334: Filtermouth

ENTRY 334: Filtermouth

When you get enough transhumans in a confined space, air quality quickly becomes an issue. Yet transhumanity has had to deal with issues of air recycling and filtering for hundreds of years, and nearly every habitat designed to host biomorphs has considerable systems in place to ensure proper air quality - oxygen levels, gas mixture, particulate levels, humidity, temperature, everything worked out ahead of time. Maintence schedules were built around regular cleaning, filter changes, and repair to ensure continuous use for decades of regular use. However, many habitats - particularly scum barges - have never seen anything like "regular use." Overpopulated, understaffed, and ill-equipped with replacement and repair parts; faced with unexpected strain from industrial gas emissions and delayed maintence, many smaller habitats are a kludge of "temporary" repairs and 3D-printed parts on seriously over-worked stations. Many scum barges in particular have poorly-ventilated zones and regular "bad air days" when part of the system is taken offline to conduct emergency maintenance, forcing resident transhumans to make do with filtermasks or portable air supplies, and many habitats in the Main Belt are noted for their low air quality and pollution.

Filtermouth bioware implants were designed as affordable, limited-action toxin filters in response to low air quality; unlike mechanical air filters which eventually need replacing or recharging, the filtermouth uses a unique self-flushing mechanism to cleanse itself of particulates. While not a complete solution - the manufacturers suggest coupling the augmentation with an oxygen reserve or respirocytes for low-oxygen areas - the filtermouth can effectively block toxins and bioparticulates (particularly mold spores, fecal matter, and airborne bacteria and viruses), considerably improving the user's quality of life.

Feedback on the filtermouth has been mixed, however. The changes to the structure of the nose, mouth, and throat make some basic transhuman activities like speaking, kissing, and oral sex almost impossible, though some transhumans have replaced their tongue with smaller, longer tongues that partially alleviate these issues. The Europan Choir in particular has slightly modified filtermouths that accomodate the different gas mixture used at their depth, and uses a modified throat-singing technique to astounding effect. Other habitats that have gone over to filtermouths out of necessity are strangely quiet, with most vocal communication having been replaced by Mesh-based communication and messaging.

Mechanics

Filtermouths are a bioware implant that modify and partially replace the user's mouth, nose, and throat, adding in a series of biological filters that trap and drain off the majority of particulates and potentially hazardous materials. They function identically to toxin filters (Eclipse Phase 305-6), but only for airborne pollutants. The filtermouth augmentation blocks use of the tongue unless the user opts for a cosmetic augmentation (Trivial cost) for a narrower, longer tongue. The cost of the filtermouth implant is Trivial.

Seed

• Filtermouths have been mandatory on the Manitou scum barge for six years after a partial failure of the air filtration system. All new biomorphs on the station have to have them installed, with the station authorities underwriting the cost of the implant and surgery. However, a crusading blogger believes that air quality in the station has actually been breathable for the last two years, and that hypercorp interests have kept the filtermouth installations in place as part of a long-term, subsidized social experiment in what a society without speech would develop as. Unfortunately, the blogger died (not so mysteriously - a robotic elephant stepped on him during the middle of a sex vacation) and their research data has been dead-dropped in the PC's laps. Will the PCs uncover the truth, or use it as blackmail material?

333: Private Mode

ENTRY 333: Private Mode

"How much do you trust your muse? How much do you trust yourself?"
- Jovian dissident

Transhumanity is long past the age where thought-police are mere allegory and hyperbole. In many habitats, the Panopticon is here, where every biomorph can breathe in a nanosensor every six seconds, where every online search is traced and recorded, and all the hypercorp-manufactured augmentations and morphs dutifully send back regular feedback that can be used to model and identify consumers and their habits, to be repackaged and sold to any bidder. In the Jovian Republic, some of the more repressive habitats have even taken to extreme step of assigning government-crafted muses to citizens, as part of a standardization service to assure that everyone can take part in government and receive their due benefits...and, of course, to report on any concerning behavior to the proper authorities.

It is in such an atmosphere that Jovian dissidents created the Private Mode app - a quick add-on popular with more than just the paranoid few in the Jovian Republic. When activated, the app temporarily deactivates the user's muse and buffers the ego's short-term memory through their cortical stack, sending the memories to a new fork instead of allowing them to pass into long-term memory or story. When the app is deactivated, the user is left unable to remember anything that occurred while Private Mode was activated, as the memories are stored on the fork instead - and often encrypted for greater safety. This does not offer full protection to the user (and thus remains nominally legal under Jovian Republic laws), since authorities can still hypothetically track any of their Mesh activity, it does create a legal loophole where the ego that performed any actions during the use of Private Mode is the fork - the main ego has no idea what they did. This allows many egos to pass lie detectors quite easily, as well as dispense with critical evidence at the expense of their own memories.

Using Private Mode

Retrograde amnesia and blackouts with lost time are bullshit plot devices that gets far too much love and affection. However, the ability to selectively induce such states is more interesting - and a good way to bring these old tropes into play in your Eclipse Phase game without any other handwaving. While this is a fun tool for gamemasters - including the old carrot of "You wake up with no memory of the last 10 hours but there's a bracelt on your wrist with a digital timer that seems to be counting down." - it should also be seen as an interesting item for player characters to muck about with. Private Mode could be a key part in a planned robbery, for example, or they might be trying to infiltrate an Exsurgent cult and need to get past the telepath, where their thoughts really would betray them. One of the key things to remember about Private Mode is that it only functions for a set period - so if, for example, Firewall had wanted the PCs to infiltrate the exsurgent cult, they would have needed to find a non-obtrusive way to get them to turn on Private Mode without leaving any memory clues that the telepaths would pick up, then give them the briefing and set things up from there. It's a trope that gives a tricky, confusing plot - but then, that's the whole point.

Seed

• Someone is attacking one of the PCs - clearing out their credit accounts, torching all their safe houses, alienating friends, giving their ex's their new number - generally making their life a living hell. It seems like the PC's new enemy knows all their secrets - but it might just be that they know secrets even the PCs don't know. It turns out that one of their Private Mode forks has been captured by a hacker - the character's own cortical stack is now their own worst enemy, and they'll have to find a way to deal with an enemy that has a captive ego that thinks just like they do.

332: Jimbot

ENTRY 332: Jimbot

"Love? Does not compute. Same time next week?"
-Jimbot and the Regular

The psychological transition of resleeving from a biomorph to a synthmorph isn't always smooth. Most transhumans have in imperfect understanding of the process to begin with, and early resleevings in particular tended to be jarring, with no perceived time lapse between one sleeve and the next. Faced with trying to reconcile self-image against current circumstances, some egos develop delusions to deal with the new reality of their situation.

Jimbotron "Jimbot" Mandroid is a transhuman synth that believes he is a robot, such as populated classical science fiction in the early post-industrial era on Earth. The delusion is durable, but otherwise seems fairly harmless - most of Jimbot's friends, coworkers, and lovers consider it a quirk or eccentricity. A few authorities have insisted on psychological evaluation and counseling, but most analysts and therapists agree that Jimbot is generally no more likely to cause harm than any other transhuman, and perhaps less since he believes he has built in moral and ethical programming he must follow.

