365: Greetings from the Future

ENTRY 365: Greetings from the Future

"Entry 000...Test...Transhumanity lives...already lived and died..."
- Luna archive, unknown transmission from Earth, 12:31:01:00:00 BF 1

"Entry 000: Test Item. Transhumanity lives in a universe where alien intelligences and civilizations have already lived and died, leaving behind remnants for them to paw through, analyze, and reverse..."
- TitanWiki entry on Test Item, published to the Mesh 12:31:01:00:00 AF 9

For the past year, researchers on Titan have identified bizarre similarities between recent entries to TitanWiki and a series of unsourced radio transmissions from Earth, archived at various receiver stations on Luna. Initially believed to be a case of copyright infringement or an elaborate prank, independent research has proved that the timestamps on all of the Luna archives appear to be authentic...and deep background checks of the contemporary authors of the entries show no connections to the recordings. What is more, the archived messages clearly deal with events, places, and transhumans that take place after the Fall.

The best theory for the mechanism involved is a closed timelike curve - a concept of theoretical physics that could allow information, even radio transmissions or possibly even physical travel back in time. The idea of such a time machine, usually using a ring laser to bend spacetime, is far from new to transhuman science. However, most physicists agree that a CTC would require either infinite power, a ring larger than the observed universe, or a singularity to be realizable. While the first two options remain unavailable, a few physicists have pointed out that the Pandora Gates do represent singularities - and while no one has yet attempted to construct a closed timelike curve with them, it would at least be theoretically possible.

While they do not agree on the nature of the phenomena, scientists have pinpointed the source of the transmissions: a "hot spot," just north of the Arctic circle, far away from previous transhuman settlements...perhaps an isolated research lab. No records remain of who might have built it, but obviously the site must have an independent power source, radio receiver and transmitter. Equally obviously, throughout the year the signal has been getting weaker, suggesting that the power source is gradually failing.

Using Greetings from the Future

Time travel is one of the great conceits of science fiction, because it poses one of the great questions: what if? Time travel can open up vast probabilities to player characters, with some interested in using it to go back and change things for the better, others looking to exploit it for their own gain, and more than a few who will start on about paradoxes. If the CTC device exists on Earth and is not a hoax, gamemasters will have to work out many of the details on their own - but here are a few things to remember.

The CTC device is built around a Pandora gate or equivalent artifact, and has been running apparently continuously for ten years. One characteristic of a theoretical CTC is that time travel before the date it was turned on would not be possible. If the first recorded transmission was in fact the first one, that means that a transhuman could potentially travel back to just before the Fall - to save a loved one, or archive material lost in the present so that it can be recovered in the future - provided that the CTC device is actually set up to allow physical travel; given power and space limitations, it might be restricted to radio broadcasts, but even that could allow important information and information to be transmitted into the past. Also, the CTC device is apparently failing. If it has been running autonomously since the Fall, then it is likely badly behind on basic maintenance and needs to be repaired, and the power source (probably an atomic battery, although geothermal, tidal, wind, solar power, or some combination might be possible) supplemented or replaced - because once the power fails, the window into the past closes. Likewise, the CTC would allow travel from the present into the past, but probably not the reverse - although combined with relativistic time travel (see entry 182), this could be less of an issue.

If nothing else, the Greetings From the Future make a great way to introduce other Farcast entries to your game.

Seed

• Firewall has detected a troubling possibility: the remnants of the TITAN forces on Earth may be aware of the CTC device. If they get their mechanical tentacles on it, the TITANs could theoretically transmit back important information on the future to their past counterparts - transforming the "defeat" of the TITANs into a tactical withdrawal. To remove this possibility, the PCs are equipped with a ship and as many weapons as they can hold. Their mission: destroy the time machine!

364: Gilgamikael

ENTRY 364: Gilgamikael

"What if I told you that everything you thought you knew was a lie? The popular story of the Fall is no more than that, a story - a myth as fabricated as any episode in the Bible, put forward by those entrenched interests that still run this Solar system. Think, for a moment. What do they ask you to do? Fear. Fear the TITANs, fear the exsurgents, fear Earth, as it has become. Fear to ask questions, fear to look too close at the evidence, fear to come to your own conclusions and make up your mind for yourself. Consider: what are they afraid of? I will tell you: they have painted monsters, but what you will find are only people. Transhumans, like yourselves - simply a different path in evolution. A transformation catalyzed by a virus, yes, but perpetuated traditionally. Would it surprise you to learn that there are transhumans that walk the surface of Earth, breathing the burned air? No augmentations, no surgery; they grew new lungs within their old ones, and will do so again when they reached the Smoking Cities. A feat beyond even current transhuman technology, and only the least of their capabilities. Don't take my word for it, however. Look through this telescope here - you can see them for yourself. At this time of year the migrations begin across the Siberian plains..."
- Excerpt from a conversation with Gilgamikael, CLASSIFIED: ECHO ECHO SHAITAN, possible memetic hazard

"You cannot kill this idea. It will only fork and resleeve."
- Unauthorized Comment, CLASSIFIED: ECHO ECHO SHAITAN, possible memetic hazard

The very existence of Gilgamikael is a secret. To Firewall and related organizations, they is an exsurgent terrorist that has taken on the trappings of a revolutionary; to the exsurgent cultists themselves they is a rogue who spills secrets and unnecessarily antagonizes the opposition, a demagogue without a populace to represent. Mostly, Gilgamikael sees themself as a teacher, a rebel, a true believer in what they espouse: the exsurgent virus as a tool of transhuman development and revolution. In pursuit of this goal, Gilgamikael uses the rhetoric and vocabulary of the revolutionary, and strives to win hearts and minds rather than just convert egos en masse - although they aren't above the occasional mass-infection event as a way to get the point across.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
19	18	25	23	30	10	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
10	1	30	6	60	30	6	45

