- Vat Grown Muscles

Santiago said:

Are there rules for vat grown muscles anywhere?

LuciusT said:

In DH no, but you could take them out of RT if you have the book

Skitarius Hoplite (Guardsman Background)
Home World: Forge Born
Cost: 200 xp
The teeming, faceless legions of the Tech-Guard—Skitarii as they are known to their Tech-Priest masters—are the primary armed force of the Adeptus Mechanicus. For all matters military, the Skitarii are employed, from the hordes of the weapon-servitors and combat helots who make up the bulk of the Tech-Guard, to the serried ranks of augment-soldiers who form its shock troops.
Within the ranks of these augmented warriors there are many further divisions, from the mechanised phalanxes of Cataphractii vehicles, MIU-bonded to their pilots, to the heavy weapon specialists and artillerists of the Balisterai, to the humble Hypaspist infantry and elite Centurions who fight beside the God-Machines of the Adeptus Titanicus and who’s might is equalled only by the legendary Adeptus Astartes.
These Skitarii—for the term applies as much to these warriors specifically as it does to the Tech-Guard as a whole—all begin as mere hoplites, arrayed in mighty phalanxes and expended as readily as the hoplites’ own ammunition.
Through lifetimes of augmetic surgery and alchemical treatments, these warriors are purged of emotion, their weak flesh bolstered with blessed steel and their souls bonded with their weaponry to make them more efficient as the Omnissiah’s sword.

Effects
Apply all of the following changes to your character:
Characteristics: Increase your starting WS by +5, and reduce your starting Fellowship by -5.
Skills: Replace the choice of ‘Drive (Ground Vehicle) or Swim’ with ‘Drive (Ground Vehicle) or Secret Tongue (Tech)’
Talents: Remove the options for Pistol Training (Primitive) and Basic Weapon Training (Primitive). You begin the game with Chem-Geld and Binary Chatter.
Insanity Points: You start the game with 1d5 Insanity Points.
Skitarius Implants (Trait): Your weak flesh has been fortified by blessed steel and sanctified circuitry. You have been judged a worthy host for the following implants:

* Electro-Graft: This is a small port that is grafted into your nervous system. Once you have been properly trained, this will allow you to interface with machine data-ports, and certain types of data-nets. Electro-grafts can take many forms, such as electoos, skull shunts, finger probes or spine jacks, though ruggedly-designed skull shunts or spine jacks are the most common amongst Skitarii.
* Cranial Circuitry: This is a series of linked processors, implants and cortical circuits that augments your mental capacities. Most sit within housing bolted onto the skull, while others nestle within the brain itself. As you grow in the seriousness of your devotions, more and more of the brain that deals with useless things such as emotion and intuition can be scooped away to provide room for additional augmentations. Skitarii cranial circuitry is robust and often crude-looking, and shares many traits with the circuitry of vehicles and other blessed machines of war.
* Respirator Unit: This implant covers the lower half of your face with a network of grilles and tubing. It purifies your air supply, granting a +20 bonus to resist airborne toxins and gas weapons. The respirator unit also houses a vox-synthesiser capable of transmitting your voice in a variety of ways. Respirators can appear and simple grille units or intricate mask-like carvings.
* Weapon Actuators: Your arms are covered in an intricate array of hardplugs, cables, support struts and servo-motors, allowing you to connect directly to your weaponry. In time, your bond with the spirits of your weapons will increase, granting you greater efficiency in battle.
* War-Mantle: This is a framework of metal, wires and impulse transmitters bolted onto your spine, shoulders, lower ribcage, and extending over and through the upper arms and thighs. For most Skitarii, this is a support structure for the other implants, but the more augmented Skitarii have additional augmetics fitted directly to the war-mantle itself—for Balisterai and Cataphractii, these implants connect the warrior more closely to their machines of war, echoing the haptic implants of a Titan’s Princeps, while for the deadly Centurions, their war-mantles allow their strength and size to be augmented and their bodies fitted with armour plating, turning them into veritable juggernauts of destructive power.

