343: Space Lightning Strikes

ENTRY 343: Space Lightning Strikes

"Initial probe shows that the atmosphere has a high-oxygen content and no toxic gases, but we'll send you through with full breathing gear just in case. We also think that the other side of the gate opens into an artificial construct - there's no sign of life, but we want you to be careful anyway. This could be a first contact scenario."
- Mission Briefing

The latest gatecrashing expedition is to an exoplanet that doesn't even have a name yet; the scientists are still arguing whether it should be Perdurabo or Voltron. Atmosphere is breathable, gravity is a little heavier than Earth-normal but not grossly so, temperature is a very reasonable 78 C, radiation levels are well within acceptable limits, and the first probe shows that the gate is semi-enclosed by what appears to be an artificial structure. While it's not clear yet whether or not this is another Echo V, that's what everyone appears to be hoping for.

The most worrying thing so far is the complete lack of any signs of life - even microbial or plant life. The initial probe sent through came back as clean as when it had been sent. The current hypothesis among the scientists is that the world did once have carbon-based life, but some extinction event killed everything on the planet, leaving only an oxygen-rich atmosphere that would someday perhaps deplete itself.

As the gatecrashers make their last prep and step through, the gentle patter of rain strikes their helmets. There's a hole in the ceiling, and through it they can see streaming grey clouds and flashes of lighting. If they take off their helmets, the air tastes of ozone. Around them, all is dust - scattered bits of rust-encrusted machinery, faded images on the wall, bits of something that almost looks like paper. A little exploration outside the room shows them that they're in a building, part of a larger complex - clearly artificial, or at least artificially expanded from some natural feature like a hill or cliff.

They're also not alone. The noise of their coming attracts a graying, bedraggled member of the Factors. The surprising contact is set off against a bolt of lightning suddenly coming down and hitting their gate, knocking it out of operation.

Alone on a dead world, cut off from home, with no chance of rescue and only a single extraterrestrial to keep them company. Game on.

Using Space Lightning Strikes

A basic set-up for a rather high-concept scenario, no different in many ways from an episode of Stargate or Sliders - but hey, call it an homage. The PCs are hired for a bit of gatecrashing, are given plenty of time to prepare and get whatever equipment they need, step through into a dead world, meet a lonely shipwrecked Factor who has apparently been living off of freeze-dried local food for years, and then! Lightning strikes. The rules of the game change. What was supposed to be a bit of exploration has turned into a desperate struggle for survival, and their only chance of going home might be to get the gate fixed. A lot of the scenario depends on the player character's own ingenuity and approach - if they are hostile to the Factor (whom they might well not be able to talk to right away), getting out of here is going to be very difficult. Don't be afraid to let the player characters envisage (even plan out) staying on Perdurabo/Voltron for possibly months or years as the PCs and the Factor work out a means of communication and then apply their joint technical skills to repairing the gate. The gamemaster's saving throw is that even if the PCs and Factor fail - which they might well - the gate is still operable, and in a couple months the corporation that hired them will try to send another team through, and the PCs (and Factor) can escape then. But give them the chance to get out on their own merits first.

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.

239: Dreamgate

ENTRY 239: Dreamgate

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

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

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

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

Mechanics

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

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

232: Mercy Wing

ENTRY 232: Mercy Wing

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

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

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

Using the Mercy Wing

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

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

Seeds

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

218: Grendal's Loop

ENTRY 218: Grendal’s Loop

Reachable through the Discord Gate, Grendal’s Loop is a set of gate coordinates with atypical properties. All probes and living gatecrashers who have passed through the gate to Grendal’s Loop have returned 6-60 seconds later. Individuals have reported no indication of lost time, and recording devices remain active for the entire period of the journey. Gatecrashers who have passed through Grendal’s Loop have described an inability to focus properly on sensations, but describe a sensation of movement and fleeting glimpses of dozens of exoplanets and exotic landscapes, ending when they arrive back on the platform at the Discord Gate. Sensors seem to confirm these impressions: video brings back a blur of images and the only sound is a low-volume, muted static; efforts to map the loop with sonar, radar, lidar, and t-rays give only confused and difficult to parse images, but temperature, pressure, and gravimetric readings however do not vary at all.

