243: Superkinesics

ENTRY 243: Superkinesics

The twitch of an eye, the number of blinks, the little calluses on the first two fingers of the right hand, the way she keeps her nails trimmed, the pulse visibly beating at her throat…people can be read, though not like a book. Every individual is different, but they are running the same wetware, and many fall into the same psychological traits. A good cold reader can walk into a crowded room and see who is nervous, and who wants to believe.

Augmented senses don’t make kinesics any easier—but they do open up the reader to a new level of information. Once they learn to interpret that data, a reader’s accuracy can be superhuman—the heat patterns from the flow of blood in their face, the smell as their pores open up and start to sweat under their clothing, the electromagnetic tingle as they access their implants. Even synthmorphs are not invulnerable; microscopic and nanoscopic vision in particular can tell a great deal about the ‘health’ of a case by the care taken in its repair, cleaning, and maintenance.

Of course, transhumans who live with augmented senses daily often pay as much attention to covering up some of their tell-tale giveaways as flats and splicers do with makeup. It’s a rare case or synth who does keep a couple small brush attachments for their fingers to clean those hard-to-reach slots, and learn to calibrate their speech synthesizers to disguise some of the unease in their voice when nervous. Many transhuman actors and public speakers make an effort to study superkinesics to help whoo their audience as well, to better emote their performance to an augmented audience.

Mechanics

Superkinesics is a specialization for the Kinesics skill that is applicable whenever the character’s augmented senses would give additional vital information that would help them judge another’s intent, or when they are dealing with a character with augmented senses, and functions identically to other skill specializations. The bonus from this specialization stacks with any bonus granted from the enhanced sense itself (i.e. a character with Enhanced Smell and the Superkinesics specialization would receive a total +30 bonus to Kinesics Tests).

Using Superkinesics

Superkinesics has a rather long run history in science fiction, though not under that name; a particularly good use was in Bruce Sterling’s “Twenty Evocations” set in his Shaper/Mechanist universe. As such, there are quite a lot of good examples out thereon how to use (and abuse) this trope, with both players and gamemasters coming up with arguments as to why a given augmented sense works or does not work in a particular situation. I would suggest not having those arguments; life is too short and at the end of the day +10 on a Kinesics roll really shouldn’t be a game over for your adventure. Now, this doesn’t mean a gamemaster can’t make life difficult on PCs that come to rely on their enhanced senses—enhanced smell doesn’t mean much if the characters are interacting through holograms, for example.

242: The Sleeping Generation

ENTRY 242: The Sleeping Generation

Desperate times call for imperfect technologies, executed with the best of intentions and plans based on whatever knowledge is available, but are not necessarily viable in the long run. Yet it is an adage not to trust all your transhuman egos to a single strategy, but to spread the risk by trying to save a portion of those lives by other means. So while in some cities ships pulled off the ground with entire transhumans, and others had their egos copied and sent off into space while their physical forms left behind, a minority of other approaches were being tried in corners of the Earth where resources for these relatively safe and sure technologies were not available.

In Munich, multiple egos were spliced together to fit within the limited number of storage devices together. In Kookaburra, a group of prominent government leaders had their egos transferred into uplifted koalas so more egos could escape in the low-mass bodies. In Bengal, dozens of families made it into low-earth orbit using high-altitude balloons, with the hope that they could be towed further up the gravity well. And in Johannesburg, they started lopping off heads.

Faced with a severe mass limitation but lacking the resources to upload entire egos, the last-minute flight from Johannesburg was a matter of brutal math. Surgeons worked tirelessly removing the heads of the volunteers, which were passed off to medical technicians to attach to the life-keeping apparatus that would keep them alive for the duration of the flight, each head locked into place in the crowded rocket ship and placed in a full VR simulation for the duration of the trip. Fifteen thousand heads were packed into the Queen Mujabi in 38 hours, and the ship was launched towards the Main Belt. They were the only survivors.

Many of them didn’t survive. At least three thousand heads succumbed to trauma or infection in the first six months; over a hundred others succumbed to insanity and exercised a built in right-to-life protocol. The slow ship finally docked with Nova York in AF 2, which was hard-pressed to deal with the sudden influx due to a shortage of morphs. Roughly half of the surviving Johannesburg heads opted to remain as they were until bodies could be cloned for them, while the others resleeved as informorphs or whatever cheap synths were available, some agreeing to contracts of indentured servitude for better bodies. A little over five thousand heads remain, connected by VR, on the Queen Mujabi—relicts of the Fall that the Nova York media have dubbed “The Sleeping Generation.”

Mechanics

The bodiless heads of the Sleeping Generation are all Flats. While they do technically have physical forms (and can thus receive whatever augmentations a head can accommodate), they have an effective SOM of 1, Wound Threshold of 1, and Durability 6, though given that all of them are incased in jars full of pseudoamniotic fluid and hooked up to major medical equipment, this should not be something that ever really comes into play. Nova York has upgraded all of the surviving heads with Medichines to counteract the long-term damage of being disembodied heads in jars, and the VR equipment is effectively the same as Basic Mesh Inserts. For PCs that for some reason want to be a head in a jar, the cost for this morph is Moderate.

