System: Eclipse Phase
Character name: Paul - El Pulpo Magnifico!
Apparent age: 3
Character concept: Psychic octopus, professional sportscaster

Prior to the Fall of transhumanity people always said that there was something a little.. off.. about an uplifted giant Pacific octopus whom the Somatek geneticists decanted. Given the name Paul, he soon distinguished himself from his broodmates by becoming something of a historian. It's widely agreed that the first thing Paul saw after awakening to sentience was probably a sportscast of some kind; maybe it was microgravity rugby, maybe it was superconducting hockey, it might even have been centripital soccer. One …

It's been a really busy week or two so I haven't had time to write much. I realize that it's only common sense, but I still find it amusing that I have the least time to write about what's going on when the most is happening. Funny, how that happens. Anyway, once the opportunity presents itself I like sitting down to make an attempt at describing everything that's been happening. I've mostly been posting hit and run messages to Twitter lately (like everybody else on the planet these days) because I can do that without looking up from everything else …

Biomorph: Brown Jenkin
Concept: Horde of malevolent ferrets with distributed intelligence. Optimized for havoc, mass extermination, and piecewise theft.

Aptitude Maxima: 20
Durability: 20
Wound Threshold: 4
Advantages

• Limber (level 2)
  
• COO +5
  
• SOM +5
  
• Climbing +5
  
• Fray +5
  
• Freerunning +10
  
• Infiltration +5
  
• Palming +5
  
• Tactical Network software (designed to coordinate swarms of semi-autonomous units)
  
• Small, nimble targets (-20 to hit)
  

• Low Pain Threshold (small mammal)
  
• Neural Damage (dysfunction) (hyperactivity)
  

• Basic Biomods
  
• Basic Mesh Inserts
  
• Cortical Stack
  
• Cyberbrain (puppet sock)
  
• Cyberclaws
  
• Enhanced Senses
  • Direction Sense
    
  • Electrical Sense
    
  • Enhanced Hearing
    
  • Enhanced Smell
• Grip Pads
  
• Multitasking
  
• Poison Gland (BTX)
  
• Prehensile …

One of the possible characters can be played in the RPG Eclipse Phase is an uplifted octopus; of course, when you bring tentacles into the equation I go off in weird (and safe for work) directions. In the shared universe Orion's Arm there is an uplifted species called the bitenic squid, originally written by the gifted and talented Anders Sandberg.

This text is released under the terms of the Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike license, as specified here.

Morph: Bitenic Squid
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Bioweave Armor (light), Cortical Stack, Chameleon Skin, Claws, Grip Pads, Skin Pocket, Vacuum …

One thing I've noticed about Eclipse Phase is that the system makes it easy to develop very detailed, very powerful (which stands to reason, when you think about it), and sometimes very quirky characters. It isn't often that a game system will let you design a character that has stats that cover a high degree of skill in a hobby as well as a profession, say, Zen calligraphy or tailoring.

As with all Eclipse Phase stuff, this character data bears the Creative Commons v3.0, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike, unported license.

For the past week or so, a new tabletop role-playing game called Eclipse Phase has been eating most of my spare time. If you're not familiar with it, it is best described as transhumanist hard science fiction combined with a style of horror which is almost Lovecraftian in nature. I find that the best way to learn a system is to sit down and generate a character for it, so I decided to build a couple of NPCs for other gamers to use if they wish and release them onto the Net under the same license as the game: Creative …