Before resleeving, Jimbot was a union leader, working with local workers as a negotiator with management, and particularly noted for his strong belief in "worker buy-ins," where the employees were part-owners of the operating capital of the company. After becoming a "robot," Jimbot shifted his focus to AGI advocacy, standing up for artificial intelligences and their rights, representing them before employers and worker counsels, serving as a parole officer, and other such support rolls.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
8	8	8	15	12	20	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
4	1	40	8	80	40	8	60

Morph: Synth

Skills: Academics: History (Robotics) 20, Academics: Law 14, Academics: Psychology (Group) 17, Art: Singing 9, Deception (Pokerface) 15, Interests: AGIs 25, Interests: Gambling 20, Interfacing 16, Intimidation 16, Language: Native English 75, Language: Polish 46, Networking: Criminals 15, Networking: Hypercorps 10, Networking: Union 18, Persuasion (Negotiation) 25, Profession: Advocate 25, Protocol 25, Unarmed Combat 13

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cosmetic Modification (multiple little hidden compartments and doo-dads with cigarette lighters, screwdriver finger tips, small concealed speakers, buttons that activate "sleep mode," etc.)

Mobility System: Walker (4/20)

Traits: Armor (6/6), Mental Derangement (Delusion - Is A Robot), Social Stigma ("AGI," Clanking Masses), Uncanny Valley

Using Jimbot

Classical science fiction was never meant to be an actual prognostication of the future, and yet for centuries transhumanity has lingered over the image of phallic-shaped spacecraft of spun steel, intelligent humanoid robot slaves, and solar empires of crystal cities inhabited by toga-wearing Aryans flying about with rocket packs and washing down their food pills with bourbon. Some of that has actually come to pass, though not as anyone might have imagined it at the time they were writing, but the dream lives on - and continues to do some considerable damage to vulnerable transhuman psyches. Jimbot is one such victim, playing out the quirky robotic humanoid. Beneath the jovial, blue-collar surface though, Jimbot is prone to long periods of despondency, fits of rage, and sometimes gets confused about what he as a robot can or should do. The episodes always pass, but can be quite shocking when someone sees Jimbot lose shit. Gamemasters can choose to use Jimbot as anything from a quirky extra from Futurama to a thought-provoking look at what it means for someone trying and failing to grasp what it means to be transhuman. As a contact, Jimbot has inroads in both the unions and AGI rights groups, and could be an ally or an enemy of the player characters depending on how they side in a dispute with either group.

331: Revaunchists

ENTRY 331: Revaunchists

"The memories are dim for some of you. To move under an open sky, without a breather. The scents and sounds of millions of people, living and working together. The certain knowledge that you could walk forever, without checking your power or oxygen levels. To swim in warm oceans and cold rivers. This is not the world we left behind. When we left Earth to its new masters, it was a world of poisoned skies and burning waters. What I ask of you today is to reach back before the Fall, to hold onto the memories of Earth as it was - and will be again. We fight today not for the Earth we left behind, but the Earth we will build again. Before that happens, we will have to wade through oceans of blood, but I promise you - it is worth it. Navigator, set the course. Home."
- General Kalpa, Commencement of the Antarctic Campaign

Reclamationists want to return to Earth. The Revaunchists are actively trying to reconquer it. Considering the Planetary Consortium as having abandoned the struggle and Reclaimers as being too passive in their efforts to return, the Revaunchists are a small guerilla army actively engaged in planning the return to transhumanity's home planet, gathering intelligence and undertaking scouting missions and occasional raids. To most in the Planterary Consortium, they are dangerous outlaws antagonizing with enemies that transhumanity is still unable to defeat, and extremists that value immediate action over long-term, considered strategies that might give better results. If anyone outside the organization had any clue as to their real intentions and capabilities, the Revaunchists would probably be seen as madmen and put down before their plans could be put into effect.

The Revaunchists are organized in a cell structure, and their history fades hazily into the paramilitary groups that were in responsible for the rampant global insurrections prior to the Fall. Their most notable leader and spokesperson is General Jules Kalpa, formerly a major Reclamationist on Vo Nguyen who proved too extreme. A skilled military strategist Kalpa is developing a coordinated, comprehensive military strategy to reconquer Earth - and to lead by example, her cell has participated in multiple bloody "test strikes," including the disastrous but inspiring Antarctic Campaign of AF 8, where her platoon managed to maintain a position on Antarctica for 93 days before local opposition caused her to order an organized bug-out, covering their retreat with a low-orbital bombardment. Total casualties were reported as 103 morphs lost out of an initial strength of 120 and 52 egos lost, but restored from forks held in orbit; survivors of the campaign claim as many as 17 of those "egos lost" were missing in action or left behind during the retreat. Rumors suggest that Kalpa and the Revaunchists may be in contact with - and even supplying - ongoing guerrila groups still extant on Earth, though the Planetary Consortium denies the existence of these groups, and claims little evidence on the continued existence of transhumanity on the surface of the planet.

Objective outside observers note that the Revaunchists and their supporters believe in a number of questionable theories regarding the surviving exsurgent and TITANs forces that occupy Earth, with the most prominent being that belief that an intact Pandora Gate exists on the planet. Most intelligence services that have any knowledge of the group believe that the long-term Revaunchist strategy lies in either driving the enemy forces back through the Gate with a sustained assault, or else locating it and cutting them off from it. Without resupply and reinforcement, Kalpa believes that the remaining forces will be vulnerable and eventually succumb.

Using Revaunchists

The call of Earth is a powerful theme for an adventure or a campaign, but it is not exactly a common one in Eclipse Phase. Earth is inhospitable to life, poisoned, damaged, and still crawling with monsters. It could be the work of decades of warfare to clear out the remaining TITANs and their creations, and centuries to undo the damage - and even then, there is a good case that Earth as it was will never be the same, too much of its biodiversity lost, its cycles too broken. Against this difficulty, exploring the Pandora Gates and the prospect of colonizing Mars and Titan and Venus seem much more enticing. So, having abandoned Earth, many transhumans are content to leave it - but not all. The Revaunchists are a group actively at work to retake the Earth, the most extreme branch of the Reclamationists and willing to put morph and ego on the line to gather the critical data and perform the suicidal missions - all good fodder for player character backgrounds or adventures.

Seed

• Alamein Al-Hussein abandoned the Revaunchists after the Antarctica Campaign, dismayed at the sacrifices that Gen. Kalpa was willing to endure just to gather data or prove a point. Yet his brother Khem is still under Kalpa's spell, and is preparing for a "reconnaissance in force" on a fortified site outside the ruins of Mecca. Alamein asks the PCs to rescue his brother before his efforts at heroics see him captured, dead, or worse.

330: Mundihof

ENTRY 330: Mundihof

"We are not a confederation, or a corporation. We are a community. Now git off my rock."
- Mama Yulia, Holder of the Nuke

An extensive beehive habitat with a population somewhere north of 10,000 transhumans, the Mundihof Collective are burrowed in to 48 Doris, one of the largest asteroids in the Main Belt. Most visitors mistake Mundihof for an anarchist enclave, but the truth is something stranger: 1,013 politically autonomous entities, each with a distinct geographical territory defined by their artificial cavern or caverns, mined out of the native rock and connected by a spiderweb of interlocking tunnels and politically neutral community areas subject to collaborative upkeep. Each "hof" currently consists of no more than 13 members, and engages each of its neighbors in complex political and economic agreements concerning trade, rights of way, tariffs and tolls, mutual cooperation, etc. Most of the Mundihof residents are stringent Autonomists, with a few being isolationists that are virtually brinkers, and the point of the habitat is to foster cooperation between small groups, while retaining their particular customs, art, and language, thus avoiding the dilution of cultures.