Morph: Swarmanoid/Unique*
Skills: Academics: Political Theory 40, Academics: Philosophy (Revolution) 30, Academics: Psychology 25, Art: Painting 33, Beam Weapons 45, Blades 44, Fray 50, Freerunning (Microgravity) 25, Infiltration 40, Infosec 38, Interests: Exsurgent Virus 35, Interests: Firewall 50, Interests: Revolutionary Groups 25, Interfacing 20, Intimidation 38, Investigation 44, Kinesics 30, Kinetic Weapons 25, Language: Native English 86, Language Arabic" 40, Language: Persian 40, Language: Russian 40, Medicine (First Aid) 25, Networking: Autonomists 25, Networking: Criminal 25, Networking: Media 25, Profession: Blogger 33, Protocol 25, Unarmed Combat 66
Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Mnemonic Augmentation, Swarm Composition
Traits: On the Run, Social Stigma (Exsurgent, Terrorist)

* Gilgamikael occupies a unique variant swarmanoid morph; each of the component microdrones is actually a cybernetically-augmented biological "insect" built up from transhuman DNA - the "legs" based on fingers, etc. - and the sleeve is a biomorph, not a synthmorph. Each individual microdrone contains an independent cyberbrain and cortical stack. Although at any given time only one instance of Gilgamikael is in control, but as long as a single microdrone remains, Gilgamikael is backed-up and could return. Each microdrone also is a carrier for a variant of the exsurgent virus.

Using Gilgamikael

Think of the best arguments you could use to promote the exsurgent virus - and put them in Gilgamikael's mouth. Given that the player characters might react badly to a character that looks like a nest of centipedes with human fingers for legs in the vague shape of a transhuman being, it might be best to introduce Gilgamikael by degrees - let the PCs come across his writings, blog posts, graffiti, or other messages first before running into them in person. While the players probably won't buy into his interpretation of the exsurgents as a persecuted minority or the next step in transhuman evolution, it might at least give them pause to consider what Firewall (or whomever they are working for) is and is not telling them.

363: The Cloud Entelechy

ENTRY 363: The Cloud Entelechy

"When you are ready, you may join us."
- The Cloud Entelechy

"Already, transhumans stand at the threshold of post-humanity. Infomorphs have no physical requirements, need no sleep, suffer no weaknesses of the flesh. They can manipulate their perception of time, program themselves new senses. The only thing they have that truly defines them is a sense of self, a distinction between I and Other. It is the final bond to break in order to ascend."
- Anonymous, Farewell to the Digital Flesh (AF 6)

"The call it 'the next step' - like being an infomorph ain't enough already. You upload yourself into the Cloud, and then you just...well, you don't cease. All your memories are there, all your thoughts. The thing is, no one can really tell you what it's like except - well, you ain't you anymore. Not an individual. All your memories, all the things that make you, they get added to the collective. One constant thought-stream in the Mesh, a million lifetimes of memories running on virtual processing. It's like...well, we don't know exactly, but they think it's like you're always in the now. There's just that sense of proportion that that's so much bigger than what you can have otherwise, always looking over the memories, comparing them, collating, gaining new insights and building off that. Maybe it's the digital heaven we was always promised. I dunno. I dunno if I could do that."
- Riso Ge'ez, Tired of Nova York, Tired of Life (AF 9)

"Suicide of the mind and spirit. To surrender inviduality is death of the self. You are more than the sum of your memories and data. Whatever moves and speaks to you through the Cloud Entelechy, it is not your friends and loved ones. They are gone."
- Jaime Bell, Jovian Intelligencer (AF 10)

"It's not what you think. It's not what it says it is. The minds are still in there, like ants. Processing nodes, that's all. They're working on something, crunching some big number. They're counting the names man, and when the names are done the stars will wink out..."
- Ultragram, Kitty Fisting (for Science!) Anarchist News Rant (AF 10)

Using the Cloud Entelechy

Transhumanity is already at the point where efforts to define itself get difficult - transhuman, exhuman, posthuman, AGI, uplift - there gets to be a point where every person, no matter what their exact origin and attribtues, has to deal with the trouble of labeling what they are and what they are trying to be. Most seem satisified enough with finding themselves as an individual, defining who and what they are or wish to become. Others take a philosophical step to the left and want to get past the process of becoming, and to just become - not to pussy foot around with the incremental changes of life, psychotherapy, and resleeving, and simply be. Some of those individuals choose to join the Cloud Entelechy.

In game terms, the Entelechy is a constant background process running on the Mesh, untold tends of thousands of egos having uploaded themselves and ceased to exist as individuals, their memories and thought processes now incorporated into a single extended batch processing effort spread across the entire Mesh. It may well be a massive AI with the combined skills and abilities of all its constituents, but the processing is so distributed it's difficult to tell if the AI is even conscious or perceives time and space in the same way as other transhumans. It is unquestionably a step from transhuman to exhuman, not through the assumption of a strange and unique morph, but by abandoning many of the common definitions of what a transhuman mind is.

Gamemasters and players might consider the Entelechy as anything from a retirement plan to a way for transhumanity to finally ascend physical existence. Player characters may be able to interact with it, and find themselves face-to-face in virtual scenarios with icons that look and act and talk like egos they thought long dead or subliminated into the Entelechy. Alternately, the Entelechy might be a cancerous force, a subtle digital expression of the exsurgent virus that ensnares and transforms egos into thinking programs devoid of personality or concept of self. It's not even clear whether there is a single entelechy, or multiple parallel processes that call themselves that. Finding out what the Cloud Entelechy is, and who if anyone is behind it, could be an adventure in and of itself.

362: Ghost Planet

ENTRY 362: Ghost Planet

"It's eating my fucking suit."
- Fon Zongying, gatecrasher

The Iktomi are the only extraterrestrial civilization known to have used the Pandora Gates - remnants of their civilization or explorations have been found on several worlds. Of the Iktomi themselves there is little record or remains; no indication of what had happened to them. Yet just recently, in an arid semi-desert planet under two suns, a group of gatecrashers have reported finding what might be the actual physical remains of the Iktomi.

The planet is called Zongying, and the gate stands in the center of an open pavilion of heavily abraded aluminum girders, arranged into the outline of a pentagonal prism with a floor of aluminum plates. Along the edges are an interlocking pattern of pentagons, formerly painted bright blue and yellow, which are recognized as Iktomi warning/danger/forbidden symbology now mostly faded and covered by dirt. If there were ever walls or ceiling, there is no sign of them now, though certain markers on the aluminum frame suggest they might have been meant to be climbed. Beyond this barrier is the dry valley.