Unconcerned with Flesh (Trait): The warriors of the Skitarii are focussed utterly on martial pursuits, honing themselves into perfect weapons in the name of the Omnissiah. Consequently, they have little time or patience for matters of the flesh. You may not purchase Fellowship advances. In addition, any and all Fellowship-based skills cost twice as much to purchase.

Skitarii Hypaspist
We are all but a weapon in the right hand of the Emperor
—Exhortationes Principiis Titannorum, Divisio Militaris
Where Hoplites are generally little more than vat-grown conscripts, those who demonstrate themselves to be fit for a greater purpose are granted advanced training, superior equipment and the blessed gift of cybernetics.
Such warriors are known as Hypaspists, named after a band of elite warriors from Terra’s ancient past. A Hypaspist phalanx (company being the equivalent Imperial Guard term) consists of 256 augmented, weapon-bonded soldiers, purged of emotion and operating with mechanical precision and brutal logic. Each phalanx is further divided into two ‘centuries’ (platoons), each consisting of sixteen maniples (squads) of 8 warriors each. Each maniple possesses a shared identity—the maniple’s designation is used both to refer to the maniple as a whole, and to any one individual Hypaspist, something which is somewhat confusing for those unused to the ways of the Mechanicus, but which the Skitarii themselves are more than used to.
This is not to say that they are not individuals, but as with many servants of the Machine, it is second nature to subsume themselves into something larger, to view themselves as simply another cog within the divine machine, an outlook that only becomes more firmly entrenched with the purging of emotion.
For some Skitarii, even the purging of emotion cannot dampen human ambition or the will to achieve ever greater heights, and such aspiring soldiers consider their time as Hypaspists as a mere stepping-stone on the path towards greater augmentation, greater prowess and greater unity with the Omnissiah.

Becoming a Skitarii Hypaspist
Hoplites, like all Skitarii, are born not chosen. Theirs are lives not of the foolish choices or inexplicable passions of the flesh-bound, but of the ordered purpose and cold logic of the Omnissiah’s chosen warriors. Whether flesh-born or vat-grown, every Skitarius is chosen from millions of squalling children born every day on each Forge World. Through intense genic scrutiny, the weak are culled and the capable are sifted and assigned their life’s vocation.
Those keen of eye, steady of hand, resilient of form and aggressive of temperament are taken for the Tech-Guard, and will know nothing else until their lives end in the Machine-God’s service.
It is likely, as you spend xp on this Alternate Rank, that your character will advance several Ranks in the Guardsman Career Path. After taking this Alternate Rank, you can enter any of the branches, though the Praefect rank (an Alternate Rank which replaces Rank 6: Assault Veteran) gives many more opportunities for augmentation and development into a truly terrifying augmented warrior.

Required Careers: Guardsman
Alternate Rank: Rank 2 or higher (500xp)
Other Requirements: You must originate from a Forge World, have a BS of 35 or more, the skill Secret Tongue (Tech) and the Skitarius Implants trait.

Advance Cost Type Prerequisites
Dodge 100 S -
Drive (Ground Vehicle) +10 100 S Drive (Ground Vehicle)
Ciphers (War Cant) 100 S -
Common Lore (Machine Cult) 100 S -
Tech-Use 100 S -
Basic Weapon Training (Launcher) 100 T -
Quick Draw 100 T -
Sound Constitution 100 T -
Concealed Cavity 100 T -
Common Lore (War) 200 S -
Logic 200 S -
Heavy Weapons Training (SP) 200 T -
Two-Weapon Wielder (Ballistic) 200 T BS 35, Ag 35
Disturbing Voice 200 T -
Autosanguine 200 T -
Weaponsoul 200 T Weapon Actuators
Rite of Pure Thought 300 T Cranial Circuitry
Slaughter Node 300 T Cranial Circuitry

Skitarii Praefect
RESISTANCE WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION. OPPOSITION WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION. HERESY WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION.
—Praefect Maniple 10001-Phi-Omega, addressing the militia of Heretek-Magos Aurelius Thoge on Belacane, before commencing a purge of the heretek’s forces.