Of course, given the stringent self-centeredness that characterizes each hof, mutual cooperation with regards to the outside world and keeping the peace is a difficult balance. The former is handled by the Stadtholder, a perpetually interim political body/secret police that deals with outside threats on a case-by-case basis; the latter is handled by the Covenant of Mutually Assured Destruction - each of the hofs is possessed of a nuclear weapon of some kind, and violence between hofs is forbidden under penalty of their use - which in turn would lead to further reprisals, further uses of weapons, etc. Current estimates suggest that in the event of a nuclear exchange, the entire Mundihof habitat would be destroyed within thirty seconds. Even so, the various citizens of the hofs like to bicker and bargain and try to gain advantage over each other; it's pretty much the local pasttime.

Mundihof is mostly self-sufficient, with no individual hof having the resources or population to dominate any of the others to a considerable extant, and community resources like waste management, power generation, and air quality are generally handled by committees of the nearest hofs. Large-scale industry and agriculture is out, but among the thousand-plus hofs are hundreds of small specialist workshops that specialize in various individual crafts and crops. Tourism is quite popular on Mundihof, with several Mesh-based travelogues remarking on the ability to travel through three or four culturually and politically distinct mini-habitats in an hour (depending on local border travel agreements), and likening the experience to parts of Europe on old Earth. A transhuman could dine on reconstituted kelp wraps in Nizima, get a hand-carved cicatrix in Algeb, and finish off the night in a swing-hostel on Bryn Mawr, listening to the chorister-miners chink away at the rock. A few of the hofs are experimenting with their own currencies, but at the moment they accept credit as the universal currency, and when that isn't available simply resort to @-rep.

Using Mundihof

It remains to be seen if the great experiment of Mundihof will work out, end in a blaze of nuclear fire, or eventually consolidate into a single habitat or confederation. Only time will tell. In the meantime, player characters can have the run of the vast network of caverns and all of the strange, idiosyncratic mini-countries that inhabit them. Given the laughably small size of each hof, the player characters will probably present a considerable influence block in their own right just by showing up, and their actions can have a serious impact on local politics and economics. Some PCs might even get it in their head to start their own hof, which if the gamemaster is willing is perfectly fine with the Mundihof - all they need is to carve out a cavern, obtain a nuke, and start dealing with their neighbors. Empire-building isn't for every game though, and whether they set up shop on Mundihof or not the Stadtholder might have a use for the player characters to see to external threats - aggressive hypercorps, Planetary Consortium and Jovian Republic reps, and scumbarge pirates are just some of the problems that need to be dealt with, and trying to herd the hofs into acting together is more difficult than herding cats in zero gravity without a mass driver.

Seed

• A terrible event: the hof of Niven has discovered that someone has stolen the radioactive material from their nuclear weapon! Now defenseless before their neighbor/enemies, the Nivenites quietly feel out the PCs to steal the material from another hof's weapon. The PCs can set out their plans, and if they succeed they find out that the target hof's nuke also lacks nuclear material! At this point, one of the Stadtholder shows up to explain that both weapons were disarmed to prevent their use - since only the threat of nuclear weapons is necessary to keep the peace. If the PCs agree to continue the illusion, the Stadtholder will pay for their silence and give them fake nuclear materials with which to satisfy the Nivenites.

329: Shiftmorph

ENTRY 329: Shiftmorph

"Haven't you always wanted to be a car? And have sex with another car?"
- Laughably Bad, stand-up comedian and shiftmorph spokesperson

Transhumanity has tried to create working robots that emulate the classical transhuman form for centuries, and for centuries it failed, because of lack of knowledge of transhuman biophysics and insufficiently advanced technology. So for decades the state of the art in robotics were wheeled constructs, many-legged shamblers based on more stable spider and quadruped designs, even rollers, swimmers, and an endless assortment of flying drones. By the time transhumans did perfect humanoid robots they had a vast array of robots, thousands of designs with every means of mobility imaginable, and transhumans gladly piloted all of them remotely. Yet when the leap was finally made to resleeving into early synthmorphs, relatively few transhumans expressed any interest inhabiting a six-wheeled all-terrain low-gravity vehicle, preferring the more familiar case and synth morphs. So non-humanoid synthmorphs remain a minority.

Yet, there is a middle way - shiftmorphs, which are designed to change both their function an appearance between specific modes. The most common shiftmorph version transforms between a humanoid mode similar to a synth and a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle mode. Each mode has its inherent advantages and disadvantages - humanoid mode has hands and can climb, all-terrain wheeled vehicle is faster, etc. Other shiftmorphs are designed with different or additional modes, such as quadrupeds (often sculpted to mimic a specific animal), arachnoids, jellybots, flight-capable drones, and even mundane equipment - very later in the conflict with the TITANS some hypercorps experiments with synthmorphs that transformed into static artillery emplacements, though relatively few were fielded in actual combat.

Shiftmorph Stats

Shiftmorphs are synthmorphs. The most common shiftmorph has two modes: a humanoid form almost identical to to a typical Synth, and a vehicular form that resembles and functions as a small, one-occupant all-terrain wheeled vehicle.

Enhancements: Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Mnemonic Augmentation, Shiftdesign (2 mode)

Mobility System: Typically Bipedal Walker (4/16) or All-Terrain Wheeled (8/32)
Aptitude Maximum: 30

Durability: 30

Wound Threshold: 6

CP Cost: 30

Credit Cost: Expensive

Shiftdesign: This robotic enhancement allows the morph to transition to a different mode, such as humanoid, quadruped (cat), quadruped (horse), flying drone, motorcycle, etc. Each mode uses the same attributes, though mobility mode may change; players should work with the gamemaster to determine exactly what the characteristics of the new mode are, keeping in mind that the morph never gains or losses mass with the transformation - so a 60kg humanoid morph that shifts into a cat mode will still mass 60kg, and will be larger than a housecat. A character can have two different modes which are functionally identical but cosmetically different - some synthmorphs enjoy the ability to transform into something resembling a case or another shiftmorph to confuse others about their identity. This robotic enhancement is typically a design mod, but is also available as an aftermarket modification, though it requires extensive design (or redesign) of the synthmorph to transition between different modes. Each new mode requires a separate shiftdesign mod. Shiftdesign is incompatible with the Swarm Composition enhancement. Changing modes requires a Complex Action.[Expensive]

328: Heracles

ENTRY 328: Heracles

"There is no place for gods anymore."
- Heracles, catchphrase

In a time when a transhuman can change their bodies and minds, when Earth and all its nations are lost, when the old religions and ethnicities begin to fade against the new cultures forming, many egos become lost in themselves; lost in the transience of life and frozen by the endless possibilities open to them even as some of the building blocks of their identities disappear they seize on whatever they can - and if they cannot be themselves, then sometimes they become someone else. These are emotional victims of the Fall, unable to cope with their own pasts they redefine themselves into personas that can.

