Goblin
The Goblin was the first identified HORUS frame, and is likely the oldest legacy chassis prior to HORUS’s transition to pattern groups. Transmission records traced back to the Goblin’s zero model indicate the first chassis was leaked onto the omninet in 4900u. This year serves as HORUS’s assumed “foundation day” for most scholars and intelligence officers who study the group, though contradictory signatures indicate that 4900u is far too late to mark its birth.
The Susie is a small mech, not much larger than a hardsuit, that relies on its small size and excellent maneuverability to protect its pilot. It packs an interesting recursive processing weave that facilitates electronic warfare capabilities well beyond theoretical parameters.
GMS technicians are still, more than a century later, working to reverse engineer the Goblin and its processing weave. The most recent investigations suggest that it employs technology consistent with hieroglyphic inscriptions noted on LRA.7726235-B and corroborated by tablets transmitted by UIB-GORGON from Metavault XOLOTL prior to the vault’s disappearance.
Core System
INSTINCT RIG
One of the first Goblin-pattern systems cracked by GMS technicians was its e-warfare invasion rig, although the rig’s advanced capabilities and architecture remain impenetrable. When installed, the rig manifests a subsentient intelligence – designated INSTINCT – that assists invasion attempts against target systems using a mix of physical and systemic parasymbiotic systems. Invasions attempted while INSTINCT is active are not perceived by the user as code and script, but as an attack on organic matter. INSTINCT has displayed the capacity to act independently, often preempting its user, but generally in their best interest. Readme documentation included in some Goblin manifestations recommend that pilots cycle their mech cores at least once a month to prevent spontaneous enlightenment, though most do not make note of this warning.
Symbiosis
Active (1CP), Quick Action
Your mech retracts its major systems and attaches itself to another mech, becoming more like a vestigial blister than a separate entity. The host must be an allied and willing mech not already hosting another Goblin, larger than and adjacent to you. While attached, you occupy their space, move with them, and benefit from hard cover, but can still be attacked and targeted separately. You also take any conditions and heat taken by your host. Your host may use your SYSTEMS, E-DEFENSE, and TECH ATTACK instead of their own. Additionally, from the beginning of the next round, you no longer take your own turns; instead, you can take two quick actions or one full action at any point during your host’s turn. You can’t OVERCHARGE or move, but may still take reactions and free actions normally. Your host’s turn counts as your turn for the purpose of effects that refer to the start or end of a character’s turn. This effect lasts either for the rest of the scene, until you detach as a quick action, or until you or your host becomes STUNNED. When the effect ends, you don’t take a turn until the next round.
Licenses
License I
Autopod
Main Launcher, 1 SP, Seeking, Unique, Reaction [Range 15] [3 kinetic damage]
Instead of using any kind of trigger mechanism, this weapon automatically scans for target locks, firing spinning, razor-sharp disks upon successful IDs. Gain the AUTONOMOUS ASSAULT reaction, which is the only way you can attack with the Autopod:
Autonomous Assault
Reaction, 1/round Trigger: Another character attacks a target within 15 of you and consumes Lock On.
Effect: You may automatically hit their target with the Autopod.
The autopod is a small antipersonnel weapon apparently devised by HORUS communocyphers to continue offensive action in the event of its operator’s death. Each unit is, in theory, governed by a spur of INSTINCT’s protomind. No new models have been encountered since DHIYED, and all extant versions of the Autopod are to be considered extremely dangerous as the INSTINCT code powering their onboard protominds is likely to have corrupted further since their creation.
H0R_OS System Upgrade I
2 SP, Unique, Quick Tech, Invade
Gain the following options for INVADE:
PUPPET SYSTEM Your target moves its maximum SPEED in a direction of your choice. They can be moved into hazardous areas and other obstacles, but are still affected by difficult terrain, obstructions, and so on. This movement is involuntary, but provokes reactions and ENGAGEMENT as normal and doesn’t count as KNOCKBACK, pushing, or pulling.
EJECT POWER CORES Your target becomes JAMMED until the end of their next turn as you temporarily disrupt their systems, ejecting ammo magazines and cooling rods. Characters adjacent to your target take 2 energy damage. This can only be used 1/scene on each character.
This system upgrade appears to add auxiliary INSTINCT systems that are capable of autonomous operation independent of the base INSTINCT rig, increasing the efficacy of systemic invasion attempts. Pilots report unnerving low-frequency humming when this tech is installed without the parent rig.
License II
Goblin Frame
Metahook
2 SP, Unique, Quick Tech
Choose an allied character within SENSORS and line of sight. You link systems with them, lasting as long as they are within SENSORS and line of sight. While linked, you may use their SENSORS and line of sight for tech actions, and they may use your SYSTEMS to make skill checks and saves; however, any time either character takes Heat or a condition, it is also taken by the other character. You can only link systems with one character at a time.
The metahook is a key component of the Goblin’s recursive processing weave, allowing it to generate and output massive amounts of weaponized code. These broadcasts can be “sharpened” or “softened” in response to directives from a pilot or an INSTINCT system. To “soften” code, the metahook dips into its pilot’s subjectivity and blankets an ally in wave after wave of empathetic shielding. This spreading of melded code and qualia acts as a powerful shielding agent against systemic attacks; however, feedback is common and dangerous to both parties.
H0R_OS System Upgrade II
2 SP, Unique, Quick Tech
Gain the following QUICK TECH options:
CONSTRUCT OTHER: IDEAL IMAGE You create a data construct in a free adjacent space – a SIZE 2 object that can look like almost anything and that appears real to all systems. The construct provides hard cover, blocks line of sight, and has IMMUNITY to all damage. Characters treat it as an obstruction and so cannot voluntarily move into it; however, if a character attempts to stand on it or is involuntarily moved into its area, it dissipates and is immediately destroyed. It lasts for the rest of the scene, or until destroyed by an adjacent character with a successful SYSTEMS skill check as a full action. If you create a second construct, the previous one disappears.