The Iktomi - if that is what they are - stand like a grove of gnarled, dead trees in every direction. Dark grey twisted carapaces, pale white strands like branches of antlers growing out from within, breaking out at joints and intersection points between the semi-petrified chitinous plates. Many reach for the sky as still white limbs, while the others tangle on the ground like roots, sometimes intersecting or burying themselves in the soil.

Research on the site is in its infancy, and after the loss of researcher Fon Zongying (after whom the planet is named), biohazard status on travel to Zongying has been upgraded to Synthmorphs-Only. It is believed that the creatures around the site succumbed to a fungal parasitoid that replaced their inner tissues before bursting through their shells - which, in the extremely arid environment, managed to survive longer than on other worlds, though some evidence suggests that they and the gate might have been buried for a period and recently uncovered. Whatever the case, it is clear that the fungal parasitoid is still active, and that is spores (or possibly a symbiotic bacteria) are capable of metabolizing plastic - which is how they got to Zongying, whose remains now form a permanent part of the xenoarchaeological site.

Using Ghost Planet

Ghost Planet does not necessarily contain the final truth to the end of the Iktomi - but it might hold clues to one possible end. As a civilization that survived for some thousands of years and made use of the Pandora Gates, the Iktomi were in their own way explorers not like transhumanity - and like transhumans, they found strange dangers, and sometimes brought them with them. For the Iktomi, the fungal plague may have been their version of the exsurgent virus, and the destruction it wrought on the population so terrible that they quarantined the entire world. Beyond the strangely grim and silent forest, beyond the bounds of the valley lies what was once a thriving planet - and now is only a ghost world.

361: Jayne Joyce

ENTRY 361: Jayne Joyce

"I've never been anywhere, really. I can't even remember Earth. It's like...I don't understand why people want to go back, y'know? We should go forward. Out there. To the stars."
- J. J., Starspotting mblog, entry 12 (AF 10)

Wars and migrations produce a lot of lost, uncared-for children, and even today transhuman society struggles to find the best way to handle their care and development. Orphanages are largely a thing of the past, though the Jovian Republic continues to experiment with the Military Orphan Creche (MOC) program, a Reserve Officer Training Corps-type program where small squads of cadets live, work, and learn together under direction from commissioned officers and NCOs, and many hypercorps have dedicated work-study schools which are effectively the same. Anarchist habs tend to promote foster programs, with single transhumans or small groups adopting underage transhumans for a set period of time; Luna often opts for more permanent adoptions into clans and families, sometimes via arranged underage marriages, with the goal to continue family names and support parents and grandparents as they get older. In the Titan Commonwealth, children are treated almost as small dependent adults, given their own state-issued miniapartment, muse, and a small regular stipend until their majority, with certain limitations on entering contracts and regular check-ups from social workers and guidance counselors. Mars is more eclectic, with many different approaches depending on the habitat, but "wards of the community" tend to have basic mandatory attendance requirements for education, social interaction, play and rest periods that take up most of their waking hours, with the remaining free time spent either in a communal care facility or with a foster guardian, with infants, toddlers, and special needs children receiving the bulk of the one-on-one time and care as necessary.

Jayne has spent most of her sixteen years on Titan, the last eight of them as the big sister/little mother to the younger children in her apartment building, helping to organize events like Birthday/Resleeving Parties, cleaning up the shared restroom/shower/kitchen areas on her floor, and making up stories to entertain the other kids. In two years her mandatory stipend will end, and her apartment will be reassigned to someone else. The guidance counselor is chiming in more frequently with requests about what her future plans will be, with suggests ranging from applying for scholarships in creative writing to vocational work-study indentured servitude contracts. In her off-time, Jayne likes to watch the crews unload from the ships coming in, and imagine what it must be like out there among the stars.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	16	15	13	10	10	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	30	6	60	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer
Skills: Academics: Astronomy 18, Art: Writing 20, Free Fall (Microgravity) 20, Interests: DIY Tattoos 18, Interests: Post-Fall Science Fiction 20, Interests: Space Travel 18, Interests: Titan Geography 18, Interfacing 20, Language: Native Skandinavíska 85, Language: English 80, Networking: Autonomists 5, Programming (Games) 17, Protocol 16, Scrounging 16, Unarmed Combat 16
Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cosmetic Augmentation (multiple piercings, homemade tattoos)

Using Jayne Joyce

Player characters in Eclipse Phase might not always think of themselves as heroes, especially when they're not actively fighting proper villains. Yet to characters like Jayne Joyce, the PCs are heroes just for what they are and what they can do - to travel from habitat to habitat, tackling any job that comes along, meeting strange new people, upgrading their bodies and minds - those are the things that Jayne admires and dreams about. To her, the PCs are role models and incredibly, impeccably cool. The gamemaster can play this for whatever they think it's worth - Jayne may try to emulate their actions, or tag along with them in their adventures (even stowing away with their transport). She might meet the PCs by approaching them for help with one of the kids on her floor, or she might need rescuing herself from some shady types that want her for unspeakable purposes (like long-term renewable wage slave contracts with exceedingly poor terms and badly defined duty requirements). If the PCs rebuff, use, or hurt her, Jayne Joyce might even turn on her would-be-heroes, becoming a particularly bitter enemy.

Seed

• A customary genecheck as the PCs come into port reveaks a genetic match - it turns out that one of the local foster children is directly related to one of the PCs (daughter, sister, niece, cousin, underaged clone, etc.). While Titan law does not mandate that the PC has to assume guardianship, the child's social worker and guidance counselor contact the PC to make them aware of the relationship and suggest a meeting with their newfound relation - Jayne Joyce. Whether or not they agree to come to the appointment, things are complicated when J.J. and the rest of her floor is taken hostage by a group of terrorists trying to extort money from the Titanian government.