One of the fixtures of Olympus habitat on Mars is Heracles; a hulking biomorph who claims to be the immortal demigod from Greek and Roman myth. Nobody really believes him, but he is entertaining, never breaks character, and always puts on a good show for the tourists. For the price of a few drinks he will gladly show anyone around the habitat, to all the good bars and places of secret beauty and forgotten history, some of which might actually be real.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
10	12	14	15	20	50	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
5	1	30	6	60	20	3	40

Morph: Unique Biomorph

Skills: Academics: History (Greek) 75, Academics: Mythology (Greek) 85, Academics: Linguistics 15, Academics: Philosophy 15, Art: Sculpture 15, Art: Singing 15, Climbing 25, Clubs 50, Fray 40, Free Fall (Microgravity) 25, Interests: Alcohol 35, Interests: Olympus 50, Interests: New Religions 35, Interests: Wrestling 35, Interests: Xenocults 35, Language: Native Greek 99, Language: Latin 75, Language: English 65, Networking: Media 15, Profession: Tour Guide 25, Protocol 15, Scrounging 16, Unarmed Combat (Wrestling) 67

Enhancements/Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts
Disadvantages: Mental Disability (Delusion - Hercules)

Using Heracles

The exhuman ego that thinks it is Heracles has gone to considerable trouble to embrace its persona, and it's body reflects that: a muscle-bound biomorph with the proportions of a Classical Grecian statue. Dedicated to his role, Heracles will seek to prove his status by telling stories and performing feats of tremendous strength. Continued efforts to undercut these displays or prove him wrong will make him angry, and then morose, at which point he will drink until he blacks out, then wake up and continue on as if nothing has happened. As an NPC, Heracles is probably best used as a quirky local to add color to Olympus and provide some comedy or pathos as appropriate to the scene, and as a contact with their finger on the pulse of the habitat. Heracles is too mentally broken to hold grudges, and stupid enough for PCs to trick him into doing their dirty work by playing along to his delusions (say, by pretending to be mythological figures themselves), so will likely only be an ally or enemy for brief periods of time.

Seeds

• A woman named Megara Milogiannis approaches the PCs. She claims that Heracles is her husband - estranged and lost in his delusion after the Fall, when a TITAN strike destroyed their home and family. Megara claims their children's egos were preserved as archives, but she needs her husband's access code to access them. Can the PCs work through Heracles' delusion? Should they? Is Megara even telling the truth, or does she want Heracles' cooperation for some other purpose?
• An industrial accident caused part of Olympus' internal structure to collapse. Heracles was drinking nearby and raced to the scene and helped rescue morphs trapped in the rubble, but was caught in a slip and now is paralyzed from the waist down. The despondent self-proclaimed demigod, who lacks the resources to get the damage healed, calls on the player characters to put him out of his misery, so that his spirit can go to the Elysian Fields. What do the PCs do?
• One of the peculiarities of Heracles is that he wears only a strange furry hide for clothing, along with sandals and, on special occasions, boxer shorts. A visiting archaeobiologist from Titan has recognized the hide as belonging to a supposedly long-extinct lion species, and asks the PCs for a sample. Heracles refuses - unless the PCs can best him in a wrestling contest. If they win, they get the hide; if they fail, they have to fulfill a trial of Heracles' choice...starting with his community service to clean out the sanitation ducts on Olympus' lower level.

327: The Maas Gate

ENTRY 327: The Maas Gate

"The Pandora Gates are a universe in and of themselves; each is obviously based on the same technology, but each is also unique, yet there are no indications that one was made before the other, with no indications of refinement or development. Even the basic materials they are made of could have been made a million years ago or yesterday. Each is also complete into itself, a whole unit...except for the Maas Gate."
- Prof. Brainbug, impromptu lecture at Titan Autonomous University

The Maas Gate was discovered and claimed late in AF 9 by Kalen Maas on Tethys, buried in centuries-old ice. It was recognized early on as technology of a piece with the Pandora Gates, but with crucial differences - smaller, with a simpler interface, and partially damaged as evidenced by a sixteen centimeter burn mark on the edge of the outer torus. Kalen quickly incorporated as Maas Laboratories, and has begun construction of a new laboratory facility to study it; meanwhile the Maas Gate is kept and studied in a high-security laboratory leased from Godwinhead and originally designed for dealing with radioactive samples.

By design or damage, experimentation with the Maas Gate has shown it does not operate identically to existing gates. The gate torus is small, only twenty-eight centimeters inner diameter. There is a wormhole effect, but no means to input an address. The effect itself only remains stable for 2.4 seconds, and puts out so much electromagnetic noise that telemetry from probes is often lost or corrupted. What came as a real surprise is that 11.2 seconds after the gate effect collapses, it spontaneously activates again and ejects an object with near-identical mass to any that passed through the prior gate episode at a velocity of 4.6 m/s, often accompanied by an "exhalation" of gases. These "exchange masses" are always alien objects which are of sufficient dimensions to fit through the torus and within 3 grams of the mass of the initial mass, none of which have ever been recovered.

So far "exchange objects" have included micrometeorites, metal fragments, partially fossilized extraterrestrial gastropod-analogue shells and exoskeletons, a single gold-coated alnico magnet with considerable intermetallic buildup, a lightly radioactive saline/heavy water solution, and a glass tube filled with neutral gasses and inscribed with a series of lines of different thicknesses and depths. The nature of this quid-pro-quo exchange and the complete randomness of the "exchange mass" has led to both considerable theorizing about the purpose of the Maas Gate and, almost inevitably, gambling. The "lottery" method of testing with the Maas Gate has proven popular with researchers, who simply drop input masses through and receive the exchange mass for study - and many of the results are posted directly to the Mesh, where bookmakers like Maas Roulette can bet on the nature of the outcome.

The current popular theory, supported by the little sensor data relayed from probes sent through the gate-device, is that the Maas Gate hooks in to a storage and exchange system set up by the gatebuilders to facilitate communication. The only slightly-less-popular theory is that the Maas Gate is an intelligence test, and that the more crap transhumans drop through the gate the greater the likelihood that whatever comes out is going to be dangerous enough to destroy everything. Maas Labs has already limited the mass of input objects to no more than 1 kilogram, ostensibly to minimize the possibility of receiving highly unstable heavy elements in quantity, and the countermeasures have been set up to hopefully contain any alive xenobiological material or active nanoinfections that might pass through.

Using the Maas Gate

Using the Maas Gate in a game directly is tricky; although PCs could gear themselves up as micromorphs (entry 282) and maybe go exploring with no guarantee of return. Instead, the Maas Gate will primarily be used in the form of the exchange objects that it outputs, which are perfect macguffins for most games and at 1 kg +/- 3 g are eminently transportable and valuable. Concerns about the nature and purpose of the gate are real, and the internal politics at Maas Labs regarding the cavalier "lottery" approach can get quite heated, and may cause some parties to involve the PCs in one fashion or another - staging a break in to underline the need for greater security, etc.

Alternately, the gamemaster may decide that the Maas Gate is a fake, a clever prop whose properties are replicated with stage illusion and carefully planned demonstrations in front of scientists. The electromagnetic noise, the light show, the puff of smoke or gas that just happens to hide the object the moment it emerges, the inability to get good sensor data - all possible elements of an elaborate hoax. If this is the case, then Kalen Maas will laugh all the way to the bank, provided they can find someplace far enough to run when the scheme is exposed.