The most popular theory for Grendal’s Loop, born out by exacting dissection of the recorded data, is that the gate address quickly sequences the individuals entering the gate through dozens or even hundreds of other gates in a series of microsecond transactions. The exact sequence of worlds seems to be random or pseudorandom, but the gatecrashers exist on the world for only a split second before the gate shuffles them on to the next one, too fast for gasses to exchange or sound to properly propagate. Still, if the theory is correct then gatecrashers may still be vulnerable to extreme changes of gravity and sudden bursts of radiation, so new gatecrashers taking Grendal’s Loop are now given a travel advisory to that effect.

Seeds

• Ultimate researcher Gal Feuer believes they have found a way to “break” Grendal’s Loop by using a time dilation awareness protocol and a wireless gate dialer prototype. The good news is: it appears to have worked. The bad news is: now the researcher is lost. The Go-nin have offered a substantial reward for a group of gatecrashers willing to go through Grendal’s Loop with their own dialer prototypes, find Gal Feuer and bring them back.
• Recently, gatecrashers exploring Grendal’s Loop have been coming back maimed and injured. Rumors have started that there is somehow something “stuck” in the loop with them—and that perhaps the Loop is a prison that transhumans have inadvertently been opening and closing. The Go-nin wish a group of private investigators to look into these rumors, and see if there is any truth to them.
• Joyce Friel believes that Grendal’s Loop is an inherent instability in the gate system, and that continued access of it will eventually cause all of the gates to malfunction or even self-destruct. She advocates complete forbiddance of further uses of Grendal’s Loop, but so far no-one has taken her or her research seriously. To prove her point, she has programmed a worst-case variant of the Grendal’s Loop gate code that, if it works, would permanently damage the Discord Gate—and she wishes to hire the player characters to install it. 

156: Communion of Re

ENTRY 156: Communion of Re

“The Future Lies On Alien Suns”

- Motto of the Communion of Re

The suryas and salamanders that inhabit the corona of Sol are one of the most enigmatic groups of morphs in the system; few can comprehend the mentality of skimming through a seemingly endless layer of plasma, much less imagine what drives such entities, what their goals and aspirations might be. Strange as they are, the sun-dwellers are still transhuman, divided into different groups and factions based on one difference or another. One of those factions is the Communion of Re.

A minor gatecrashing organization that buys time on the Vulcanoid Gate, the Communion is organized like a hypercorp but close-knit like a religious fellowship, their headquarters at Caldwell a combination of slipstream Neo-Egyptian imagery, mini-Heliopolis meets raygun gothic. While it has only used the Vulcanoid Gate a dozen times, in its six missions five have used new gate coordinates which emerged near stellar bodies or Jupiter-like gas giants, sending through suryas or salamanders to investigate. How the Communion knows which coordinates to feed in is a carefully concealed secret, with speculation ranging from gravimetric calculations to a TITANs artifact or something bargained out of the Factors.

Because of their relatively small size and resources, the Communion of Re is often eager to hire experienced gatecrashers for their missions. Hired-on must resleeve into appropriate morphs for the expected environment, usually (but not always) salamanders and suryas, and given basic acclimation training as well as classes in sunspotting. The gatecrashing insertion itself involves a specially designed plasma chamber called the “Oven,” which is brought up to heat and pressure levels equivalent to those expected at the other side of the gate—the better to ease transition for morphs passing through the wormhole.