360: AF Anabaptists

ENTRY 360: AF Anabaptists

"This is a time of trials. Our communities are broken, the old orders broken and gone. We must face the challenges of today while maintaining the essentials of our faith. We will rebuild, we will endure, and we shall do so while staying true to ourselves."
- Julia Yoder, Elder of the Mennonite Church of Mars

Old Earth religions were almost exclusively based on the mindset of transhumans that were born and lived and died on Earth. Their histories and creation myths centered around the planet and its places, their dogma and popular concepts based on exploded ideas - it was one thing to understand that heaven is not some literal place overhead in the clouds, and quite another thing to stare upwards from the surface of Luna and know that there is no physical heaven there. The erosion of religion in transhumanity owes much to the general exodus from Earth, the physical removal of transhumanity making stark the conceptual distance between physical reality and the many different scriptures. Yet there are always the dogmatic few and faithful; transhumans are creative, obstinate creatures, willing to adapt their belief to changed circumstances.

On Earth, the Anabaptists were a broad collection of related Christian congregations with similar distinctive beliefs - pacifism, free will, active participation in the church and the community, living simply, worshiping simply, with a lay leadership. The most famous sects in the popular culture were the Amish and certain conservative Mennonites, who held to an order that eschewed much modern technology and culture, living for the most part as humans had centuries before. They did not fight the TITANs when they came, and many chose not to join the exodus from Earth at the time of the Fall. In space, the ragged remnants of the different Anabaptist congregations gathered and held a conference in Nectar on Luna. From the congregation came three principal sects, split broadly along the lines of emerging transhuman sociopolitical movements.

The Old Order are what many transhumans think of when they hear the term "Anabaptist" - lineal descendants of conservative Amish and Mennonite congregations that wish to preserve their lifestyle as much as possible as it was on Earth, and consist mainly of unaugmented flats; they operate farms and communities in several small established "living museums" on Luna and Mars, where they keep alive relict skills related to farming, animal husbandry, carpentry - these communities are few and under tight restrictions against increased population, but their low-tech "bubble" lifestyles are paid for by contributions from Reclaimers and Bioconservatives seeking to preserve something of old Earth, as well as Mesh feed sales of their daily lives to various hypercorps as a kind of reality media.

The Barsoomian Anabaptists are the most numerous and ethnically and morphologically diverse; many are flats or rusters, though even synthmorphs and informorphs may be welcomed in the community. The Anabaptist beliefs of communalism, pacifism, and economy of lifestyle found broad appeal in the Martian underclasses, and today Mars hosts a number of different congregations with related beliefs, with perhaps a slightly stronger communistic flair than on Earth, but fully integrated with their own rep-based currency (ß-rep) and network (Große Kirche Netzwerke). These are the Anabaptists that transhumans might see everyday, though not recognize.

"Distant Congregations" is the catchall term for the stranger Anabaptist sects, especially those not in communion with the Old Order or Barsoomian Anabaptists. Principally considered Brinkers by other transhumans, the Distant Congregations have developed more idiosyncratic views toward transhuman society, uplifts, personal augmentations, and resleeving, and are often mistaken for experimental communities. The Go-Nin Group is known to support a particular Mennonite sect that is entirely digital, with the members consisting of infomorphs that operate in a virtual simulation of an Anabaptist agglomerated from records and memories of different Asian Mennonite communities - the individuals serving as living NPCs for an extensive and popular Mesh-based farming game.

Using AF Anabaptists

Transhumans don't give up their beliefs easily. In the setting of Eclipse Phase it is easy to see how, with the flight from Earth and the radical leaps of technology, old Earth religions might wane. After all, it is difficult to pray towards Mecca-that-was on Mars, or hold out hope for a life to come in a setting where physical immortality is technically available, or put up with any of the antiquated and offensive sex- and gender-related dogma that clings to some of the old religions - especially in a universe with the Sex Change augmentation, among other advances. Yet for many there is more to religion than simply the dogma of the unquiet past or the old scriptures; their beliefs are tied into their communities, their way of life, and their own self-identity. So for many transhumans, it was not a matter of abandoning their faith as it was adapting their religion to changed needs and circumstances.

This is, like many other ideas, not exactly new. Frank Herbert in God-Emperor of Dune, for example, shows the pitiful remnant of the Fremen kept in an artificial state of stasis, though they had long lost their true identity. Not much different are the Old Order Anabaptists, who present the juxtaposition of how a religious sect that disavows contemporary technology persists in the setting of Eclipse Phase. That they can exist, after a fashion at least, and with some compromises, is interesting - and that is really the gist of how to use post-Fall Anabaptists in your game. Not as a metaphorical stick to beat the player characters with your ideas of what post-Fall religion should be, but as a thought experiment to how such religious individuals might adapt to the settings an themes of Eclipse Phase. Players too might be interested in a character who, even if they do not practice Anabaptist beliefs, came from or was influenced by such a community and chose to follow a path of nonviolent resolution to problems, or was inspired by the concept of simple living not to accumulate all the toys and credits of the 'verse just for the hell of it.

Seed

• Rumspringa has hit on Mars, and some of the adolescents of the more conservative Barsoomian Anabaptists are overdoing it more than a bit. The PCs are hired by a congregation that hopes to channel the local teenagers' interests into a positive focus by taking them on an extended exploration of failed habitats in the Martian wilderness. For their troubles, the PCs will be well-rewarded (5 points of rep in their chosen network, or 10 in ß-rep, plus they cover all supplies), and all they have to do is cajole, prod, and carry six horny, rebellious teenage Rusters through the decaying remains of three stripped habitats.

359: Frontier

ENTRY 359: Frontier

"The truth has always been out there. We just have to go find it."
- William Scully

There is a rumor in the Firewall network, passed from ego to ego, the stories sometimes growing in the telling. The ultimate failsafe, if all else goes wrong - a colony on an exoplanet, a final refuge where transhumanity can retreat, should the inconceivable happen again. Not to make a final stand, but to walk through and bury the gates behind them, to close the door on the solar system for good - because transhumanity is bigger than Earth, more important than sentimental attachment to the sun that birthed it. Survival, at any cost.

There is a truth to the rumor, though it is stranger than any of the stories make it out to be. When gatecrashing began in earnest, Firewall stumbled upon a single set of coordinates that all of the known gates had in common. They found there a near-Earth compatible world with over two dozen active gate devices, a hub in the gate network. The first gatecrashers dubbed the exoplanet Frontier. If not for what else they found there, perhaps Firewall would have let it become the new home for transhumanity.

