Do Agathics cause cancer?

[Tom Kalbfus]

What do you think of this idea? Lets suppose Agathics makes you young every time its used, but your ability to survive after a few months depends on your ability to fight off all the cancerous tumors it causes, so if you can get past a year of vigorous cancer treatments, contain and treat all the cancers it creates you are home free starting over at 20 again. Can you think of any plots that might come out of this concept?

 

[-Daniel-]

I can think of many plot ideas, but to be honest I would not use this idea at my table. If I want Characters to live longer than I make it possible for them to get the Agathics. If I don't, I just say they are not available. The need to add such a hurtle for them to get past in order to use them feels more like GM problems than anything else. Of course this is just my reaction, others will disagree.

 

[madmike]

Not sure, but according to WHO bacon does.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Not sure, but according to WHO bacon does.

This WHO?

Or the Whos of Whosville?

 

[Condottiere]

If agathics reversed aging and returned the imbiber to youth.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

If agathics reversed aging and returned the imbiber to youth.

Yes that is what agathics does, but think about how it does it. There is something called telemerase which limits the number of times a cell can divide, with cancer cells, the telemerase is turned off, and so it can divide an unlimited number of times, which is why it kills you. Part of the process of restoring youth might include turning off the telemerase and setting it back to zero. I think you can see how a side effect of this process might be cancer.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

There are rules for cancerous growths in the OTU due to anagathics. Traveller New Era books talk about people take them and start getting side effects see below:

Anagathic A, "The Standard" (TNE pp. 33-34) causes growths on the body. After 60 years of actual use (interrupting the regimen only stops the clock, does not reset the clock) you start getting cysts and growths due to your biological clock being whacked out of sync for so long. You have to roll on the side-effects. There is a table to roll for side effects which has growths, disfigurations, psychological effects and at the highest roll, psychopathic behavior (not stated but, I think they mean roll a new character). The text cites having a hand growing from your shoulder. An attending medic can reduce the side effects roll, but the DMs keep getting higher.

Anagathic B, developed by SuSAG LIC, (Regency Sourcebook p. 16), does not have the cancer side effects and you could potentially live forever. However, there is a different side effects. Every time you go to Jump space most people experience nausea and headaches at the moment of transition. Those who take "B" however have to roll % higher than than the number of years of use EACH AND EVERY TIME you go into Jump Space. If you do, great! If you roll equal or lower, you die immediately massive of brain hemorrhaging.

 

[alex_greene]

And then again, you might have an anagathic which works and doesn't kill you. After all, people who search for the Fountain of Youth are after it because they don't want to die. If it kills you when you start using it, it can't be the Fountain of Youth, can it?

Your characters might indeed find the magic pill that makes them live forever without turning them into blobby walking tumour monsters or having their heads explode every time someone says "Jump," but Marc Miller has stated that eternal youth and immortality will never become a thing among the general masses. The stay-at-homes will never live forever, and always grow old at the same rate - and there will always be funerals, even in the Far Future.

Just not for your boys, if you play your cards right and talk to the right alien entity.

 

[Condottiere]

Well, having eternal youth with an allergy to hyperspace lends itself well to years and decades in near light speed travel.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

The stay-at-homes will never live forever, and always grow old at the same rate - and there will always be funerals, even in the Far Future.

More like the reverse, in part. With RAW, you could take "B" and live forever. There are no side-effects aside from Jump Death and you stay put biologically at your apparent age with no growths. However you are confined to a single star system at one point due to the danger of certain death at the one hundred year mark of usage.
A society that wholeheartedly adopts it will have it's ability to have have a stellar empire impacted as only those who refuse it or the poor could go travel.

Taking "A" you MIGHT live forever, but eventual psychosis is the final result and thus rendering the individual non-functional. And well a psychotic society...

Either way, your character will not be fun or easy to play.

Only Grandfather with his psionic regeneration or cloning can live forever. Well, if one of his "sons" does not get to him first.

 

[alex_greene]

Or your guys can look for an alternative and find it.

 

[Hopeless]

I was wondering if anyone considered The Sixth Day movie whilst dealing with this subject?

Of course that was deliberately included because the sole producer of that particular process wanted to keep them under their control.

Please be warned it gets quite nasty and by that I mean the movie but for those who like Arnie movies it should be fine! :shock:

 

[alex_greene]

I was wondering if anyone considered The Sixth Day movie whilst dealing with this subject?

If we haven't by now, Marc Miller's Traveller Novel will very likely bring the topic back into sharp highlight.

I like that his character, the Decider, is not only functionally immortal but also hugely beyond what is considered "canon Traveller," because Deciders have never been featured in any published Traveller material before.

Also, what if the published side effects of anagathics are not a feature of these drugs but a deliberately engineered side effect? Be immortal, sure, but you're going to be staying right where we want you. Live forever, sure, but you're going to spend your days looking like Otto Sump.

There is a precedent for this. The US painkiller Tylenol has been adulterated at point of manufacture with a compound which is hepatotoxic. Take too many, and they destroy your liver. The point of this hepatotoxin is to stop people using the analgesic to get high.

I can see the megacorps kinking their anagathics for that exact purpose. Keep taking the shots, and watch yourself turn into a monster. Stop taking the shots, and the cumulative dose of progeriac enzyme you've been building up in your system since day one kicks in, and without the monthly suppressor progeriac enzymase from your shots to stop it, you go through every deferred aging roll in a week and end up looking like The Doctor at the end of that episode with the Master taking over UNIT's flying fortress.