241: Bailey y Goch

ENTRY 241: Bailey y Goch

“They could afford any morph they want. Bailey chooses not to exercise that option until all infolife has the right to be embodied…”

Makken, spokesweasel for Red Freedom Inc.

Talent and skill will take you only so far. To go the extra distance, to succeed from rich to superrich, from the voice of a generation to sole owner of your multimedia empire, requires drive, ruthlessness, and an elevated sense of self above all others. This is what has made dream-producer Bailey y Goch the most beloved artist in his field, though to their tens of thousands of fans they projects the persona of a dreamy idealist, an ascetic artist-magician who aspires to the shared rise in consciousness of transhumanity and the equal rights and freedoms of all, as outlined in their book series Dreaming to Peace, sample chapters free for instant download, further chapters available when donations hit the next level…

Goch is a businessentity and an artist, and ruthless at both. Everything that Goch does, from the dream XP recordings to the charity benefits for Save Welsh! and tradeschool workshops for uplifts on Luna all funnel credits into their coffers, or raise their rep a little more. Goch capitalizes on their pull for outstanding performances and very public massive acts of work and goodwill, with their corporate entity Red Freedom Inc. handling the grunt work, ever growing Goch’s personal fortune. To those few who know him—including uplifted weasel and PR flack Makken Teague—money and art seem to be the only things that really capture Bailey y Goch’s interest.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
10	10	18	10	16	10	11	-

Morph: Infomorph

Skills: Academics: Psychology (Dreams) 33, Academics: Sociology (Group Dynamics) 42, Art: Lucid Dreaming 89, Deception 37, Impersonation (Persona) 60, Infosec 40, Interests: Dream Business 45, Interests: Fangroups 45, Interests: Self Promotion 46, Interfacing 50, Intimidation (Financial) 50, Language: Native Welsh 90, Language: Cantonese 85, Language: English 85, Language: Irish 85, Persuasion (Negotiation) 66, Perception 50, Profession: Dream Arist 75, Programming 25, Research 19

Disadvantages: Allies (fans), Expert (Art – Lucid Dreaming), Social Stigma (AGI)

Using Bailey y Goch

Artists are valued either for what they have, what they create, or what they well create, and this is the basic key to using Bailey y Goch. As an artist, Goch has released several hundred extremely popular XP of lucid dreaming episodes, along with thousands of pieces of derivative media, and the bulk of their income comes from the sale, distribution, and licensing of those works in whole or in part. As such, Goch sees any threat to their work as a threat against themselves, and may hire or target the PCs accordingly. Both artistic and business rivals may target Goch directly, either hiring the PCs to kidnap/destroy/hobble the infomorph or Red Freedom may hire the PCs to protect Goch’s interests. Finally, there is the possibility that Goch owes their fame and fortune to something besides their art—an early rival Goch ripped off, or a secret network whose resources Goch tapped to first distribute their material, possibly even some key work that Goch is blackmailing a powerful media hypercorp executive with. Any and all such secrets are a good “in” to bring Bailey y Goch into the campaign for a session or two.

240: Dreamcrackers

ENTRY 240: Dreamcrackers

“Sleep is the brother of death. The continuity of your consciousness ceases every cycle as the amphetamines and caffeine crashes against your rising fatigue toxins and weariness overtakes your cage of flesh. You go to sleep…and is it you that ‘wakes up’ the next morning? What happened while your mind was offline? Do you cease to exist, and rise again each day as a phoenix? No. There is a continuity, brothers and sisters, there is a thread of consciousness that remains always running in the background. Even as the higher functions of your brain cease, your essential you continues on…”

- Evangelist Holyfield, the Fist of Sand, Mesh sermon #238

Few morphs with Mesh implants are every fully disconnected from the Mesh. The tech savvy and unbearably paranoid install their killswitches and zip themselves in Faraday hammocks, and the rest of transhumanity just hopes that their firewalls will hold out as they lay themselves down to sleep. Yet some say their prayers and tighten their security settings at night, for fear the dreamcrackers will come for them.

The Dreamcrackers are an offshoot of the Sandman Project, an open technical community dedicated to the exploration of hacking sleep in all its forms. It’s an initiative that appeals to transhumans of every social strata, and many applaud its open databases exploring the neurological, neurochemical, and psychological aspects of sleep, rest, and dreaming. Most of the attention the Sandman Project attracts is for its Exploits though—everything from formulas for chemical cocktails that’ll keep you awake and lucid for a couple weeks, tweaks to circadian regulation and hibernation implants for maximum efficiency or alternative use, lucid dreaming software, tens of thousands of hours of XP from dreamers covering everything from nocturnal emissions to incubus attacks, experimental group rigs for “splitting” a Petal among multiple users through shared hallucinations, unconscious morph transition therapy, psychotronic weapons…science and pseudoscience, presented, debated, recategorized, and added to, one piece of data at a time.

