User:GreytideSkye/Lore:DeathSandbox

Concept

Death	Other Names: The Big Sleep Related Pages: Nanotrasen Consultant Related Lore: SolFed, Nova Sector

Death. The Big Sleep. The bane of all mortals and, in the hands of a competent engineering team, several immortals. Death exists in this setting, despite Medbay's best efforts, people are not in this world forever, and extending the life you have here tends to have consequences or tradeoffs.

Rules (OOC)

As this is a game-first server, the lore around Death is constrained around a few of our rules.

Blackout Policy exists to allow murders to happen with out punishing the killer for not RRing the victim and ruining the rest of a 3 hour shift for them.

As this server is based around player freedom and mechanics, two things must be able to hold true:

• A character can be Round Removed and show up next shift.

• A character can die to anything, the player can hit the DNR button in their verbs at their choosing (or take the DNR quirk), and never play that character again.

That is, you cannot compel another player to force their character to stay dead, or to stay alive. We do still ask that you uphold the General Player Policy about fitting the setting in a grounded way, so have some way of reasonably addressing your miraculous return ("I don't know why" is valid, as is "(Rule 7) That shift was non-canon. Whatever you saw, happened to someone else.", whereas "I'm a God, I just do that" and "Meme magic" are both rulebreaks.)

Additionally, treat death with some gravitas. As much as you OOCly know you're not going to hit the DNR button, and all you're OOCly going to lose is like 10 minutes while a Paramedic finds you, there's always the chance each final breath is your final final breath. As per Rule 3, don't self-terminate for "little reason."

Avoiding Death

For as long as there have been two cells in this galaxy, someone has wanted themselves to not be dead. As technology has advanced from the 2100s, more means of preventing long-term death from taking hold have come into common practice. Here is a non-comprehensive list.

《 Avoiding Death 》
Genemodding: Manipulating your body to use alternative genetic paths, often to the benefit of longevity. This may be as simple as removing genetic predispositions to diseases, or as extensive as rerouting entire metabolic pathways to reduce or even reverse natural wear and tear. Science nerds may recognize the term "telomere" and how it relates to aging.
Symbiosis: Usually viruses with the Eternal Youth symptom, even less long-term healing viruses qualify as helping to avoid death. Legally, Cortical Borers are labeled as a Death Accelerant, as their consumption of brain tissue is linked with long-term mortality, but when your alternatives include immediate death, a shortened lifespan is still longer than your "natural" one.
Cryostasis: Trading off conscious time for eventual tech solutions. You're living across a longer span of time, not necessarily for a longer length of consciousness. Modern technology has enabled the Stasis bed, which slows biological processes for surgical means, though some long-term thinkers have used this to draw out their time in the universe.
Access to Health Care: Unsurprisingly, the general mortality rate is much lower in sectors where doctors are capable of treating "bullet to the face" syndrome. Legally, defibrillating someone whose body is dead is only a "short-term death," which does not trigger most bereavement clauses in contracts. Mannitol and Formaldehyde can draw out a "short-term death" for a significant amount of time.
MMI: For longer-term bodyless brain operation, the Man-Machine Interface serves as a bridge between neural impulses and the outside world. While newer models of the MMI automatically synthesize a tiny trickle of mannitol to counteract natural brain rot, older MMIs are routinely found with half-rotten lumps of idiot fused to the connectors. These MMIs can cheaply be inserted into a Cyborg shell or AI frame, which does strip them of some rights and bind them to some laws, or expensively inserted into a fully Synthetic body, restoring their legal personhood.
"Entangled Mindswapping": A staple of the MECU's upper brass, an Entangled Mindswap is a primitive form of Man-Machine Interface, closely resembling old tropes of Brains in Jars. As a result of the limited resources and production during the MECU's early days, the oldest of their leaders found themselves collaborating from inside room-sized brain preservation machines. For various reasons, these individuals are resistant to transfer to more modern MMI designs. Perhaps their neural pathways have expanded beyond their synapses, perhaps their brain has rotted to the point of insanity, perhaps they simply don't trust any SolFed designs.
《 Species-Specific Restoration 》(TODO: separate into a different table? differentiate "avoid" and "reverse" in this table?)
Ethereal Crystalization: Upon death, an Ethereal will crystalize. "Retreating into voltaic chrysalides to regenerate their bodies." This results in what most folk consider as "Permanent brain damage," but is simply part of their lifecycle.
Slime Hybrid Core: Upon critical injury, a Slime person's core will remain, their damaged body dissolving to encase the core in a protective shell. You need to pour an ambiguousbuggy amount of liquid Plasma on it to restore the slime person's body.
Ashwalker Tendril: Her Mother's Grace, she permits eggs to be hatched upon the surface to birth live, fully-fledged Ashwalkers. An Ashwalker's corpse can be stuffed into these eggs to regenerate them, or if the Ashwalker sacrificed enough to Her Mother whilst in life, she may grant their soul the grace to be reborn in a new egg, not as an entirely new Ashwalker but as themselves again. The mechanics around this are ill-defined. If you don't find the correct mechanics to prompt this grace naturally, you can always Pray or Ahelp to get permission.
Vox's Cortical Stacks: The Vox swap their brains and Cortical Stacks between bodies all the time, as needed. Some Voxform are more specialized for tasks, and rather than optimize them to also socialize, it's often easier to just pop their consciousness out and insert it into a more general voxform. The station does not have a means to replicate this, as this is a closely-guarded Vox secret (or at least, the means to do so).

Reversing Death

《 Rise From Your Grave 》
Sometimes Death just happens but you're not ready to go just yet. There are ways to reverse even long-term death, often at a terrible cost. Often, this is at the cost of either your original Body or your original Self.
penis
Common Backgrounds
Replica Pod: Add blood from your body into a Replica Pod seed, and watch it ensnare your loose Resonance and grow into an entirely new body with entirely new biology. This new body lacks blood, and thus is not able to grow a third Replica Pod. Cheap, common, and readily available in most Seed Vendors, this was one of the first resurrections available to Humanity. In modern times, there are better means if you're able to entertain options.

Michael Dudley

Rank: Sergeant
Organization: Goldshield (Nanotrasen)

Additional Notes

Old and divorced corporate climber, retired from Frontier Station Warden to Goldshield.

Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.

Nova Sector Lore
	Common Species	Humans, Tiziran, Unathi, Moths, Ethereals, Azulae, Slime Hybrids, Teshari, Synthetic Humanoids (and assorted robots), Pod Persons
	Other Species	Genemodders (Felinids, Ice Walkers, Dwarf), Ashwalkers, Hemophages, Snailpersons, Ordoht (Formerly Skrell), Plasmamen, Flypeople, Vox (Primalis et al), Tajaran, Vulpkanin, Xenomorphic Hybrid, Rouges (Abductorkin), Miscellaneous Species
	Nanotrasen	Nanotrasen, Central Command, Emergency Response Corps
	External Groups	The Syndicate, Interdyne Pharmaceutics, DS-2, Cargo, The Spider Clan
	Nova	The Nova Sector, Indecipheres, Freyja
	Concepts	Bluespace, Plasma, Faster Than Light Travel, Resonance ("Souls"), Death
	SolFed	SolFed, Earth in 2565, The SolFed Armed Forces, The SolFed International Capital District