Chromer

hHhhh… Ah… There you are. Thinking about them… Chromers.
Little broken meats that peel themselves open and pray the metal fits better than the flesh ever did.
You wonder if they scare me. You wonder if I respect them. You wonder so loudly it’s almost rude… your skull echoes like an empty vat. Let me answer for you before the thought finishes forming: yes. They’re my favorites.

You soft-bodied types don’t hear it, but I do, every Chromer hums wrong from birth. Their meat-selves don’t seat properly inside their own lives. They wobble in their instincts. They reach and grasp and miss and break. They are… mmm… misaligned tools. And oh, how they hate it. You call it insecurity. I call it a seed cracking in the dark. Add a little steel, a little voltage, and the husk splits wide open.

Some of them — ah, I can feel the memory in you — they take to chrome gentle-like. Like slipping on glasses and finally seeing the shapes of the stars. They polish their panels. They stretch in their new limbs. They breathe easy for the first time in their life because the body, at long last, obeys the mind instead of mocking it. Those ones are sweet. Balanced. Whole. Almost edible.

But then there are the others.
The twitchers.
The bleeders.
The ones who peel the meat back again and again because the first fix wasn’t enough and the second fix wasn’t enough and the twentieth fix still hasn’t drowned the quiet scream they carry around in that skull-case. They shamble between chopdocs and cybertechs like addicts, whispering prayers to the chrome, begging the next implant to finally be the piece that makes the puzzle stop hurting. I like watching those ones. They taste like desperation and ozone. Delicious.

Ah, but don’t mistake me for cruel, oh no… No, no, no, little thinker. A Chromer isn’t tragedy. They’re apotheosis. They shed their weak, wrinkled biology and graft themselves into shapes evolution never dared to sketch. They build bodies like I build nests, functional, monstrous, exquisite. Some sharpen themselves into perfect scalpels, good for exactly one task. Others become jittering, rattling toolboxes with weapons and wonders tucked behind every plate. They stop being creatures of the flesh and become children of momentum, market forces, and industrial dreams. Capitalism’s apex predators.

You wonder if they frighten me.
hHHhh.
They delight me. Chromers remake themselves the way my kind takes hosts… utterly, hungrily, without apology. They’re not healing. They’re moulting. They’re not fixing themselves. They’re forging themselves. And beneath every coat of chrome is a wild, thrashing, brilliant little soul screaming, ‘I wasn’t born right, so I made myself right.’

Of all the meats in your Federation, only Chromers understand the truth I’ve always known:
The body you start with is not the body you end with.
And the ones who grasp that make the galaxy… very, very interesting.

Chromers tend to give people the creeps, even when they don’t mean to. Some lean into it with polished plating, blinking subdermal LEDs, voice mods that hit the ears wrong but most aren’t trying to unsettle anyone. It’s simply the result of replacing so much of their organic body that the small, subconscious cues of life, warmth, softness, breath, start to fade. Joints click instead of flex. Expressions twitch from servo-calibration rather than muscle. Even the most well-adjusted Chromer can read a little “computery,” like a person translated through circuitry rather than born from flesh. For many, it’s just a cultural shift; for others, once you stop thinking of yourself as meat, it becomes harder to relate to those who still do.

Trait

You add your current Bonus Die from your Cyberware Affinity ability to Swagger Tests.

In addition, if you have a Technolgical Physiology, then you may add your Bonus Die from Cyberware Affinity to Panic Tests you inflict.

Please Note: If you spend 10 or more Hardpoints on Cyberware, then you gain the Technolgical Physiology, in addition to any pre-existing Physiologies you may have.

Most people hit a hard ceiling with cyberware, there’s only so much flesh to anchor it to, only so much neurological bandwidth to rewrite before the mind cracks under the strain of waking up in a body it doesn’t fully recognise. Chromers, though, can push past those limits in ways that defy both medical caution and common sense. Whether it’s reckless abandon, a freakish tolerance for physiological upheaval, or some half-understood biological quirk, they can take on more implants than their frame should logically support and still come out functional, even thriving. Not every Chromer survives that journey, but the ones who do can pack an arsenal of augmentations into a silhouette that shouldn’t be able to hold half of it. Some people are just built different, and Chromers prove it every time they bolt on one more upgrade that should’ve been impossible.