To compare the Praefecta of the Skitarii to mortal soldiers is akin to comparing a Battle Tank with a groundcar. Even the Hypaspists are not beyond the frailties of flesh, but a Praefect must aspire to go beyond that, to cast off the shackles of the organic and truly become living weapons for the Omnissiah.
A truer comparison might perhaps be with the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. Indeed, the Praefecta—also known as Centurions, Praetorians (not to be confused with Praetorian combat servitors) or Herculiani—bear many similarities with the Astartes. Both are considered warriors of their gods, both are wrought from mortal flesh into something greater, and both are elite warriors of the finest calibre.
The roles filled by the Praefecta are varied. Some serve as bodyguards for important Magi, particularly Magi Militant, while others go to battle with their phalanxes either as shock troops or as an escort for the God-Machines of the Adeptus Titanicus. All Praefecta are alike in one way, however—each and every one of them is both more and less than human, rebuilt for the harshest of conflicts.
Some amongst the Praefecta, particularly (though not exclusively) those serving as Titan escorts, go beyond even those drastic measures. These Praefecta are made larger, stronger and tougher, their bodies armoured and their limbs strengthened to the point where they can wield far heavier weaponry and deal far more damage at close quarters. To enhance their intimidating presence, they are often adorned with trappings that make them seem savage, almost feral, though there is nothing but cold logic and artificial rage within their minds. Draped in furs, given claws and fangs, and pushed to a synthetic frenzy by their slaughter nodes while the logical halves of their brains calculate trajectories and consider tactics, these Praefecta are a terrifying sight to behold, and it is for this reason that they are rarely deployed alongside other humans. It is also for this reason that many high-ranking Magi often mass-boosted Praefecta as bodyguards, knowing the usefulness of fear as a tool even if they no longer feel it themselves.

Becoming a Skitarii Praefect
The Praefecta are the best of the best, the finest infantrymen the Adeptus Mechanicus can produce, chosen from the sturdiest and most devoted of Hypaspists and rebuilt into something greater.
It is likely, as you spend xp on this Alternate Rank, that your character will advance several Ranks in the Guardsman Career Path. After taking this Alternate Rank, you must continue down the Assault Veteran branch of the Guardsman Career Path.

Required Careers: Guardsman
Alternate Rank: Rank 6 or higher (6,000xp)
Other Requirements: You must originate from a Forge World; have Strength 40 or more, and the Slaughter Node and Rite of Pure Thought talents.

Advance Cost Type Prerequisites
Common Lore (Machine Cult) +10 100 S Common Lore (Machine Cult)
Demolition +20 100 S Demolition +10
Tech-Use +10 100 S Tech-Use
Blademaster 100 T WS 30, Melee Weapon Training (Any)
Combat Master 100 T WS 30
Electrograft Use 100 T Electro-graft
Furious Assault 100 T WS 35
Logis Implant 100 T -
Melee Weapon Training (Power) 100 T -
Logic +10 200 S Logic
Dodge +20 200 S Dodge +10
Sound Constitution 200 T -
Prosanguine 200 T Autosanguine
Noosphere Interface 200 T Cranial Circuitry, Electrograft Use
Exotic Weapon Training (Shock) 200 T -
Exotic Weapon Training (Rad-Cleanser) 200 T -
Exotic Weapon Training (Graviton Gun) 200 T -
Feedback Screech 200 T Respirator Unit
Armour-Plated 200 Trait War-Mantle
Rite of Awe 300 T Respirator Unit
Rite of Fear 300 T Respirator Unit
Auto-Stabilised 300 Trait War-Mantle, Hulking, Unnatural Strength (x2)
Hulking 300 Trait War-Mantle
Unnatural Strength (x2) 500 Trait Hulking, War-Mantle
Unnatural Toughness (x2) 500 Trait Hulking, War-Mantle

Slaughter Node
Prerequisites: Skitarius (Cranial Circuitry)
The most ferocious of machine spirits reside within the implants in your skull, and with their help you can unleash bursts of calculated, logical fury. You may enter a Frenzy (as per the talent) as a free action at any point, and while Frenzied, you may continue to parry as though you had the Battle Rage talent. Further, you may voluntarily end your frenzy at any time as a free action. You may only enter or leave a frenzy once per turn – you cannot do both in the same turn.

