If you're a rich weirdo with access to miraculous medical equipment and if you need a distraction from the fact you'll die soon when the sun fizzles out, you might choose to spend those last days in hope and generosity, healing the needy... or you might silence your better nature with drink and drugs and become a scar artist.
Some of the medical machinery available to people living on Earth-at-the-end dates back five hundred centuries, but it works as well today as it did then. The ancients built to last. These devices can perform surgery without pain or blemish, cure infection, remove hereditary conditions and repair crushed, cut, burned, poisoned, or frozen tissue in moments. But they can't create flesh from nothing. The raw material has to come from somewhere, and that's almost universally another person.
Needless to say, scar artists are attractive if that's their thing. Lean, tanned, muscular, perfectly coiffed, exquisite faces. It's an eerie beauty, though. Somehow slightly removed from human. Shake hands with a scar artist, and you could be shaking hands with three different people. Those long, strong bones could be from one donor, that even-toned skin from another, and the muscles and veins could be from someone else. Someone so destitute they sold a piece of themselves or just vanished in the city's back alleys late one night. Those scar artists are disturbing if you consider the implications of their existence, but they're not the worst.
There's a faction that says becoming the platonic ideal of the human form just makes you first among a very bland group. They want to push past beauty into artistry. Transparent skin, veins that bulge and glow, feathers or fur or scales instead of hair. Muscles that chime as they flex, lungs that exhale psychotropic vapours, glands under the fingernails that stain whatever they touch with swirls of iridescent pigment. Creating that kind of exotic flesh needs experimentation, and there's an implied level of human wastage. But creepy as they are, they're not the worst either.
There's a school of thought at the extreme forefront of scar artistry that says keeping the natural human body plan is timid, pedestrian,
dull. Take risks. Go further.
Dare. Take what you need, use what you need. Cut your conscience out if it bothers you.
Become art. And keep your mistakes alive, because they have a kind of beauty too.
Those are the worst.
Lord Scapho of the mad city Incarnari has a hole all the way through his torso. He can reach through and shake hands with himself. At parties, he encourages young ladies to put their heads through it, to the amusement of all present. To achieve that he needed a second spine, and to replace his two adult kidneys with six child-sized ones.
Lady Vinta has a crown of eyes. They blink in unison and swivel to face whatever has her attention. She claims each one of them is a trophy forfeited by a lover, and only laughs if someone points out that not all of them are human.
The
Daly Twins, sons of the city's wealthiest merchant prince, play a complex ongoing game of their own devising to see who gets to wear all the arms this week. Their older brother was the first to experiment: he had the position of his arms and legs swapped. He was a sensation for several months, but it made debauchery awkward, so he dispensed with limbs altogether and had himself attached to a distended floating gas sac.
Lady Margot, wife of the city's ruler, earned their respect by suffering for her art. She had her breasts carved into the shape of roses the old-fashioned way -- a knife, a vial of poppy juice and a surgeon who loved money more than his reputation. Now she heads the
Critics, a clique of scar artists who kill the creators of what they consider bad art.
Scar artist Narcissist
Narcissists are the lowest rung of the scar artist ladder. It's not the art that interests them, it's the health, youth and beauty. They don't warp their bodies so much as fine-tune them. They're physically tough as well as gorgeous. They form the baseline for scar artist stats.
AC 4 [15],
HD 1+2 (6hp),
Att 1 × weapon (1d6 or by weapon),
THAC0 19,
MV 120’ (40’),
SV D12 W13 P14 B15 S16 (F1),
ML 8,
AL Chaotic,
XP 15
Scar artist Canvas
Canvas scar artists transform their bodies, but not so much as to be unrecognisable. Roll a D6. On a 1, 2 or 3, give them one feature from the table. On a 4 or 5, two features. On a 6, three.
1. Silver eyes. Reflective like a cat's, can be any shape or even a symbol. Gives low light vision. *
2. Transparent skin. Watch blood flow through veins, muscles flex and slide.
3. Hollow fangs. After successful grappling, the scar artist can automatically do 1d6 damage and regain half that number (rounded down) of HP. They take blood, bile, spinal fluid or eyeball jelly. *
4. Musical muscles. Sounds like a violin, or some other instrument where strings are strummed with a bow.
5. Pheromone glands - as per Charm Person. HD x daily. One target in an adjacent square, only in an enclosed space. *
6. Bioluminescent markings.
7. Echolocation - dark vision. *
8. Mobile tattoos. Usually of an offensive and/or erotic nature.
9. Thick skin - as leather, +2 to saving throws vs heat/cold. *
10. Skull ridges.
11. Scales. Equal to 2 points of AC. *
12. Feathers. Colourful.
13. Quills. On a successful grapple, target must save vs poison. *
14. Eyestalks. Disturbing rather than practical.
15. Serpent tongue. Enhanced sense of smell. *
16. Reversible joints. The life of any party.
17. Talons. Never unarmed. Att x 2, 1d4 damage. *
18. Striped or spotted skin.
19. Prehensile tail. Adds to climb ability. *
20. Extra fingers or toes.
* +4 XP.
Scar artist Atrocity
Atrocity artists have redesigned themselves (and the test subjects they keep with them like pets) to capture attention and offend the senses. 1 - 3 on a d6 - one feature. 4, 5 - two features. 6 - 3 features.
1. Faces. The artist has extra faces on their body (and perhaps limbs as well if they're unusually large). They uniformly wear an expression of fear and revulsion and some have independently-moving eyes.
2. Crab claws. Serrated and bony, like giant scissors. (d8 damage) *
3. Extra limbs. More arms, more legs or a combination of both. They're often mismatched in length and position of joints, and may sprout from surprising places on the body.
4. Cloud. The artist carries a visible miasma with them, coloured or simply blurry.
5. Shrieking. When the artist moves, it's accompanied by screeching from joints and muscles remade to generate noise as they function. Discordant and loud.
6. Wings. Non-functional wings made from elongated finger-joints with skin stretched taut between them.
7. Protruding bones. Sharp bones emerging from the skin, like spear points twisting erratically around them as they walk.
8. Symbiote. The artist has one or more smaller creatures living inside their body. Like wasps in the eye sockets or mice in body-holes. Will emerge on demand to cause disgust or work mischief. *
9. Sticky. The artist's skin continually secretes a viscous fluid. It may be caustic, flammable or just unpleasant to touch. *
10. External organs. Air sacs on the back that inflate with every breath, a pumping heart attached to the breastbone, pulsating tubes emerging from and re-entering the body.
11. Giant. This scar artist is much larger than the average human being. This one's more of a billboard for their work than a canvas. (+3 HD, 125 XP)
12. Bloody. This artist's skin continually seeps blood, staining everything they touch. Doesn't cause any harm to the artist, just inconvenience to anyone else.
13. Hot. This body runs at a temperature much higher than normal. Not hot enough to injure, but anyone in close quarters is going to feel uncomfortable fast.
14. Mutilated. This artist has reconfigured him/herself to cause maximum distress with their appearance. They're fully fit, but
appear to be terribly wounded.
15. Stinking. Continual or at will. The artist produces a smell so reeking anyone within two squares must save vs poison or spend a round vomiting. *
16. Foul. The artist is covered with small orifices that continually dribble body waste.
17. Pustulant. Random body parts slowly swell, then shrink back to normal.
18. Sting. The artist has a venomous stinger they can attack with. May be obvious, or hidden. (Att x 1, 1d6 + poison) *
19. Armour plate. Thick, stiff skin like a rhino's hide. (2 [17] AC)*
20. Electric. The artist has sparks arcing over their skin. If touched, delivers a shock to both the artist and whoever touched them.