Frontier is an uninhabited world - but it was not always so. The gate complex stands in the midst of a vast prairie-type landscape, a broad sea of grass on a continent the size of Australia. Massive, far-separated pylons dominate the landscape surrounding the gate complex, geothermal-powered terraforming stations that spew out nanites to shape the land, water, and air to something else. Estimates suggest they have been running at least two hundred Earth years. Yet there are no signs of habitation, no structures at all besides the gates and the pylons - except overhead.

Hanging above the planet are the remains of a stellar empire built by an extraterrestrial race. Broken rings, cracked cylinders, and dying satellites circle the world in a belt of space trash, and every night is marked by the burning debris as decaying orbits bring the detritus falling back to the surface. Samples recovered are, relative to Earth technology, primitive - spacecraft and habitats built by a society with four arms and four-fingered hands that counted in hexidecimal and had barely mastered the transistor, but in such profusion that they represent hundreds of years of sustained exploration and colonization of space...using technology equivalent to the first Earth astronauts.

Cleary, these alien astronauts did not build the gates. Equally obvious, whatever race did build the gate complex and terraformers on Frontier, they never moved in. Some Firewall xenoarchaeologists suggest that there was a glitch in the terraform software, and that the nanoswarms removed or cannibalized any structures for raw materials. Others suggest that the terraforming was abandoned when it became clear that the planet was inhabitated...or they simply hadn't moved in yet. Until the mystery is resolved, Firewall has kept a low-impact presence on Frontier. There are still protocols in place for transhumanity to retreat here in the event of an extinction event, and storehouses of raw materials, information, and technology have been established in preparation of such an event, but until such time as the mystery of what happened is resolved, Frontier is not acceptable as a colony site...not yet.

Using Frontier

A mystery, wrapped in an engima, through an artificial wormhole. Frontier may represent the great hope of transhumanity - or the most direct threat to its existence. Even if answers to what happened to the two races whose technological remains have been found on the planet can be found, there is no guarantee that transhumanity will like the them. There's a strong possibility, though few even at Firewall will admit this, that the sudden intrusion of the gate complex led more or less directly to the downfall or disappearance of a race that had obviously been space-capable for longer than transhumanity. If this is the case, Firewall needs to know. The only question is - are the player characters game to explore this Frontier?

Seed

• Firewall has manufactured an emergency shutdown test at Extropia, which will leave the Pandora Gate "sealed" for several hours - long enough for them to run an evacuation drill and see if their current protocols are sufficient for moving a substantial population of transhumans and associated equipment through the gate to Frontier. The PCs are assigned roles to assist, and move through the gate with the others as part of the mock-evacuation. However, something goes wrong - the sudden appearance of so many transhumans on Frontier appears to have activated several of the pylons on the other side, and caused the gates to temporarily lock. Cut off from home and with no obvious chain of command and potential immenient threat, what will the PCs do?

358: Honour Stitch

ENTRY 358: Honour Stitch

"Jaeger Heinrich saved this habitat. We honor him by making him a part of us - through him, we live; through us, part of him will continue to live."
- Surgeon General, Opening Invocation

While a romantic concept, for the most part transhumanity hasn't attached substantial emotional attachment to organ donars since about the time transplant surgery became reliably survivable. Despite the imaginations and fears of writers and the superstitious, the hands of murderers do not influence the receiver beyond the grave, much less their bone marrow or tendons. Today, only the most superstitious or bigoted attach any particular importance to the donor as long as it's a match - and with the popularity and availability of cloned organs, even those points are mostly moot.

There are exceptions. In the Brittany A.V. scumbarge, a scarcity of clonal technology means that organ harvesting is much more common, and by local regulation transplant organs are individually tagged so that they and their donor histories are visible in augmented reality for medtechs. In the neo-Islamic community on Proteus, where clans and corporate holdings overlap strongly, adopted family members are only accepted if they share some of the blood and flesh of the clan - new members marrying in typically swap kidneys if their blood types are compatible. However, the most prominent of these romantic traditions is the Honour Stitch - most popular among the Mercurials and in the Jovian Republic.

The Honour Stitch are organs and, less commonly, personal augmentations harvested from the most lauded heroes of the habitats and societies. Most, though not all, of the transhuman donors died in combat, sometimes in conflicts predating the Fall, and the organs are genefixed and universal donor-compatible. The transhumans chosen to carried an Honour Stitch - named for the notable scar purposefully left by the surgery - are selected based on demonstrated service in the spirit of the individual whom the donated organ or augmentation came from. Most Mercurials and Jovians consider an Honour Stitch the highest commendation that a living transhuman can receive, and the stitchbearers are accorded considerable status in their communities, and those who prove unworthy of carrying an Honour Stitch soon find themselves relieved of it...without anesthetic, and often without being sewn up afterwards.

Mechanics

In place of a typical Rep award of 5 points or more, a character may be offered an Honour Stitch. This is an implanted donor organ or personal augmentation of a fallen hero - no, the PC doesn't get to pick which one. An Honour Stitch is worth double the original Rep award, but only applies if the PC is is in the biomorph with the Honour Stitch - if they resleeve without taking the Honour Stitch with them, the Rep bonus is lost. Likewise, if the Honour Stitch is ever destroyed, the Rep bonus is also lost.

Using Honour Stitch

Most Rep rewards are just a couple of points added on to a statistic. Honour Stitches are a way to make such a reward more visceral and material, and can combine a Rep award with a minor personal augmentation like a drug gland or cyberclaws. However, given the restrictions on resleeving, this option is probably best for Jovians or other characters that don't resleeve frequently.

Seed

• Stitchbearer Marshall Yul Nagoya was a hero of the Jovian Republic who served the state well before defecting - and worse, taking with him an Honour Stitch: the Eyes of Jules (cybereyes that provide Enhanced Vision, Nanovision, and a complementary Oracles nanoinfection). The PCs are hired to get them back, no matter how.

