A Guide to Cadavers So you're interested in the land of the dead, are you? Lucky for you, it's not just the Coroner who gets to deal with dead bodies!

This guide will cover everything handled when it comes to dead bodies, from cloning to autopsies.

Standard Procedure First and foremost, remember that dead people are players too, try not to dawdle and get them cloned as soon as possible. Cloning should always be attempted first, never borg an unwilling or unwitting patient as this is akin to murder, and most players aren't going to be terribly happy that you've stripped away their ability to play how they choose by binding them to the AI. Follow the rules of triage in the Guide to Medical, as soon as you have time any and all dead bodies should be immediately dealt with and either processed for cloning or brought to the morgue.

Scanning As a medical doctor, cloning is inevitably going to be one of the main aspects of your job. Bringing people back from the dead is arguably one of the more important functions of the medbay, and it's important that one is well-versed in the particulars of cloning.

Scanning requires a dead or live human body with its brain still in place - keep in mind that monkeys, decapitated corpses, skeletons or husked corpses are not able to be scanned under normal circumstances.

Defrib.gif First off, it may be worth it to try defibbing the patient first. Cryogenic2.png Failing that, place the person in the cloning scanner. Cloning console.gif Use the scanning console, and click “Scan”. Upon scanning the cadaver you will receive one of the following messages.

Subject successfully scanned! - The body has been successfully scanned and is ready for cloning.

Subject already getting cloned. - The body is already being cloned. No further action is needed.

Subject already in database. - The body has already been scanned and may be cloned from the record in View Records.

Error: Subject's brain is not responding. Further attempts after a short delay may succeed. - The body is unable to be cloned, either due to the state of the cadaver or because the player is not in their body. Try scanning them again a few times just to be sure.

Error: No brain detected in subject. - The body lacks either a brain or it's head, headless or brainless bodies are unable to cloned.

Error: Xenomorphs are not scannable. - The body is an xenomorph, xenomorphs are unable to be cloned.

Error: Subject species is not scannable. - The body is a monkey, farwa, or other creature that is otherwise unable to be cloned.

Error: Vox/Slime People are not scannable. - The body is a Vox or Slime Person, which are unable to be cloned and must be revived by other means.

Error: Subject has committed suicide and is not scannable. - The body is a victim of suicide, suicides are unable to be cloned or revived.

Error: Subject has incompatible genetic mutations. - The body has been absorbed by a changeling and cannot be scanned unless the cloning machine is upgraded, a brain transplant is required for revival.

Initialization Failure. - The player who you are trying to clone is currently alive or has disconnected from the game.

Cloning

Once the person has been successfully scanned in, you can start the cloning process; a single clone costs 150 biomass. If the cloning tube has no biomass you can create some more by mixing blood with Cryoxadone.

Hit View Records on the cloning console, followed by the name of the person you're cloning. Hit “Clone”, and the process will begin! Cloning takes approximately two minutes to complete. Notes About Cloning All clones will have 60 genetic damage by default, this can be fixed by placing them in cryo. All clones will suffer from severe brain damage by default and will require Mannitol. Some clones may suffer from genetic disabilities and will require Mutadone. Some players when cloned will optionally choose to suffer from Clone Memory Disorder. Clones can be ejected early by toggling APC power, or by using an ID on the cloning tube. You can only manually eject a clone using an ID when they're over 60% cloned or more. Ejected clones will require longer time in cryo. Once a body has been cloned, or deemed unclonable it should be placed in a body bag and put in a morgue tray.

Advanced & Race Specific Revival

Some species are impossible to clone, and once the defibrillator limit of 5 minutes passes requires special means of revival via the use of Strange Reagent or the Advanced & Race Specific Cloning methods described below. Strange Reagent is a medicine that is usually in the chemical fridge or easily made if it isn't. Generally, it is recommended that this method be followed first as many players prefer it from an OOC and IC standpoint. This method, while effective, is dangerous for the patient if not done correctly. Though if done correctly is fairly simple provided you do the necessary preparations and should pose no issue. The main thing to note before attempting this is to ensure that Brute, Burn, and Genetic damage total under 150 COMBINED or you will gib the corpse you are attempting to revive. When Strange Reagent is administered, it will cause 50 genetic damage, a random amount of brute, burn, or toxin damage, as well as (usually) randomly afflicting limbs and organs with necrosis.

