Sunday, January 22, 2017

Shepherd's Gland

Enhanced Pheromones (p. 305 EP) are a fairly standard social implant, which refines native biochemistry for natural pheromone releases to have more potency - improving social skills through affection and trust, but does not affect those with a different biochemistry system. Scent Affinity (p. 148 EP) is an implantation for Smart Animals which modifies them to be receptive to a particular scent of an individual. This is good for singular animals or a worker who works with many animals, but does not necessarily have field utility. For those who need a more utilitarian tool for animal handling, there are other options which mimic the utility of Enhanced Pheromones.

Shepherd's Gland: Utility bioware modeled after Enhanced Pheromones. This system allows a user to produce a number of common scent and pheromone cues for a variety of smart animals. These can be used to help push an animal to specific behaviors or emotional states. This grants the user a +10 to all Animal Handling rolls, assuming the animal can smell them and is in the gland's library. By default, the gland contains the ability to influence most extant mundane animals and their smart variety. An upgrade to handle specific exotic or neogenetic animals may be procured at a [Trivial] cost. A variation of this upgrade is made to handle uplifts - those who smell, anyway, and functions identical to Enhanced Pheromones, though many uplifts are not happy with the idea of being "handled" [Low]

Because of it's utility and lack of lead-time, many freelance animal trainers and handlers utilize it to have more flexibility than installing Scent Affinity and Cybercortexes in every animal. While not common, some habitats even have enough "wild" life in their regions to warrant animal control officers, who may also prefer this implant. And of course, there are less than scrupulous uses, such as for intrusion specialists who may need to work around guard animals who are predisposed to be hostile.

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