L
Leodiensian
Guest
Original poster
Your mind is software. Program it.
Your body is a shell. Change it.
Death is a disease. Cure it.
Extinction is coming. Fight it.
Eclipse Phase is a tabletop game by Posthuman Studios. It is released under creative commons licensing, allowing it to be shared and downloaded for free. If you're interested in the ideas in this thread, please visit www.eclipsephase.com
Ten years ago, Earth was devastated by rampant AI's called the TITANs. With atomic, biological, chemical, digital and nanotech WMDs, they turned humanity's birthplace into a tomb, inhospitable and quarantined to this day. As suddenly as they turned on us, the TITANs vanished, leaving us decimated, near extinction, baffled. But alive. We call those awful times The Fall.
But humanity has endured, even thrived. Mars is our primary cradle now, but major populations can be found around Venus, Luna, even Jupiter and Saturn. With cortical stacks and backups, we have a kind of semi-immortality. Life these last ten years has been a period of adjustment, perhaps even relative stability and comfort. This is not to say there has been no conflict. The rise of nanofabrication technology has posed serious challenges to the traditional capitalist economies of the inner system. Anarchists, scum and autonomists argue for a full transition to post-scarcity economies based on reputation, not finance. Bioconservatives and traditionalists try to hold on to what makes humanity human. Reclaimers work to break the deadly quarantine around Earth and take our home back, while gatecrashers explore the galaxy beyond our solar system through the mysterious Pandora Gates...
And watching all this, there is Firewall. Firewall is a benevolent conspiracy whose mission is simple: there cannot be another Fall. Humanity's never been closer to the brink, nor more likely to push itself over the edge. The TITANs left us a solar system seeded with nightmares, but political instability is as likely to be what finishes us off. To that end, Firewall recruits from all factions, operates in secrecy and seeks to encourage peace and diversity among what's left of the human race.
But humanity has endured, even thrived. Mars is our primary cradle now, but major populations can be found around Venus, Luna, even Jupiter and Saturn. With cortical stacks and backups, we have a kind of semi-immortality. Life these last ten years has been a period of adjustment, perhaps even relative stability and comfort. This is not to say there has been no conflict. The rise of nanofabrication technology has posed serious challenges to the traditional capitalist economies of the inner system. Anarchists, scum and autonomists argue for a full transition to post-scarcity economies based on reputation, not finance. Bioconservatives and traditionalists try to hold on to what makes humanity human. Reclaimers work to break the deadly quarantine around Earth and take our home back, while gatecrashers explore the galaxy beyond our solar system through the mysterious Pandora Gates...
And watching all this, there is Firewall. Firewall is a benevolent conspiracy whose mission is simple: there cannot be another Fall. Humanity's never been closer to the brink, nor more likely to push itself over the edge. The TITANs left us a solar system seeded with nightmares, but political instability is as likely to be what finishes us off. To that end, Firewall recruits from all factions, operates in secrecy and seeks to encourage peace and diversity among what's left of the human race.
Firewall's mission is centered around secrecy and double agents, so recent events in the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance (LLA) have been a major setback for the organization. Several vital servers have been compromised and leaked onto the public mesh. Agents have been burned, operations have been ruined and the organization has been all but totally crippled throughout the entirety of Earth and Lunar orbits. Worse, the information on those servers could be used to damage operations going on around Venus, on Mars - potentially the entire organization is at risk. Given that the compromised servers are supposed to have been secret, Firewall suspects someone is a mole...
This is where you come in. You are agents of Firewall. You have been recently recruited or reassigned from another theater of operations. You find yourself on With Sharp Flames, a Scum barge that is being used as sanctuary by a high-ranking Firewall officer burned by the leak, Adam Redd. You are the only thing keeping this region of space from blowing itself all to hell. Your mission will be simple, which is not the same as easy. Re-establish covert Firewall presence on the moon and around Earth. Identify extinction threats and covertly prevent them. And find out just who the mole within Firewall is.
This is where you come in. You are agents of Firewall. You have been recently recruited or reassigned from another theater of operations. You find yourself on With Sharp Flames, a Scum barge that is being used as sanctuary by a high-ranking Firewall officer burned by the leak, Adam Redd. You are the only thing keeping this region of space from blowing itself all to hell. Your mission will be simple, which is not the same as easy. Re-establish covert Firewall presence on the moon and around Earth. Identify extinction threats and covertly prevent them. And find out just who the mole within Firewall is.