Using the Communion of Re

The Sun is a difficult spot to adventure in Eclipse Phase—it’s not friendly to a wide variety of morphs, and there’s not a vast amount to do once your player characters get there. The Communion of Re is a means to get a bit more use out of suryas and salamanders, easing the PCs’ path into resleeving and providing environments and settings that the PCs might actually be interested in. The very fact that the Communion has found gates located within the coronas of strange suns and the bright/hot layers of gas giants suggests there may be remnants of alien life there, or perhaps native entities of some sort. As for the Communion itself, the iconography is more than superficial, but an expression of a NeoGnostic sect that is at the core of the group, basing its ideology on something supposedly found drifting around the sun. How much of this the PCs are exposed to and pick up on is up to the gamemaster, but certainly the cult/corporation has a distinct purpose to their missions—perhaps they’re looking for something specific.

Seed

• The PCs are hired by the Communion to rescue a party of salamanders that had previously gone through to explore an alien waypoint made mostly out of artificial diamond. When they arrive, the salamanders appear to be fine—they’re attempting to fix the station’s degrading orbit—but the longer the PCs observe them, the more clear it is that something or someone on the station is influencing the salamanders’ actions…perhaps the station itself, which may be operated by an alien AGI.

141: Gagarin's Rest

ENTRY 141: Gagarin’s Rest

On the icy moon of Pandora stands the massive Gateway complex. Through the maze of corridors and tunnels to the chamber of the Pandora Gate itself, it is a humming hive of transhuman activity. But just outside the gate room, there is a door marked by a skull; and through that door is the gatecrasher’s bar—Gagarin’s Rest. The last stop most gatecrashers take before they go through to their pre-gatecrash checks, and the first stop after debriefing coming back.

The story goes that Gagarin’s Rest started out as an emergency exit leading to a canyon-like alley out of the complex, where the first gatecrashers would come out for a quick pull before going on what might be their final journeys, and eventually some squatter made it permanent. It’s cozy rather than cramped and a couple degrees colder than comfortable for most unmodified humans, with recessed lighting and only ten seats at the bar—a stretch of laser-cut Pandora with a couple thousand scratches in it to give it character—and booths along the wall, with a couple tables in back next to the bathrooms. A flat named Dukovitch pours the straight beers and the wine, while his lifemate, a case called Illiov, handles the mixed drinks and hookahs. The ceiling is made from slabs of transparent aluminum, so that customers can stare up and see the stars—or, as Dukovitch says, so they can stare down on them.

The walls are covered with tokens of travel: bits of stone from a dozen exoplanets, pictures of gatecrashers that didn’t make it etched in synthetic diamond raising their final a glass, pieces of old spacejunk, and of course Gagarin’s skull right over the mantle, staring down at everyone that comes in. It’s probably not the real thing, though Dukovitch swears it is…and if anyone who’s scanned it has found otherwise, they’ve never posted it to the Mesh. The one morph stupid enough to try to steal it was found in six pieces on six different exoplanets.

There are traditions at Gagarin’s Rest, and parties when missions go well, and wakes when they do not. A standing rule is that any gatecrasher heading out to a new destination for the first time, Illiov will pour them a free drink; if they come back, most buy a bottle of something and give it to Illiov in return. Otherwise, the bar trades on @-rep and a little kroner, and if Illiov and Dukovitch don’t have something they’ll fetch something else—“Try, you like.” Dukovitch will say with a crooked smile, gold-on-steel teeth gleaming.

Using Gagarin’s Rest

There’s a gatecrasher’s bar at every gate, but there is only one Gagarin’s Rest. Located so close to the gate itself, the bar is a good place to do business or just socialize and pick up a few rumors. There are more mysteries lining its walls than can be counted, more practical gatecrashing experience bellied up to the bar for a quick tote of oxygen or a touch of hash oil in a shot of grain alcohol than player characters are likely to find anywhere else. Dukovitch and Illiov operate mainly on trust and good will, and they have a lot of it to spare—with their @-rep, few would deny the men anything they asked for, but they ask for very little. Good friends to have, but considerate enemies. Their clientele tends to be less forgiving.