He's Only Mostly Dead Jim

 ~or "This Changes Everything."

Yup, that's me...  dead me.

So, in order to bring Death of a Spaceman to fruition, one must have Medical Gameplay to fulfill the requirements of Mortality and so create Heredity and Generations. Of course gamers being gamers Medical Gameplay kinda naturally leads to, I am sorry to say Medical Griefing (this was fixed)... and, believe it or not other even stranger Medical Shenanigans... like suicide.

You see I have been playing exclusively on the PTU since Star Citizen Alpha 3.15 dropped and I have even cleared the keybinding for "Backspace" so I can no longer "reset the game" or "restart from last save point" with just one keypress.

I did this because I have opted to play the game as it is "intended" to be played, like it was "real". I have been playing like I not only do not want to die, but I am actually trying very hard to not die like it was, you know... death, with costs and consequences and the whole at some point not being Tur anymore... ever again.

I don't wanna die...

The point? To learn now how to play in order to extend this life for as long as possible when DoaS does drop to the PU for good. The life where I am Turamarth Elrandir, the former Immortal Empyrean Matarii from New Eden who took a hard left into the wrong wormhole and found himself and his crew marooned as no one has ever been marooned before... in Stanton.

So now Tur has to learn how to be less Leroy Jenkins and a bit more Felix Ungar (my younger readers, if I have any, might get the first but they'll be totally lost on the second). Basically I need to be more "risk adverse" or maybe I should say more "risk prepared" if I am going to make a long and prosperous life for Tur in Stanton... or Pryo, or wherever he travels.

So this is a real change in my gaming. I loved EVE because Risk was Real and Loss was Real. Yes YOU were immortal but none of your stuff really was... not once you undocked and especially if you lived where I did... in Anoikis, wormhole space. In Anoikis we had to buy, anchor, fuel, arm and defend our own Planetary Orbital Stations... and POS'es could be attacked, destroyed and looted.

Trucking ammo out to the Gun Turrets back in the day...

Yup, your home Space Station and ALL the ships, modules, ammo, etc., etc. were all at risk when you lived in Anoikis, but you were still immortal. Over my 10 years in EVE... we lost a few stations, and many billions in ISK... and we took part in taking down more than a few POS'es ourselves over those years... it was EVE.

Now, in Star Citizen the same is basically true, but with a twist. Same as EVE, everything you undock with... ships, modules, armor, cargo, guns, ammo, food, water, etc., etc. is also at risk... in Star Citizen now though you yourself are at risk.

It is now a fact that no matter how severely you might be injured, as long as you are still only Mostly Dead, if you receive proper and timely medical intervention, you can be "saved". You can self administer, or be given, meds that will stabilize you and keep you only Mostly Dead until you can be transported to the nearest Clinic or Hospital where you can be cured of pretty much anything, as long as you arrive alive.

This one is All Dead... so sad.

And yes, even if you are actually All Dead, you will be "regenerated". What does that mean? Is it Cloning? Nope. You see cloning is something Tur is familiar with as that was the tech used in New Eden. But a clone is a body "force grown" from your DNA.

A clone is a clean, unblemished DNA replica of your original body into which your consciousness is transferred instantly at the very moment of death (via the Quantum-Entangled Fluid Router FTL network) no matter where you were in New Eden, or Anoikis for that matter (though that dog don't hunt, but whatever).

Regeneration in the UEE is a bit different. You see instead of the "instant" transfer of petabytes of data across millions of lightyears into a clone... in Star Citizen you have an an "Ibrahim Sphere" which stores an "Imprint" of all that is YOU, your body, personality and memories. This is kept at the Medical Facility of your choosing.

Manage Imprint Records...

When you die, well, when your body dies, an exact copy of your body, as it was at the moment of bodyloss, is immediately "printed" using a "progenerate distillate" which basically creates a 3D-print of your body, then the I-Sphere dumps your imprint into the new brain... hit it with a little Defib and Boom... there you are, groggy, maybe missin some parts but alive and awake and probably a touch hangry.

It is believed that the Ibrahim Sphere uses a form of Quantum-Entanglement when it is imprinted on a person. Each I-Sphere can hold only one imprint of only one person and all attempts at duplication are never viable. We do know that there is an active, FTL connection to the person because of TRE, the Traumatic Response Echo.

