048: Planet Killer

ENTRY 048: Planet Killer

In a time when transhumanity has reached the limits of the solar system and beyond, one infomorph has as its sole ambition the need to destroy a planet…and he is not alone.

What began with that one ego, a cache of ambiguously legal antimatter explosives, and a small dwarf planet beyond Pluto known only by its catelogue number has become a community of ambitious hobbyists, busily crunching the numbers on a variety of doomsday scenarios, calculating the exact force and placement of various weapons needed to destroy a world—because if anyone is going to kill a planet, they feel it should be done properly. Coupled with this simple desire for mass destruction is, perversely, the need to create. So the Planet Killer community includes geologists, artists, and architects. Their designs are fed to robots on the dwarf planet’s surface, reshaping the dormant lump of rock and ice to carve out cities and mountains to scale, so that when the charges finally go off towers will topple into streets and great cracks will rend mountains to rubble.

Riding herd on these enthusiasts is the Planet Killer, waiting for the perfect moment to end a world—because it can.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
18	17	18	15	12	20	17	-

Morph: Infomorph

Skills: Academics: Geology (Catastrophes) 65, Academic: Physics 80, Academic: Chemistry 56, Deception 63, Demolitions (Large Scale Explosives) 85, Interfacing 45, Interests: Explosions 70, Interests: Planet Killing 80, Kinesics 30, Language Native German 80, Language English 75, Perception 40, Persuasion 85, Profession: Excavation 65

Disadvantages: Edited Memories, Social Stigma (AGI)

Using Planet Killer

The Planet Killer is a supervillain that has managed to crowdsource its burning need for grand destruction…and succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. It turns out that given the opportunity there are plenty of transhumans that not only want to see a planet blow up, but want to help. Hell there are even official hypercorp sponsors for the event. At the center of the whole project however is one obsessed infomorph with the destructive power to blast a planetoid to rubble and the will to do it, and that is someone for player characters to fear.

Seeds

• The Planet Killer approaches the players to “liberate” elaborate geological surveys conducted by hypercorps on Saturn’s moon Titan. Knowing the AGI’s proclivities, will the PCs deliver the data—and what will they do if the Planet Killer does decide to target Titan?
• Before the main event of detonating the dwarf planet, hobbyists seeking to improve their mathematical models have performed elaborate “small scale” explosive tests—mock-up cities, a small mountain on a xenoplanet, that sort of thing. Now however they’re getting ready for their largest demonstration to date, a city carved out of an asteroid to be annihilated using one of the killsats in the Planet Killer’s arsenal. Unfortunately, a group of tourists examining the city up-close have been trapped on the rock, and the Planet Killer is unwilling to halt the countdown. Only hours remain before the asteroid-city is due to be destroyed, and the tourists with it, unless the PCs can rescue them, disable the killsat, or talk some sense into the Planet Killer to halt the demolition.