EDIT: The stats in this thread are working drafts. Please see the final versions on the Burning Empires Wiki.
I think these should be self-explanatory…
Courtesan
Setting: Stewardship & Court
Time: 4 yrs
Resources: 1
Circles: 1
Stat Bonus: +1 M
Skills: 5 pts: Seduction (Wil), Conspicious (Wil), Inconspicous (Wil), Soothing Platitudes (Wil), Vanity & hypocrisy-wise (Per)
Traits: 2 pts: Charming, Privileged Position, Showboat, Lavish Taste, Social Climber, Garbo, Almost Like Family
Requirements: Companion, Bastard, or Matador; or Housemaid plus the “Ruined” Trait; or Prostitute plus Bondsman (Bondswoman)
Surrogate
Setting: Serfdom & Servitude
Time: 4 yrs
Resources: 0
Circles: 2
Stat Bonus: +1 P
Skills: 5 pts: Child-wise (Per), Child Rearing (Wil), Inconspicuous (Wil), Pregnancy-wise (Per), Noble family-wise (Per)
Traits: 2 pts: Surrogate Mother, Breeder, Loyal, Innocent, Hurt, Almost Like Family
Requirements: The character must be 15 or older and female to start this lifepath.
Eugenicist
Setting: Outcast & Criminal
Time: 6 yrs
Resources: 2
Circles: 0
Stat Bonus: +1 M
Skills: 6 pts: Human Eugenics (Per), Human Biology (Per), Cryonics (Per), Genetic lineage-wise (Per), Lost Secrets-wise (Per), Inquisition-wise (Per)
Traits: 2 pts: Practitioner of Forbidden Arts, Blacklisted, Outlaw, Idealist, Clever Bastard
Requirements: any Student-type lifepath
Notes:
Courtesan plus Social Climber trait allows Lady.
Anvil Wife plus Social Climber allows Lady
Eugenicist allows Filthy Worm Lover and Rebel Priest
New traits:
Social Climber (Dt) 5 pts
This character has risen above his or her station in life, and everybody knows it.
This trait grants a 1D infamous reputation with all characters Born to Rule. It also grants +1 success in any Duels of Wits where the hypocrisy of the noble class is relevant.
Almost Like Family (Dt) 9 pts
The character has been in service to some powerful household so long that they treat him or her like one of the family… except when they don’t.
This trait grants a 1D affiliation with the family, as long as the player names it, specifies its source of prominence (noble title, military service, wealth, etc.), and locates its primary residence. It also grants a free complicated relationship with any one family member. Finally, the character may ignore +1 Ob of higher/lower status penalties for Circles tests involving family members and servants in the primary residence.
Further, the character gains a persona point for getting drawn into a conflict between two family members so blatantly that the rest of the family think it’s none of his business.
Surrogate Mother (Dt)
Bearing and raising children is hardly compatible with positions of power, even in a high-tech society: There is no such thing as maternity Iron. In the great days of the Federated Empire, artificial wombs were widely available to allow women to carry their children to term outside the body, but even on High Index worlds such technology is now rare, unreliable, and illegal. In Mundus-influenced space, most worlds have simply fallen back on the ancient custom of patriarchy, excluding women from any position deemed too dangerous or demanding.
Among the elite of the Casiguran Matriarchy, however, as well some secretive families elsewhere, the alternative is surrogate mothers. The fertilized egg of the noble patroness is implanted in a carefully selected bondswoman, who carries the child to term and usually breast-feeds it. Some families allow their surrogates to continue throughout the child’s life as a governess, but most ruthlessly isolate the child from the surrogate as soon as it is weaned to ensure the young heir does not grow up with divided loyalties. One irony is that among the Casigurans, a society that glorifies matriarchy, much of the elite grows up effectively motherless and with a painful, but politically useful, longing for a strong mother-figure.
A surrogate mother has a 2D infamous reputation as an abomination against nature among followers of the Burning Wheel (Mundus Humanitas, Cyrean, and Urfan alike), and a 1D infamous reputation among Casigurans as an embarassing necessity best ignored.
