Watts-MacLeod Sub-Strains
As an async, you are affected by a specific sub-strain of the Watts-MacLeod virus. This sub-strain determines how the exovirus affects you personally. It influences what Mental Disorder trait you start with and provides you with a free bonus sleight. It also impacts the behavioral compulsions and spurred motivations that infection inflicts upon you (Influence Effects). The sub-strain is chosen during character creation (or when your character is infected during gameplay).
The Architect
Your infection possesses a distinct curiosity and sense of intelligence. You often see things from a perspective that is different. It drives you to delve into the inner mechanics of things and examine how they work — whether they be machines or biological entities. The urges push beyond exploration and learning — you are often compelled to build and construct new things: architecture with inexplicable functions, strange devices, or even new forms of life. Though the virus’s exact motivation and intent remains unclear, it leaves you with an unmistakable sense of purpose.
Negative Trait (Choose one): Mental Disorder (Bipolar Disorder, Insomnia, or Paramnesia)
Free Sleight (Choose One): Enhanced Creativity, Grok, or Implant Skill
The Beast
Your infection is a ravenous, bloodthirsty monster, yearning to break free. You struggle to keep it in check, placated or distracted, else the desire for carnage and mayhem overwhelms you.
Negative Trait (Choose one): Mental Disorder (ADHD, Anxiety, or PTSD)
Free Sleight (Choose One): High Pain Threshold, Burst of Adrenaline, or Psychic Stab
The Haunter
The low-level dread of incomprehensible terror, flittering at the edge of perception, is your constant companion. Sometimes it is the crushing weight of the uncaring dark void that makes our extinction a near certainty, sometimes it is a more palpable, unnameable presence, an entity so beyond your ken that you are insignificant in comparison. You are plagued by unrest and unease, taunted by nightmares and a sense that reality is not always as grounded as you would like.
Negative Trait (Choose one): Addiction or Mental Disorder (Cosmic Anxiety Disorder or Paranoia)
Free Sleight (Choose One): Heightened Awareness, Infectious Mind, or Nightmare
The Stranger
Your infection is the shadow at your side, the whispering chant of its unusual desires echoing just below the limits of your perception. It is omnipresent but patient, waiting for moments of vulnerability to steer you towards its inscrutable ends. Though its motivations are hazy, it seems to enjoy testing your limits — and those of transhumanity at large.
Negative Trait (Choose one): Mental Disorder (Disassociative Personality Disorder, Paramnesia, or Paranoia)
Free Sleight (Choose One): Superior Kinesics, Basilisk Stare, or Subliminal
The Xenomorph
An alien presence lives inside of you. Your instinctual responses are different from those of your original phenotype and you occasionally find yourself acting in ways more fitting to a physiology different from yours. You might feel a weird compulsion to burrow into sand, lay eggs, eat non-nutritious or dangerous substances, or clean phantom appendages that aren’t part of your current anatomy. You may even seek out morphs that better accommodate these omnipresent urges. You sometimes express an outlook that other transhumans find strange, just as you are occasionally confused or mystified by transhuman cultural practices. When the infection expresses itself strongly, these omnipresent urges seem quite normal, but the transhumans around you seem more and more bizarre and alien. While some asyncs report this sub-strain as adhering to a specific alien anatomy (i.e., they often feel insectoid or aquatic), others clearly feel that the alien presence within transforms and changes over time.
Negative Trait (Choose one): Mental Disorder (Alien Behavioral Disorder, Atavism, Body Dysmorphia, or Conversion Disorder)
Free Sleight (Choose One): Somatic Control, Eco-Empathy, or Xeno-Empathy