Not all of the tech is legal in every habitat. Not every clique and individual in the Sandman Project has the advancement and understanding of transhumanity at heart. Such individuals often find their access restricted, and parts of the community even made off limits to them. Research materials and funds diverted, isolated from the rest of the community until they take the hint and amend their ways or wander off. Among these offshoots and orphans are Dreamcrackers—philosophically cut off from the purer research, this group of hackers has found a technology that works and continued to develop it in secret. They crack the firewalls of sleeping egos, to record their dreamscapes, either for their own art or to sell to petalcrafters and others, and manipulate the dreamer. Depending on the morph and its implants, their exploits can allow them to control the duration and depth of sleep, tweaking sleep cycles to turn a cat nap into a coma, or to manipulate the reticular activating system, effectively paralyzing the victim. These brain hackers delve into weird and esoteric knowledge, and rumors of their skills have caused some Firewall agents to wonder where they got their skills and software.

239: Dreamgate

ENTRY 239: Dreamgate

Dial the right coordinates on the Martian Gate, and you step through to a red world, eerily familiar. Not Mars-as-it-is, but Mars-as-it-was—a planet made in the image of old Mars by some long-vanished race of planet shapers, who liked the dryness and the dust, and built cities like convoluted flutes the color of raw pink bone, inlaid with veins of metal that crackle with electricity. Now all they have left behind are dusty cities that hum with ancient power sources, and dream.

The first probes noticed it the second they came in, the heavy wireless signals in the air—an alien Mesh, active and alive even if the extraterrestrials that built it seem long dead. Gatecrashers found the first terminals when they breached the towers: sonar/audio systems for creatures that sensed the world primarily though sound, and shell-backed cuirasses presumed to be nonhuman neural interfaces. The engineers back on Mars began reverse-engineering them immediately.

Now the red world, this twin-Mars is known as Dreamgate, and each group of gatecrashers comes through bearing the latest versions of interface augmentations designed to allow them to experience and explore the alien computer network. Crews have spent hours and days mapping sensory palaces like dry windblown caverns of the mind, artificial dreamscapes of pink and purple beaches that fade into ink-black oceans swimming with wriggling tadpole-things. All of it might be real, or none of it. Some people bring back snatches of alien music, XP recordings unlike anything ever seen, fragments of science databanks, and millions of lines of alien scripts—at least two dozen separate languages and half a dozen alphabets with different variations, all waiting to be translated and read.

Others never come back at all, their egos lost in the vast XenoMesh, or fallen prey to still-active defenses or the bizarre AIs that might live there. Others ask why the Martian Gate would link to this particular world—did something or someone try to cross over to Mars from the Dreamgate? Or was it the other way around? What stopped them? Where did they go? For all of these questions, many are sure the answers lie in that alien Mesh of sonic contours and bone-chattering base rhythms, and fluted towers that stab up at the pale sun like the skeletal fingers of some buried giant…

Mechanics

Physically, Dreamgate’s environment is nearly identical to Mars, right down to the gravity, and the landscape is strongly reminiscent of Mars as well, though explorations further afield uncover several vast salt pans that used to be shallow inland seas teaming with invertebrate life.

Accessing the XenoMesh requires specialized non-standard mesh inserts; these Custom Mesh Inserts cost at least 50,000 credits, but are usually provided to gatecrashers headed to Dreamgate as essential equipment for their job. In the alien city or outpost on the other side, users can tune the mesh inserts to experience augmented reality or to explore the full virtual space. However, the XenoMesh is a very alien sensual experience, and PCs often find it difficult to navigate the exotic information architecture.

238: Antimirror

ENTRY 238: Antimirror

Chrome roses budding from a length of barbed wire, each bud and thorn tipped with rust, antimirror tastes of stale blood and ozone, with overtones of burning rubber as the flowers dissolve that seem to fill the head and overwhelm the senses. This petal is favored among masochists and exhumans, for whom pain is but one more sensation to be experienced and savored in all its million shades and combinations.

Each antimirror trip is a revisitation of some crime—a rape, a murder, a mutilation. The scripts tend be simple, the characters flat and mechanical. The non-player characters and settings are filled in from the user’s memory, pulled at random: friends, family, lovers. Familiar faces on empty shells playing pat parts. The user, of course, is always the victim, and suffers the worst of the events until the hallucinatory narrative ends.

The petalcrafters of antimirror pass themselves off as harmless enthusiasts, entertaining each other with their simple games, but the XP recordings that form the backbone of antimirror are culled from their vast archives of pain and fear. While they may or may not be torturers and sadists of themselves, they hoard and barter the memories of those that suffered and died at the hands of such depraved individuals, and vicariously cherish that anguish. While some are relatively harmless, others on the shadowy networks have been connected with kidnappings, unlicensed and unwilling augmentations, sexual assault, and premeditated surgical alteration on many habitats. Still, because of the disparate and secluded nature of the group, it is difficult for any legal authorities to stop their trade and barter of such materials, disguised as it is within accepted and perfectly legal peer-to-peer networks.

Antimirror Mechanics

Type	Application	Duration	Addiction Modifier	Addiction Type	Cost
Nano	O	1d6 hours	+3	Mental	Moderate

Antimirror has about a 1 in 10 chance of causing a “bad trip,” inflicting 1d10 Mental Stress on the user. Common derangements caused by antimirror addiction include paranoia and self-inflicted wounds.