326: Soma Fruit

ENTRY 326: Soma Fruit

The genetic codes for opium, tobacco, coca, coffee, and marijuana have been in the public domain for a long time, and the basic mechanisms for the production of caffeine, nicotine, morphine, codeine, cocaine, and cannabinoids are so well known that genescript kiddies have pre-written programs to help them hack together chimera plants that produce the drugs they want in the quantity they want. Hypercorp genetic engineers and drug artists tend to focus on more obscure plant and animal species, and instead of crude script-kiddy software splicing coca genes into space tomatoes they focus on taste, texture, consistent dosage, and aesthetic appeal.

At the consumer level, these drug-infused genetic chimera plants are known as soma fruit, covering everything from the bland "speedball cherries" (cherry tomatoes which codeine and cocaine) popular on Luna to the Superdark Chocolate (mildly hallucinogenic datura-cocoa beans) popular among hypercorp executives on Phobos and Extropia's trademark Munchies (cannabis-potato chips that stimulate appetite and cause mild euphoria). Given that there are no controls on genehacking beyond the technical difficulty involved, both independent and corporate genehackers are in a constant game of one-upmanship to produce the latest and greatest soma fruit, with occasional collateral damage in the form of overdosing customers. 

Mechanics

Soma fruit are generally recreational drugs (Eclipse Phase 320), most of which are based primarily on classical drugs (opiates, stimulants, and cannabinoids), just in combination and different forms - small fruit, chilies, edible tubers, flowers, etc. On the low end, these are functionally the same as Buzz, Mono No Aware, or Orbital Hash. Many soma fruit combine different drugs in their genetic makeup, or higher concentrations, and vary from toxic to the equivalent of speedballing to Grin and Kick at the same time and hoping your morph's heart doesn't explode. Since a full description of effects is impossible, gamemasters are suggested to use the drugs and effects in Eclipse Phase as a guideline - soma fruit tend to be cheaper, but more unpredictable. Players that want to make their own soma fruit can find starter software packages and open-source/public domain gene sequences available for free on the Mesh, they'll just need access to an appropriate kit or lab and a successful Skill Test (probably Interest: Gene Hacking) to design and produce a handful of seeds - actually growing the plants will take time.

Using Soma Fruit

There are good reasons why certain drug-producing plants have been perrenial favorites throughout transhuman history: access, abundance, and effectiveness. However, the advent of genehacking and the trans-Solar Mesh has made the production of classical drugs ridiculously simple and ubiquitous - at the point when anybody can do it (local lows and resources permitting), transhumans in search of a new and better drug experience will turn to effervescent chimeras that promise them novelty. Soma fruit are popular among DIY autonomists and hypercorp wageslaves alike, from the junkie that will consume anything to the drug gourmand that demands only the finest chemical high. For all practical purposes, soma fruit are a way of showing off the difference and occasional casual decadence of the Eclipse Phase future, where re-engineering food to contain drugs is cheap and easy, but doing it well is a technical and artistic challenge.

325: Marin Buskovic

ENTRY 325: Marin Buskovic

“I went to sleep on Earth, I awoke to see the stars. Yet I knew I was in prison still. Only the cage had changed. Very well. I know prisons. They are not the end."
- Buskovic, post-hibernation interview

The first hibernoids were designed for sleeper-ships to the Outer Rim and beyond; explorers sleeping away the decades as they inched along at sub-light speeds. Exploration, however, could not account for the full cost of their development, and soon after other uses were looked at for these morphs - and found. "Sleeper prisons" enjoyed a brief vogue before the Fall as relatively cost-effective in terms of operating expenses and in some countries were considered relatively humane. Regrettably, the bulk of the sleeper prison populations are believed to have perished in the Fall, or in the months and years since as the automated systems failed and the hibernating prisoners starved or succumbed to infection in their sleep.

Yet not all the sleeper prisons were on Earth. Luna had one, as well as a few experimental orbital facilities and certain "hibernation brigs" on the oldest orbital habitats. With the fall of Earth and its political bodies, debate arose as to what to do with these prisoners. Most were woken up and released on their own cognizance or issued new trials; others were assessed as posing a danger and retained in their state, perhaps indefinitely; the Jovian Republic is said to have simply unplugged theirs and harvested the organs, though most experts consider that simple xenophobic libel.

Marin Buskovic was serving two life sentences in the Luna sleeper prison for a pair of murders he had committed, and opted for hibernation over regular prison. The authorities at the time of his trial had been unsympathetic - Buskovic had been a police officer, who had successfully solved the case of the marital kidnapping of a young woman and returned her to her true husband and family. Regrettably, the woman had been raped by her kidnapper, and her family considered her to have dishonored them with her "adultery" and killed her. Buskovic tracked down the men responsible and killed them in cold blood. In AF 6, as the debate about the sleeper prisons was the talk of Luna, the circumstances of Buskovic's case became a cause célèbre. An online petition for his release hit 1 million votes, and the Lunar authorities agreed to release him.

Now, Buskovic is a man out of time, still sometimes struggling with the world he finds himself in - his post-hibernation assessment shows that he still believes he is in prison, resulting in the retention of certain prisoner behaviors like stashing home-made weapons about and paranoia about inspects. Unwilling to trade on his temporary moment of fame, he supports himself as a freelance investigator and part-time law enforcement agent, with a reputation for "old school" solutions to problems.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
14	13	18	18	18	25	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	2	42	8	84	35	7	53

Morph: Hibernoid

Skills: Academics: Anthropology 25, Academics: Philosophy (Law) 40, Art: Graffiti 24, Art: Harmonica 20, Blades 36, Clubs 36, Deception 25, Fray 36, Free Fall 30, Gunnery 19, Impersonation 25, Infiltration 36, Infosec 25,  Interests: Pre-Fall Earth 66, Interests: Neo-Slavic Culture 24, Interfacing 20, Kinetic Weapons 60, Language: Native Ukrainian 80, Language: English 75, Language: German 44, Language: Russian 60, Negotiation 35, Networking: Autonomists 15, Networking: Criminals 25, Profession: Bodyguard 37, Profession: Lawman 36, Spray Weapons 55, Unarmed Combat (Subdual) 40

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Bioweave (Light), Circadian Regulation, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Hibernation, Medichines, Neurachem (Level 1), Toxin Filters
Traits: Mental Disorder (Delusion - Still in Prison, Paranoia)

Using Buskovic

Buskovic is a freelancer, but his sense of justice is stronger than his attachment to a particular employer or code of law. He particularly dislikes violence against women and children, but his somewhat archaic understanding of sex, gender, relationships, and technology mean he can sometimes misunderstand a situation - he still hasn't quite grasped the implications of Neotenic morphs and the Sex Change augmentation for example, and has taken to calling them "hermaphrodites," even when people correct him. Most of those who know him overlook this, as he means well and will break some noses for "hermaphrodites" that are being harassed. Player characters may run up against Buskovic in many contexts, but most probably when they're doing something illegal or in the pay of a criminal figure (even if the job itself is legal), or else he's extra muscle for a job provided by their employer. Buskovic is also a good moral ruler to illustrate the difference between contemporary understanding of social issues versus the acceptance or nullification of those issues in Eclipse Phase - a Neotenic morph out on a date with a Splicer and getting a little touchy-feely will have Buskovic reaching for his gun, for example.

