288: Liangamish

ENTRY 288: Liangamish

The Liangamish Tholus near the Amenthes Fossae on Mars is an artificial hillock carved from local stone and built into the shape of a large phallic dome, ornamented with penis-headed columns, and fantastic, intricately detailed phallic sculptures, carvings, and the accouterments. The architectural style is claimed by experts to be loosely derivative of Asian and Indian fertility temples of old Earth, but experts who have examined the building claim that while the outside architecture is smooth and symbolic or representative of human genitalia, inside the temple the artwork gets progressively more strange, detailed, elaborate, and dark, incorporating fanastical creatures and aliens, skulls and bones, perverse couplings, genital mutilation, and architectural considerations that suggest blood grooves and ritual chambers for self-castration.

Despite, or perhaps because, of the elaborate and strange sexual symbolism and artwork of the site, it retains a steady tourist trade, with the the Liangamish Tours microcorp controlling access to the site, giving guided physical and virtual tours, ensuring visitors don't damage the site, and selling souvenirs. Honeymooners in particular are known to visit the site and kiss or rub the Central Phallus, a freestanding iron pillar in the geometric center of the Tholus, which is often given to be good luck and promote fertility. An objective outside investigative agency performed a series of surveys and biomedical scans and found that there is a sleight positive correlation between fertility and kissing the Phallus, but argued that this may well be the result of other factors. This has not stopped the microcorp from disseminating the study's finding widely to attract more tourists.

Liangamish Tours has been searching for the original artisan or artisans as part of plan to expand the site, with detailed designs already in place for new tholuses centered around breasts, vaginas, and anuses, but have so far failed to discover much on the origins of the Liangamish site or its creator(s). Initial construction steps toward new or expanded tholus sites have also met unusual delays and faults, which has given birth in the media to the rumor of a curse - ironically, Liangamish employees and officers appear confused as to whether this is an idea they came up with or not, and interviews and Mesh-based digital archaeology gives conflicting evidence as to whether is it is a plant and to what degree the Liangamish Tours employees actually believe in the supposed curse.

Using Liangamish

A mystery, wrapped in an enigma, which could be the site of an H. R. Giger-themed pornographic film - and hey, feel free to use it in your game if that appeals to you. Liangamish is an adult-themed location which is taboo enough for the inner twelve-year old in every gamer, and with just enough is-it-or-isn't-it rumors and unresolved origins about it that the gamemaster can do pretty much whatever they want with it. As a scene, it's creepy and yet sort of silly, with carve stone penis-monsters that PCs can momentarily stumble on in the dark and then feel foolish about. Who built it and why are entirely up to the PCs, but as it stands it is a good slightly-out-of-the-way tourist spot (like Stonehenge), a decent scene for a wedding or post-wedding hijinks, the not-so-secret meeting place of an exsurgent cult, the remnant of an old Earth religion, etc. Gamemasters that don't like or aren't comfortable using "phallus" and various related terms every other sentence are entirely welcome to replace the distinctive theme with teddy bears or hippopotami or whatever else they find interesting, though that does mean they'll miss out on the opportunity to use images of Asian fertility temples and H. R. Giger art as props in game.

Seed

• The Liangamish Curse doesn't just prevent further destruction - individuals that have damage the site, such as removing materials from it, often face bad fortune or death. So when the superstitious flat Juice Boxer finds a stone penis among his things, he is scared bad. He asks the PCs for their help in returning the object to its rightful place as quickly as possible - made all the more difficult because Liangamish Tours has temporarily closed the site after recent marsquakes may have damaged the stability of the building.

254: The Posthuman League

ENTRY 254: The Posthuman League

Before the Fall. Human technology first made the transition to exhuman status feasible long before it became widely available. Those first exhumans pushed the technology of their day to its limits, and they were exceptional individuals—resourceful, driven, often brilliant; many of the technologies involved they had to refine or invent on their own, and they experimented on themselves, all to realize needs and modes of existence that could not be met by the traditional human form. These first would-be exhumans were ostracized by the public, hounded by governments for their technologies and what they had done to obtain their transformations.

So they went underground. Consolidated into networks. Developed their own philosophies and ways of interacting with each other. A society of sorts. The name attached to them was “The Posthuman League”—and when the governments closed in, when they drew first blood, when the first proto-exhuman died on an operating table during a raid…they vanished. Into the night, toward the stars.

The first posthumans. Maybe the first brinkers. Silent, uncommunicative, never tracked, never traced, never found. They’ve been out there in the darkness for longer than most of transhumanity, and who knows what lessons they’ve learned, how they have developed their technologies in isolation. Or maybe they’re all dead, their society torn apart by internal pressures, their primitive morphs unsustainable over the long term. Maybe the TITANs got them. No one can answer the question: what happened to the Posthuman League?

Using the Posthuman League

Another mystery for the Eclipse Phase setting, the legend of the Posthuman League is more romantic than the facts. The earliest “exhumans” comprised a variety of inventive but relatively low-tech morphs, back when egocasting was only possible with a room full of equipment that cost something on the order of the gross national product of a mid-sized state. In their day they were clever, resourceful, and unique, but on their own, in isolation, their technologies are unlikely to keep pace with contemporary tech levels in Eclipse Phase—hell, a lot of it might not even be compatible. The archaic retrotech morphs of the Posthuman League, combined with their antiquated sense of themselves is part of the appeal. These were explorers, some of the first explorers, diving headfirst into embracing new sensoriums, new bodies, new ways of being. Some likely died. Others are probably insane. The rest, if they survived…what stories they have to tell, if anyone still gives a damn to listen. History has passed them by, should they ever return, and they’re not likely to react well to that. Gamemasters can have the PCs search for the Posthuman League, or maybe just run across them somewhere in outer space. It’s first contact with their past, the culture shock of explaining to these people what has happened in their absence, and how thoroughly forgotten and passed-by they have become. Some may return with the PCs; others might prefer exile. A very few might be in dire need of some materials to sustain their degrading forms, and aren’t above raiding habitats to get it, leaving the PCs to stop them…if they can.