Name: (include any aliases, false identities etc here)
Age: (Also obvious)
Gender: (Mental AND Physical)
Faction: (Criminal? Corporate? Anarchist? Jovian? ... there's a lot of them.)
Personality:
Morph: (What kind of body are you in right now? Bio, synth or pod? How does it look? What's it designed for? Any nice mods?)
Skills: (Why does Firewall like you? This might not be combat related. You might be a useful techie, or a social networker)
Flaws: (What holds your character back? What do they struggle with? This could range from social or mental problems to defects with your morph)
Gear: (Weapons, armor, useful tech etc)
Rep: (divide 80 points between c-rep, @-rep, g-rep, f-rep, r-rep, e-rep and i-rep)
Biography: (Brief description of your character's life up to this point. Include some event that brought you in to Firewall.)
Age: (Also obvious)
Gender: (Mental AND Physical)
Faction: (Criminal? Corporate? Anarchist? Jovian? ... there's a lot of them.)
Personality:
Morph: (What kind of body are you in right now? Bio, synth or pod? How does it look? What's it designed for? Any nice mods?)
Skills: (Why does Firewall like you? This might not be combat related. You might be a useful techie, or a social networker)
Flaws: (What holds your character back? What do they struggle with? This could range from social or mental problems to defects with your morph)
Gear: (Weapons, armor, useful tech etc)
Rep: (divide 80 points between c-rep, @-rep, g-rep, f-rep, r-rep, e-rep and i-rep)
Biography: (Brief description of your character's life up to this point. Include some event that brought you in to Firewall.)
Eclipse Phase is a big place, full of different ideas, philosophies and politics. Here are some of the main factions and political groups to be aware of.
The Planetary Consortium (PC) is a collaboration of hypercorporations mostly centered around Mars and Martian orbit. They are the single largest polity in the setting and use traditional capitalism for most of their economics.
The Lunar-Lagrange Alliance (LLA) is an alliance of cities and space stations on moon and in high Earth orbit. It is closely tied with the reclaimer movement to take back Earth and is very socially conservative.
The Morningstar Constellation is a more liberal collection of aerostats, floating cities, in Venus's upper atmosphere. Morningstar recently defected from the PC and has a better focus on personal liberty and human rights.
The Jovian Republic, called the Jovian Junta by its enemies, is a restrictive and isolationist faction in orbit around Jupiter. It is born of the remnants of US and South American military bases and notorious for being extremely bioconservative and opposed to most transhuman technologies.
The Titanian Commonwealth is based Saturn's moon Titan and began as a Scandinavian academic research outpost. However, it has blossomed into a cybersocialist techodemocracy, in which every citizen has a vote on every issue. They run a rep-based economy.
The Scum are a loose collection of nomadic anarchists, gypsies and mad scientists who move throughout the system in migratory fleets of obsolete colony ships. Their fleets, called Scum Swarms, are rep-based economies and home to all sorts of debauchery. And they usually have really weird names, for some reason.
The Autonomist Alliance are a loose gaggle of habs, collectives and think-tanks united by the desire to promote personal liberty, open-source nanofab technology and an end to capitalism. They mostly occupy the outer system but have been known to send terrorist inwards.
Argonauts are technoprogressive scientists who believe the best way to make life better is science for everyone; more science! Bigger science. They will work with any other faction, in exchange for useful information, but their open-source philosophy means basically everything they learn will end up torrented by someone out there.
Mercurials are a loose alliance of AGIs and uplifts who believe that their kind should branch off from transhumanity and go their own way for the most part. Some do trade with humans out of necessity, but many see humans as a bad idea and want to get away from them as much as possible.
The Ultimates are people who use transhuman technologies and combine it with Spartan-like discipline and asceticism to hone their selves into living paragons. Their main strongholds are in the outer system, but they can be seen in the inner system working as mercenaries.
