338: The Immix

ENTRY 338: Immix

"Jovians must not pander to a culture of fear and stagnation, nor surrender what is most precious to us for the yoke of security. Freedom is our calling - freedom to believe as we would, to practice those beliefs, to decide for ourselves how to govern our bodies and minds. We wish, in no uncertain terms, to defend our right to chose - to die as men or live as artificial intelligences, to resleeve according to our needs and means, to utilize according to our own conscience the technologies we have so painfully uncovered."
- Johann Zimmer, suspected Immix cell leader

"The Immix say: we do not hate you! We do not wish you to fear us! We are not your enemies but would be your friends! To cut ourselves off from the universe is to stagnate and die."
- Kylie Aragones, underground journalist

"Let it be known: we are not all as you see us. There are good Jovians. There are Immix."
- Prisoner 1999-09, final words

Outsiders call it the Jovian Junta. Millions of transhumans simply call it home. The media of the Planetary Consortium makes it the butt of jokes and the concern of military-political channels - a dangerous remnant of Earth oldthink, blind to the possibilities of transhumanity, a society of oppression ruled by fear and a small elite, the poison spawn who trace their lineages back to ancient oil barons and monopolists and papists. A place where individual choice is curtailed, intellectual thought stymied by superstition, old economies kept churning through military production, and the whole house of cards repeating the same damned mistakes that led to the Fall. That is the caricature; the truth is more complicated.

The Jovian Republic rules by the general approval of the populace. By and large, the people there are content - they do not want to resleeve, they hold value in their religions and secular institutions, they honor and praise those who put their life on the line in the defense of others. To be a Jovian is not necessarily to be stupid or superstitious; they are as intelligent and hardworking as any other sample of transhumanity. There is a government which seeks to mold and constrain them, but by and large the options that they restrict are options that the majority of Jovians do not wish to exercise. Outsiders rarely grasp the fundamental truth that Jovians know very well how to rebel - and do.

The mechanisms of the Jovian Republic - the military-industrial conspiracy of private and public interests, the agencies that monitor every message and transmission, the secret police that come during the night-cycle under a mask of terror - they are effective, but they are old. The Jovian Republic was born long after transhumanity had mastered the arts of domestic insurgency, and there are very few so ignorant or naive that do not understand the balance of power in the Jovian state rests, always, in its transhuman population. Every Jovian is a potential traitor or rebel. If pushed too far in a direction they will not go, the Jovian Republic faces the possibility of its civilian support evaporating, its military arbitrarily choosing not to pursue an immoral or unethical course of action. There are far more rational transhumans amid the Jovians than fanatics, and more than one cruel and unethical political officer has found their orders disobeyed, or suffer a nasty accident. When such things happen, if they are investigated, they are blamed on the Immix.

The Immix are the conceptual revolution of the Jovian Republic. Certainly, the government has uncovered any number of plots and incidents of sabotage and anti-government action it has blamed on the Immix. Equally certainly, there are those groups and individuals who have taken the name for their own, who prowl the unmonitored hallways and storerooms of habitats to discuss the atrocities of the Junta, or to rail against the particular corruption and failed policies of individual parts of it. Some even go so far as to take action, spreading viruses that replace political broadcasts with outside newsfeeds, corrupting school texts with uncensored histories and philosophies, or forging licenses and permits for forbidden tech. Yet there has never been a single central ethos or structure to Immix, and many Jovian politicians and military commanders are kept awake at night by the thought that they fight a ghost - that the Immix is simply the idea of rebellion, a convenient title by which any Jovian, at any time, can decide to follow what they know and feel is right instead of the lawful orders of their superiors...and they fear that more than the TITANs.

Using the Immix

As presented in Eclipse Phase, Jovians are conservative and old-fashioned - politically, socially, and technologically. The bulk of them are not in favor of resleeving or AGI or any of the cooler technology in the book; the population is overtly fascist and religious; and the leaders rule an enforced regime birthed in a coup and based on a monopoly on military and political power. However, conservative does not automatically mean bad, nor are the Jovians automatically villains. Even as given in Eclipse Phase, the Jovians are not a monolithic group of rabid Roman Catholics or United States Republicans looking to outlaw all space abortions because God told them to. There is room for intelligent Jovians who just happen to not want to resleeve, or who despite the relatively recent technical advances of transhumanity still hold spiritual and philosophical beliefs, and there are plenty of non-Jovians in the system that might agree with them - and plenty that Jovians might disagree about among themselves.