324: Nuit Academy

ENTRY 324: Nuit Academy

Personal augmentation started with a relatively low acceptance rate, but once the commercial products hit reasonable levels of safety, conformity, and cost then development of new augmentations quickly outpaced the abilities of society to accommodate individual technologies. So, outside of some specialized habitats, few habitats are built, designed, or adapted with any specific personal augmentation in mind - catering to the special needs of those transhumans that preferred echolocation to visual sight, for example, took a back seat around the time of the Fall, when survival of the majority of transhumans took precedence over the wants and needs of the few. Some of the victims in this rush of technology and societal changes were the burgeoning secondary markets that tried to grow up around augmentation technology, only to fail when they couldn't keep up - or else adapt into something else.

The Nuit Academy is a survivor of those harsh market forces. Originally a school for the blind on Earth, Nuit specialized in fitting its students with echolocation prostheses and teaching them how to navigate by sound. The advent of reliable, cost-efficient cybereyes severely reduced their body of potential students, and the Nuit Academy reinvented itself and transitioned its curricula to train transhumans in the use of new sonar implants. However, "sensory acclimation schools" fell out of favor relatively quickly, as most transhumans could easily access equivalent courses on the Mesh and proper calibration of sonar augumentations during implantation rendered them more user-friendly. Faced once again with a shift in its core audience, the Nuit Academy abandoned its failing business and reoganized as a microskillware studio.

Subskills are extremely specific abilities which are too minor and incidental too merit full skillware; they are typically little more than collections of instinctive reactions and physical familiarization that few transhumans think twice about - and because of their seeming unimportance, subskills represent an untapped market that the majority of skillware producers have failed to develop, and the Nuit Academy has moved into the gap. Using a pay-as-you-go model with occasional ransomware projects, the neuroprogrammers of the Nuit Academy are the masterminds behind several popular subskill products such as Navigating by Sound, Chopsticks, Zero-Gravity Toilet Training, Whistling, and Tying Neckties. The genius of subskills is that while most of these activities have online tutorials and training that users can easily follow, downloading and installing microskills grants immediate mastery with none of the time, hesitation, or potential for embarrassment that comes from trial-and-error or missing a step in the directions.

Mechanics

Subskills are an option for characters with skillware implants. As noted, they cover a range of perfectly mundane minor skills that your character may never have needed and which are normally not the subject of a test (unless your gamemaster is particularly cruel). For example, a PC that has never been off the surface of Mars probably would not know how to use a zero-gravity toilet, and instead of trying to figure out the instructions while their guts are boiling simply downloads the subskill and gets to work. Anything that can be covered by an actual skill test, like playing a musical instrument or firing a pistol, is beyond the range of a subskill. Assume that all subskills are available for download and are free, and each takes up only 1 skill point in the skillware implant.

The only down side of subskills is that the character cannot familiarize themselves effectively with the actual task while the subskill is installed. So if a character installed a subskill to handle using chopsticks, they would cease to be able to handle chopsticks once it is uninstalled and would have to learn how to handle them the old-fashioned way. For this reason, many transhumans become somewhat dependent on certain subskills, although Mesh legends of parents that installed toilet training subskills in their pets or children and then never bothered to uninstall them are (probably) false...

Using Nuit Academy

The Nuit Academy are business people and programmers that try to understand the transhuman condition and make little programs that make life easier. To do this requires a fundamental understanding of the transhuman condition which is a difficult thing at a time when the bulk of society devotes its resources to the statistically average transhuman abilities. Originally developed to assisting those with disabilities and then those with personal augmentations, the Nuit Academy has transitioned to more generic fare to pay the bills, but as a group they still devote considerable resources to subskills aimed at help disenfranchized characters who because of their combinations of morph/augmentations and/or disabilities require some help at basic tasks, or those whose upbringing has left them deficient in some basic areas of transhuman knowledge, such as the brinker synthmorph that doesn't know how to apply a band aid to a biomorph or the over-nannied flat who never learned to brush their own teeth because they had a nanomouthwash for that. Most PCs probably won't be direct recipients of their skills except possibly from a flavortext angle, but NPCs might be very reliant on them.

Seed

• Many uplifts have basic difficulty adapting to transhuman body language, especially smiling - which many see as a form of threat display. The Nuit Academy markets a Smile Adaptor subskill specifically to address this, but there's been a bit of difficulty with it - three neo-hominids using the subskillware have died recently, and the Nuit Academy asks the PCs to investigate. The answer turns out to be rather straightforward, in that the software worked too well - the neo-hominids using it became so inured to smiling that they ignored threat displays from other hominids while smiling too much themselves, which ended up with them getting into fights they couldn't win.

323: Uno

ENTRY 323: Uno

"Oh fuck, I think I stepped on something."
- Fuckup; 34:256:11:29 remaining on on their sentence

A step through the Pandora Gate brought the 'crashers to an alien paradise garden. The air smelled like cinammon, with patches of bitter almond that turned out to be clouds of cyanide gas. The whole place moved; the carpet-critter scoured the ground for feces left by the undulating gasbag plant, leaving bioluminescent slime trails eagerly slopped up by the five-tongued starfish-snail. Nothing attacked the transhuman tresspassers; nothing seemed carnivorous. It was a weird ecosystem, and deserved a lifetime of study.

Until one of the gatecrashers accidentally stepped on a finger-crawler. Damage done, the team scraped it into a sample bag and took it back home, initial survey complete. Analysis of the finger-crawler showed signs of an engineered organism - immortal cell-lines, no recognizable reproductive capabilities, ridiculously specific digestive system, something that looked like a serial number encoded in base 13 under one gill-flap. Reviewing the recordings of the survey further reinforced this hypothesis; none of the analysts could see two of anything. Each creature appeared to be unique, with its own niche.

The subsequent team came back to a devastated ecosystem. Things were starving, dropped dead in their tracks. A whole section of the garden's food chain had broken down, critters starved or suffering from micronutrient deprivation, others overburdened and poisoned by waste products that they couldn't rid themselves of naturally. Emergency rescue measures met up against an ecological prime directive, but a last-ditch 24-hour Mesh campaign raised enough funds to overcome the eco-conservatives and at least make an effort to save as much of Uno's ecosystem as could be done.

As for the gatecrasher who killed the finger-crawler, their punishment was set for bid during the fund-raising campaign, and the winning vote was that their name be officially changed to "Fuckup" for a period of 35 years, with all traces of their former name being erased retroactively. Fuckup wasn't exactly contrite or cooperative with the sentence, but eventually submitted to psychosurgery under duress, and henceforth until time is up will be known as Fuckup.

Using Uno

Transhumanity has a nasty habit of unbalancing ecosystems; it's just rarely as blatant as what happened with Uno. That said, even with its dying ecosystem, Uno needs to be explored - there is every indication that this group of alien lifeforms was built, not naturally evolved, and there may still be evidence of the extraterrestrial sentients that created them around there somewhere. Likewise, gatecrashers are needed to help in the recovery efforts, bringing sick and starving critters back for treatment and study, then re-introducing healthy specimens along with feeders that approximate the functions of some of the lost critters. It's a weird world, and the xenoecologists want to keep it that way.

Seed

• Fuckup approaches the PCs, trying to hire them to recover their original name. The PCs will have to do some serious digging if they accept the job, and face a number of reasonable-sounding transhumans that will non-violently hinder them, as they believe in the justice of Fuckup's sentence.