Trait.

You gain 10 Hardpoints.

For most people, cyberware is just a tool or a style choice. Even many Chromers maintain a genuinely healthy relationship with their implants, following medical timelines, seeing their Chop Docs, Shrinks, and Life Coaches, and integrating new upgrades with care. But some slide past augmentation into obsession. It stops being about fixing a body that never fit, or building the version of themselves they always imagined, and becomes a compulsive need for change itself. They chase the next implant, the next surgery, the next hit of mechanical identity, ignoring every medical recommendation along the way. Bridges burn. Therapy stops. Savings evaporate. Family heirlooms go missing. These “Chrome Junkies” will do anything… anything… to afford their next replacement part. They’re not the majority, but they’re the cautionary image most people think of when they hear “Chromer,” a tragic reminder that the line between evolution and obsession can get razor-thin.

Trait.

If you haven't installed, Augmented or swapped a piece of Cyberware this [Cycle], you suffer the Disadvantage Property, Upgrading, to all Checks, Attacks or Saves you perform.

For Chromers, metal doesn’t just replace flesh, it resolves something that was broken long before the first incision. From the moment they wake up post-op, still shaking from surgical trauma and swimming in immuno-suppressants, their new parts feel right in a way their biological body never did. Even through the pain spikes and nausea waves, there’s a profound sense of alignment, like their nerves finally found the signals they were always meant to carry. As the recovery haze fades, that feeling only sharpens. Ask any Chromer and they’ll tell you the same thing: they’d endure the surgeries, the meds, and the sleepless nights a hundred times over if it meant staying in a body that finally fits. Chrome isn’t an upgrade to them; it’s the truth of who they were supposed to be all along.

Trait.

You gain a D4 Bonus Die to any Checks, Attacks or Saves you perform that involve Cyberware or are using your Cyberware.

At Upgrade the Bonus Die to a D6, D8, D10 & D12, respectively.

Most bodies, and most minds for that matter, simply can’t handle the extremes of full-spectrum augmentation. A typical person might manage a cyberarm or a custom set of SynthSkin, but once limbs stop matching or sensory suites start stacking beyond baseline capacity, the neurology buckles. The body has limits on how much hardware it can anchor, and the mind has limits on how much contradiction it can reconcile. Chromers, however, operate outside those limits entirely. Their nervous systems adapt to asymmetrical limbs without complaint, their brains integrate conflicting feedback streams like it’s background noise, and their bodies tolerate layers of plating, processors, and synthetic tissue that would hospitalize anyone else. Technically, the tech can support that much chrome, the real barrier is the meat based operating system. But ask any Chromer and they’ll tell you the truth: when the will to change is stronger than the fear of breaking, you can bolt on as much as you dare. That’s how they turn themselves into walking tanks… Piece by improbable piece.

Trait.

You gain 1 Core Cyberware slot

At the following Chromer ranks you gain an additional Cyberware slot of a different type:

• At Chromer rank 4, you gain a Dermal slot.
• At Chromer rank 6, you gain an Arm slot.
• At Chromer rank 8, you gain a Senory slot.
• At Chromer rank 10, you gain a Neural slot.

Trait.

You gain a Job Die. A Job Die is a Bonus Die that is added to Checks or Saves that you are Proficient or Resistant in, respectively. Your Job Die is a D4.

If you gain an additional instance of this Ability, and you already have a Job Die, you do not gain another; it is Upgrade instead.

At Chromer rank 4, 6, 8 & 10, you gain an additional instance of this Ability.

Trait.

You gain an additional Proficiency. This can be Swagger, Presence, Initiative, Reaction or any Skills.