Meanwhile, the Emperor quietly gets a regular booster shot of anagathics monthly, without any kind of engineered side effects, so he lives forever and stays looking human.

It's the bottom line, man. You've got to protect your most generous customers.

 

[Hopeless]

I was wondering if anyone considered The Sixth Day movie whilst dealing with this subject?

If we haven't by now, Marc Miller's Traveller Novel will very likely bring the topic back into sharp highlight.

I can see the megacorps kinking their anagathics for that exact purpose. Keep taking the shots, and watch yourself turn into a monster. Stop taking the shots, and the cumulative dose of progeriac enzyme you've been building up in your system since day one kicks in, and without the monthly suppressor progeriac enzymase from your shots to stop it, you go through every deferred aging roll in a week and end up looking like The Doctor at the end of that episode with the Master taking over UNIT's flying fortress.

And that's the positive side effect! :shock:

Meanwhile, the Emperor quietly gets a regular booster shot of analgathics monthly, without any kind of engineered side effects, so he lives forever and stays looking human.

It's the bottom line, man. You've got to protect your most generous customers.

You assume they're the most generous customer after all what with Transhumanism you never know who exactly is currently using the Emperor's body you could have the Klingon Emperor from Star Trek TNG whose dna is based on the blood of someone their perceived great hero considered his most loyal friend rather than the legendary Kahless himself (from the book since the blood from that dagger is mentioned there).

I always pictured Batman using cloning so that Gotham would always have a Batman then wondered what if Lionel Luthor found out about it and inserted a copy of himself so one day Batman reborn is actually Lionel Luthor whose now in charge of the world's most powerfulest organisation (JL) and no one knows otherwise since he is now the Batman!

Sorry for the genre jump, but figured it would make a great example of just how that might work!

You know they never explain how they discovered this drug even using the Babylon V example what if the intended point is to get everyone using it so they're all vulnerable to the same ailment which is actually what this drug induces all for the purpose of finding someone or something resistant or immune so they can manufacture a cure from them as their next wonder drug? :twisted:

 

[alex_greene]

There is one other anagathic technique, and it's likely a horrifying one.

You could go down the Babylon 5 route and have some sort of alien healing device which, when properly used, excises time from someone's lifespan and grafts it to the user's. The user gains a term without an aging roll, and the user is forced to make an immediate aging roll and an END roll to avoid dying on the spot from the shock.

Perhaps Deathwalker had stumbled upon the secret - a secret discovered by Lorien himself, when he found that he was actually, as well as functionally, immortal. The secret is that life force, lifespan, is transferrable - but that in order for one person to live beyond their allotted span, another has to give up theirs.

Immortality comes at a price. The price is other people dying prematurely to sustain your own immortality. The rich would buy their immortality and turn whole planets, whole subsectors, into vast stock pens - citizens whose only raison d'etre would be to feed the immortality of their leaders. Whole herds of sentients, bred only to be harvested.

No wonder the Vorlons were ready to destroy Deathwalker, the last of the Dilgar. Humaniti as a whole is ill prepared for the price they would pay for immortality for a few.

 

[-Daniel-]

Immortality comes at a price. The price is other people dying prematurely to sustain your own immortality. The rich would buy their immortality and turn whole planets, whole subsectors, into vast stock pens - citizens whose only raison d'etre would be to feed the immortality of their leaders. Whole herds of sentients, bred only to be harvested.

This sounds like the original concept for the Warhammer 40k Emperor. He lived through a vampiric process that kills thousands at a time. Later they toned it down, but in the original Rogue Trader it was clear the Emperor was a Techno-Vampire.

 

[Condottiere]

They Disneyfied a lot of Warhammer.

In game terms, it's a balance mechanism.

Jupiter Rising had entire planets owned, colonized and then harvested for the elixir of youth, by aristocratic families/consortiums.

The Traveller version may require harvesting the pineal gland from a Zhodani psychic.

 

[Hopeless]

Or from a rare bloodline that's able to retain the longevity enough that if they could gather enough of their blood and transfuse it with the recipient it would actually extend the hosts life admittedly given the rarity makes procuring more very difficult.

Its even more difficult if the bloodline can't be cloned and is actually aware of the condition so they go to rather great lengths to avoid being discovered.. such as faking their death multiple times since they do have quite a long life span after all! 8)

 

[Condottiere]

Harvesting Zhodani gives another complexion to Imperium expansion in the Spinward Marches, and the Zhodani efforts to undermine the Imperium.

 

[High Orbit Drifter]

Agathics will return your youth, but cancer is a side effect of pretty much anything, including bacon, that we are exposed to in a given environment. The fact we die of old age masks that - if our bodies lived long enough we'd develop cancers from pretty much anything.

I've assumed cancer treatments have to be part of the agathics regime. At least for the basic stuff, like lung or stomach. Otherwise I'd say that after your third or so treatment the body just starts sprouting cancers not as a side effect of the life-prolonging drugs/life-vampire process, but as a normal consequence.

So either you cure the cancer with drugs, a different life-vampire process, or some such OR you swap out the effected body parts, either with cloned parts, robotics parts or parts from young, healthy peons. All of which provide some good story lines.