And finally, no system would be complete without people trying to break it. Criminals exist aplenty in the magic space-future, with all sorts of cartels making it off Earth (the Triads especially) and even new ones emerging thanks to the possibilities of amazing sci-fi technologies. Take for instance Pax Familia, a mafia of one woman who forks herself extensively to run rep-scamming operations, or the Nine Lives cartel who illegally steal forks of people and copy them over and over to sell into slavery. Or how about the shadowy Hidden Concern, a wealthy and malicious syndicate populated entirely by octomorphs.
The Planetary Consortium (PC) is a collaboration of hypercorporations mostly centered around Mars and Martian orbit. They are the single largest polity in the setting and use traditional capitalism for most of their economics.
The Lunar-Lagrange Alliance (LLA) is an alliance of cities and space stations on moon and in high Earth orbit. It is closely tied with the reclaimer movement to take back Earth and is very socially conservative.
The Morningstar Constellation is a more liberal collection of aerostats, floating cities, in Venus's upper atmosphere. Morningstar recently defected from the PC and has a better focus on personal liberty and human rights.
The Jovian Republic, called the Jovian Junta by its enemies, is a restrictive and isolationist faction in orbit around Jupiter. It is born of the remnants of US and South American military bases and notorious for being extremely bioconservative and opposed to most transhuman technologies.
The Titanian Commonwealth is based Saturn's moon Titan and began as a Scandinavian academic research outpost. However, it has blossomed into a cybersocialist techodemocracy, in which every citizen has a vote on every issue. They run a rep-based economy.
The Scum are a loose collection of nomadic anarchists, gypsies and mad scientists who move throughout the system in migratory fleets of obsolete colony ships. Their fleets, called Scum Swarms, are rep-based economies and home to all sorts of debauchery. And they usually have really weird names, for some reason.
The Autonomist Alliance are a loose gaggle of habs, collectives and think-tanks united by the desire to promote personal liberty, open-source nanofab technology and an end to capitalism. They mostly occupy the outer system but have been known to send terrorist inwards.
Argonauts are technoprogressive scientists who believe the best way to make life better is science for everyone; more science! Bigger science. They will work with any other faction, in exchange for useful information, but their open-source philosophy means basically everything they learn will end up torrented by someone out there.
Mercurials are a loose alliance of AGIs and uplifts who believe that their kind should branch off from transhumanity and go their own way for the most part. Some do trade with humans out of necessity, but many see humans as a bad idea and want to get away from them as much as possible.
The Ultimates are people who use transhuman technologies and combine it with Spartan-like discipline and asceticism to hone their selves into living paragons. Their main strongholds are in the outer system, but they can be seen in the inner system working as mercenaries.
And finally, no system would be complete without people trying to break it. Criminals exist aplenty in the magic space-future, with all sorts of cartels making it off Earth (the Triads especially) and even new ones emerging thanks to the possibilities of amazing sci-fi technologies. Take for instance Pax Familia, a mafia of one woman who forks herself extensively to run rep-scamming operations, or the Nine Lives cartel who illegally steal forks of people and copy them over and over to sell into slavery. Or how about the shadowy Hidden Concern, a wealthy and malicious syndicate populated entirely by octomorphs.
Eclipse Phase is full of Big Cool Ideas, which can be appealing but also fairly intimidating. Here are some explanations which will help make things seem a bit easier.
Hard sci-fi is the genre Eclipse Phase draws on heavily, meaning most stuff is based on at least vaguely-plausible science. There is, for example, no faster-than-light travel, artificial gravity or teleportation, with the exception of xenotech. The moments where it away diverges from hard sci-fi and the moments when it diverges towards horror - TITAN and xenotech like the Pandora Gates are meant to be freaky.
Forking takes advantage of the fact that the mind can be encoded as computer data. You can upload copies of yourself into multiple bodies at once - there's even a mafia composed entirely of copies of the same woman. Merging with your fork is possible, allowing you to learn what your fork knew. However, doing so can be pyschologically distressing, getting worse the longer you and your fork are separate. Some political factions do not consider forks to be their own people, while others see forks as distinct persons to be treated as sovereign individuals. Where do you stand?