Sweets

• Let the Blood Run Out (30 or more doses of antimirror in the last 30 days): Prolonged users find cathartic release through self harm; by inflicting 1d10 damage to themselves, the character can remove 1d6 Mental Stress that they have accumulated in the past 24 hours.
• Mind Numb (60 or more doses of antimirror in the last 30 days): The user develops a mental resistance to traumatic imagery and experiences; reduce all Mental Stress the user accumulates by half.
• Become the Victim (5 bad trips with antimirror): The user’s last hallucination made it onto the Mesh, and they have become a minor celebrity among the petalcrafters and users of antimirror. These individuals push the user to use the petal more often; the cost for them changes to Trivial.
• Witness (Random): The petal isn’t the typical narrative, but the XP recording of a recent unsolved violent crime. The user’s hallucination may hold clues to catch the perpetrator, or help identify the whereabouts and status of the victim.

237: Holder

ENTRY 237: Holder

Gatecrashing is a different set of logistics from space travel. No one worries about another couple of grams more or less as long as everything vital is accounted for, and most of the gatecrasher hypercorps are willing to look the other way if their people decide they need a little something extra. So in the demimonde of hangers-on and specialized services that have cropped up around the Gates there are people like Holder, dealing out drugs, petals, narcoalgorithms, and whatever else people might need. Holder is the one-stop pharmacy outlet of the Pandora Gate, self-incorporated as his own microcorp and with silent pipelines to all the big pharmacorps and petal artisans, who push him product samples and literature with witty soundbites and quick taglines—enough business that he has five people in an office-cum-warehouse space handling the logistics, keeping track of inventory, quality control, and making deals for promoting their product.

No one wants to buy drugs of hazy legality or possible experimental status from a corp-backed salesman who operates under the blind eye and quiet blessing of the powers that be. Holder knows this, and cultivates the genially scruffy mystique of a low-level hustler that says he can get his clients anything—and, amazingly enough to them, he can actually deliver. Holder’s gatecrasher clientele don’t need to know that he’s probably hooked into their employers through discreet backchannels, and that they approve of anything that Holder sells them. All the better to protect their investment if they can get them what they want and need, and in such a manner that the gatecrashers don’t go dealing with people they can’t trust. So Holder maintains his niche.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
17	12	15	13	13	10	14	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	2	28	5	80	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer

Skills: Academics: Chemistry 40, Academics: Economics 50, Academics: Pharmacy 40, Blades 35, Climbing 25, Fray 45, Free Fall 27, Hardware: Nanotechnology 45, Infiltration 60, Interfacing 25, Interests: Experimental Drugs 65, Interests: Gatecrashing 35, Intimidation 33, Kinesics 33, Kinetic Weapons (Holdouts) 45, Language: Native Czech 84, Language: Japanese 55, Language: English 55, Language: German 44, Language: Russian 44, Networking: Criminals 25, Networking: Hypercorps 48, Palming 55, Perception (Taste) 37, Persuasion (Sell Drugs) 42, Profession: Drug Dealer 60, Scrounging 20

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Pheromones, Enhanced Taste, Medichines, Neurachem (1)

Traits: Unattractive (1)

Using Holder

The Holder most player characters meet is a street-level hustler transplanted into weird future of a Pandora Gate complex; the kind of character that can seem at ease but out of place almost everywhere. He’s never exactly dirty, just scruffy and mismatched enough not to quite fit in, even with the dingiest of the technicians or the most rumpled of the suit-wearing flacks that seem to hang around the gate and collect a salary for nebulous services rendered under vague titles like “special consultant.” He is, in fact, the person that everyone around the gate will point the PCs to if they’re looking to score anything remotely strange, illicit, or illegal, and he tries hard to look and act the part, though very attentive PCs will probably question how he maintains his business and the quality of his goods in the midst of all the hypercorps and security. If caught out or confronted about it, Holder will smile and drop the act as a compliment to their detective skills; after all, most customers are happy if they think they’ve figured out the trick and don’t look for the next one.

236: Sistemy

ENTRY 236: Sistemy

Modern professional military organizations recognize the importance of training in multiple related martial skills: close quarters combat using knives, hand-to-hand, and small arts, attacking at range, and overall strategic and tactical thinking are typically emphasized and increasingly integrated into a single block of training, with periodic refreshers and optional advanced courses in selected skills for promising or dedicated students. As a concept, these sistemy (singular: systema) allow the rapid development of a group of related skills in a relatively short period of time, and with a focus on utility and adaptability often absent from the more artistic contemporary martial arts intended solely for exhibition, exercise, and formal competition.

Mechanics

The sistemy concept is an option for gamemasters and players to help simplify combat in Eclipse Phase. Instead of having individual combat skills like Blades, Clubs, Fray, Kinetic Weapons, Unarmed Combat, etc. the character has a Systema skill which represents their basic block of training in multiple forms of combat. When attacking, the character would roll their Systema skill instead of the typical individual combat skill.

Example

Sixjane needs to cut a Ruster bitch and pops her cyberclaws. Sixjane has Systema 44 and her player rolls 38—a success!—and is rewarded with a spray of arterial blood as her victim screams in pain…

Extras

Players and gamemasters interested in a slightly more complex approach to sistemy combat can include some of these optional extra rules.

