First off, remember that he took a flaw equal in value to being Paraplegic. Although I recommend NOT screwing the character over in the process, it should also not be something he'd find extremely useful either.

Something interesting could be Subdermal Speakers attached to an Internal Radio. The settings can't be changed, but when passing through, or into, certain areas he could pick up frequencies that he can't block out. It could be a high pitched squeal, it could be the local security or police band, or it could be the type of music he hates most suddenly blasting through his mind. Cost: 0.5 Essence, but dropped to 0.3 since he's unable to actually control the Radio.

I like the idea of the eye recorder that makes a copy of the things that the person sees, but since it's a decker character a better way is probably the idea that someone else had to record matrix runs as well or instead of visual data. The problem that I see with this is that headware memory is going to fill up quickly. Perhaps some sort of uplink capability that uploads all of the information in the headware memory to a database when the character sleeps.

Alternate idea: Perhaps one of the options from psychotropic IC could be used. Frenzy is probably a bad one to start a character off with, but positive conditioning could be interesting. Charge them some amount of essence -- perhaps the least amount of headware memory available -- and then this cyberware introduces the positive conditioning onto the character. Might be a little too close to the compulsion flaw, though.

Last idea: Give them cyberware that is completely normal, they just don't know they have it. For example, if the don't have any reaction/initiative enhancements, give them one. Don't tell them. Then, watch them be really confused about how they are moving so fast. Perhaps make them pass a surprise roll with a target of their own reaction in order to not lose a simple action in combat because they didn't expect to be moving so quickly. Could make it really interesting if as the GM you roll the "extra" initiative dice. For example, give the character boosted 1. Then, they roll their reaction + initiative resulting in a 9, you roll a 4 giving them a 13. They'll be really surprise when they get that second pass every once in a while. Could also be done with muscle replacements -- they're stronger than they expect to be -- and others.

Wow, thanks everyone--there are some awesome suggestions here.

I'm not concerned about essence costs: this is a decker/samurai hybrid we're talking about, so he's got 0.05 essence at the moment and looking to see if he can maybe squeeze another alpha-grade router in there somewhere. Whatever cyberware I eventually decide to use will have a magical essence cost of zero (but be totally harmful / unpleasant).

I like the idea of the psychotropic conditioning... where do I find rules for this? And the Invoked Memory Simulator is nice too, but why would someone install that in a peon? To what end?

I also like Kagetenshi's idea of the mainframe running an agent... this is awesome, raising the possibility of a split personality or some hostile force "riding" his decking forays... hmm...

You guys are grand.

Hmm, it is sort of lame for him to take mysterious cyberware and then fill up all his essence.

You could give him some usefull bit of ware putting him into negative essence and making him a cyberzombie without his knowledge. It would not be a mystery for long though.

You could also ponder some sort of nanotech beasties that are doing a hideous experiment on him, and squirting telemetry out his datajack sometimes when he jacks in.

Oh you could also make it mysterious bioware without telling him, cant think of anything great to stick in other than a parasitic organism.

Heh heh, you could put his brain in a jar someplace and he is communicating with his body by radio, magic, and the matrix through some wierd thingy in his skull (the matrix connection works best, which is why he likes being jacked in so much)

Well, one other interesting thing is that this character has a fondness for Long Haul. In case not everyone is familiar with it, Long Haul is a drug from Man & Machine that allows the user to stay up for insanely long periods--like 72 hours straight. When the drug wears off, the user crashes hard: they must resist some serious stun damage and need to sleep for a whole day.

Since the character just slept off another bout of it at last night's session, I've started wondering if maybe something else is happening while he's recovering from the drug. Maybe while he's sleeping, something's running in the background... did I mention his cyberdeck is a cranial deck with wireless connectivity?

How much initiative could a well-programmed smart agent take? Could it jack in while he's deep asleep?

Four days for the Long Haul, IIRC, and a fifth if they take a second dose.
Frames and Smart Frames'd be iffy, Agents maybe, and if you really wanted to screw with the player and make it an S-K, hell yes. Of course, if it's what the Agent was programmed to do...

~J

something's running during the downtime, and it's HIM!.

he never actually sleeps but has a split personality on an embedded personafix chip of a megolomaniac assassin (Or other personality the character would absolutely hate). The character never or rarely actually sleeps because the socond personality is out living his life and making a cold, vicious name for himself. Making boatloads of enemies at the same time. Give him a data filter (If they still exist in 3rd) so its physically impossible for him to have flashbacks and memories of these events, even mind probe will bring out literally nothing.

Check out the NAGEE 1-6, updated, page 172, for the article on sleepwalkers.

Basically, it's a modification to wired reflexes (or a version, wired reflexes 0) that allows the body to run on autopilot. Programs can be created to do all sorts of things...while the character is sleeping....and because they're programs, more can be uploaded into his headware memory from time to time....

Hmmm...I was going to post the link to the updated version, but I can't find it on the plastic warriors site. The article originally appeared in NAGEE #4 and updated in NAGEE #9, I think.

To write a spoiler tag, you write spoiler in brackets, and close the tag with /spoiler, also in brackets.

~J

danbot: in canon SR real full viable cloning is impossible

Maybe it's a GitS-style clone.

~J