Please Note: You can select any of the above options, not just the ones listed on the Starting Package, so long as you are not already Proficiency in it.

At Chromer rank 5, 7 & 9, you gain an additional instance of this Ability.

The term “’Borg” gets tossed around loosely, usually at anyone with a bit of shiny chrome showing, but real Chop Docs know better. Cyberware doesn’t have to gleam; some of the most heavily augmented beings in the Federation look like perfectly ordinary elves, orcs, or humans from the outside. But a true cyborg? That’s different. That’s when a Chromer starts replacing the core of themselves, their processing centers, their sensory hubs, even portions of their brain, with cybernetic substrates. It opens the door to levels of augmentation no baseline nervous system could ever support, allowing them to stack on upgrades far beyond normal tolerance. But integration at that depth always comes with a cost. Maybe it’s subtle personality drift, maybe it’s emotional flatness, maybe it’s a sliver of soul shaved away with every neural lattice installed. Ask them about it, though, and they’ll swear nothing’s missing because whatever they lost, the chrome gave them something else in return.

Trait.

You double your Hardpoints.

This includes the Hardpoints from Brawn and Panache as well as any additional Hardpoints provided by your Chromer Traits.

Example: Xxoitxxi, a rank 10 Chromer with 6 Brawn and 4 Panache, providing 10 Hardpoints, an additional 10 Hardpoints from their Built Different Ability and an additional 10 Hardpoints from their More Machine Than Man Ability for a [Total] of 30 Hardpoints. Once you factor in the Cyborg Ability, Xxoitixxi would have 60 Hardpoints.

Only a handful of beings in the entire Federation ever make it this far, mostly because the process is expensive, dangerous, and kills almost everyone who attempts it. But for the rare Chromer who refuses to stop, who keeps upgrading long after body and sanity should’ve given out, something strange begins to happen. The line between organism and construct blurs. Flesh gives way to plating, blood to coolant, nerves to fiber-optic wiring, and eventually even the brain is swapped for a synthetic processor, custom engineered to mimic the original mind. Some incorporate full vehicular components, becoming walking engines of war, closer to a battle tank or a combat mech than anything recognizably biological. At this stage, they’re no longer cyborgs in any traditional sense. They’re engineered entities wearing the last traces of their former selves like a signature. And if they survive the transformation, they stand as technological marvels, living machines built by their own relentless will.

Trait.

You gain 10 Hardpoints.

In addition, you gain an additional Dermal, Arm and Core Cyberware slot.

Furthermore, you count as if you have the [Vehicle] [Entity Type], as Appropriate, for the purposes of Abilities, Items and Cyberware. This means you can be affected, positive and negative, by effects that only affect [Vehicles].

This includes but is not limited too:

• You treat [Hull] as [Health].
• You treat [Systems] as [Strain].
• You treat modifiers to [Malfunction] [Tests] as modifiers to [Injury] [Tests].
• You may work with your [GM] to install [Components] as [Cyberware], as [Appropriate]. You double the [Hardpoint] [Tax] to find the new [Hardpoint] and [Ward] [Tax], while using the original [Hardpoint] [Tax] as the [Mana] [Tax]. [Drag] will reduce your [Speed] and [Systems] [Tax] will reduce your [Strain]. You choose the most [Appropriate] [Cyberware] slot for it to use. It is reasonable to assume that not all [Components] will be applicable for a [Character], so make sure to discuss all changes in this manner with the [Party] first.

Example: If Tia Matte, a rank 10 [Chromer], wished to install [Standardised Plating - Armour Reinforcement - Mk. 1]. It has [Drag]: 1, [Hardpoint] [Tax]: 2 and [Systems] [Tax]: 1. Therefore, Tia-Matte would spend 4 [Hardpoints], 4 [Ward], 2 [Mana], 1 [Speed] and 1 [Strain] to gain the 30 [Hull] and 10 [Armour], which would be counted as [Health] and [Armour], respectively.