Individual Advanced Training: The character’s Systema skill maxes out at 60, and cannot be improved beyond that. Characters wishing to improve their skills must take individual advanced training in specific skills to further develop them past this point. While the character retains their Systema skill at max, they can then develop individual skills (Blades, Clubs, Fray, Kinetic Weapons, Unarmed Combat, etc.) further, with each skill having a base rating equal to their Systema skill.

Example

After years of hard training, Sixjane has topped out at Systema 60. Now she qualifies for individual advanced training in Blades. By spending 2 Rez points, Sixjane now has Blades 61.

Specific Systema: There is no one Systema skill; rather there are multiple sistemy, each of which has its own skill, and each of which has its own culture and heritage depending on the military that developed it. Contemporary examples would include the systema of the Russian Spetznatz, krav maga of the Israeli military, and the MCMAP program of the United States Marine Corps, though in Eclipse Phase systems would probably include more training in recoilless and beam weapons, implant weapons, different morphs, etc. The specifics of each Systema skill should be worked out between the player and the gamemaster, but in general each should focus on certain areas—this is effectively represented by a free specialization in the chosen Systema skill which cannot be changed, though it does not apply to advanced skills obtained through Individual Advanced Training. Typically, certain exotic or unusual weapons or skills are not covered by these specific Systema—Kinetic weapons in particular are rare in space, and few systems cover Spray Weapons for example.

Example

Zapato: The systema of the Jovian Army, Zapato is a comprehensive fighting system developed for both close-quarters and ranged combat in microgravity environments and incorporates close-quarters combat training as well as ranged training with beam weapons, though training with firearms is neglected due to their general absence in the Jovian armory. [Free Specialization: Microgravity, Not Covered: Kinetic Weapons]

235: Maintenance Rats

ENTRY 235: Maintenance Rats

Resources are limited. Imagination is not. Faced with the greatest challenge of its existence, transhumanity has had to do the best it can with the technology and scraps of old Earth—and put them to work. Maintenance rats are a breed of partial uplift, genefixed for cleanliness, sociability, intelligence, and certain specific fixed behaviors. They have as much in common with the old earth rat as a Chihuahua has with a timber wolf.

In most habitats that have them, maintenance rats perform essential cleaning services, scurrying through pipes and crawlspaces too small for most transhumans, picking up trash and debris and carrying it away to a designated refuse pile in a maintenance area marked by certain scent markers. They control their own population, are fastidious about their appearance, and only deposit their droppings in designated areas. Most habitats find they make great personal pets, being extremely friendly and easy to train.

These modifications have come at the expense of a degree of self-sufficiency. Maintenance rats need their designated collection and “deposit” points, and while they are still biologically capable of eating almost anything their tastes have been tweaked so that they will only devour especially scent-marked food pellets. While they are an important tool in transhumanity’s survival, maintenance rats are no longer able to survive on their own in the wild—and if left unattended or neglected, entire populations may starve or go mad.

Seeds

• A vengeful maintenance worker disposed of a bully by spraying them with the maintenance rat food marker—hundreds of furry bodies covered the victim within minutes, leaving only a gory skeleton with a few winking, indigestible electronics, which were soon picked up by bloodstained paws and taken to the collection point. Now the station administration debates whether or not to exterminate the entire population as a result of the media uproar of the attack. Rat-lovers throughout the station have put up a bounty for anyone that can find proof that the maintenance rats were compelled instead of acting freely.
• Genehackers have developed a new breed of “splicer rats” that compete with maintenance rats for space and food, but which can use the Mesh to coordinate their activities thanks to basic mesh implants, and the maintenance rats are being hard-pressed by the newcomers. Unfortunately, the splicer rats have been infected with an exsurgent virus. Somewhere in the bowels of the habitat a seven-headed splicer rat king begins directing the others—first to eliminate the maintenance rats, and then the transhumans! The sudden rapid decline of maintenance rat populations triggers a warning, and the habitat hires to PCs to figure out what’s going on with the rats.
• Hypercorp researcher and chief maintenance rat breeder Mamoud Rasiq has only one vice: his pet maintenance rat Blinky, who thanks to his own cortical stack is currently on his sixth incarnation. Mamoud believes that Blinky is on the verge of becoming a true uplift—he just needs one little upgrade. Mamoud’s employer has the tech, but he’ll get in big trouble if he accesses it…but if the PCs happen to steal it for him, all’s well. In exchange, Mamoud can give them some Best of Breed™ top-quality pet maintenance rats, which are worth quite a bit on the pet market.

234: Malomer

ENTRY 234: Malomer

“I’ve died on more exoplanets than you’ve ever seen. I was there when the firehorses overran us at Potsdamn…when the sky blinked on Little Browntop…when Mad Jorge drank pure butane and accidentally gassed us all on the way to Roswell…”

- Malomer, four or five drinks in to his latest story

Malomer holds two records in the history file: the first gatecrasher to die on an exoplanet, and the gatecrasher with the most recorded deaths period. There are some that say he’s visited over fifty exoplanets, and been resleeved almost eighty times. One of the original gatecrashers, Malomer proved adept at exploration and discovering the seen and unseen perils of new worlds, often by fatally injuring himself in some fashion. In at least fifty cases, Malomer was resleeved simply so they could ask him what killed him (he refuses to talk to people as an infomorph, on the grounds that they won’t buy him a drink). Today Malomer is still gatecrashing, considered both a veteran explorer and a lightning rod (literally, in three instances) to catch whatever bad luck may befall an expedition, and he finds steady work.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
12	14	13	15	5	17	20	4
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	40	8	80	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer

Skills: Academics: Xenobiology (Digestive Systems) 40, Academics: Xenogeology 60, Art: Storytelling 40, Beam Weapons 55, Blades (Knives) 60, Climbing 60, Clubs (Wrench) 70, Fray (Full Defense) 67, Free Fall (Microgravity) 56, Hardware: DIY Repair 50, Infiltration 50, Interests: Alcohol 70, Interests: Custom Gear 60, Interests: Death 44, Interests: Gatecrashing 60, Interests: Transhumanism 50, Intimidation 70, Kinesics 50, Kinetic Weapons (Pistols) 35, Language: Native Spanish 84, Language: English 70, Language: Mandarin 56, Networking: Autonomists 60, Networking: Hypercorps (Gatecrashing) 60, Perception 60, Persuasion (Buy Me A Drink) 38, Profession: Explorer 50, Scrounging 40, Unarmed Combat (Groin Attack) 66

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Back-up Cortical Stack, small tracking tags located in all major bones

Traits: Addiction (Alcohol, Minor), Bad Luck, Brave, Neural Damage (facial tic)

Using Malomer

An old salt, or whatever the equivalent term would be for a gatecrasher, Malomer is the perfect half-crazed old alcoholic to have propping up a gatecrasher bar and telling a story that might just be true. Having stared death in the face more times than he can count (literally, he had to relearn basic algebra after a particularly bad resleeving), Malomer is completely fearless, calm, and collected in the face of a dangerous situation, and is not above giving the boot to anybody—said weapon being a homemade affair weighted down with lead and with spring-loaded spikes topped with a mild poison and a much more dangerous accumulation of grime because he never cleans the thing. Another good use of Max is as a convenient corpse, either to illustrate a particularly danger on an exoplanet or simply to help illustrate how transient death is in Eclipse Phase. If Mal dropped dead in Gagarin’s Rest (Entry 148) during rush hour for example, his corpse would just be propped up in the corner until the crowd had cleared out. In fact, get him drunk enough and he’ll tell you how that exact thing happened, except he was sitting at a game of Neptunian Poker and won the pot…

233: Eden Ventures

ENTRY 233: Eden Ventures

“Traditionalist.”

- Ultimates insult

Of all the organizations devoted to exoplanet colonization through gatecrashing, Eden Ventures is most notorious for its minimalist approach. Typically they find some (barely) habitable exoplanet, crowdsource a sizable amount of funding and materials with the aid of dedicated religious subscriber networks, and then send forth the “seed” colony—typically, between two and eight transhumans with minimal food and equipment and no plan for continued support. Eden Ventures considers this a “shotgun approach” to colonizing multiple worlds very quickly, but critics of the gatecrashing corporation deride it as “Adam & Leave,” which typically requires someone else to go behind them and rescue EV’s hapless “colonists.”

Seeds

• Eden Ventures is heavily involved with religious networks, buying advertisement space and programming drives to solicit donations and investments in its colonization activities. However, a group of these investors wishes to bring a multiple-habitat class-action suit against the company for its predatory practices—but they need evidence to do it. They wish to hire the PCs to visit six “colonies” EV has established, to find out how well the colonists were prepared, what supplies and training they were given, and how much follow-up support they received. If, that is, the colonists are still alive.
• A nasty property dispute has cropped up on the exoplanet Jezza III between a mining hypercorp and Eden Ventures regarding the ownership of a deposit of titanium ore. EV insists they have an established claim based on a previous colonization attempt—and hires the PCs to sneak into the titanium-rich caverns and quickly establish a makeshift “colony” so they can push their claim. How much can the PCs do with the limited resources available to them, and against the challenges faced by a hostile world?
• A critical impasse has come to the grass-covered exoplanet of Savannah: relations between the colony members have broken down because two of the female biomorphs have decided to engage in a monogamous relationship with each other, which poses a critical threat to the colony’s long-term genetic diversity. Eden Ventures hires the PCs to peacefully resolve the issue as neutral mediators, giving them the authority to promise the colonists anything from artificial insemination to the Lilith Sequence (see entry 126), but the PCs will also have to deal with the colonist’s religious beliefs.
• In preparation for every colonization attempt, Eden Ventures does considerably location scouting using gatecrashers like the player characters. The PCs are hired to scout out the terrain of Puddle, a world of sunken continents where all of the solid ground is covered by at least 1-10 centimeters of water. To fulfill their contract, the PCs will need to explore and map a circle at least thirty kilometers in radius around the gate—wading through tall grasses that might conceal deep water crevasses and quicksand, tiny carnivorous fish, and lumbering amphibious mugwumps. If the PCs consent to babysit a geological surveyor (a hapless neohominid called Earwig), Eden Ventures will even pay them a bonus.