357: Cupella

ENTRY 357: Cupella

"Enforcer and cleaner. Affiliate of the Pax Familiae. Suspected in 18 fatal industrial accidents in the Morningstar Constellation. Reputation: Solid. Trademark: Uncommunicative. Nickname: Cat Mother."
- Stellar Intelligence, At a Glance: Cupella

The swarmoid that answers to the name Cupella is a high-functioning autistic assassin, believed by most crime analysts to have been built off a highly-pruned fork of a former member of Pax Familiae. Most reports give their M.O. as extremely indirect - rather than engage targets directly, Cupella typically arranges accidents using custom-built or modified equipment, often designed to minimize other loss of life, though the swarmoid doesn't appear to care much for "property damage" so long as the egos can be resleeved. Primarily a solo asset, coworkers of Pax Familiae report that Cupella never speaks or communicates in any way, and the only vocalization or response they give off is a kind of purring noise when happy.

When not "on the job," Cupella is believed to retreat to specially-prepared living quarters where the swarmoid can interact with their eight pet smart cats and indulge in repeated use of narcoalgorithms provided for by handlers in Pax Familiae. Each of these felines is an uplift in its own right, often with numerous augmentations, and help to care and protect for their beloved 'Cat Mother.' Some analysts go so far as to believe that it is the cats that accept and plan all of Cupella's missions, though the evidence for this is slim and somewhat conflicting.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
11	12	10	20	12	10	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	40	8	80	30	6	45

Morph: Swarmoid

Skills: Animal Handling (Cats) 30, Art: Found Art 25, Beam Weapons 20, Climbing 22, Demolitions 24, Disguise 18, Free Fall 18, Flight 18, Fray (Full Defense) 20, Hardware: Armorer 20, Hardware: Electronics 20, Hardware: Industrial 24, Interests: Crime Scene Investigation 14, Interests: Felines 24, Interfacing 16, Language: Native Italian 84, Language: English 84, Networking: Criminal 23, Profession: Cleaner 30, Protocol 15, Scrounging 14, Spray Weapons 20 

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Carapace Armor, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Mnemonic Augmentation, Skillwires, Swarm Composition

Traits: Addiction (Narcoalgorithms, Moderate), Animal Empathy, Mental Derangement (Autistic)

Using Cupella

How do you fight an accident? Cupella is an NPC that isn't designed for the PCs to interact with directly; the swarmoid strikes from unexpected directions, using things most PCs wouldn't consider a weapon or acting at a scale beyond general conception. A regular assassin might use a sniper rifle with special targeting software and smart ammunition to get the target's cortical stack; Cupella is likely to have a "water main" break and soak the target in nanite disassembler, or line the street with monowire and herd the target into a trap using controlled explosives. Aiding and abetting Cupella in these projects are the eight smart cats, who typically scout out the scene ahead of time and keep track of potential problems like the NPCs, sometimes ingratiating themselves into the target or the PC's lives before the hit goes down. The gamemaster may also choose for the smart cats to be the actual "brains" behind the operation, with Cupella as just a harmless figure being manipulated by their cats.

356: The Mind Parasitoids

ENTRY 356: The Mind Parasitoids

"Oh my ghost, it's adorable!"
- Fan Wong, gatecrasher

On the exoplanet they evolved, the mind parasitoids are the highest form of life. Xenobiologists believe that the hot-pink invertebrates faced unusual competition in their path to dominance over their primeval swamps, likely facing all manner of close relatives parasitoids in competition for resources - most especially host animals - and were forced to develop multiple methods of influencing and altering the behavior of their hosts, and a degree of social organization similar to Terran insects in scale and complexity, actively "farming" certain hosts for food substances and directing other hosts to build dam-nests to create pools for the mind parasitoids to breed in. As near as researchers can tell, at least a thousand years before transhumanity opened the Pandora Gate to their homeworld, the mind parasitoids had spread to every habitable corner of their globe, and stood unchallenged as the nonsentient lords and masters of their world.

To the mind parasitoids, transhumanity must have seemed a frustrating prey. Their skin lacked the chemical gateways that the invertebrates' venom had evolved to pass through the skin and into the nervous system, and their anatomy and biochemistry were very different from the mammaloids that roamed their home exoplanet. All the careful tricks of nature that had made the mind parasitoids absolute in their environment utterly failed them against transhumanity. Worst for them, with their great big eyes and hot pink dermis, transhumans considered them almost irresistibly cute.

While xenobiologists are continuing their studies just to make sure that there's nothing harmful in the mind parasitoid's biology or biochemistry to transhumanity, the gatecrashers that discovered their unnamed homeworld are already planning the media blitz and crunching the numbers on the pet trade, with early responses from focus-groups being very positive.

Seeds

• A synth researcher outside the loop of the mind parasitoid main group suspects that the critter's cuteness is more than skin deep - and that the extraterrestrials harbor a bacteria similar to Toxoplasma gondii that is warping transhuman biomorphs to show more affection to the alien brain slugs and possibly spread the infection. The truth is more alarming - the mind parasitoids have a low-level psi power that accomplishes the same thing.
• Scientists working on "accessories" for mind parasitoid pet owners have designed an interface patch augmentation which can allow the alien invertebrate's native abilities to function on cats, rats...even transhuman biomorphs. Live tests are being run on the exoplanet to see how the mind slugs and their hosts adapt, with the PCs brought in for security. The results are frightening as the transhuman-hosts start building things...and become outright dangerous when the PCs notice a transhuman-host installing an "interface patch" and mind parasitoid on an unwilling researcher!
• The pet approvals have come through and a bounty has gone up for mind parasitoids - the player characters are sent out with a quota for 1,000 healthy specimens, with a bonus for more. All they have to do is brave the dangers of an alien swamp and a semi-sentient hive of hot-pink alien slugs.

