The Laminates

The Laminates, better known on the non-Fallen worlds as Uplift Contact Sheets or Smart Trash, are often found in the wilderness areas and ruins of the Fallen Worlds that have lapsed into barbarism.  The industrial castoffs of failed colonies, Laminates are biomimetic detriforms that were originally designed as dermal contact infoports.

Laminates are typically made in molecular assemblers. Each Laminate is a flexible plastic sheet with two surfaces: a Recording Plate onto which genetic information, data, texts, or memories can be transcribed from an assembler template, and a Port Plate which transfers the recorded information to another Laminate or to a living creature through dermal contact.

On most High Worlds, Laminates are manufactured for Single Use; this means that the Laminate may record and transfer a single template one time. After the transfer it disintegrates into a puddle of goo. The next level up in terms of quality and utility is the Totipotent Laminate, whose original template can be reformatted as desired. Such re-recordable Laminates can acquire a new template from either a molecular assembler, or from a living biological substrate (whether it be a multicellular biotic medium in a laboratory, or a living contact-host organism). The third and most dangerous type is the Self-replicating Totipotent Laminate. The latter's manufacture is highly regulated, as they can cause planetary eco-disasters, such as that which crashed the High World of Intelego Vim.

Laminates have many uses. High worlds use them to:

• Transfer knowedge and skills
• Alter a person's somatic form
• Heal wounds and cure diseases
• Uplift animals to full or semi-sentience 
• Affect biological, cognitive, and affective repairs in abhumans and mutants
• Prepare suitable living host homunculi for Cartesian infusion by Ships' Avatars and Minds. 

On Fallen Worlds, Laminates are a constant nuisance and sometimes an active threat. Pity or marvel at the primitive or barbarian whose bare foot steps on the Laminate pictured above. He or she will gain the wisdom of a god, or a new bestial form. Sometimes both.

Even more dangerous to people on Fallen Worlds are the Totipotent or Self-replicating Totipotent Laminates. They are often carriers of a variety of unwholesome and lethal diseases and heresies, and some have even attained a species of malevolent sentience. Imagine an entirely inhuman intelligence suddenly in human flesh. His or her companions had best beware.

Many of these latter groups of Wild Laminates have also developed the ability to move about on their own. Some crawl, some move about by fluttering and flapping their membranous body.

Wild Laminates often begin to grow to enormous sizes - particularly on areas of Fallen Worlds with dangerous levels of radioactivity. Wild Laminates acquire the ability to grow by sampling the genetic information of living organisms. They often develop specialized folds and striations with specialized cell-like structures capable of breaking down and digesting animal and plant matter. Once a Laminate has grown to a sheet of 1x1 meter in size, it can easily envelop and kill a human.

The Laminate below is a particularly dangerous Wild Type.

OGL MECHANICS

Laminate
Biomimetic detriform infoport

ASPECTS:

• High Concept: Smart trash
• Trouble: Susceptible to fire
• Aspect: Self-Replicating and Totipotent 
• Aspect: Big and Hungry
• Aspect: A good book gone bad 

APPROACHES

• Careful: +1
• Clever: +3
• Flashy: 0
• Forceful: +2
• Quick: +2
• Sneaky: +1

STUNTS:

• Record - Acquire genetic information, data, texts, or memories stored in a living being by making direct physical contact with that being
• Smother - +2 on a Forceful Approach to smother an opponent that needs to breathe
• Transcribe - Once per session, transfer stored genetic information, data, texts, or memories to another living being by making direct physical contact with that being

REFRESH: 3