322: Soulless

ENTRY 322: Soulless

"What am I now?"
- Harold Meson, after resleeving

Every transhuman believes in something that they can't see. Atoms, distant stars, the shadows on the cave, there is always something that they accept as existing, even if they haven't personally experienced it, or if they have seen it than not able to trust their senses. Even people who believe in scientific research and evidence have limited educations and perspectives; even the most critical have to accept some things, if not on faith, than as a matter of convenience. The true test of a transhuman's adherence to their beliefs is how they react when those beliefs are challenged. Some slip into denial, others try to rationalize it away, a few re-examine their beliefs and may even change them. Yet it is an individual process for every transhuman, something that everyone has to deal with on their own, in their own way.

Millions of transhumans still believe in the soul. Some attribute this to the core teachings and dogmas of religions old and new, others have a more vague notion of a spiritual self. The "invisible you" has gotten complicated in a time of resleeving, forking, and AGIs, and viewpoints on what these developments mean with regards to the concept of the soul have been multifarious and often divisive. Pseudoscience-cultists claim that the self is a form of meta-data, carried and copied and split between forks; most Catholics claim that the soul is tied to the physical body, and disapprove of resleeving and ego-manipulation; some Hindus and Buddhists claim resleeving is a form of realized reincarnation, though opinions are divided on the effects of this on karma. Yet it is one thing to espouse or study these beliefs and something else again to internalize and live them, to act on their certainty. So what happens when you resleeve a devout Catholic who believes the soul does not continue on past the death of their physical body?

The soulless are those transhumans who held - or sometimes, still hold - belief in the existence of the soul, and that it does not continue when an ego resleeves or forks. They are faced then with an intimate test of self and faith: what are they, that continues to think and feel and exist? Some adapt their beliefs to their new situation, and there are no shortage of sects of those in like situations willing to accept them. Others reject their old beliefs, and become rather lost in themselves and what to do as they explore outside their old paradigms. Some accept their status in stranger ways; the Jovian Republic is said to have a hospital with an entire ward of "living corpses" - transhumans that believe so firmly that they are dead, that they do not move or talk in any way. Most transhumans are unlikely to encounter those comatose victims of their own beliefs, but are likely to encounter the "walking corpses" - those individuals that think of themselves as just digital echoes, unnatural soulless things that continue to move and think and influence the world. Some rage at their status, the heaven or reincarnation they believe was denied to them; others accept that this is the only world they will know, and work to make of it a heaven. A few commit suicide, erasing themselves, unwilling to face existence without a soul.

Socially, soulless must deal with the relations with their old communities, families, and friends, many of whom probably held the same beliefs that they did before resleeving or forking. Some find acceptance, most face rejection, epecially in habitats and legal systems that do not recognize them as the same person - in an instance, the soulless lose their property, family, and social support network. New soulless often fall into the outskirts of their societies, where there exist predators designed for them - agents, career managers, and headhunters eager to guide them into indentured contract employment; communal property sects that seek to see to their emotional needs, but are little better in terms of not exploiting the talents of their members. A few manage to access enough old accounts to sustain themselves, or find their feet and build new lives for themselves.

Using Soulless

Science fiction is not about technology; sci fi is about the questions that arise from science, how new developments impact the human story. Eclipse Phase as a science fiction setting where these questions can be played out - and maybe your table finds the answers that work for them, or maybe they do not. The Soulless are a concept for players and gamemasters to employ if they want to explore elements of belief and transhuman ego technology. There is no right or correct way to play a Soulless, whether as a PC or NPC; the details of any character's beliefs regarding the ego and the soul are often unique to them. Most transhumans get along fine without asking those questions; materialists think the concept of the immaterial soul is ridiculous, or at least unprovable. Whatever the players or gamemasters personal beliefs, Soulless characters can be a great way to introduce these philosophical concepts to their game - although in both cases, GMs and players should beware of preaching their personal beliefs at the table. Remember, the point is to have fun, not to convert anybody.

321: Squire Maize

ENTRY 321: Squire Maize

“Water is mass, boy. Mass costs delta v. Mass costs money. You remember money, boy? Now that's why you want dehydrated food. Well lookie here what I got! An' if you want something to wash it down with..."
- Squire Maize, ramping up a pitch

"Dry" habitats have no local source of water, and so are required to carefully watch their local water economy and import new water at cost. Regulations for water conservation on such stations can range from the reasonable, like re-using grey water in hydroponics and limiting showers, to the laughable and terrible rules regarding rationing, mandatory water reclamation from corpses, a "water tax" for visiting morphs, etc. Perhaps most painful for the transhumans on the latter joyless stations are restrictions on the use of "water for entertainment purposes," which is usually understood to mean the creation of alcohol.

Squire Maize is an independent trader who works a circuit of mostly "dry" habitats, buying space on larger ships with his goods and then farcasting ahead to start dealing with the "natives." A good trip for him involves a profit, and he has a reputation among his customers for both thrift and skirting local regulations. In habitats with restrictions against distillation and wet making, for example, he tends to sell denatured alcohol as an industrial solvent - as well as a carbon wool "scrubber" which can act as a filter to remove the additive and provide drinkable alcohol. Well, most of the additive. Beggars can't be choosers. 

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
12	13	16	13	10	9	13	-

Morph: Infomorph

Skills: Academics: Chemistry 23, Academics: Economics 30, Art: Writing (Ad Copy) 25, Deception (Selling) 35, Infosec 26, Interests: Currency 24, Interests: Distilling 33, Interests: Great Merchants of History 45, Interfacing 27, Language: Native English 85, Language: German 75, Networking: Autonomists 25, Networking: Criminal 25, Networking: Hyperorps 23, Persuasion 28, Profession: Smuggler (Bootlegger) 25, Profession: Merchant 33

Traits: Social Stigma (AGI)

Using Squire Maize

While Eclipse Phase doesn't particularly focus on commerce, greed and desire are two of the main drives of transhumanity, and the people that feed those drives are often important. Squire Maize is a stock character: the traveling merchant who is always slightly shady and working on a new deal, with a rather straightforward motivation (profit). As a contact or occasional reoccurring NPC, Maize is the guy that can get what you need...or at least try to point you in the direction of the people that can get you what you need, as long as there's something in it for him. The Squire is refreshingly aware of his self-centeredness, and doesn't feel the need or desire to philosophize about it. Exactly what constitutes "a profit" varies, and clever PCs can convince Maize to uncommon deals or actions if they can explain it to his personal benefit.

Seeds

• Squire Maize has come to the habitat, and the authorities are watching him very closely. Fortunate, then, that Maize has hired the PCs to secretly act as his agents - while the authorities watch Maize and his perfectly above-board transactions, the PCs will take charge of the illicit cargo and carry out the transactions for a cut of the profit. It's the perfect scheme...as long as nobody gets too greedy.
• After selling some bad booze, Maize is in hiding from the irate customers he's poisoned. The PCs are asked to find him and exact restitution - and once the Squire realizes this is a negotiation, he's willing to make amends, as long as the PCs help him out on a side deal...
• Squire Maize rings up the PCs and offers a piece of equipment they've been wanting at a steep discount. However, there is a catch which the Squire doesn't disclose until after they've agreed to the deal: the goods are currently in the impound with the rest of Maize's goods that customs seized for mandatory quarantine after he was found moving some questionable biologicals. It'll take a few weeks to iron things out, but Maize was hoping to be gone before then - if the PCs could just help him cut through the red tape (and a few locks), then they can have their goods and Maize will be moving on.