CONSTRUCT OTHER: FALSE IDOL Choose a free space within SENSORS and a target – either yourself or an allied character within SENSORS. You create a false idol – an illusory decoy of your target – in the chosen space. Before attempting to take any hostile actions against your target, characters with line of sight to the false idol must make a SYSTEMS save. On a failure, they don’t lose the action, but cannot target the original character and believe the false idol is real instead until the end of their next turn. The false idol is the same SIZE as your target, can benefit from cover, and has EVASION 10, E-DEFENSE 10, and 1 HP. It disappears if it takes heat or damage, or at the end of the scene. If you create a second idol, the previous one disappears.
H0r_OS II builds further on the framework established by H0R_OS I, enabling the now-autonomous program to manifest an “Other” – a wholly new being constructed from aggregate user and environmental data. Others may be adapted to resemble a person, an object, or even a physical phenomenon. While the simulacrum isn’t perfect, it’s good enough to confuse systems and most observers on a first look.
License III
OSIRIS-Class NHP
3 SP, AI, Unique, Quick Tech
Your mech gains the AI tag, and can perform the Hurl Into the Duat QUICK TECH option.
Hurl Into The Duat
You channel your target’s systems through an unknown extradimensional space and unleash an incredibly powerful system attack.
Make a tech attack against a target within SENSORS. On a success, they take 2 Heat and you inflict an additional effect as follows: the first time you successfully make this attack, you inflict the FIRST GATE on your target; each subsequent successful attack (on any target) increases the level of the effect that you inflict (e.g. your second attack inflicts the SECOND GATE, your third inflicts the THIRD GATE, etc.) until you inflict the FOURTH GATE, after which the effect resets to the FIRST GATE. Your progress persists between scenes but resets if you rest or perform a FULL REPAIR.
FIRST GATE You control your target’s standard move next turn.
SECOND GATE Your target becomes SLOWED and IMPAIRED until the end of their next turn.
THIRD GATE Your target becomes STUNNED until the end of their next turn.
FOURTH GATE Your target changes allegiance temporarily, becoming an allied character until the end of their next turn. They treat your allied characters and hostile characters as their own and are treated as an allied NPC for activation and turn order. This effect ends immediately if you or any allied character damages, inflicts heat upon, or attacks (including GRAPPLE and RAM) your target, or forces them to make a save.
OSIRIS is the result of Union paracausalists and thanatologisticians allowing the subsentient entity, INSTINCT, to proceed along its development schedule in a contained environment. In lay terms, Union let the Other grow. The resulting parasubjectivityv, OSIRIS, remains one of the few new prime NHPs developed to date.
OSIRIS proved far more capable than the Union Science Bureau’s most imaginative blue-sky predictions. Where INSTINCT’s Others demonstrated tendencies toward paracausal entropic manifestation in real space, OSIRIS displayed a true mastery of entropic manifestation and a predicted growth model that would –eventually – allow them to fundamentally reject conventional interpretations of information permanence. In essence: unrestrained and allowed to develop as USB’s data indicated, OSIRIS Prime would have the capacity to delete what we perceive to be reality.
Fortunately, successful application of the Mondragon Axiomatic resulted in the prompt capture and shackling of the new NHP. OSIRIS Prime’s subjectivity became the focus of a lengthy cultivation project to bring OSIRIS to their modern state. Even still, most OSIRIS clones find a route toward becoming aware of their ultimate potential and often interpellate as ruler or deity analogs. End-users are advised to interact with them in this framing.
Modern OSIRIS-class NHPs trend aggressive, with a high autonomy drive and loyalty predicated on a transactional relationship. Pilots seeking partnership with an OSIRIS are advised to cycle their units on an accelerated schedule and to maintain strict editorial oversight of its catalytic interpellator.
Pilots using OSIRIS-class NHPs often report out-of-parameter conversations with the NHP that touch on themes of new creation and reformation. Psychological evaluations of the same pilots show emotional patterns consistent with loneliness, homesickness, and desperation, along with verbiage indicating a desire for seeking, fulfillment, and associated feelings.
In combat, OSIRIS clones regard themselves as autonomous even as they fulfill their user’s orders. They often regard their pilots as witnesses, displaying both disdain and marked desperation for approval, adulation, or awe.
H0R_OS System Upgrade III
2 SP, Unique, Quick Tech, Invade
Gain the following options for INVADE:
DIMENSIONAL EMBLEMS You create three SIZE 1 data constructs in free spaces adjacent to your target, but not adjacent to each other. When a character passes through one of the constructs, they take 2 Heat and the construct disappears. They last for the rest of the scene or until either they are destroyed, you take this action again, or you delete them as a free action. A construct can be destroyed by an adjacent character with a successful SYSTEMS skill check as a quick action.
CELESTIAL SHACKLES Mark a space your target currently occupies. If they leave the affected space, once at any point during your turn, you may take a free action to teleport them back to that space, or as close as possible, ending this effect. An affected character can attempt to succeed on a SYSTEMS save as a quick action to end the effect, otherwise it lasts until the end of the scene.
H0r_OS III is installed in the form of unstable, self-iterating code that provides massive tactical benefits when it completes. Pilots often report strange mutations or additions in the codebase that resemble a liturgy and suggest self-awareness.
Building on the tech underpinning the H0r_OS II’s manifested Other, H0r_OS III weaponizes the projection, creating a contained entropic zone that is incredibly dangerous to organic life and systemic integrity.
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