Be aware that while Strange Reagent does revive patients, all pre-existing conditions exist and will need to be treated.

Slime People SlimeMSmall.png

Ensure that Brute, Burn, and Genetic damage is below 150 combined before attempting. Ensure that Chemistry has prepared mitocholide, or if none is available that you have a spare heart and lungs. Any will do, monkey or a set from medbay. Preferably, stock the mitocholide or the spare organs in the OR you intend to use to conduct healing after revival. Ensure that all external damage is treated as much as possible. It is recommended if the corpse has been dead longer than 10 minutes to cut off external limbs prior to revival to help prevent massive toxin damage from necrosis, slime people are capable of regrowing their limbs. Prior to feeding the patient a pill of Strange Reagent, it is recommended to inject them with ten units of epinephrine and saline. Along with feeding them a mannitol pill & salbutamol pill. Prior to revival you may also, though it is not required, fix any cases of internal bleeding that are present to make the revival process easier. Ensure the patients slime jelly level isn't drained before revival, and if it is too low give them slime jelly VIA IV prior to revival or they will die at a rapid pace. If the patient is suffering from severe toxin damage, feeding them pentetic acid or Charcoal before revival or defibbing them will aid in them simply dying post-revival. Feed them the pill and quickly toss them into a Body Scanner, printing the report to determine their post-revival status. If the resulting necrosis isn't too severe, place them in a cryotube to heal their damage. Once healed, all necrosis and underlying conditions requiring surgery should be treated immediately. If the patient dies at any point during treatment, revive them with a defibrillator occasionally keeping in mind the 5 minute timer. Doing so will allow you to continue to work on the body without risking more damage VIA Strange Reagent.

Vox VoxMSmall.png

Ensure that Brute, Burn, and Genetic damage is below 150 combined before attempting. Ensure that Chemistry has prepared mitocholide, or if none is available that you have a spare heart and lungs. Any will do, monkey or a set from medbay. Preferably, stock the mitocholide or the spare organs in the OR you intend to use to conduct healing after revival. Ensure that all external damage is treated as much as possible. Prior to feeding the patient a pill of Strange Reagent, it is recommended to inject them with ten units of epinephrine and saline. Along with feeding them a mannitol pill & salbutamol pill. Prior to revival you may also, though it is not required, fix any fractures or cases of internal bleeding that are present to make the revival process easier. Ensure the patients blood level isn't drained before revival, and if it is too low inject the appropriate blood type VIA IV Bag into them prior to revival or they will die at a rapid pace If the patient is suffering from severe toxin damage, feeding them pentetic acid or Charcoal before revival or defibbing them will aid in them simply dying post-revival. Feed them the pill and quickly toss them into a Body Scanner, printing the report to determine their post-revival status. If the resulting necrosis isn't too severe, place them in a cryotube to heal their damage. Once healed, all necrosis and underlying conditions requiring surgery should be treated immediately. If the patient dies at any point during treatment, revive them with a defibrillator occasionally keeping in mind the 5 minute timer. Doing so will allow you to continue to work on the body without risking more damage VIA Strange Reagent.

Advanced & Race Specific Cloning

Some species require special considerations when brought in for cloning. Plasmamen for instance will burst into flames before cloning is finished, and Vox and Slime People will simply be rejected by the cloning scanner.

Plasmamen PlasmamanM.png

Make sure you have their suit and plasmatank ready! Have a fire extinguisher, and a defibrillator handy. Once they start cloning they'll quickly burn to death, let them die. Eject them from the cloner, extinguish the body and then apply a defibrillator. You may need to apply synthflesh, or silver sulfidiazine prior to defibrillation. Stick them in a cryotube afterwards.

