It’s hip and aware to have high tech grafted onto your body somewhere. If they can afford it, most people have an “enhancement” or two on their person. A few software chips installed in the nervous system to interface with the computer, remember appointments, and improve sports reflexes. Some have interface plugs allowing them operate computers and machinery mentally. Maybe their eyes are cyberoptics with a recording function and the latest iris tint or their hearing is boosted to better hear the gossip in the Executive Lounge.

If your job involves combat or security you probably have two or three types of combat software, as well as plugs and interfaces for a smartgun. You may have had one or more limbs replaced by prosthetics, allowing you to hide a variety of tools and weapons in your body, as well as giving you an edge in speed and strength.

Many want to get their hands on this expensive and exciting new tech. Expensive is the key word here. The averaged enhanced character with, say, one cyberoptic, a reflex boost, and one superchromed arm with a .25 caliber machine gun hidden in it, interface plugs and chipware for Martial Arts, Rotorwing Pilot, and Handgun is easily going to cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Cyberpsychosis

“They’re so… like… weak and flimsy, you know? You just reach out and touch ‘em , and they… die…” - Unknown Cyberpsycho

“The guy weighed in at about 550, once you counted in the metal. When we took him down in the maglev station, he’d already killed fifteen people. He said he couldn’t stand all those flimsy sacks of blood and water, hemming him in…” – Sgt. Hammerman, PCPD

Something happens when you start adding metal and plastic to people. They start to change. And sometimes it isn’t pretty.

It’s called cyberpsychosis, a mental disease in which the addition of cybernetics causes an already unstable personality to fragment. At first, the victim begins to relate more to machines than to humans. Soon, he starts to ignore people – parents, friends, lovers. Eating, sleeping all become less important. Finally, human interactions begin to irritate, culminating in a terrifying rage that consumes the victim entirely.

As a character with cybernetics Integrity rating decreases, they become something of a “cold fish”; emotionless and cold. Chilly, forbidding, and distinctly unpleasant to others. As it slips lower, they’re usually violent, sociopathic, and vicious. They must constantly fight to keep from going over the edge and committing irrational, violent works of carnage and mayhem.

At Integrity 0, the character is fully in the grip of cyberpsychosis. He is driven by a maddening hatred of other humans or living beings. There’s no turning back – they become someone with all the worst attributes of a murderous, mechanized, psychopath, called a cyberpsycho.

Not all cyberpsychos are the rampaging type. Many exhibit more subtle symptoms; compulsive lying, kleptomania, sadism, brutality, split personality, and extremely violent mood swings.

The Psycho Squad

Cyberpsychosis is a big problem in Paradise City. While city-sponsored therapy is an option, the hardest part is getting the patient into the psychologists office. What do you do when a metal armored, cyber boosted maniac starts randomly killing people? If you’re the government, you organize a special squad of professional police with one job – to hunt down and capture or kill murderous cyberpsychos.

In Paradise City, this is handled by a division of the Police Department called C-SWAT. They are armed with the best in armor, equipment, and vehicles. Most carry weapons that start at the light cannon range and up. They are, by nature, not very nice people.

Registered Cybers

Although the Uniform Criminal Justice Code of the United States says you must actually commit a crime before you can be arrested, this doesn’t stop the Paradi Police Department from practicing selective crime prevention. C-SWAT keeps tabs on who buys what and where through informants, monitors, and hidden tech detectors scattered all over the city. They usually have a good idea what gangs are loading up on megaware and who’s most likely to cross the line into psychohood in the near future. When a potential perp looks like he’s getting too close, the squad picks him up off the street and offers him a choice. He can go on like he is and risk having an “accident” happen some dark night or he can get registered.

Registration is sort of like parole; you agree to see a cyberpsychologist for monitoring and analysis (which can help raise lost Integrity points) and the squad implants a small transmitter into your cyberwear, allowing them to know your general whereabouts. Just in case. It’s rumored that sometimes they also implant a small explosive charge and a radio detonator, but we all know that’s against the Criminal Code, don’t we?

Therapy

There’s one way to hang out over the Edge and still keep it wired, and that’s therapy. C-SWAT drags you in, screaming and tearing at the walls, and straps you down to a heavy metal psychiatrist’s couch. Probes deactivate your cybersystems one by one, while the shrink jacks your rabid psyche into the braindance. Then begins the long, arduous process of disassembling your brain and reconstructing it in a more socially acceptable form. One that doesn’t get its kicks out of eating dead bodies, for example.

Cyberpsychologists (Psychoshrinks) use combinations of braindance simulation, drugs, hypnotics, psychosurgery, and average therapy to reconstruct damaged personalities. Once all cybernetics are removed or deactivated, the character will recover one point of Integrity for every week of therapy attended.