Weaponsoul
Prerequisites: Skitarius (Weapon Actuator)
Through your blessed implants, you are made closer to the spirits of your weapons, and with that unity comes increased lethality. When you aim with a weapon connected to your Weapon Actuators, you gain an additional +10 to hit. This does not stack with the Accurate quality. In addition, you gain a +10 bonus on all Ballistic Skill tests made to clear a jammed weapon connected to your Weapon Actuators.

Tech-Priest Talents

Binary Chatter (Revised Talent)
Your body has been modified to speak and interpret the binaric cant of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the primary form of speaking the language known as ‘Tech’. This allows you to interact more proficiently with servitors, granting a +10 bonus on any test made to instruct, program or question them. Further, if you have the Secret Language (Tech) skill, you may communicate with any other character possessing that skill and the Binary Chatter talent in the binaric form of Tech, allowing swift transfer of information and more complex interactions in a shorter space of time. This means that you may use the Logic skill as if it were Inquiry only when interacting with characters possessing the Binary Chatter talent who are able to speak Tech.

Haptic Commands
Prerequisites: Tech-Priest (Electoo Inductor) – New Talent, available at Tech-Priest Rank 5 (Tech-Priest) for 200xp
You have been blessed with the haptic touch, the ability to touch and feel machines from a distance. Through the manipulation of electromagnetic fields, you may interface with machines at a distance, the implants in your limbs returning sensations of physical manipulation to guide your interactions. This allows you the ability to perform Tech-Use tests without touching the machine being interacted with. You must still be able to perceive the machine you are interacting with, and it must be within a number of metres equal to your Willpower characteristic.

Noosphere Interface
Prerequisites: Tech-Priest (Cranial Circuitry), Electrograft Use – New Talent, available at Tech-Priest Rank 4 (Enginseer) for 200xp
You have been initiated into the secrets of the Noosphere, the collective data-repository that forms the heart of every true Mechanicus Forge and Facility. You can bear witness to that which is invisible to the unenlightened: the purity of blessed knowledge as it flows around you. In any area where information is transmitted noospherically, you may interact with Cogitators and other linked machinery without physical contact or connection. This confers the same benefits as Electrograft Use, but requires only your physical presence within the Noosphere’s reach.

Augmetic Implants

Interkeratic Implants
These implants consist of additional layers built into the cornea of the recipient, whether gene-altered organic matter just beneath the surface, or advanced photo-augur technology implanted over the surface of the eye. Regardless of the source, the implant enhances the vision of the recipient, allowing him to see in ways he would otherwise be unable to.
For all game purposes, Interkeratic implants are identical to photovisors, infra-red goggles (both are in the DARK HERESY rulebook, page 147) or both. However, being implanted means that they cannot be removed without surgery or removing the eyes.