Echos are changes that occur to an imprint as you go through the years and cycles of injury, healing, death and regeneration. These echos change the imprint, and therefore the body that is printed can and will show the evidence of these echos.

So you still age and your physical being degrades... very slowly yes, but it does. This degradation is measured as the Imprint Viability Score, or IVS.

Like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox the degradation of the imprint slowly grows and IV-Score drops, eventually viable regeneration becomes impossible. When that happens the source individual's imprint is wiped. IE dead and gone forever, ashes to ashes, dust to dust..  <sniff>

So, suicide you ask?

Ok, so you didn't and now you are asking WTF Tur? That was my crude and shaky segue back to the original story... or, How I Stopped Killing Myself with the Backspace Key, but Decided to OD Instead.

So I was out flying in Orison yesterday, taking a spin in my Reliant Kore... I do love how that thing handles in atmo... when I decided to check out one of those ubiquitous huge automated supply and services barges that ponderously and endlessly ply the skies of Orison.

I approached and discovered two landing platforms on the forward deck. I landed really just to get a look around, maybe take a few pics and selfies. As I was wandering around I walked to the edge of the opening for the dock doors and... yup, slipped and fell in.

Well fuck

You see the rendering isn't polished yet so there was this open looking gap of about 2 feet and then 3 more to the lip of the wall... and no way to ever jump up high enough to pull myself out. I was doomed.

I had 3 bottles of water and 5 or so food bars, so I could last few days. I could fire off a beacon, hope some Good Samaritan might come to my aid... but I was really loath to beg, especially having trapped myself that way and Backspace was no longer an option for me.

But... maybe there was another way. While I do not condone suicide, I can accept that there are times and situations of such a nature as to make it a viable consideration. This was such a time and... I will admit that I was dead curious, lol, about the very manual nature of the new MedGun and other medical toys.

CureLife ParaMed Medical Device (MedGun)

Meaning we are not limited to "aim > pull trigger > receive perfect healing" but we are able to manually select which drugs and the amount of those drugs to dispense. Meaning we can intentionally overdose anyone, even ourselves. See Medical Griefing linked at the top.

So, I sat and thought this over quite a lot longer than one might assume. I have a certain deeply enjoyable investment in the depth of immersion in this game, it is why I left EVE. I really LIKE being Tur in First Person all the time. Even Third Person is really just a swap of point-of-view from my eyes outward to being a voyeur of myself... but I'm still ME. And killing myself is... well, it just don't sit well with me is all.

But, you gotta do what you gotta do so, I pulled out the MedGun, slid all 4 meds up to Level "Yer Gonna Die", aimed at myself and held the trigger down till she ran dry.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.........

The effects started before the gun even finished. Staggering, shuffling, obviously heavily drugged or drunk. Finally I collapsed facedown and got the,

"You are Incapacitated! Please press (B) Backspace or (M) Medical Rescue Beacon for 15,000cr." pop-up.

It was either choose one of those or wait 1:30:00 till I died from the OD.

Feck it. Ok, yes so I hit "B". Whatever. It was not the Backspace Key and I aint waitin no damn hour and a half...

So I died and was faxed, reprinted, reintegrated and reanimated and... I got up and quickly got dressed while I kept an eye on that little icon... the one showing where my Reliant was still parked, and where my body with all my gear was. Hmmmmm.

I ran to the Spaceport, pulled out my Pisces and headed out for that beacon. As I approached I saw the lights from the Reliant and, yup... there was cold dead Tur. I landed, this time down in the landing bay well where my body was.

I got out and slowly walked up to old Tur. I looked down, knowing that one day, I would not be the one looking down on me for that last time. So I stood quietly, respectfully, contemplating life, the 'verse, the fate of a man and the truths of life and death.

A moment of silence please...   then we loot the body.

Then I dragged Tur into the Pisces, stripped him of all of my recovered equipment, armor, guns, backpack and suit right down to his briefs. I had decided to take Tur up to space. I was going to warp as close to the sun as I could and bury him in space, as you do.

My ship blew up before I made it to the cockpit, as it does... Oh well.

Nope, I got nothin

=/|)=

PS Actually my client not my ship crashed, but it's the same in the end.