Vox & Slime People VoxMSmall.png SlimeMSmall.png

Get a humanized monkey from genetics. Make sure to scan the dead body's UE in genetics and save it. (Optional) Have a surgeon transplant the dead body's brain into the human-monkey's body. Defib the newly transplanted body. Transfer the UE of the old body to the new one. (Optional)

Advanced Cloning

Some bodies will require special attention if they have been husked, or turned into a skeleton. If a body has been husked by a changeling or skeletonized, are unscannable, and the morgue lights show up as purple or green please abide by the following procedure.

Get genetics to make a humanized monkey. Using a circular saw, target the head area with HELP intent. Saw of the humanized monkey's head, and the cadaver's head. Put the skeleton's or husked body's head on the humanized monkey. The body should now be able to be scanned in, follow basic cloning procedure.

Morgue Lights and YOU!

Once the body has been cloned - or simply couldn't be scanned in - take it to the morgue and pay attention to the lights.

The lights on the morgue trays will display different colours, depending on the state of the body.

Color Sprite Meaning Gray Morgue1.png There is nothing inside the tray. Red Morgue2.png The body is permenantly unclonable. (i.e: Player left server, Player already cloned, Player rejoined as NPC .ect) Green Morgue3.png The body has a spirit inside of it, and is revivable. Orange Morgue4.png There is something inside the tray, but it's not a body. Purple Morgue5.png Either the body has a spirit but it isn't in the body, or it's uncloneable due to being a skeleton, or husked.

Performing Autopsies

Every body that enters the morgue should be autopsied at one point or another, and it is the sole responsibility of either the Chief Medical Officer or Coroner to ensure all bodies have an autopsy performed.

Autopsy Surgery

Sterilemask.png Ensure you're wearing a sterile mask so you don't besmirch the morgue with vomit. Surgery.png Place the cadaver onto the operating table. Healthanalyzer.png Scan the cadaver with a Health Analyzer to find the locations of any injuries. Damage zone.png Aim for the affected areas in the Damage Zone. Autopsy scanner.png Use the autopsy scanner to scan all affected areas.

Autopsy Reports

Right-clicking on the Autopsy Scanner will let you print out an autopsy report. Review the report and optionally attach a picture of the body using your camera, if anything suspicious shows up on the report you should alert the detective or security.

Every report that the autopsy scanner generates will include specific information about the cadaver.

The time of death. Any injuries sustained, as well as their cause. A toxicology report, stating what reagents the cadaver had in it. You are also free to write in some extra details on the autopsy report, such as…

What cause of death is if not already listed. Who the person was that performed the autopsy. If the body was cloned or borged. Who brought in the cadaver. Your signature. After completing your notes make a copy of the report using a photocopier, file one in the morgue's autopsy reports cabinet and deliver the other to security if there's anything suspicious on the report.

Causes of Death

Oftentimes the cause of death is not clear from the autopsy report. These require a little more digging and investigation to find out the truth, and experience as a Medical Doctor will help out greatly.

Decapitation

The cadaver has had its head removed before other injuries could cause death.

Health scans reveal damages on the cadaver do not add up to 200 or over. There is no head. Autopsy Scanner reveals that you cannot scan that spot.

De-Braining

The cadaver has had its brain removed while they were still alive.

Visual examination states that they have no brain. Skull has already been cut into during an autopsy attempt.

Burst Appendix

The appendix has burst within the body, causes sepsis and eventually death. Often by choking on one's own vomit.

Toxin damage with no toxins showing up in system. Minor brute damage to the groin region. Heavy suffocation damage. Body was located buried in vomit.

Suicide

The cadaver had bitten off their own tongue, overflow of blood would have entered their lungs, causing drowning in their own fluids.

Visual examination states that the individual has killed themselves. Severe suffocation damage.

Bleeding Out

The cadaver had gone into shock and passed away due to heavy blood loss from either internal or external wounds.

Body appears pale. A Health Analyzer scan shows that their blood has fallen to dangerously low levels. A Health Analyzer scan reveals that their blood percentage is low. Suffocation damage. Placing the body within the Body Scanner will show locations of internal bleeders.