Mem-Coils
Memory coils, also known as mem-coils and eidetic helices, are complex devices used to allow those so augmented to recall vast amounts of information more quickly and efficiently. In most cases, a single eidetic helix is sufficient, but the most ancient and knowledgeable Magi of the Mechanicus may be implanted with several. Beyond the Adeptus Mechanicus, scholars, adepts and archivists of all kinds can be found with mem-coils housed within their brains, and encrypted mem-coils, their contents inaccessible to the owner and only readable by extracting the information via a data-shunt, are implanted into couriers (as often unwilling as willing) whose cargo is too sensitive to be left unsecured and too secret to let the messenger himself know of it. Regardless of the quality, it takes a Tech-Use test (which may be performed by anyone present) and 1 hour to load a mem-coil with a particular set of information artificially. A mem-coil normally can’t be used to remember things in a natural way, though some advanced versions are capable of this.
Poor mem-coils are slow to “spin up” and retrieve information, are limited in capacity, and often incompatible with the mind that must interface with it. It takes 1d10-IB minutes to activate a poor mem-coil each time it is used, and grants a +5 bonus onto a single Common Lore, Scholastic Lore or Forbidden Lore skill relevant to the information loaded into the coil. Incompatibility means that the recipient gains 1d10 insanity points.
Common mem-coils can store information pertinent to three Common Lore, Forbidden Lore or Scholastic Lore skills, granting a +5 bonus to any tests involving them, or a +10 bonus if the mem-coil’s contents are thoroughly searched, taking 1d5-IB minutes (minimum 1 minute).
Good mem-coils are quite rare and exotic items, costing five times the normal amount for a Good-Quality item. However, their adaptive structures and vast storage capacity means that they can store information remembered naturally, rather than requiring data to be uploaded into them (though that function remains). This valuable item grants a +10 bonus to any and all Common Lore, Forbidden Lore or Scholastic Lore Tests, and counts all such skills as Basic Skills, as well as granting the Total Recall talent.
Encrypted mem-coils of any quality do not grant any bonuses to any tests whatsoever, as the contents cannot be accessed by the character that they are implanted within. They can still be recorded upon in all the usual ways, however – meaning that an encrypted Good-quality mem-coil is an excellent way of retrieving a subject’s memories.

Muscle Grafts
Vat-grown muscle, either from a gene-neutral source or cloned from the recipient’s own flesh, is implanted beneath the recipient’s skin and woven into his existing musculature, granting enhanced strength and mass.
Poor Muscle Grafts, the crudest and cheapest examples of this kind of augmentation – common amongst ganger “heavies” and dreg-thugs of the lowest variety – are simple slabs of gene-neutral surgically-grafted meat, prone to rejection sickness and cramping, and can provide only limited and uncertain benefits without skeletal reinforcement. They grant a +1d10 bonus to Strength, but the recipient suffers a level of fatigue if a Strength test is ever failed by 3 or more degrees.
Common Muscle Grafts incorporate bio-alchemical treatments that strengthen bone, and use cloned muscle tissue to minimise rejection, allowing the recipient to better utilise the new strength he has been granted. They grant a +10 bonus to Strength and two extra wounds.
Good Muscle Grafts go a step further still, genetically-enhancing cloned muscle that is not only denser and more efficient than natural human muscle tissue, but is designed to grow into the tissues it is grafted into and supplant their genetics with the grafts’ enhanced structures. They grant a +15 bonus to Strength, a +5 bonus to Toughness, and 1d5+1 additional wounds.

Subdermal Weapon Support Bracing
An articulated, powered network of cables, hydraulic support struts and locking mechanisms are built up the recipient’s arm, beneath the skin and connecting between both muscle and bone all the way up to the shoulder and upper back. All the way along, but concentrated mostly on the forearms and hands, are magnetic clamps that push up beneath or even through the skin, which can affix to specially-altered weapons. The reinforcement spreads the weight of the gun along the arm and absorbs the shock of firing. The system requires no external power source – it runs off of the heat generated by the recipient’s own body – and can accommodate almost any rifle-sized weapon, though ones rebuilt to better fit the bracing (clamping the weapon to the forearm, and relocating the gun’s grip and trigger further forward) can take better advantage of the structure.
Such structures are common amongst various forms of Skitarii, allowing them to more easily use and carry otherwise bulky weaponry, and in some cases (where the bracing has been applied to both arms) to allow them to carry two rifle-equivalent weapons at once (often a Hellgun or other standard weapon, and then a specialist weapon like a grenade launcher or meltagun). In these cases, the weapon support bracing is built as an extension of the Skitarius’ weapon actuators and woven into the war-mantle, rather than built as a separate implant.
Subdermal weapon support bracing is an implanted equivalent to Recoil Gloves (DARK HERESY rulebook, page 147) and functions in the same way, save for the fact that it cannot be removed without extensive invasive surgery.

