 
  of her peers.
  50 pts
  Stats [36 pts]: Body 5, Mind 5, Soul 8
  ACV: 6 DCV: 4 Health: 55 Shock: 11
  Attributes [23 pts]: Features (Extreme Beauty-2, Fur-1, neural jack, neural buffer-1), 
  Heightened Senses (Tracking Smell, Hearing, and Touch), Sixth Sense (Emotions), Special 
  Movement (Cat-Like), Sixth Sense (Lies), Combat Tech (Judge Opponent), Heightened 
  Awareness-1, Highly Skilled-8, Organizational Ties (Moderate-2)
  Cyberware [2 pts]: Cybereye (infravision), Implant Com
  Gadgets [2 pts]: (major-2, minor-8) (strict conditional ownership-2) [Police Scanner, Burglary 
  Kit, Liquid Bandage, Flechette Pistol, Motorbike, Skinsuit armor, 4 wetware slots] Mundane 
  Gadgets [Trendy Clothing Wardrobe, 3 Holo-clothing outfits, personal effects]
  Skills [110 spts]: Area Knowledge (New Beijing)-3, Computers (Databases)-1, Driving 
  (Motorcycle)-1, Etiquette (Lower Class)-2, Interrogation (Psych)-4, Languages (eLatin, 
  Mandarin)-1, Law (Criminal)-1, Performing Arts (Fast-Talk)-1, Police Sciences 
  (Criminology)-3, Seduction (Males)-1, Stealth (Silent Move)-1, Street Sense (Gang, 
  Influentials)-3, Urban Tracking (Underworld)-3, Gun Combat (Pistol)-1, Ranged Defense 
  (Personal)-1, Unarmed Attack (Grappling)-1
  Defects [-13 pts]: Ism (Altered Human)-1, Marked (catlike)-3, UD (Slave Mentality)-3, Nemesis 
  (Zutreffend Familie)-1, Not So Tough (Cara has a thin, light frame build)-1, Red Tape-1, 
  Owned (Xuihui Prochazka)-2, Phobia (Fear of being alone)-1
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  85
  
  Conflicts / Plot Hooks
  Key areas of conflict:
  •
  Racial tensions are often strained between Altered Humans and Pure humans – the past of these 
  two populations often can involve a slave dynamic and people do know who the slavers and 
  traffickers of the pre-revolution era were.
  •
  Altered humans blame their slave mentality on those who once controlled them, as well as 
  those whose ancestors were geneticists producing them.
  •
  Nearly all of the pre-revolutionaries involved in breeding and recycling of AH populations were 
  'purged', so few of their descendants exist on the JF today.
  •
  Some pure humans grow tired of the 'reservations' given to Ahs, and lobby to get them to 'be 
  responsible and take care of their affairs.' Anti-AH sentiment often builds popularity by 
  'reminding' pure humans that they are being 'forced' to pay for mistakes made by people before 
  they were born.
  •
  Refugee populations put a strain on JF economics and, unlike Ahs, there is no direct blame or easy 
  moral analogy to defend taking care of them. There is merely 'humanitarianism'. Refugees resent 
  being denied access to the JF civilization, and many will cite the war between the JF and Mars as 
  the root of their plight.
  •
  Refugees make an easy target for police, politicians, and angry pundits to blame for any 
  problems that arise. Refugees have no voice in the public sphere, so they can do little to deflect 
  attacks.
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  86
  
  •
  Ethnic tensions between former EU and Chinese populations exist, but are much lower than they 
  'should be' due in part to some mixing of these populations before the revolution 'engineered' by 
  both sides to keep conflict down, and very proactive mixing campaigns after the revolution to 
  create unity. Both of those programs made and continue to make active use of the population of the 
  city of Jovia, the once 'foreign workers' as the catalyst for encouraging mixing. It is the historic 
  'middle ground'. By contrast the former US-bloc population of 'Station 7' has not mixed in easily. 