232: Mercy Wing

ENTRY 232: Mercy Wing

Not every trip through a gate goes well. No one quite knows why—maybe the receiver gate is damaged, or a collapsing star disrupts the wormhole, or the coordinates fed in were off by a bit. Most of the time when this happens, passage simply fails: the portal does not open, the connection is not made, please try again later. Much more rarely, the connection is disrupted when someone is going through. The survivors of such disasters are brought to the Mercy Wing, an emergency medical research facility which specializes in injuries caused by a sudden change in the local laws of physics.

Gatekeeper Corporation opened up the first Mercy Wing near the Pandora Gate shortly after the first “incident,” and most other groups and corporations (with the general exception of the Fissure Gate—negotiations with the anarchists have broken down again) set up their own emergency medical research facilities, combining the equipment of an experimental physics lab with state-of-the-art medical care. For the majority of Mercy Wings, the first goal is to keep the patient alive (biomorph) or functioning (synthmorph); this was a point of serious contention against their second goal, which was to study the injuries involved to determine what exactly happened. Transferring the patient’s ego to another morph is generally not a high priority, and generally only addressed when the staff finds it convenient.

Of the hundreds or thousands of gatecrashers that have gone through since the first gate was discovered, there have been only eleven recorded “incidents” affecting a total of sixteen gatecrashers. Nine of those have died, two have been rehabilitated, and the other five remain in care—three of them long-term residents of the Mercy Wing at the Pandora Gate. The immediate effects of the physics fluctuation are highly localized to the portions of the individual at the gate threshold during the time of the incident, but secondary effects either from the implications of the initial exposure or from re-exposure to ‘normal’ physics environments are extremely common, and typically include severe radiation exposure and the infamous “exploding hand” syndrome where a part of the individual’s anatomy experiences a sudden state change, typically accompanied by a sizable release of energy.

Using the Mercy Wing

Mercy Wings are secret hospitals that hide the deepest, darkest underbelly of gatecrashing—injuries so rare and random that there’s no point in rolling the dice for them because the normal chances of an “incident” while going through a gate is infinitesimal. The only reason transhumanity has suffered so many “incidents” is because they’re still playing fast and loose with the gate network. So having said that, any time a character suffers an “incident” passing through a gate is not a matter of the roll of the dice, but gamemaster fiat.

While physics majors might enjoy the hypothetical scenario about what happens when you stick your hand into a universe where the Plank constant suddenly decides it wants to be lower, for most gamemaster it is enough to say that very likely whatever part of the character that was at the gate threshold at the time will explode (or fuse, transmute, start to undergo rapid radioactive decay, etc.) and the character will suffer a relatively severe shock (as well as the effects of the explosion/radiation exposure, etc.) Immediate medical care is their only hope for survival, and so the crews are ready to take them down to the nearby Mercy Wing. Other injuries are possible if the GM is feeling creative, but the afflicted character is likely to be out of play for a considerable time, so it isn’t recommended to subject PCs to gate malfunctions. Rather, these gate errors, resulting injuries, and the Mercy Wing emergency medical research facilities are great setting material for games set around a gate, especially if the PC gatecrashers are getting cocky and think they know everything. The few survivors of gate malfunctions may even summon the PCs to a Mercy Wing and ask them to carry out a final task for them.

Seeds

• In as many weeks there have been two “incidents” at the local gate—and the PCs are scheduled to go through on a gatecrashing mission soon! Is this just a statistical fluke, or has somebody figured out how to deliberately cause gate malfunctions to weed out the competition? The only answers may like in the Mercy Wing.

231: Gravity Prison

ENTRY 231: Gravity Prison

There are as many kinds of prison as transhumanity has concepts of freedom. All of them rely on the principle of separating an individual from society, both to prevent further harm and as a punishment or place where reformation and re-education can take place. Habitats take different stances regarding incarceration based both on their social and ethical background, and on the economy and technology available to them. Isolated, secure holding facilities for physical morphs that see to their basic needs are expensive to operate, and typically only used for the short term—and even then, only if the prisoner is suspected to be a risk to themselves or others. Mental prisons such as time dilation protocols, simulations, or simply removing the ego from the morph are much more cost effective, but sometimes run into issues regarding the rights of the prisoner and undo trauma. Then again, there are some people that just want someone else put away, as cheaply and effectively as possible, and don’t care a wit about laws and regulations.

Gravity prisons are as brutal as they come: durable prison-habitats with constant high (>1) effective g forces, such as the Elysium High Capacity Residential Habitat on the surface of Jupiter (>2g). The most famous are the three GMax facilities in orbit about the sun, all of which are located as stops along the same one-way space elevator. The GMax Alfa has an effective gravity of 2g; GMax Bravo is 4g, and GMax Charlie a bone-crushing 8g. Each habitat is monitored remotely, but policed from afar. Fresh supplies are dumped in once a month by a one-way shuttle; any tampering with the shuttle means no supplies the next month, and anyone stupid enough to try and hitch a ride on the shuttle simply ends up on the next GMax down…and after Charlie the space elevator simply runs out, and the spent shuttle free-falls towards the surface of the sun. All GMax terms are for life, but aside from the brutal gravity and isolation the inhabitants are free to do as they please; Alfa’s inmates have set up their own societies and hierarchies, while Bravo is an anarchistic model with heavy Main Belt cultural influences since the majority of the surviving morphs are Bouncers. Charlie is the harshest of the three habitats, but the morphs that can handle the gravity have pioneered experiments in heavy-gravity agriculture and aquaculture that have earned them special privileges (Mesh access, luxury goods, etc.) compared to those habitats higher up the gravity well.