Malpractice

Anything resulting in death caused by a doctor attempting to treat the patient is considered to be malpractice. Some of these are not great enough to cause death on it's own, but can play in as contributing factors.

Surgery Mishaps

Mistakes caused by a surgeon. Any tool mishaps will show up on the autopsy report, however, performing surgery in a non-sterile environment will cause the surgery location to become infected with sepsis.

Infection shows up on a Health Analyzer Scan. Cadaver had undergone surgery before death.

Blood Rejection

Individual was given an incompatible blood type that their body proceeded to reject.

Toxin damage with no clear source. Suffocation with no clear source. Cadaver had received a blood transfusion before death.

Improper Transport

Individual was not transported properly during medical treatment, which resulted in further injury.

Does not show up on any scans. Low percentage of blood. Best indicator is large trails of blood where the cadaver had previously been.

Medication Overdose

Someone had given the patient to much of a healing medication, which resulted in overdose.

Heavy toxin damage. Toxin report shows no harmful chemicals in the system. Using an upgraded health scanner will show amounts of chemicals in the bloodstream.

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What to Do with a Dead Body First and foremost, if you find someone on the ground who you think is dead, scream for Medical unless you are medical. Once responders arrive on scene they can declare a person dead or not. If they aren't dead, stop reading this guide and get them to medical! If they are, it's time to call for security if they are not already there.

Responding officers should follow standard procedure for a crime scene, outlined here, before investigative staff arrive. The responding officers should not touch the corpse at all, unless specifically asked by investigative staff or command. Should one be available, a body bag should be used to cover the deceased's body for privacy and respect; no one wants their corpse gawked at by passersby. Once Investigative staff arrive, they should follow the procedures outlined in the Guide to Forensics before moving the body to the Autopsy Room.

Autopsy Surgery Before anything else is done, take a body scan of the corpse using the scanner in the autopsy room and print it. You want to see what condition the body is in before you start poking and prodding it, in case anything should change as a result of your investigation. Take blood samples from the body and run them through your advanced mass spectrometer to see if there's anything in their bloodstream, keep the results. Scrub and sterilize the autopsy lab using sterilizine. Once that is done, it is time to move onto the actual autopsy.

Place cadaver onto the operating table. Scan the cadaver with a health analyzer to find injured locations. Aim for the patient's affected area in the Damage zone.png Damage Zone. Cut the skin with your Scalpel.png scalpel. Vaurca will require using a Drill.png surgical drill instead of scalpel to pierce the exoskeleton that wrap vaurca. Use the Autopsy scanner.png autopsy scanner to scan the area. Repeat for all injured body parts. Using the previous full body scan, remove any foreign objects from the body. Bag and label them. Remove all organs besides eyes and brain before bagging and storing them in the break room refrigerator cooler in the morgue (this is purely for roleplay purposes, and thus optional). Make sure you have everything you want from the autopsy before washing off and handing over the body to medical so they may make the body presentable, before carrying out whatever the victim's postmortem wishes are. Autopsy Reports Right clicking on the autopsy scanner will let you print out an autopsy report. This will have some basic information on it, such as:

Time of Death Suspected MoI (Method of Injury) and a percentage chance - sometimes this will come up as something stupid, like “Yes, this man was hit 16 times in the chest by a fully organic armblade from a species that is not known to exist”. When this happens, just ignore it and go for the next best thing, I.E Armblade turns into “Large Bladed Weapon with trace organic elements?”. Times struck by method of injury. Trace Chemicals However, this is not a piece of paper you will need. In fact, you'll need a whole bundle: in the forums database accessible at the requests console (the big blue TV looking machine on the wall) there will be several pieces of paperwork you should fill out. Firstly among them is the coroner's report, where you will write down your findings and conclusions of the autopsy, including cause of death. Following this should be your blood work form, the data from which you got from the spectrometer earlier, then identity confirmation if the victim's identity is in doubt, followed by the data you just gathered, including that full body scan done at the start. This will be the entirety of your autopsy paperwork, and will go into the case files.