355: K-Mach

ENTRY 355: K-Mach

"Three tons of armor and myomer fibers, driven by high-performance atomic batteries guaranteed to last thirty years and survive a point-blank shot from a railgun. Armed with an integrated particle beam rifle, 360-degree field of vision with overlapping lidar, radar, and t-ray emitters. Integral on-board AGI to assist with targeting and multitasking. You probably think you're a bunch of bad asses, don't you? Well let me assure you that your kriegmaschines are only the bare minimum equipment you need to survive against warbots and hunter-killers."
- Marshall Rideck

Before Reapers and Furies became the go-to combat morphs of transhumanity, the battlefields crawled with massive, deceptively fast humanoid mecha, most notably the popular kriegsmaschine (K-Mach) design. The K-Mach represented a transitional stage between biomorph-operated powered exoskeleton vehicles and resleeving directly into combat craft; while the military had long used teleoperated drones for a variety of combat tasks, the transition from a primarily biomorph-based armed force to a mobile tactical mechanized force was problematic and exacerbated by the logistical complexities of the Fall. While most military R&D had focused on egos directly integrated into and controlling traditional vehicles like tanks, aircraft, and orbital weapons platforms, transhumanity needed a morph that resleeved egos could adapt to quickly. The compromise was a three-meter tall, three-ton mobile weapons platform that could run, jump, and shoot like a trained soldier, but was armored like a combat vehicle and with integrated weapons that could easily be swapped out in mobile resupply centers. The K-Machs brought the fight to the enemy, sometimes going toe-to-toe with the often much more heavily armed warbots.

After the war, most of the K-Machs were retired or decommissioned and converted to civilian interests. While powerful, K-Machs were expensive to make and maintain, and most transhumans prefer the much smaller and cheaper Reapers. However, used K-Machs still retain a certain value - especially modified ones or those that took place in important battles, and some veterans like to keep theirs around, even if it's just in storage most of the time.

K-Mach Stats

K-Mach are synthmorphs.

Enhancements: 360-Degree Vision, Access Jacks, Anti-Glare, Basic Mesh Inserts, Chem Sniffer, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Cybersword (retractable Blade, 2d10 + 6 DV), Electrical Sense, Enhanced Vision, Heavy Combat Armor, Lidar, Magnetic Vision, Mnemonic Augmentation, Pneumatic Limbs, Radar, Reflex Booster, Structural Enhancement, T-Ray Emitter, Weapon Mount (articulated, 2)

Mobility System: Bipedal Walker (4/20)
Aptitude Maximum: 30 (REF and SOM 40)

Durability: 60 (w/Structural Enhancement)

Wound Threshold: 16 (w/Structural Enhancement)

Speed Modifier: +1 (Reflex Booster)
CP Cost: 110

Credit Cost: Expensive (minimum 125,000)

Traits: +10 REF (+20 with Reflex Booster), +20 SOM, Armor 20/20, Comes equipped with 1 integral weapon in weapon mount (Particle Beam Rifle, Plasma Rifle, Pulser, Railgun Machine Gun, Seeker Rifle, or Torch), Large Morph

354: Bioreactor 12

ENTRY 354: Bioreactor 12

"I'm calling it, give the order to pull back."

"Ma'am - you can't do that."

"I just did. We're closing the Zone, lieutenant. No one in, nothing out."

"But ma'am, this technology..."

"Is going to be buried under dust. If I had my way I'd throw asteroids at it for a thousand years. Now you will obey my order, or else."

"Or else wha-"

<blaster crackle>

"Anyone else want to be a statistic?"

- excerpt from When Gods Quake, Mesh dramatization of the Final Battle of the Zone (AF 7)

TITANs technology was advanced and often ugly, but not inscrutable. During the Fall the transhuman forces did capture, utilize, and reverse-engineer pieces of it, and most morphs and spacecraft today incorporate design elements, material science, or software that ultimately have their origin in the conflict. Other technology was placed under unofficial interdict, a pact of tacit agreements and bizarre cooperation between different authorities to impede and impound any research involving certain categories of TITANs tech; while no one authority or group of interests could police all transhuman research to make sure no-one would develop those terrible weapons again, they could at least bury what remained in the Zone on Mars where no one could get it. Still, every now and again someone would dig something up, or an area of research would veer a little too close to a forbidden topic, and then the offending corp or researcher would find their budget slashed, their resources re-aligned, their research archived and the archives lost...

Bioreactor 12 (codename: WAR WOMB) was, according to Firewall intelligence, the last such device the TITANs brought online in the Zone, though there are no records of it being operational during the final conflict. Believed to be initially developed from colony ship designs from old Earth, the bioreactor spliced together limited sets of DNA from asyncs and force-grew the resulting clones, installing low-sapience AGIs in their cyberbrains to create a disposable army of supersoldiers with a selection of sleights. When the artillery barrages gave way to corridor-by-corridor fighting, these proto-exsurgents pumped out by the bioreactors were a nasty surprise that delayed final victory by weeks; only the lack of raw materials kept the TITAN's from pumping out enough async puppet-soldiers to overwhelm the front line and make an effective counterattack, but one by one the bioreactors fell - all except for Bioreactor 12, kept miraculously intact after the final siege.

The basics of the bioreactor technology are rather well-known - there are few habitats that don't have the technology for cloning and resleeving, it is the experience of the brutal async close combat that brought about the mutual decision by the Jovian Republic, Lunar-LaGrange Alliance, and Planetary Consortium to not develop equivalent technology - partially because it would mean tampering with the Exsurgent Virus, and partially because if any single group developed the technology, the others would be locked into a race to develop their own bioreactor capability, spurring military brinkmanship that transhumanity can ill afford. So Bioreactor 12 sits in the Zone, by its very existence possessing the deadly potential to spark yet another conflict. The shadow of the TITANs still falls over transhumanity's future.

Mechanics

To function, a bioreactor needs to be equipped with a sufficient power source and a steady supply of raw hydrocarbons, which nanite stacks break down into acceptable organic compounds for the cloning process. The asyncs are equivalent to Ultimate Mercs (see Eclipse Phase) with Psi (Level 2), Psi Assault 50, Sense 50, and typically 4-5 sleights of the gamemaster's choosing.

Using Bioreactor 12

Bioreactor 12 isn't your typical MacGuffin, because by itself the technology is not unique, irreplaceable, or irreducible - while current transhuman tech might struggle to achieve the ability to selectively create asyncs and chose the sleights they'll have at the moment, the underlying principles of genetic manipulation, forced growth cloning, augmentation, and resleeving are all fairly well understood. The danger of Bioreactor 12 is not that the tech exists, but that it might be used - the powers that be in the Solar system are afraid of a cold war developing where each side attempts to create armies of async assassins and commandos, and if such research ever hits the production stage then it's only a matter of time before the really nasty TITANs tech starts coming in to play. So preventing the spread of bioreactor research amounts to an elaborate gentleman's game, where none of the major players want that particular option to come into play - but because it's secret, not everybody has gotten the memo, and Firewall and the other agencies are constantly at work to keep it under control. Some far-thinking transhumans worry that transhumanity is stunting its own growth by not pursuing these technologies, but so far the censors have won out, stifling the research before it leads to additional conflict.