An alternative model gravity prison is a habitat with a ring section that spins fast enough to emulate g forces of 1g and higher. The few examples of these are generally located in the inner system, where more abundant solar power is available, and vary from the “gravity spas” around 1-1.5g used for transhumans adapted to zero gravity and microgravity environments to “bonecrushers” that can potentially emulate up to 10g, though most have safeties that prevent them from being taken up above 4g acceleration due to an incident when a hacker killed an entire imprisoned population by prolonged exposure to high g forces. Rotary gravity prisons offer the wardens and guards moderate control over the gravity by controlling the acceleration of the rotation, and depending on the individual prison riots and the like can either by broken up by halting spin completely—few prisoners have the skills to riot effectively in zero g—or by accelerating and forcing the transhumans onto their knees.

Using Gravity Prisons

Prisons in movies and books tend to suck: cramped, crowded places typically segregated by sex and filled with violent and often filthy criminals and ruled over by corrupt guards. Science fiction prisons tend to suck differently: a bit more clinical and severe, focusing on the isolation of the individual and the numbing of the mind. Those are just tropes, however. In Eclipse Phase, a prison can just be another habitat where leaving is difficult in some way and life is relatively unpleasant. Gravity prisons in this regard aren’t toxic hellholes where badasses tattoo themselves with racist symbols and face gang rape in the communal showers. Instead, picture your average habitat except most of the biomorphs are solidly built, suffer chronic back and joint pain, and probably there against their will. They may not be criminals, just inconvenient people shot down the gravity well because it was cheap. This is a different enough perspective from “regular” prison that a gamemaster could potentially set an adventure in one, and breaking in/breaking out isn’t too hard for a creative crew with some outside help (for example, having a ship waiting at the end of the Solar GMax line to pick up some escapees taking the one-way shuttle), so some bulky NPCs could even be escapees from a gravity prison, or only available through the Mesh because they’re stuck in a gravity prison.

230: Rexxus

ENTRY 230: Rexxus

“Given the choice of being anybody or anything—what would you be?”
“A dinosaur. With lasers.”
- Rexxus, A Posthistoric Life

On Mars, a bipedal dinosaur stalks the slops of Olympus Mons, shaggy feathers red and brown from the Martian dust, a massive fishbowl helmet over its head allowing it to breath properly. Four meters tall and thirteen meters long from snout to tailtip, from the outside this biomorph is a painstaking reconstruction of an adult Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is Rexxus, one of the last paleontologists in the solar system.

The science of prehistoric life remains extremely relevant in the age of terraforming, but with the lack of access to Earth’s biosphere and fossil record the disciplines of paleontology and paleocology have repositioned themselves, adapting their data and techniques to exploring the development of life on other worlds, and essentially merging into the burgeoning disciplines of xenoecology and xenobiology.

Rexxus is a holdout. He loves dinosaurs, and wants to share his love of dinosaurs with a new generation—a generation that he hopes will reclaim Earth. In the meantime, he is large and in charge, a valued eccentric and minor celebrity in the Martian social scene and respected academic.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	20	14	23	20	38	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	2	42	8	84	65	13	75

Morph: Tyrranosauroid biomorph

Skills: Academics: Paleoecology 75, Academics: Paleontology 80, Art: Performance 50, Beam Weapons 35, Deception 55, Fray 66, Free Fall 60, Impersonation 55, Infiltration 66, Infosec 55,  Interests: Dinosaurs 66, Interests: Teaching 50, Interfacing 40, Kinetic Weapons 50, Language: Native English 80, Language: German 75, Language: French 44, Negotiation 65, Networking: Hypercorps 40, Networking: Scientists 40, Perception (Smell) 66, Profession: Paleontologist 77, Profession: Teacher 66, Unarmed Combat (Bite) 70

Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Bioweave (Heavy), Claws (on feet, non-retractable), Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Respiration, Enhanced Smell, Hand Laser, Temperature Tolerance

Advantages: Bite attack (1d10 DV, use Unarmed Combat skill), Heavy tail provides +20 to any Physical skill tests where balance is a factor

Disadvantages: Limited articulation and grip strength on forearms (-20 to any Physical skill test requiring forearms); mass and size limit travel and habitat options; overall physical difficulties requires customized equipment and assistance in getting dressed, etc.

Traits: Pain Tolerance (Level 2), Tough (Level 3)

Using Rexxus

There is little practical reason to be a tyrannosaurus rex in Eclipse Phase…but then Rexxus is not a terrible practical individual, a proponent of a dying academic discipline and an ardent supporter of the need to reclaim the planet Earth. Because of the rarity of his expertise, Rexxus is one of the few people that the PCs can go to if they encounter an Earth fossil or critter possibly recreated from fossil DNA—he’s the best in the system, and more than willing to practice his skills; he probably also has the contacts needed to sell such rarities, though he’d prefer to see them in a museum... More likely, PCs on Mars may get to meet Rexxus if their adventures put them in contact with groups that want to reclaim or recolonize the planet Earth.