Nanofabrication is a technology using nanobots to convert base matter into useful objects. For example, using a fabber one could convert metals into a gun - with the right blueprint. One simply needs raw materials and a blueprint. This technology is a real game changer economically, as it suddenly means manufacturing and scarcity-based capitalism lose much of their value. As such, nanofabrication technology is tightly regulated by the capitalist economies, using extensive DRM and anti-piracy measures, one-use blueprints and aggressively enforced IP laws. On the other hand many factions argue that nanofabrication technology will improve the lives of everybody and try to release blueprints over the mesh in an open-source fashion, arguing for an economy based off reputation instead of materials and money. What do you think?
Reputation is a kind of secondary economy in Eclipse Phase, mostly used in situations where advanced technology is pushing humanity towards post-scarcity. Reputation is a kind of social currency, primarily used to buy services and favors rather than goods. There are different reps depending on your social networks, so it can also function as an 'alignment' system, to show how strongly entrenched with different factions you are. C-rep is corporate, used primarily by capitalists and inner-system types. E-rep is used by ecologists and reclaimers, people who work towards making Earth habitable again. G-rep is used by gangs and organized criminals, on the other hand. @-rep is used by anarchists, autonomists, Scum and other non-conformists. R-rep is used by scientists, researchers and academics. F-rep is used by the media, celebrities and socialites. I-rep is a hidden social currency used only by members of Firewall.
Uplifts are animals that have been genetically and eugenically engineered to improve intelligence, to human-equivalent levels. Uplifted species were generally intelligent already and had some natural talents at low-grav life, such as birds or octopodes. Uplifted species include dolphins, whales, several avians, pigs and several hominids (apes, gorillas, chimps etc). Uplifts are generally second-class citizens in the inner system but considered distinct persons by outer systems. A large political issue is where uplifts fit in with human society - should they be our grateful servants, or should they go off and form their own cultures?
Artifical General Intelligences (AGIs) are artificial intelligences with human socialization and the capacity for personality and emotions. They are distinct from most AIs due to this social and emotional capacity. They are more intelligent than the 'weak' AIs used to perform simple day-to-day tasks, but lack the dangerous capacity for recursive self-improvement of 'seed' AIs - such as the TITANs. AI research has become harshly restricted following the Fall and AGIs are controversial. Many consider them risky, TITANs waiting to happen, while others consider them digital persons deserving equal rights. Where do you stand?
Asyncs are people who were exposed to a 'weaker' strain of the dangerous Exsurgent Virus, and instead of being turned into monsters appeared to develop psionic abilities. These powers, called sleights, are purely mental in nature. There are two categories; psi-chi sleights augment the asyncs mental and cognitive abilities (for example, they might be able to boost their own creativity, or give themselves photographic memories) while psi-gamma sleights can affect the minds of others, usually with a touch. However, this rewriting comes at a price; asyncs invariably suffer from incurable mental disorders, as their brain has been simply rewritten to be a little 'wrong' permanently. Curing them would necessitate turning off their powers. Also, these powers ONLY work in biomorphs. Asyncs are extremely uncomfortable in pods and synths, and slowly go even more insane when placed in these bodies for long periods of time.
The Exsurgent Virus is a big scary thing that the TITANs seem to have left behind for us to enjoy. It is a virus that rewrites the host into monstrous forms, but that's not the scary part. What's really messed up is the fact that it seems to work across almost any vector, affecting biomorphs, synthmorphs and even infomorphs. A person affected by the virus is called an exsurgent. They are transformed by the virus physically and mentally, until what remains is most certainly not a human - exactly how it transforms them appears to be down to the staggering number of strains out there. One of the viruses most terrifying forms is the dreadful "basilisk hack", which appears to use advanced modulation and manipulation of visual and auditory data to literally hack the human brain.
Hard sci-fi is the genre Eclipse Phase draws on heavily, meaning most stuff is based on at least vaguely-plausible science. There is, for example, no faster-than-light travel, artificial gravity or teleportation, with the exception of xenotech. The moments where it away diverges from hard sci-fi and the moments when it diverges towards horror - TITAN and xenotech like the Pandora Gates are meant to be freaky.
Forking takes advantage of the fact that the mind can be encoded as computer data. You can upload copies of yourself into multiple bodies at once - there's even a mafia composed entirely of copies of the same woman. Merging with your fork is possible, allowing you to learn what your fork knew. However, doing so can be pyschologically distressing, getting worse the longer you and your fork are separate. Some political factions do not consider forks to be their own people, while others see forks as distinct persons to be treated as sovereign individuals. Where do you stand?
