[Erling]

Hi!

I'm going to use Thomas Roxborough in my campaign with his eagerness to obtain new body as one of the plot's motives. Of course, his quest for new body must be full of DRAMA. But what on earth prevents him from downright buying a cloned body and inserting his brain into it? 4th edition Augmentation rulebook describes it as available treatment is 2070s. Perhaps his desease somehow prevents his brain from accepting new body?

[farothel]

Any cloned body will have the same auto-immune disease as his old body and will deteriorate over time as well.  Maybe there's a mega-corp (one he isn't part of) which has a treatment for his disease.  the main part of the run would be to get their hands on the treatment, after which a cloned body might work.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

I tried to run a 'Freejack' with Roxborough once.  Unfortunately, none of the players had ever seen the movie.

[Mirikon]

And if Alice survived the Crash, she'll want to stop anything like that from happening.

[DeathStrobe]

I've actually wondered why he wouldn't go full cyborg. My assumption is the vat he is in lets him keep his essence, which is why he's not crazy like the other brains in a jar.

[Reaver]

Take you pick, live life as a blob in a tank and keep your sanity....

Go cyborg, survive for 6 to 10 weeks before going bat shit crazy, killing everyone around you and then yourself....

I'd take the tank thankyou.

[Wakshaani]

Rox can pop off clones anytime he wants to. That's easy.

Moving his brain into it's impossible as his brain has disassembled and is floating in all kinds of weird gooey ways. His cells mutated and are all *over* the tank, yet somehow they keep working due to some serious vat tech. Is this slimey scoop of RoxSauce his brain? What about this scoop?

It's a mess.

Thus, his work on trying to find a way to digitally upload his consciousness into other forms, which has been prevented at every turn by Alice.

Alice, of course, is no longer with us.

...

Hmmm...

[Crimsondude]

It's explained, more or less, in Stranger Souls, and it's tied to his being a director of Aztechnology. That connection is likely why he is also no longer a director of Aztechnology.

As Wak said, they can't just swap brains because his brain is a matrix of cells within the vat. A clean body would have the same disease, maybe, but so what? CFD suggests that consciousness and memories/personalities can be transferred electronically via nanotech, but again, so what? Every digital upload is merely an impression of the person—a persona—and not his or her actual self. The single exception is Quicksilver in Imago. There could be an army of Roxy clones with the disease removed and his biological memories, personality, etc. implanted. However, none of them are Roxy because none of them has, as DeathStrobe noted, what Shadowrun refers to as his Essence.

Why Roxy hasn't availed himself of the resources and opportunities since Crash 2.0 is the billion nuyen question.

[DeathStrobe]

Alice, of course, is no longer with us.

...

Hmmm...

Or is she? Data Trails says she might be a demiGOD for Renraku now. But unreliable narrators and all that.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

... an E-Ghost, the ORIGINAL E-Ghost, a demiGOD?  I find that more than a little hard to believe.

And Roxy's already insane, he's just functional.

[Mirikon]

... an E-Ghost, the ORIGINAL E-Ghost, a demiGOD?  I find that more than a little hard to believe.

Stranger things have happened. And Alice was part of Echo Mirage, way back in the day...

Dunno if it is actually her that is a demiGOD for Renraku, but I would like to believe that she survived the Crash somehow. Maybe hanging out with Captain Chaos's e-ghost...

[Erling]

Thanks, now it's clear for me.

[Sengir]

But what on earth prevents him from downright buying a cloned body and inserting his brain into it? 4th edition Augmentation rulebook describes it as available treatment is 2070s.

Huh?
You can take out a brain and put it into a cyborg (with an array of side effects), put I've never seen something about putting the CCU into a biological body

[Erling]

Huh?
You can take out a brain and put it into a cyborg (with an array of side effects), put I've never seen something about putting the CCU into a biological body

Well, you can replace all of your own limbs, bones and organs with spare parts taken from your own full-body clone. Since mere transplants (not bioware) don't cost Essence, the sky is the limit. Changing every part of the whole is pretty much changing the whole.

[Mirikon]

They have not yet gotten to the point where they can transplant brains from one organic body to the other, I believe. And Roxy doesn't have an intact brain any more. Just soup that is somehow kept alive in a tank.

Now, they COULD try and do the same trick on him as they tried to do with Eliohann in Boston, and use modified CFD nanites to imprint his mind on a new body, but we've all seen how that's gone down.