Practitioner of Forbidden Arts (Dt)
While Psychologists are generally distrusted, they have their uneasy place in the society of the Iron Empires. Other arts of the old Federation, are outlawed altogether: damned by the Mundus Humanitas as sorcery and heresy, deeply distrusted even by other heretics and would-be rationalists. The Practitioner of Forbidden Arts trait is required to know the Human Eugenics skill and other such underground technologies.
This trait grants the character a 2D infamous reputation with the Mundus Humanitas – including splinter groups like the Cyreans and Urfans – and makes killing him a virtuous act rather than a sin for any believer, as with the Heretic trait. It also grants a 1D infamous reputation with any human from any of the Iron Empires; whether such a reputation applies in a particular Void World should be determined by the group. On the upside, it grants a 1D affilitation with other Practioners of Forbidden Arts, if you can find them, and a 1D reputation among Vaylen as remarkably enlightened, for a human.
Note that “Outlaw” remains a separate trait indicating active persecution by the local government. A Practitioner who lacks the “Outlaw” trait has managed to keep his or her activities quiet enough, or make them useful enough to certain people in power, to avoid being declared a dead man walking.
Restrictions: Must have the Human Eugenics skill (or any other skill the group decides is banned on their world)
New skill and tech:
Human Eugenics (Per)
While Vaylen Eugenics is a flourishing technology for mass-producing monsters and specialized castes as needed, Human Eugenics is a nearly lost art for improving the species as a whole over the course of generations.
Now banned by the Church and universally distrusted, eugenicists were once a respected profession in human space. Century after century, they weeded the harmful mutations borne of space travel out of the human genome while weaving in everything from the Bright Mark to immunity against the innumerable plagues plaguing colonists and traders on new worlds. Some legends even say eugenicists invented psychological talents and the mutant traits commonly attributed to interbreeding with the alien Fuur. At the height of human civilization, eugenicists aggressively offered the Federation’s middle classes genetic screening of potential mates and the use of external wombs to conceive embryos and carry them to term, liberating women from the dangers and discomforts of pregnancy while giving eugenicists easy access to the developing child’s DNA.
But as civilization, technology, and the eugenicists’ own skills all declined, these once-commonplace conveniences increasingly began to miscarry – often literally – at a terrible cost in public trust. Yet all too many eugenicists, especially those associated with the state-sponsored Church of the Divine Machine, responded to the decline not by limiting their ambitions but with ever more desperate efforts to “improve” the human race, especially among the ruling elite. The resulting backlash contributed to the rise of mystics like the Mundus Humanitas and of noble rebels like the Hanrilkes.
Today, a handful of eugenicists still practice underground. Within the scale of the game, the primary use of Human Eugenics is to ensure healthy, normal births for desperate and wealthy would-be parents – and to reverse-engineer what the Vaylen eugenicists are up to. The problem is presenting the evidence to anyone in authority without being executed for the techniques used to gather it.
To test a person for psychological talent, Ob 2. To determine whether a life form is natural or a creation of Vaylen Eugenics by testing a DNA sample, Ob 2; to determine the specific Alien Life Form traits by testing a DNA sample, Ob 3. To help a previously infertile couple achieve a healthy pregnancy, Ob 2; to test a developing fetus for congenital defects, Ob 2; to cure a fetus of genetic illness, Ob 3; to cure an adult of a genetic illness through retroviral therapy, Ob 4; to use an external womb to fertilize an egg and bring the fetus to term, Ob 2.
Practice Cycle: 1 yr. Hrs/day: 6r/8d/16c
Technology: Yes, a laboratory.
External Womb
Resources Obstacle: 8
High Index only
The external womb is a kind of cyborg birth tank, blending mechanical and organic components, capable of bringing sperm and egg together and carrying the result fetus to term under constant watch for potential health problems. This is not a “fast growth” tank: The pregnancy takes the normal nine months. However, any Human Eugenics rolls made on the embyro inside gain a +2D bonus. The device requires a continuous and stable external power supply to operate.
Mere possession of this device immediately grants the owner the Outlaw trait if he or she does not have it already.
Technological Traits: Enhancement (8 pts), 3D Skill Advantage (7 pts), Categorical Limitation (only affects one fetus, -1 pt), Trait Limitations x2 (requires or imposes Outlaw, requires external power, -6 pts)
Availability in character burning: Any character with the Human Eugenics skill and the Outlaw trait may buy an External Womb in character burning for 1 rp.