320: Ego Keys

ENTRY 320: Ego Keys

"You are the key."
- Message from an Alpha Fork (Aswald Catallus, Bellagio Park Publishing, Luna, AF 9)

The security of any system is only as good as the security of its keys; all the lasers and sentient landmines and biometric-scanning urinal stations in the world are useless if the CEO chooses "GOD" as their personal password. While public key encryption is reasonably safe and secure for the majority of encryption purposes, some transhumans prefer a greater level of personal security and control, which led to the development of ego keys.

An ego key is a handful of specific memories that make up part of an ego and are used to encrypt data reserved for a single user. While still vulnerable to quantum codebreaking, no hacker can steal or copy the password to an ego key-encrypted file, since they are unique to a given ego and those of its forks which share the specific memories - or so they are advertised. Still, since each ego key is customized to a single user they retain a certain appeal to the paranoid and eccentric, and are often used for private archives, brain boxes, and secret accounts intended to be accessed only be forks if anything happens to the original ego.

Culturally, ego keys have a reputation as last year's fad in spy/thriller/amnesia media, inspired mainly by Message from an Alpha Fork and its tens of thousands of derivative works. In that story, a beta fork named Prophos awakens to itself after the alpha fork it was created from succumbs to a digital weapon, and finds that it is being sought out both by the Jovian Secret Police and the Counterintelligence Hypercorp Alliance Committee (CHAC) of the Planetary Consortium. Both groups believe that Prophos unknowingly possesses the ego key to a file, and Prophos (along with competing lovers Xia and Giles) must follow a series of clues left by their former self to find the program first. Message and its imitators are considered cliché now, but the fad caused a spike in the usage of ego keys that has not yet died off.

Using Ego Keys

Ego keys are storytelling tool to throw a slight wrench into the traditional story of a locked box/encrypted file. As a twist, it has the innate advantage in being a password that you can't beat out of someone, so there is less incentive to beat them. While it is occasionally fun to bypass a retinal scan by ripping out the security guard's eyeball, it is also interesting to have a game where killing, torturing, or mutilating a character is not in the best interests of the individuals involved since they need actual cooperation to get what they want. So ego keys are designed both to protect NPCs whom the PCs need to open a file, and vice versa. As an added twist, ego keys are another onionskin layer onto Eclipse Phase's material on forking and brain hacking. Whether or not a fork of an ego has the right memories to match the ego key depends on which memories were picked and how complete the fork is.

Seed

• Particularly secretive or paranoid egos back themselves up, create an ego key, and then delete themselves so that the backup continues on unaware of their status - until some preprogrammed condition causes the muse to alert them to the fact. This process is known as "hedging" and is generally more trouble than it is worth. So what does it say about the PCs when their muses pop up with a pre-programmed alert alerting them to the existence of a file encrypted by all of their ego keys...but getting to it requires following a series of clues that the character left for themselves. What did the PCs stash away together, and why are they being alerted to it now?

319: Dragoons

ENTRY 319: Dragoons

"We need boots on the ground."
- Brig. General D. Patscha, Last Martian Cavalry Regiment "The Red Boots"

In the past, some people thought that wars of the future would largely be fought remotely. Drones firing on drones, teleoperated vehicles and automated defense systems, planes and spacecraft raining death from above, fighter craft and battleships exchanging fire with enemies over the horizon, ballistic missiles fired between continents, mass drivers hurling rocks to crush targets on nearby moons, invisible lasers and masers flash-boiling enemies that never saw their death coming. It didn't turn out that way, though. The larger apparatus of war have their place, but the wars they were designed for were too terrible of conflicts, even before the Fall. Most of the battles in transhumanity's recent history have been meaner affairs, fought by those without uniforms, invisible forces maneuvering around each other, surfacing briefly only to instill terror with organized strikes. As once before, mobility was key, and transhuman judgment and intuition essential. Wars fought by soldiers, not just smart weapons and AIs. It only remained to find a way to get them there.

Dragoon forces developed during the Fall, pushing back against the TITAN forces on Mars and Venus. Developed out of necessity when there were no resources for proper drop ships, they took their inspiration from high altitude high opening (HAHO) military parachuting. The first drop suits were designed for emergencies on orbital stations, and slightly better ones for thrill-seekers; vacuum-sealed, built to take the heat of re-entry without cooking the occupant, with muse-guided smart parachutes to slow the fall down to something survivable. They say half of the first regiment broke their legs on their first jump Martian, flesh-and-blood knees unable to take the impact; the survivors got cyberlegs and were sent out again, dropped from orbit and falling behind enemy weapon emplacements, taking a position from an unexpected angle, too small for radar to detect. After the war, most of the dragoon groups broke up, with only a few small organizations remaining throughout the solar system, passing down their skills and refining their equipment. In these days, dragoon training is an unusual but valued skillset for mercenaries and security forces, as well as thrillseekers and extreme sport enthusiasts.

For practical purposes, dragoon operations are mainly restricted to Mars, Venus, and Mercury, because they have enough gravity to care about and enough atmosphere to work with. The other planets, minor planets, and major moons and asteroids either have no atmosphere - which means no terminal velocity, which means you will continue to accelerate all the way down - or are gas giants where you will continue to fall toward the solidified core until you are crushed by the increasing pressure. Mars and Mercury with their low atmosphere have higher terminal velocities, and the drop suits expand their parachutes' surface area to try and keep the dragoon's joints from popping when they hit the ground. Venus, of course, has a caustic atmosphere, and the trick there is to hit the ground slow enough to walk away but before it eats right through the parachute.

Mechanics

A low-orbital jump ("dragoon jumps") requires a success on a difficult (-10) Freefall Test; characters may take the "Parachute" specialty to improve their odds. Success means the character survives and only takes 1d10 damage on impact; failure means that something went wrong, and the character is both off-course for where they hoped to land and takes 2d10 damage. A critical failure indicates that the character's drop suit or parachute failed, and they take 10d10 damage. Drop suits are mechanically equivalent to a light vacsuit (Eclipse Phase 333) but the cost is Moderate due to the inclusion of a smartfabric programable parachute and additional thermal protection. Drop suits designed for operation on Venus are equivalent to hard suits (Eclipse Phase 334) but lack plasma thrusters.

Using Dragoons

Low-orbital jumps are a fun and cool scene to describe, with the PCs being fed pure oxygen from their suits and the altimeter ticking off in their ecto, the fall itself can last several minutes depending on how fast they're coming in and from how many kilometers out they're falling. That said, the physics majors are probably going to piss themselves at the raw numbers if they think about it too hard, so concentrate on the aesthetics rather than why the PCs haven't burst into flame and buried themselves in the ground yet. Dragoon jumps are there for when the PCs need to get to some place in an unexpected fashion, excellent for infiltration or if they lack a vehicle, or even as a kind of low-budget escape pod for the habitat or spaceship doing things on the cheap. As a regular mode of transportation, however, they leave something to be desired - even with the typical armor on a drop suit, they're probably going to take some damage. 

Seed

• Some of the first dragoons on Venus never landed; their chutes got caught up by a storm and carried on near-perpetual wind currents, the owners slowly starving to death. These "angels" are honored for their sacrifice, and it's been traditional for some of the dragoon veterans of the Venus campaign during the Fall to follow suit with a "sky burial." However, one veteran's association has discovered that some punks have caught one of the "angels" and are selling the bones and gear on Mesh auction sites - they hire the PCs to kidnap the offenders and take them on a dragoon jump, to see what it is they suffered through.