  Pre-revolution it was actively economically hostile to the Mosquito project, and its own internal 
  population existed in an Apartheid situation. Station 7 citizens have been much slower to mix 
  despite modern efforts, and some level of ethnic resentment continues even today.
  •
  Relations with the Inner System are highly strained. Any visit by an Inner System trading or 
  diplomatic vessel is going to result in heightened security measures throughout the JF. It also 
  makes for an ideal time for terrorists, pirates, smugglers, and others to stage their efforts due to 
  the level of fear and distraction.
  •
  The JF still has no official explanation for Earth's switch to recognition. On a practical level it 
  may simply have been done to regain access to petrochemicals. Or it may be a part of some 
  other long-range plan.
  •
  There is a low-level 'Cold War' going on with the Inner System. Both sides make active use of 
  spies to gather info and spread memes. Both sides use the fear that the other side is doing this 
  to justify 'pograms / 'red scares'.
  •
  'Combat-Anthros' are not officially present withing the JF, but they are in some refugee camps, 
  and they are in certain unofficial areas – such as drifter camps. In addition, they are scattered 
  about the Outer System and Asteroid Belt on ships and stations. Raids into the JF are not 
  unknown, though this is never targeted at a station or large ship that could defend or that would 
  force 'official notice'.
  •
  Jurisdictional conflicts between the different types of policing ministries has led to violence in the 
  past. It is not common, but it is also not unknown, although it is rare. It is not impossible that one 
  division might be given orders to 'terminate' what the government designs is a 'rogue unit' within 
  another division, though this would be an exceptional event. Day to day, the different divisions 
  seems to get along and cooperate well, but underlying tensions are always present.
  •
  AHU is likely to conflict with SVU and GTF on a frequent basis. SVU and AHU often share 
  victims, and AHU often sees a victim in what GTF sees as a criminal.
  •
  SIU is the most likely branch to get wrapped up in messy politics. SIU units have been 
  'assassinated' before in the past.
  •
  The three Organized Crime associations have different areas of criminal focus, but that does not 
  mean they do not come into conflict. They are usually smart enough to avoid the open conflict that 
  would bring down the power of the state on them, but low level conflict is common. A killing here 
  or there, a kidnapping, a theft or vandalism, and so on... They will often fight proxy wars through 
  street gangs and small time crooks who 'think' they are independent – which each Organized 
  faction funding a side in the street conflict but staying out of the direct fighting to avoid blame and 
  keep down tensions. It plays out much like 'Cold Wars' between nations do.
  •
  Memetics is the modern buzzword for culture warfare, and it is a constant source of conflict. 
  Different sides of a social issue will at times go too far in pushing their agenda over the other side. 
  This can range from a source of localized terrorism down to merely overdone 'self promotion' in the 
  'face' of the other side.
  •
  Corporations live and die on the memes they choose to ride or create and promote. Meme-spam 
  and SIN-spam are constant issues as well as reasons for 'anti-corp retaliation'.
  Plot Hooks:
  •
  Sources:
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  87
  
  •
  Plot hooks can come from fiction, the news, and even detective and crime story TV shows and 
  movies. Many of the plot hooks below come from watching 'Cop shows' on TV.
  •
  The listings below may or may not be all that special, what they are here for is to show people 
  examples of things that could be done, or could still be done, in this unusual setting.
  •
  For Police / Detectives / Working with the law:
  •
  Political:
  •
  Mid level city official is found dead or assassinated in public. Items on him hint at 
  connection between a terrorist group and / or a foreign government.
  •
  Investigation of bombing of government office in refugee camp, clues hint it was funded not 
  by refugee terrorists, but by an MP up for re-election.
  •
  Diplomat from Earth or Mars to visit the JF.
  •
  Series of violent clashes begin beforehand. Perhaps ethnic, perhaps against Station 7 
  descendants, or by Earth loyalists
  •
  Station goes on zero-tolerance lockdown. PCs send out to 'stop and control everything.'
