Bruno

"Bruno" is slang for anyone, typically men, who is "more strong than smart"<ref name=":0" />. It's also used to describe manual laborers who get back alley modifications to increase their strength. There are multiple ways to create a Bruno, with each method having its own drawbacks.<ref name=":0">He was a ‘Bruno’. While Bruno was slang for a brute, a guy that was more strong than smart, it also was the term used most often to describe the men and the exceedingly rare women who went to back alley clinics and walked out with more muscle than they’d had when they started. Sometimes it was drugs, sometimes it was a rewriting of their physical makeup, and sometimes it was grafts, from vat-grown sources or from animals.

Most did it because the cost of the procedure was low, compared to the added dollars they could make being manual laborers. It meant a year or two to pay off the medical expenses, then a few decades of living like a king. Relatively speaking, anyway, in a place like Lugh.

But the drugs meant dependency and tolerance. The rewriting of one’s makeup always had other consequences in the long run. Grafts from animals meant possible rejection or having to take drugs, and grafts from vat-grown life didn’t always last that long, meaning more surgeries and replacements.

It amounted to the same thing. A shortened lifespan. Maybe a halved one. - Excerpt from Bleeding Edge 8.4</ref><ref>Boil</ref> They do not have a reputation for living long.<ref>So you say, but do you know how many years those muscles you bought are going to take from you? There are no old Brunos.
[...]
“An excellent doctor won’t run into that problem,” Jamie said. Before I could make a counter argument, he provided it himself, “But he said it wasn’t top dollar work.” - Excerpt from Bleeding Edge 8.4</ref>

Individual Examples

• Six unnamed men- Each is a slab of muscle with hunched posture and arms that are as thick around as their massive legs. Sy suspects that if a normal man was carrying as much weight as they could, these Brunos would be able to pick-up one of those normal men in each arm, while the men are holding that weight.<ref>I tried to avoid staring as we passed a collection of six men with roughly identical builds, each with slabs of muscle, hunched-over posture, and arms as thick around as their legs, which were thicker around than I was. Where the next guy could pick up a given maximum weight, these Brunos could carry two of those ‘next guys’ and the weights besides.
  
  I knew the type – manual laborers, taking some cheap and freely available option to alter themselves. - Excerpt from Bleeding Edge 8.3</ref>
• Emmett-bonded to full body prosthesis
• Adam- a nice 'old' man in Lugh<ref>Bleeding Edge 8.4</ref>

References

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