Nanofabrication is a technology using nanobots to convert base matter into useful objects. For example, using a fabber one could convert metals into a gun - with the right blueprint. One simply needs raw materials and a blueprint. This technology is a real game changer economically, as it suddenly means manufacturing and scarcity-based capitalism lose much of their value. As such, nanofabrication technology is tightly regulated by the capitalist economies, using extensive DRM and anti-piracy measures, one-use blueprints and aggressively enforced IP laws. On the other hand many factions argue that nanofabrication technology will improve the lives of everybody and try to release blueprints over the mesh in an open-source fashion, arguing for an economy based off reputation instead of materials and money. What do you think?
Reputation is a kind of secondary economy in Eclipse Phase, mostly used in situations where advanced technology is pushing humanity towards post-scarcity. Reputation is a kind of social currency, primarily used to buy services and favors rather than goods. There are different reps depending on your social networks, so it can also function as an 'alignment' system, to show how strongly entrenched with different factions you are. C-rep is corporate, used primarily by capitalists and inner-system types. E-rep is used by ecologists and reclaimers, people who work towards making Earth habitable again. G-rep is used by gangs and organized criminals, on the other hand. @-rep is used by anarchists, autonomists, Scum and other non-conformists. R-rep is used by scientists, researchers and academics. F-rep is used by the media, celebrities and socialites. I-rep is a hidden social currency used only by members of Firewall.
Uplifts are animals that have been genetically and eugenically engineered to improve intelligence, to human-equivalent levels. Uplifted species were generally intelligent already and had some natural talents at low-grav life, such as birds or octopodes. Uplifted species include dolphins, whales, several avians, pigs and several hominids (apes, gorillas, chimps etc). Uplifts are generally second-class citizens in the inner system but considered distinct persons by outer systems. A large political issue is where uplifts fit in with human society - should they be our grateful servants, or should they go off and form their own cultures?
Artifical General Intelligences (AGIs) are artificial intelligences with human socialization and the capacity for personality and emotions. They are distinct from most AIs due to this social and emotional capacity. They are more intelligent than the 'weak' AIs used to perform simple day-to-day tasks, but lack the dangerous capacity for recursive self-improvement of 'seed' AIs - such as the TITANs. AI research has become harshly restricted following the Fall and AGIs are controversial. Many consider them risky, TITANs waiting to happen, while others consider them digital persons deserving equal rights. Where do you stand?
Asyncs are people who were exposed to a 'weaker' strain of the dangerous Exsurgent Virus, and instead of being turned into monsters appeared to develop psionic abilities. These powers, called sleights, are purely mental in nature. There are two categories; psi-chi sleights augment the asyncs mental and cognitive abilities (for example, they might be able to boost their own creativity, or give themselves photographic memories) while psi-gamma sleights can affect the minds of others, usually with a touch. However, this rewriting comes at a price; asyncs invariably suffer from incurable mental disorders, as their brain has been simply rewritten to be a little 'wrong' permanently. Curing them would necessitate turning off their powers. Also, these powers ONLY work in biomorphs. Asyncs are extremely uncomfortable in pods and synths, and slowly go even more insane when placed in these bodies for long periods of time.
The Exsurgent Virus is a big scary thing that the TITANs seem to have left behind for us to enjoy. It is a virus that rewrites the host into monstrous forms, but that's not the scary part. What's really messed up is the fact that it seems to work across almost any vector, affecting biomorphs, synthmorphs and even infomorphs. A person affected by the virus is called an exsurgent. They are transformed by the virus physically and mentally, until what remains is most certainly not a human - exactly how it transforms them appears to be down to the staggering number of strains out there. One of the viruses most terrifying forms is the dreadful "basilisk hack", which appears to use advanced modulation and manipulation of visual and auditory data to literally hack the human brain.
Augmented Reality (AR): Data and graphics placed on top of real-world visual feeds, commonly used for advertising.
Biomorph: A biological body, with an organic brain used to carry human egos.
Cortical Stack: A memory core housing a person's ego, usually kept between the spine and brain
Cyberbrain: A computer brain used to run egos, or house AI's.
Darknet: A covert or secret information network, often used for illicit purposes.