Manner of Death This is what your corporate instructors would have told you is the most important part of your job, and they'd be partially right. Manner of death is a regulations/contractual determination, and therefore Manner of Death can be the deciding factor in something like your victims life insurance being paid out to remaining family members. Deciding which category your victim fits into can be difficult, but here we will go over a few common signs of each category of Manner of Death.

Natural The most common type of death in the spur, but the type you will probably go your entire career onboard the Aurora never seeing. Because it's so uncommon on the Aurora, signs will not be touched upon here.

Accidental Accidental deaths come in 2 sub-categories aboard the Aurora.

The first is Industrial Accidents, which are most common in departments such as engineering and science, who handle dangerous tasks and materials. Deaths that are a result of Industrial Accidents have several common signs. Firstly, they will occur in the victims place of work, that is, if an engineer dies as a result of an Industrial Accident, their corpse will most likely be found in Engineering. Second, they will have occurred doing something related to their job, so for our engineer, it could have occurred when he was setting up the Tesla engine and due to circumstances outside his control containment failed and he was fried. It is important to note, if someone dies as a result of an accident while doing something outside their job, (ex. a medical doctor trying to set up the Tesla) their death may instead be ruled as a Suicide.

The second type of accidental death is manslaughter. Very uncommon, manslaughter is when a person's death is accidentally caused by another. Circumstances such as excessive force resulting in death and medical malpractice fall under this section. The common signs of manslaughter are very different from those of Industrial Accidents. Firstly, it is usually the perpetrator who calls first responders to the scene, should it happen outside of medical itself. Secondly, the perpetrator usually comes clean without very much effort once they realize what exactly they have done, racked with guilt. Remember though, Nanotrasen does not make distinction between Manslaughter and Murder, so despite the fact there is no manslaughter specific charge, they still must be arrested. Medical Malpractice is somewhat harder to detect, as the doctor may believe themselves doing what is right for the patient, or may be stressed and mix up two medications, or two blood bags. However, due to it's possibility and depth, more information can be found here.

Suicide In 2464, Suicide is prevalent as people fail to cope with a megacorporate-dominated galaxy, and fail to find the help they need. Corporations have strict rules in place to help combat suicides on their installations, empowering security to detain suicidal individuals for the remainder of their shift and get them the help they need to continue being a productive worker. However, some still slip through the cracks and as an investigator you will have to deal with at least one suicide over the course of your work onboard the Aurora. The common signs of a suicide is that it is self-inflicted, a note is left, and it is done in certain areas of the station. Determining self-infliction is the easiest, the victim will be found alone in an isolated part of the facility and dead without signs of a struggle. Victims also normally leave notes, explaining their reasoning to whoever finds them and saying goodbye. Suicidal people also tend to choose the same spots as others to die, mainly isolated parts of the facility.

Homicide Homicide is probably the easiest manner of death to determine: if it doesn't fit any of the previous categories, it was probably a homicide. Common signs also include signs of a struggle on the body, the victim will normally have multiple purposefully inflicted wounds, such as multiple gunshots, lacerations, stabs, or plain trauma. Homicides will eventually lead you more to establishing things like motive and means, but where manner of death is important for everything else, the most important thing in a homicide is cause of death, which we'll talk about here.

Causes of Death Cause of Death, different from Manner of Death, is defined as what killed someone - hence the name -, and tends to be the “final nail in the coffin”. For example, if someone were to be shot one time through the heart, and then 7 times in the right foot, the cause of death would not be the gunshots to the foot, but rather the gunshot through the heart even though the shots to the foot happened afterwards. Determining what exactly killed someone can be difficult, especially as a newer player, so here's a few types of damages and their causes.

Due to how Brainmed works, nearly all “causes of death” could be defined as deprivation of oxygen to the brain, or it's removal, but that'd be boring to write for everything, so go with what caused that oxygen deprivation for cause of death.