The crux of the Immix is that idea that the Jovians are not stupid, and will not follow orders blindly. Some citizens will question the direction of their society, some soldiers will refuse to launch a missile or gas an orphanage, some teachers will disobey and teach transhuman sex ed to their students. Most Jovians have some line they will not cross, and if pushed against their beliefs they will rebel. Sometimes they will join together as an Immix cell; others will simply try to do the right thing and blame it on the Immix bogeyman. For player characters Jovians, the Immix is a handy label for still holding to some Jovian ideas and identity without being associated with the Junta; for gamemasters the Immix are a ready-made (if diffuse) rebellion that they can use to help stage adventures involving the Jovian Republic, and to show that not all Jovians are goose-stepping primitive screwheads with too many boomsticks.

285: The Mortal Diamonds

ENTRY 285: The Mortal Diamonds

"And when they die, their end shall be as the sparks that fly from the hammer of God as it strikes the anvil of creation, seeds of stars cast off to reflect the divine."
- Lynn of Mitchell

There is a treasure that few would have the heart to steal. One million carats or more of high-pressure diamonds, created from the Lucifer's Hammer project on Jupiter, crafted from the cremains of some of those who died during the Fall. They are the honored dead, transfigured to immortal carbon, for that is all that remains of them. One of the great treasures of the Jovian Junta, the Mortal Diamonds are on perpetual display in a memorial-shrine at Liberty on Ganymede.

Seeds

• The Planetary Consortium asks the PCs to take on a daring mission: infiltrate the Junta on Ganymede, and swap out some of the Mortal Diamonds for fakes that contain passive spy bugs.
• Within the Junta, a gauche faction in The Castle is planning on making their own memorial, the Mortal Diamonds II. This seems sacrilegious (as well as extremely poor taste) to some of the more restrained Jovians, and through an intermediary they approach the PCs to disrupt this effort by stealing the diamonds intended for the second memorial - the PCs, as outsiders, are utterly deniable, but the media outrage at their crime could have serious consequences if they are caught.
• Five years ago, transmissions from the Junta reported a failed attempt to steal the Mortal Diamonds, and the pirates had fled to the Court of Zeus. Now, a friend of the PCs approaches them with a carefully pieced-together map, supposedly showing where the thieves landed - and of course, a story about how they must have gotten away with something, or the Junta wouldn't have wasted so much effort for so many years trying to track them down.
• Miracles! is the word of the day on Ganymede...a debate has erupted in the Holy See on accounts of visions that have occurred to pilgrims who have visited the shrine. Scientists are examining the chamber and combing through the case histories, looking for what phenomena may be behind the rash of hallucinations, while a faction within the populace and the church urge the pope to declare it a true miracle. The PCs are asked to investigate by a minor mediacorp, which is willing to pay their expenses as they pursue the story...up to a certain point, anyway.
• The PCs are hired to assist the Planet Killer (entry 048) in stealing the mortal diamonds - and thanks to his plan they succeed, and get away clean. Only to discover that the Planet Killer intends to use the diamonds as ultrahard shrapnel in an antipersonnel weapon designed to wipe Liberty off the face of Ganymede. Can the PCs stop the Killer in time? Will they?
• Not all the Mortal Diamonds lay in the Junta's hands. The artist-engineer who designed the memorial kept two two-carat diamonds crafted from the cremains of his parents, and took them with him when he later defected to the Planetary Consortium. The Junta is eager to have these final diamonds to complete their memorial, and are willing to go to great lengths to retrieve them...even murder. Corned by the Junta's agents, the engineer passes them on to the PCs. Now they hold some of the most precious stones in the solar system, and everyone will be looking for them.

127: The Concentric Trees

ENTRY 127: The Concentric Trees

In the sarcophagus hab of Prototype, the boughs of the concentric trees twist and curl in vast wooden rings and spirals around the light tube spindling along its mile-long axis. One of the earliest Reagan cylinders, Prototype was a captured asteroid put into artificial orbit around Jupiter, and hollowed out as field test for macroengineering technologies that would go into building habitats like Almathea. Prototype only spins fast enough to simulate up to 0.2g in centripetal force and receives too much radiation to be considered suitable for long-term human habitation, but has continued to fulfill its purpose as a testing ground for new habitat technologies.

As an independent research project financed by the hypercorps, Prototype was one of the habitats near Jupiter to fall outside the reach of the Jovian Republic; officially the Jovians lay claim to it, but allow the apolitical research commune free reign and limited trade for water ice and hydrocarbons in exchange for their research data. The heavily-shielded research station itself is located at one pole of the spinning asteroid, with the other pole occupied by the fusion plant and water/air recirculation systems. In the tube itself, the researchers have created a self-contained, low-g rainforest ecosystem, studying the long-term effects on plant life, and accepting commissions from hypercorps and habitats to test the effect of introducing new species into their ecosystem. The core of the ecosystem are the concentric trees, mutated and genetweaked descendents of Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, and Western Red Cedar, bent and twisted into their distinct curls and coils around the central light tube, their boughs and trunks heavy with shaggy free-floating clouds of moss and epiphytes. Various ant species are the major wildlife, and Prototype scientists have demonstrated bizarre adaptations to the gentle spin and low gravity conditions.