Exhuman: Someone who has taken transhumanism 'too far' and modified themselves in horrific ways, so as to be no longer human.
Farcasting: A method of long-distance traveling where an extracted ego is 'emailed' across space to a new body at its destination.
Indenture: A person who has signed a long-term labor contract with a hypercorp in exchange for a morph.
Infomorph: Someone whose sole existence is as data, usually existing in a virtual reality environment.
Infugee: A person who escaped the Fall with their ego - but not their body, an information-refugee. Millions of infugees have yet to get bodies due to their low-value skillsets.
Mesh: An internet-like information network, formed via cloud computing links between local devices. Meshes are local, not universal, due to the vast distances and lag involved in interplanetary communications.
Morph: A general term for a body.
Muse: A dumb-AI helper commonly used for day-to-day purposes such as personal finance, data processing and information research. Most people have one.
Pandora Gates: Mysterious objects of unknown origins that appear to be capable of generating wormholes allowing extrasolar travel. Five are currently known; one near Mercury, one on Mars, one on Pandora, one around Neptune and the last in the Kuiper Belt, on Eris.
Pod: Bio-mechanical bodies with cyberbrains, usually having a mechanical core surrounded by cloned flesh. Typically used for low-level service and menial labor.
Quantum Entanglement (QE): Communication using paired molecules, allowing for untraceable and high-speed messages to be sent over vast distances. However, QE has low bandwith and typically only uses text. Also, QE devices are paired and can only talk to each other.
Simulspace: Virtual reality environments, often used for entertainment or other purposes. Simulspaces typically feature full immersion for all sensory spectra.
Sleeving: The process of an ego entering a body.
Synthmorphs: Purely artificial or mechanical bodies, featuring cyberbrains to house human egos.
Uplift: A non-human animal that has been modified to have human-equivalent intelligence.
X-risk: Firewall term, short for 'existential-risk'. Anything that poses a serious risk to humanity's continued existence, from TITAN technology to human political instability.
Biomorph: A biological body, with an organic brain used to carry human egos.
Cortical Stack: A memory core housing a person's ego, usually kept between the spine and brain
Cyberbrain: A computer brain used to run egos, or house AI's.
Darknet: A covert or secret information network, often used for illicit purposes.
Exhuman: Someone who has taken transhumanism 'too far' and modified themselves in horrific ways, so as to be no longer human.
Farcasting: A method of long-distance traveling where an extracted ego is 'emailed' across space to a new body at its destination.
Indenture: A person who has signed a long-term labor contract with a hypercorp in exchange for a morph.
Infomorph: Someone whose sole existence is as data, usually existing in a virtual reality environment.
Infugee: A person who escaped the Fall with their ego - but not their body, an information-refugee. Millions of infugees have yet to get bodies due to their low-value skillsets.
Mesh: An internet-like information network, formed via cloud computing links between local devices. Meshes are local, not universal, due to the vast distances and lag involved in interplanetary communications.
Morph: A general term for a body.
Muse: A dumb-AI helper commonly used for day-to-day purposes such as personal finance, data processing and information research. Most people have one.
Pandora Gates: Mysterious objects of unknown origins that appear to be capable of generating wormholes allowing extrasolar travel. Five are currently known; one near Mercury, one on Mars, one on Pandora, one around Neptune and the last in the Kuiper Belt, on Eris.
Pod: Bio-mechanical bodies with cyberbrains, usually having a mechanical core surrounded by cloned flesh. Typically used for low-level service and menial labor.
Quantum Entanglement (QE): Communication using paired molecules, allowing for untraceable and high-speed messages to be sent over vast distances. However, QE has low bandwith and typically only uses text. Also, QE devices are paired and can only talk to each other.
Simulspace: Virtual reality environments, often used for entertainment or other purposes. Simulspaces typically feature full immersion for all sensory spectra.
Sleeving: The process of an ego entering a body.
Synthmorphs: Purely artificial or mechanical bodies, featuring cyberbrains to house human egos.
Uplift: A non-human animal that has been modified to have human-equivalent intelligence.
X-risk: Firewall term, short for 'existential-risk'. Anything that poses a serious risk to humanity's continued existence, from TITAN technology to human political instability.
Last edited by a moderator:
