By way of introduction, the proceeding comes straight from my mom who’s a “Homeostasis Applications Specialist” for Medtronic’s Cardiac Surgery Division, i.e. she’s the Grand Wizard of all things blood.

The Platelet Factory as described in Shadowtech [p.14] “enhances the thrombocyte [platelets] within the bone marrow is increased to a high level resulting in the formulation of platelet factories”. Which is nice, it’s also 30,000$, and not the only option available.

I asked moms ‘how do ramp up the platelets in the blood and induce clotting’. Apparently if you take blood from a donor and spin it the blood plasma will separate from the white blood cells, red blood cells etc and what you are left with is the “Plasma Clotting”. This is then given to the patient [or Shadowrunner] via transfusion; the “Plasma Clotting Agent” then stays in the blood for 5 days. The Plasma agent only costs 1,000$ per bag!

As for Thrombosis, do to the high levels of platelets in the blood, clots begin to form in the narrow areas of the blood vessels, such as fingers and toes, where they clog up and turn black whence they need to be amputated if Thrombosis gets out of hand. Anticoagulants are inexpensive available from a pharmacist to prevent this.
Warafarin and Heparin both being pills used to suppress the clotting factories.

For the Sinister GM’s I include the following:

“Prothrombin 201010g Mutation” & “F5 Leiden Mutation”

Both viral mutations which make the infected person highly susceptible to thrombosis, and very nasty blood clots, the kind that dislodge wind up in lungs and other places with catastrophic effects. If someone were to refine the strain [say Universal Omni-tech…] you’d have a very hard to trace means of assassination or new weapon in your germ warfare arsenal.

Hope this was useful, if there turns out to be any interest I may see what I can do about similar workups for other bioware.

Decepticons.
[COLOR=red][COLOR=red][B]

Actually back in the day of SR3, If I recall, the way I came up to get around having to spike yourself with anticoags periodically, was to have another bioware implant, (forget what its called atm) basically a gland that releases the necessary anti-coag at regular intervals. Based off a leech. (Yknow the bloodsuckers).

Heh in SR4, it looks like they dropped the whole fatal blod clot thing, at least from the basic book, so feel free to use em without mods

The "Chemical Gland." Worked real nice with SR3's platelet factory. And a good thing, too. The stress effects of the platelet factory were just stupid. At low stress levels, you got tingling and numbness in your extremities due to excessive platelets in the blood. Hello? What's that say for your brain? It was a recipe for a stroke-a-day.

OTOH, I like SR4's treatment of platelet factories. No anti-coag needed.

I dont have SR4, could someone let me know how they get around the anti-coag?

Speaking of Leeches, they use em' for transplants and reattachment, they keep the blood flowing into the limb by preventing the coagulation. Maggots on the other hand are great for eating away the dead skin and keeping the area clean. Finding maggots under the bandages might be a nice surprise for the uninformed Runner's next trip to his sketchy street dock.

Hmm.

Could you make hollow arrows designed to cause as much excessive blood loss as possible?

Or would that impact the functioning of the arrow too severely?


-karma

Inefficient. If you can do that, you're better off widening the blade (or snap-blade) to increase the chance of opening/severing a major blood vessel. Let the heart figure out how to get the blood out of the body, you just need to make the path.

~J

KarmaInferno:

Try a modified broadhead arrow--for those of you who may not be familiar with archery, those are the hunting arrows that look like they have two razor blades at 90 degrees to one another--with a second set of spring-loaded blades behind the first. (Kind of like snap blades, but in miniature.)

They deploy only if somebody tries to remove the arrowhead by pulling it out.

Result--massive tissue damage, resulting in excessive blood loss.

Of course, a NarcoJet projectile loaded with a concentrated anticoagulant, such as Heparin or Sodium Warfarin (also called Warfarin Sodium, and marketed under the trade name "Coumadin") would work, and would most likely be quieter.

Just as a "for instance"--Warfarin is what's currently used in D-CON and other rat/mouse baits. It's as effective as arsenic (which was the original "rat poison", IIRC), but not as quick-acting, so it's (at least theoretically) possible to save a human or pet that has accidentally ingested it.

--Foreigner

Coming out of lurking and posting for the sole fact that I have the F5 Leiden Mutation myself. As does my dad and my sister. I just find it amusing that it got brought up...

And now I've actually read the thread.

See, I never understood how this stuff worked.

On the one hand, you've got your platelet factory, which produces platelets to make you clot, which is where it's game effect comes from. On the other hand, you've got the anticoagulants that you've got to take if you have one, because clotting more can kill you when you throw one and end up with PE, or a stroke, or any of the great stuff that random floating clots produces.

Now, uh... doesn't taking the one sort of cancel out the effect of having the other implanted? I know a guy who has to take anticoagulants for the rest of his life, since he's had a heart valve replaced. When he gets cut, he'll have free-flowing blood for the better part of an hour from a wound most people might not even realize was there until they see it in a mirror.

The anticoagulants work by *handwave handwave* and break down when exposed to air.

~J

That's what the internal ductwork to pipe air to your injuries is for!

Yeah, I must have been tired when I wrote that. Good point.

~J