Unfortunately, the Prototype Research Commune has something of an amoral research philosophy; in the past they have acted as a dumping ground for failed uplifts, who are let loose in the low-grav jungle to survive as best they can, their every actions monitored until they die, usually of malnutrition complicated by health problems from extended time in low gravity. However, the purpose of the Prototype Research Commune is for valid study, and efforts have been made to extend the suitability of the habitat for the subject, such as the introduction of various species of edible tubers. Non-Uplifted Rights activists counter that the PRC’s modifications simply extend the projected lifespan of their subjects so that they can collect more data.

Using the Concentric Trees

Prototype’s environs is as close as one is likely to get to a proper “wild” jungle on a sarcophagus hab, and as exotic a location as one could want to set an adventure; the hard part is finding a reason to go there. The easy main reason to travel to Prototype is to deliver (or more rarely receive) shipments of raw materials, visiting scholars, and new plant and animal specimens to test out; the secondary reason has to do with Prototype’s relationship with the Jovian Republic, acting as a possible backchannel for smuggling goods, data, or people in and out of the Republic without going through official channels. The PRC and the Jovians are both aware of this trade, but as the participants are mainly scientists seeking to promulgate their research, both turn a blind eye—a position that might change if anyone were to upset the status quo.

094: Ulf Vargsnev

ENTRY 094: Ulf Vargsnev

Principle only goes so far, even in the bioconservative Jovian Republic, and even the civic leaders must balance their philosophy against what is best for their people…and their children. Ulf Vargsnev was a sick kid with a host of genetic defects and long-term illnesses picked up from years of exposure to cosmic radiation and toxic byproducts of his mother’s chemical manufacturing complexes. Magda Vargsnev wanted a better life for her son…so she bought it. The process was supposed to be legal within the constraints of Jovian law, exercising several loopholes concerning the replacement of human organs by systematically replacing Ulf’s failing organs with transgenic material that did not qualify as human according to the Jovians’ meticulous stands. Over the course of eighteen weeks, Ulf Vargsnev was essentially remade, rebuilt in form and function. Then the clinic was raided.

As a minor, Ulf was not held responsible for his mother’s actions, and the court let him off with sterilization. However, the stigma of being transgenic in a bioconservative society stuck with Ulf; unable to obtain any better employment he took work as a biological waste disposal specialist, out of sight and out of mind of the majority of the Jovian population, and began to associate with the less prejudiced criminal elements that operated on the fringes of society.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
23	18	19	21	19	27	18	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
8	1	36	7	72	40	8	60

Morph: Transgenic (Remade)

Skills: Academics: Biochemistry 42, Academics: Genetics 40, Beam Weapons 35, Blades 44, Clubs 44, Fray 44, Free Fall (Microgravity) 45, Infiltration 36, Interests: Jovian Republic 50, Interests: Transgenetics 50, Intimidation 45, Kinesics 45, Kinetic Weapons 44, Language: Native Finnish 91, Language: Norwegian 67, Language: Danish 55, Language: Swedish 56, Language: German 55, Language: English 77, Networking: Criminals 55, Perception 50, Persuasion 30, Profession: Waste Disposal 52, Scrounging 30, Unarmed Combat 44

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Circadian Regulation, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Enhanced Respiration, Temperature Tolerance, Toxin Filters

Traits: Addiction (Alcohol, Petals, Minor), Stigma (Transgenic)

Using Ulf Varsnev

In another habitat, another society, Ulf would be a valued member of society. However, in the Jovian Republic his abilities, skills, talents, and output are disregarded; as far as they are concerned he is a second- or third-class citizen, a barely human eunuch who is only suited to taking out the trash, and that he does begrudgingly. As an NPC gamemasters can take two basic tacks with Ulf: trapped by his life and making the best of a bad situation in the only habitat he’s ever known, or dying to escape but unable to scrape together the resources and favors to do it. Either way, he makes an excellent contact for the PCs, a friendly face within the Jovian Republic that knows a few things about operating on the down low. For a price, he can probably smuggle them anywhere they want to go by hiding them among the medical waste he carts around. Of course, given his history that price might range from breaking his mother out of prison to giving him a ride off this rock.