  •
  PC's unit / squad / group is accused of plotting a coup by an MP up for re-election. PCs 
  suddenly on the run trying to prove innocence. Perhaps uncover a real coup plot in process.
  •
  Assassination in Parliament – during a session debate, one member suddenly stands up 
  and kills a rival, or maybe even a close ally. Why? And is something else really going on?
  •
  Someone is hacking the cyber-brains of prominent figures to control their 'enhanced vocals' 
  and make them denounce the government or hint at a massive governmental conspiracy.
  •
  Alternatively, the denouncements are being hacked into popular SIN-casts or 'wave-
  enabled billboards.'
  •
  Routine criminal investigation implicates a major political figure. After evidence is 'bagged 
  and tagged' PCs are approached by agents of Secret Police who 'inform' them of the need 
  for silence and discretion. Or alternatively, Secret Police informs them they must 
  investigate, and will be 'assisted', after their own superiors have tried to silence the 
  matter.
  •
  An unusual letter is delivered to the Prime Minister, a death threat with political 
  accusations and meandering poetry, and perhaps a promise of place or time. Perhaps it 
  connects to some past special crime the PCs investigated. The PC's unit is brought in to 
  determine the source of the threat and prevent the attack.
  •
  Organized Crime:
  •
  PCs find clues to suspect one of their superiors is on the take with organized crime. Now 
  they must either investigate the matter or cover it up without getting 'dragged in' to the 
  web of scandal.
  •
  SVU:
  •
  Minor-aged altered human killed in traffic accident, body shows signs of long term abuse, 
  bringing in SVU. Address child is supposed to live at turns out to have been 'cleaned out' 
  overnight, but appears to have been an illegal slave-brothel or market.
  •
  A new kind of serial-rapist: Someone is hacking cyber-brains of people with cybernetic 
  limbs and piloting the victims to make them assault random strangers. Variation: the 
  hacked victims are merely cyberdolls, which are then being used to conduct the assaults.
  •
  A SIN-Spam attacker is forcing victims to 'live through' snuff films, either as the perp or 
  the victim. Clue might be in the choice of hacked victims, or the 'SIN-cast' itself. Crime 
  might have been uncovered after a victim committed suicide believing the incident was a 
  true memory or merely from the trauma or recognition of something in the 'SIN-cast'.
  •
  A victim comes forth claiming to have been kept imprisoned as a slave in a private suite by 
  a major media, corporate, or political figure. The investigation will stall when the victim 
  Ex Machina, and the Tri-Stat System are trademarks of Guardians Of Order, Inc. Used without permission.
  88
  
  later turns up dead in unusual circumstances.
  •
  A woman's staged auto-erotic asphyxiation death conceals a murder. Investigation of a 
  death threat in her email leads police to a male prostitute who claims he was gang-raped 
  by that woman and several others. Is he also her killer, or is something else afoot?
  •
  An SVU style murder – The victim is still alive, poisoned with radiation or chemicals to 
  such a severe degree that even JF technology cannot save them, they will die in a few days. 
  PC Police must work with the dying victim to uncover the assassin, and find out why. For 
  further twists, the victim is a foreign diplomat and the race against the clock must also 
  work to avoid an international crisis. For a final twist – the toxin might be contagious, or 
  might still be out there infecting others, such as radiation on the loose, or a biohazard.
  •
  Street / Regular Crime:
  •
  Investigation of a late night 'hit-and-run' has strange parallels to a new SIN-game. A copy 
  cat thrillseeker? Could the maker of the SIN-game be behind the crime as a publicity 
  stunt? Could an anti-game-violence activist group be behind it as a counter publicity 
  protest?
  •
  Someone is 'tagging' 'wave-billboards' to broadcast their 'tag sign' rather than the intended 
  advertising / public service messages. Who is behind this graffiti? What is now being said 
  that is important enough for police to care? Something contrary to legally accepted memes?