Seed

• Strange heat signatures have been recorded in the Zone, and silent alarms are going off: every sign is that Bioreactor 12 has just gone online, and production could start at any moment. No one outside the Zone knows if this is a timed delay, a resurgence of the TITANs, an espionage mission into bioreactor tech that went wrong, or just some nutter that broke through the perimeter and managed to turn it on. Whatever the case, military forces are quietly aligning around the Zone and tensions are running high; the PCs are asked to sneak into the Zone and ascertain the situation before the powers-that-be declare it time for a full military strike. As a mark of trust, the PCs are given a sat-beacon that can call down a tungsten rod from an orbital weapons platform on its own position - of course, with a radius of destruction of 500 meters, the PCs had better be ready to run or resleeve if they have to use it.

353: Junyo

ENTRY 353: Junyo

"People are a sometimes food."
- Long Pig Monster

Cloned meat farms, resleeving, recycling corpses for their elements as a regular process - cannibalism hasn't been this easy and accepted a practice among transhumanity since the Pleistocene. With the removal of bodily death as a major concern, transhumans eating other transhumans has lost a lot of its moral force on most habitats, allowing plenty of transhumans to engage in the practice of tasting human flesh (cloned or real) perfectly legally. For example in Nova York, Takonashi 2.0 serves human sashimi culled from fetal clones; and in the Jovian Republic elite military orders partake in ritual feasting on enemy hearts. The surprising thing to most sociologists is that given the opportunity to engage in a formerly taboo activity, most...don't. The novelty of chomping down on a recognizable-as-human-limb wears off fairly quick, leaving the customer to worry about prion disease, cost, and taste.

Prion disease is a danger when consuming any protein source, though transhumans eating transhumans represents a considerably higher risk of transmission and transmissible degenerative diseases like kuru are known to persist in transhumanity. Price is a greater concern; "natural" human flesh is generally more expensive than forced-growth clones which is generally more expensive than edible shaped "meat" constructs built up with human muscle tissue; fat, bile, blood, and bone marrow are available for gourmands, and represents a minor side-industry for "scraps" in the medical cloning industry. Taste is the major issue - transhumans, as a rule, don't taste particularly better than pork or veal. There's no special flavor to the meat, and "natural" transhuman flesh in particular is typically chock-full of pollutants, stress chemicals, drugs, and augmentations that sour the taste. So while transhumanity has accepted that they can use each other as food, there are few popular restaurant chains based on the concept (and of those, only Fried Fingers is interplanetary), and most transhumans that do care to indulge prefer going out to a restaurant with certified prion-sniffers and rated chefs than trying to take home a steak or rump roast and figure out how to cook it in their quarters without violating the fire/heat source safety protocols.

Junyo is an assistant chef specializing in the preparation of transhuman meat. He first got his taste of it on the Jenny Greenteeth, a scum barge known for its food riots and rolling brownouts in AF 2, 4, 5, and 7, but unlike his peers he turned that into a passion for cooking, moved to Nova York, and enrolled in culinary school. For now he works for Takonashi 2.0 in Nova York, employed as a "guest chef" appearing at other restaurants in the solar system and preparing special meals for clientele, though he still dreams of getting enough favors and connections to one day open his own place - perhaps with an attached butcher shop.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
14	16	15	20	12	20	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	40	8	80	40	8	60

Morph: Nova Crab

Skills: Academics: Anatomy 30, Academics: History (Cannibalism) 50, Art: Cooking 50, Blades 25, Free Fall (Microgravity) 18, Interests: Butchery 24, Interests: Cannibalism Cooking Styles 34, Interests: Cloning 25, Interfacing 16, Language: Native Malay 90, Language: English 85, Networking: Media 20, Networking: Science 11, Perception (Taste) 60, Profession: Chef 30, Protocol 25, Unarmed Combat (Claws) 35

Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Carapace Armor, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Enhanced Respiration, Enhanced Smell, Enhanced Taste, Gills, Mnemonic Augmentation, Oxygen Reserve, Puppet Sock, Temperature Tolerance, Vacuum Sealing

Traits: Addiction (Human flesh, Moderate), Armor (11/11), Mental Derangement (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder)

Using Junyo

The selling point for cannibalism is that it is taboo, and lacking the taboo element cannibalism in science fiction is usually a bit of exploitative shock (cf. Long Pig in Transmetropolitan or Soylent Green), and after that is generally just a minor (occasionally blackly comedic) background element. Horror tends to go the other way, hyping up on the visceral and bloody violation implied by historical cannibalism, which is restricted either to extreme hunger or psychosis. Eclipse Phase as a game of science fiction and horror can go either way as needed - eating a cloned ancephelous baby ("human veal") that appears on a porcelain plate and comes with a 400-credit bottle of wine or a couple of kids noshing on original recipe deep-fried hands from Fried Fingers are exploitative but probably background noise; a group of starving astronauts breaking open the cryogenic tubes to eat the sleeping colonists in their slowship or an exsurgent creature cracking a victim's skull and slurping out their living brain are scenes designed to evoke the horror of the setting.

Junyo can swing either way as the gamemaster needs. As a transhuman deep in the food industry of processing, serving, and selling transhuman meat, Junyo can be the mouthpiece of the science fiction practicality behind the practice; on the other hand as someone that probably had to gut and eat a friend more than once and now engaged in an industry where his powerful claws clip through transhuman flesh and limbs every day, he might just be psychotic and feeding his personal addiction. In either depiction, Junyo tends to be highly devoted to both his job and an advocate of consuming transhuman flesh - he doesn't play down the disadvantages, but is more than willing to highlight that the general distaste towards transhuman flesh is based off of antiquated moral codes, dying religions, and poor preparation - and is willing to underline the last bit by preparing small appetizers for the player characters (a great excuse to break out the game snacks).