In order to be better organized, we will group some more specific and easy to overlook causes of death under their overarching manner of death, as well as give signs that point to that specific cause of death. By now in this guide, you should be able to pretty easily deduce if someone died via gunshots or stabbing. Remember that for all of these, the rest of your case files and investigations matter as well! You can sometimes figure out a general cause of death before even starting the autopsy and getting specific.

A couple of things to note:

Burn damage will remove blood from the body with no bleeding. Any injuries done by Simplemobs (slimes, hivebots, carp) won't show up on the Autopsy Scanner. Broken ribcages may be a result of EMTs or bystanders attempting CPR before the person is declared dead, and not a result of whatever killed your victim. Dextrotoxin, a powerful paralytic, won't show up when running blood tests on your spectrometer. These signs and causes of death aren't all encompassing, there is a lot that isn't here and up to you and your investigative skills to figure out!

A few Causes of death via Accidents

Industrial - Inhalation of Dangerous Gasses. Most common in Engineers and Phoron Researchers. Damage to the Lungs. Other signs of Suffocation. Trace Chemicals in the body, if phoron. Industrial - Electrocution. Massive Burns. Significant loss of blood, but no bloodstains. Heart Damage. Manslaughter - Poisoning. Massive Toxin damage. Victim consumed something not fit for their consumption (ex. Unathi consuming alcohol). Victim was injected with something not fit for their biology (ex. Vaurca getting injected with Dexalin). Victim consumed something hazardous (ex. dranking liquid phoron). Manslaughter - Excessive/Unnecessary Force. Little physical damage. Victim went into cardiac arrest. Died while being detained, or while sparring. Witness statements saying that someone continued to apply force once it was no longer necessary. Malpractice - Surgery Mishaps. Visible inflamed wounds, or open incisions Infection shows up on a health analyzer scan. Victim had undergone surgery before death. Simple procedure that had little risk of failure resulting in death. Malpractice - Blood Rejection. Toxin damage with no clear source. Suffocation with no clear source. Victim had received a blood transfusion before death. Malpractice - Improper Transport. Does not show up on any scans. Best indicator is large trails of blood where the cadaver had previously been. Witness testimonies will also be helpful. Malpractice - Medication Overdose. Heavy toxin damage. Toxin report shows no harmful chemicals in the system. Using an advanced mass spectrometer will show amounts of chemicals in the blood stream. Malpractice - Failure to Respond The victim was called out over the radio while still alive. Victim expired after the call. Responders did not respond to call.

A few Causes of Death via Suicide

Suicide via Gunshot. Only injury is on the head, and is a gunshot. Gun is very close to the corpse when found. Only the victims fingerprints are on the gun. Suicide via Hanging. Victim is found dead hanging from the ceiling. Noose only has victims fingerprints on it. Victim is found alone, without signs of a struggle.

A few Causes of Death via Homicides

Homicide via illegal Cyborgification. Victim has no brain. You notice a new cyborg on the station. No paperwork and Command approval has been given for cyborgification that shift. Homicide via blood removal No blood remaining in the body No wounds at all. Most common when there's a bloodsucker on the station. REMEMBER THAT VAMPIRES AREN'T KNOWN IN-CHARACTER, DO NOT GO SCREAMING ABOUT A VAMPIRE BEING AROUND AFTER DETECTING THIS.

Sometimes, people will try to fake being dead, and it's up to you to figure out if they're faking! There are 2 main ways death can be faked:

Zombie Powder - slows all bodily functions to near zero, and won't show up when you run the blood test with your basic spectrometer. The only way to detect is when the effects wear off and they get back up, or by begging science for an Advanced Spectrometer and running the test on that. You can tell if someone might be using zombie powder if they appear dead but have no wounds on them at all, even when doing a full body scan.

Changeling Resurrections - only available to changelings, it makes the body appear dead, while it is healing. If your responders are worth their salt however, they will detect this easily as using a stethoscope on the faking changeling will show that they are still breathing. Besides that, there is no way to detect this until they start talking to you while you're arm deep in them.