  •
  A band of registered 'Shells' living on the outside of the station set up a platform and being 
  trying to remove pieces of the hull and 'dig their way' inside. PCs are part of the first 
  response team sent to pick them off.
  •
  Someone or something is 'eating' people in a refugee camp or in the alleyways of New 
  Beijing. PCs are assigned the investigation. Is it a band of Primals? Cannibal Shells? Or 
  something else?
  •
  Domestic dispute among friends – a good friend of a PC is accused of domestic violence. 
  Now the PC must struggle with personal loyalty and not getting 'too involved' in the 
  investigation.
  •
  Corp Crime:
  •
  A body shows up in alley. Just another murder case, until SIU shows up to tell the PCs the 
  stiff was under investigation for embezzling employee retirement funds / company revenue. 
  But then an unsent memo is found in the stiff's cyber-brain to the SIU detective, offering to 
  blow the whistle on the Corp's illegal dealings in smuggling, trafficking, data piracy, or 
  some other crime. Who is up to what, with whom? Is the SIU detective on the corp payroll? 
  Was he the killer? Where the three crimes unconnected?
  •
  An indentured accountant from a Corp on Neptune escapes to the JF, but now a 'counter 
  extraction team' has shown up to 'reclaim' the 'stolen property' of one person.
  •
  Maybe the accountant has an asylum claim that seems legit.
  •
  Maybe the PCs are trying to catch the accountant, but the bounty hunters are making 
  trouble and chaos trying to get there first.
  •
  Maybe the accountant's indenturment contract was over, but the corp wishes to force a 
  renewal. Why?
  •
  A Corporate employee comes to the police to blow the whistle on some illegal activity, but 
  the corp hires assassins to prevent this. Perhaps they just need to make a kill, or perhaps 
  they desire to capture sensitive data the employee has before it can be decrypted. Police 
  must prevent the assassination, and prove a connection to the Corps.
  •
  An office building implodes / collapses, killing all inside and destroying vast amounts of 
  company data. What happened, why? Was it perhaps an inside job to cover up a crime or 
  unmentionable embarrassment?
  •
  A Corp exec or family member of an exec is kidnapped, and police must solve the 
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  89
  
  kidnapping in time, before a private investigation team botches everything. Or perhaps the 
  private team was really hired to take out the victim before they could reveal something, or 
  take out the kidnappers before -they- could reveal something.
  •
  After a scandal on the board, a large Corp executes a sudden massive layoff. The former 
  employees are now out in the streets protesting and demanding their employment contract 
  severance plans be honored. PCs are called in as part of riot prevention.
  •
  Media Crime:
  •
  A popular sport's figure or entertainer is cyber-brain hacked during a match / game / 
  performance. Whatever cyberlimbs they posses are sent out of control, or perhaps a singer 
  is revealed to be performing recordings (cyber lip-sync) when her vocal chords are hacked 
  and a confession is read out. PCs must uncover the culprit as well as deal with the 
  controversy over the figure and whether or not to bring that person in for 'fraud' or 'athletic 
  cheating' or a similar crime.
  •
  A compromising SIN-recording of a celebrity is released and the PC unit is ordered to 
  investigate. Who put it out? A failed blackmail, a money grab, or an intentional publicity 
  stunt?
  •
  A celebrity is kidnapped by a disgruntled fan who seeks to take him/her off the station. But 
  is it really a kidnapping, or actually an escape?
  •
  During a routine investigation someone enters the scene and steals evidence before the 
  PCs can stop them. That evidence later turns up on the wave, compromising the 
  investigation unless the PCs can track down all of the players involved in addition to 
  finding other evidence to prove the original crime.
  •
  For Crooks / Mercenaries / Working against the law:
  •
  How did I get wrapped up in this?
  •
  Bodies have been disappearing in the hood and the police don't care or haven't noticed. The 
  group's favorite local restaurant owner is doing a brisk business with his new 'Gnu-Meat' 
  pies, supposedly made from the best flavored soy products. But just why does he keep an 
  antique meat grinder in the back office...? When a rival goes missing, and a PC sees 
  something being dragged in the alley that nobody should ever see... do they help, or stop a 
  madman?