I'd consider it at least somewhat overpowered - the Rite of Pure Thought is pretty much end-of-the-line for Techpriests and the Slaughter Node is three talents in one without the disadvantages (Flagellant without the wound loss, Battlerage and Frenzy without problems for getting out of the frenzy). And of course, Autosanguine is golden for any cell that doesn't rely on a psyker for healing.

And the Praefect... well... two Unnatural advances, Armour Plating and the almost ungodly Auto-stabilised (fire Full-auto as a half action). At rank 6.

I'm not saying the upgrades don't fit. In fact, they're about what I'd expect from extremely high-level soldiers of the AdMech - but they're pretty far beyond the power level of all other careers. I mean, there's exactly one career that gains a single Unnatural attribute and a second that could likely gain one with some GM benevolence (aka Best Quality Cortex Implant).

Once we get to the higher tiers where other careers get comparable advances, it's fine, but right now, the character would likely outshine everyone else in combat. Of course he's not much into socialising, but the standard guardsman isn't either if you take a look at the skills available.

The sidebar in the full document covers the optional and extremely potent nature of those options. One of the issues with alternate ranks is that there's no easy or established way to spread advances out over a long period (demonstrated by the Templar Calix and Mechanicus Secutor, who both have a vast list of advances which in a normal career path would likely be scattered across 3 or 4 ranks), which means that the Mass-Boosted advances (Hulking, Unnatural Strength and Toughness, Armour Plating and Auto-Stabilised), which I would prefer to make available only at rank 8, end up being made available earlier by merit of the way alternate ranks work. As it stands, I worked to offset the relatively easy availability and attractiveness of those talents by requiring 300xp to be spend on Hulking first (a trait which doesn't really grant major benefits, and which is extremely awkward to deal with in practical terms (confined spaces, non-combat missions, etc tend to become problematic) before the Unnatural Traits become available, and similarly requiring Unnatural Strength x2 (and thus Hulking as well) before Auto-Stabilised can be purchased, essentially keeping the overall cost to the character up. To buy the whole Mass-Boosted package (which I have been, and still am, tempted to separate out and include as an Elite Advance Package instead) still costs 1,900xp in total, which is no small amount by any estimation.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

An easy solution that comes to mind for spacing talents and skills out through various ranks with one Alt Rank is to simply give them an XP spent requirement. So, for instance, the Auto-Stabilised trait would have the fallowing prereqs:War-Mantle, Hulking, Unnatural Strength (x2), 10,000 XP Spent.

Just a thought.

My criticism on the Rite of Pure Thought still stands - it's considered an extreme honour for techpriests and the circuitry needed for replacing the stuff scooped out likely isn't easy to manufacture, assuming you want a relatively intact person instead of a servitor.

However, the main thing granted by the talent you want from a soldier would be immunity to fear and pinning. What grants these traits? Frenzy. So we're back to the slaughter node. How about letting it stand as it is, but penalizing its use somehow? Say, one or two auto-wounds for using it or some fatigue after shutting it off? After all, the augmetics implanted into such a relatively lowly soldier won't pay much heed to his personal well-being as long as he stands and fights for his AdMech masters.

However, using the Slaughter Node to provide the fearlessness is inconvenient, because it's frenzy and thus requires the character to get into melee and hit things rather than shoot things. It seems somewhat incongruous (and somewhat wasteful, particularly considering some of the things you're likely to encounter that cause fear) that a Skitarius would become heedless of danger when seeking to assault, yet be subject to the frailties of emotions when standing back and laying down suppressive fire.

Yeah, that's a disadvantage. However, it would be quite interesting to know when Fear kicks in - when you're shooting at stuff from almost half a kilometre away with your hellgun?