  •
  Gun for hire:
  •
  A derelict ship has been found speeding its way out of the solar system at near light speed 
  in a spiral-widening orbit from the sun (slowly spiraling out). In exactly 3 days it will be 
  passing the JF close enough to board. Due to time dilation, the PCs will lose one day of 
  outside time for every 10 seconds aboard, but if they can find the loot in time, the buyer 
  will pay handsomely. The problem, is that others want that loot just as much or more. The 
  days leading up to the mission are filled with lethal attempts by each team to identify and 
  knock the others out ahead of time. The mission itself may involve a hairy firefight and 
  possible encounter with a lost crew from a previous century that may want to use the PCs' 
  vessel to escape, and a mystery of what stranded the ship. And just why is this loot so 
  valuable? What secret does it hold?
  •
  The JF is launching a probe to Alpha Centauri. PCs have been hired to make sure it never 
  makes it off the station, or at least not far. Who hired them? Earth or Martian agents? A 
  rival Corp to the probe's maker? Alien conspiracy theorists? Can they pull it off before JF 
  security stops them?
  •
  A Corp's employee has absconded with valuable data, either business secrets or criminally 
  implicating, or both, and the PCs are hired to recover the data by any means necessary.
  •
  After an accident, a wealthy individual has been gravely injured, losing a limb or vital 
  organ. Cyber-replacements are available, but oh so unfashionable. A new limb can be 
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  90
  
  grown, but takes years, and they need to be ready for a party in three nights... PCs are 
  hired to 'snatch an organ' from a suitable 'donor', and their employer happens to have a 
  DNA profile highly compatible with a number of people previously ID'd by their medical 
  staff for just such an emergency. Or as a variation, PCs must hack the JF DNA records and 
  find matches. Sure, the new organ will only last long enough to grow a real replacement, or 
  maybe only enough to keep yet another donor, but fashion is fashion...
  •
  A good score:
  •
  A local smuggler is short for his next order, three slaves died from an overzealous 
  bodyguard. PCs have been hired to scout the streets and find three new victims to kidnap – 
  all to be under-aged Anthros. It's a snatch and grab plot of the darkest sort, as these 
  victims will be headed into a life of the worst form of slavery. But hey, it will pay the bills.
  •
  PCs are hired to find and 'recruit' 'actors' for an illegal snuff SIN. They can use force or 
  trickery, and maybe each role in the SIN requires a different tactic.
  •
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  91
  
  Ex Machina Conversion
  As BESM is now in a third edition, rules for the old tri-stat second edition based game have been 
  moved here.
  Basic Human-Anthro (2 pts)
  2
  +1 Body, -1 Mind, +1 Soul
  3
  Features: Extreme Beauty (2), Fur (1)
  3
  Heightened Senses: Tracking Smell, Hearing, and 
  Touch
  1
  Sixth Sense: Emotions
  -1
  Ism: Altered Human
  -3
  Marked: Animal like features
  -3
  UD: Slave Mentality: 3 penalty to resist 
  commands from authority figures or chosen 
  leader, need to be submissive in a group, extreme 
  and distracting libido. Depression if lacking 
  guidance / someone to lead them who actually 
  does command them (1 penalty to all actions, +1 
  per week up to 3).
  Options: (Traits will run in a family and be consistent 
  with a single animal type)
  1
  Tail is prehensile.
  1
  1 additional feature of an animal nature
  1
  +1 claws and +1 teeth (Restricted: Half damage 
  bonus to 5)
  1
  Special Movement: Perfect Balance or Cat-Like.
  1
  Sixth Sense: Lies
  -2
  Owned: Indentured under Anthro-slave contract.
  -1
  Phobia: Fear of being alone
  Basic Jovian Bioroid (2-4 pts)
  2
  +1 Body
  3
  Features: Extreme Beauty (2), one additional 
  cosmetically themed feature
  2
  Heightened Senses: Touch and either Hearing or 
  Sight
  -1
  Ism: Altered Human
  -1-3 Marked: Pointy ears, unusual skin tone, vestigial 
  wings or other unusual traits.
  -1
  UD: Slave Mentality: 1 penalty to resist 
  commands from authority figures or chosen 
  leader, desire to be submissive in a group, 
  extreme and distracting libido. Depression if 
  lacking guidance / someone to lead them who 
  actually does command them (1 penalty to all 
  actions).
  Options:   (if * then also increase Marked to 3 – which 
  is not included in the cost)
  1
  Special Movement: Perfect Balance or Cat-like.
  2
  Four arms and mammaries (popular in bioroids 
  made for India-themed resorts).
  1
  1 additional feature.
  1 or 
  2*
  Glider or Flier (10kph) Restriction: Only in 0.3g 
  or less.
  2*
  Water Speed 2, Adaptation: Underwater, Phys 
  Imp ('dolphin tail' rather than legs).
  -1-3 Owned: Indentured to someone or some group
  -1
  Phobia: Fear of being alone
  0
  Earth Bioroid (+1 Mind, -1 Soul)
  1
  Earth Elite Bioroid: Earth Bioroid plus no slave 
  mentality, rather you are the offspring of a 
  wealthy or ruling class.
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  92
  
  About the Author
  Hello;
  No point in writing this in the usual 'third person manner' if I'm the one doing the writing. I go by the 
  name of arcady online, but that is of course, just a pen name.
  I'm a native of San Francisco, grew up poor around a lot of what you might call 'street activity'. 
  I've served in the US Air Force, stationed in Korea where I managed to learn that as a second 
  language. I've worked in electronics and as a web programmer, and am just about to wrap up a degree 
  in Political Science with a Criminal Justice minor. Actually, I have finished that major, and am merely 
  hanging around the university working on the minor.
  I'm of mixed heritage, which might explain my interest in cultures and my personal opinion 
  that ethnic identity is one of the most dangerous deviant memes known to mankind. If you need to 
  know it, I am a mix of Cherokee/Crow, Portuguese / Irish, Chinese, and Inca – and I get annoyed at 
  how often people treat me like I'm some Mexican who just ripped off a Chinese guy's credit cards...
  My life long love of studying social issues and dynamics drives a lot of my interest in the 
  Cyberpunk genre. To me, this is a genre about human nature and the tech is just window dressing. 
  That has driven much of what you'll find in the Mosquito setting. I like anthropomorphs, and consider 
  them a likely eventual result of genetics tampering, but don't cater to the furry counter culture. Don't 
  mistake the presence of gene modified people in this setting for making it a furry friendly place. It 
  isn't.
  I've been in RPGs since my mother made me spend my 11th birthday money on the basic DnD 
  set back in 1982. I wanted the DnD electronic board game, she said it would just break in a month or 
  two. She was right, as I later learned when I managed to get that game through other means. Since 
  that time I've never been able to shake the habit, despite a couple of tries at it.
  Most of my gaming experience has been with the Hero system and GURPS. I found the 
  predecessor to GURPS in 1982 in the form of 'Melee', an intro game for 'The Fantasy Trip'. Hero for me 
  dates to Autoduel Champions which I was introduced to in 1983. I've been GMing both of these 
  systems for years. I discovered tri-stat in 1998 with a copy of BESM first edition, though first played it 
  when one of my Champions players chose to run a Sailor Moon game.
  World design is something that draws me, and I may very well get more out of doing this than 
  actually playing these things. Something which may have a connection to one of my other hobbies as a 
  fiction writer. Which fits in there between drawing, digital art, collecting African cichlids, making 
  espresso, and studying history or politics.
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  93
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Cyberpunk/Unofficial/Datafortress 2020 Archives/Cyberpunk 2020 - Net - Sourcebook - Mosquito Cyberpunk by Arcady.pdf