247: Melikov's Expedition

ENTRY 247: Melikov’s Expedition

Some say the TITANs left, fled to another solar system or retreated through one of the Pandora Gates, or else went into hiding on some distant lump of spacerock or in some unfathomable cavern on Mars. Transhumanity, broken, bleeding, and exhausted from war and the rapid exodus from Earth, was in no shape to pursue en masse. Yet there was one person that understood that transhumanity would never be safe so long as the TITANs existed, and resolved to hunt them. So in the dying days of AF 1, and funded by the alliance of interests that was or would become Firewall, Petra Melikov set off to find where the TITANs had gone in three vessels: the battle cruiser Yama King, the frigate One Bad Mother, and the medical frigate Bama Cruise, with a total expedition strength of 68 transhumans. Melikov’s Expedition has not been heard from since.

Using Melikov’s Expedition

Great expeditions that vanish into the unknown are generally good for two purposes: the surprise return (which would probably herald a collective “Oh shit!” moment, since it means either Melikov succeeded and/or they’re being chased by an exsurgent fleet), or the rescue mission, where the PCs are sent off to go find out what happened to them. Firewall is like to send out periodic feelers along Melikov’s suggested routes and look into any evidence of her expedition and crew. This is an excellent setup for a follow-the-clues space jaunt in the farthest, strangest, most dangerous parts of the solar system—and possibly beyond. Of course, there’s no guarantee that Melikov succeeded, meaning her ship might be a derelict and the crew dead from some critical damage or an encounter with an exsurgent booby-trap left  by the TITANs in their wake, but either way returning with proof of the expedition’s demise—or better yet, the captain’s log and blackbox—would be a considerable coup that would raise the PC’s reps considerably.

Starting Points

• The Zone, Mars: Firewall’s surviving records indicate that Melikov was in one of the last waves of ground troops that penetrated the Zone before the quarantine, and described an astrophysics center where she discovered a set of coordinates. These were kept secret, but are believed to have been the basis for the first leg of Melikov’s journey.
• Ursus Gammon, Neptune Trojans: This small observation post was the last station to catch sight of Melikov’s Expedition, and still contains the original logs. Review of these files shows that the expedition stopped off at one of the centaurs (dwarf planets).
• Plexus (exoplanet): Three months ago, an expedition through the Martian Gate stumbled across a campsite in the icy polar regions of a habitable planet, including several pounds of what appear to be human feces in a covered latrine pit. The campsite is on a ridge overlooking a glacier with what appears to be an alien city under a kilometer of ice. Among the scraps discovered at the campsite is a scrap of synthetic cloth that matches the uniforms used on One Bad Mother.

228: Last Flight of the Chattanooga

ENTRY 228: Last Flight of the Chattanooga

Space is a frontier, with all the hardships and scarcity that implies. In the old days, on earth, the people on the frontier could content themselves that home was beyond those hills, over that sea. Now, Mother Earth is lost, and with it all the resources visible and invisible, all the skills and knowledge and heritage of generations. For all the bluster of the Planetary Consortium and empty high life sold by the hypercorps, transhumanity remains scattered in lost colonies, scraping by on what is available, cut off from our homeland—and despite what some may hope, there is no going back. Transhumanity stands or falls on what it can make do on with the technology and resources at hand. What are scarce, what is valuable in the solar system are those things that were peculiar and unique to Earth. They are prizes that can secure the rep of anyone, and there is one more valued than any other: the Chattanooga.

Lifting off from the Alexandria space port during the Fall, the Chattanooga was a fully-automated ark-class vessel, with a seedbank carrying specimens from over 150,000 plant species and 50,000 animals—including fifty species of mammal—and a cultural database containing over sixteen million volumes from university and public libraries all over the Middle East and North Africa, the vast majority of which were never archived elsewhere. The full scans of every cuneiform tablet dug up at Ninevah and every temple in Egypt, digital manuscripts that track the development of Arabic to before the rise of the Prophet, proto-terraforming experiment data for reclaiming the Sahara; all this and much more was sent out into space.

That flare as the booster rockets kicked in is where the Chattanooga left the pages of history and enters the realm of legend.

Originally intended to orbit Mars, most sensors lost track of the Chattanooga some time after it left Earth orbit. The final transmission to Luna was garbled, but suggests that the guidance program recognized the danger and took an “alternate course”—all records of which, if it is true, are lost. After the Fall, unconfirmed sightings started trickling in as transhumanity spread throughout the system—most in the main belt, some as far away as Uranus, though most diligent seekers doubt that the Chattanooga made it that far. While a nuclear reactor powers the ark section, the ship itself had a three-shot nuclear propulsion drive and limited maneuvering thrusters. Without constant acceleration, the range of the ship falls well within the limits of transhuman exploration…which makes the mystery of its disappearance all the more strange and unsatisfying.

Using the Chattanooga

Classic treasure-hunting set-up, just add setting info and characters: shake well and serve. Gamemasters can make an entire campaign out of chasing the Chattanooga, following the trail of sightings and possible routes it might have taken, dealing with treasure hunters and conservationists eager to claim it first for their own reasons, chasing down leads and artifacts—and that’s just the basic approach. There’s no guarantee that the Chattanooga was carrying what everyone assumed it was, or that it even existed; what most people think was the Chattanooga could have been a massive weapon carrying every nuclear warhead the Mideast could scrounge up as an attack against the TITANs. It’s a mystery, so play up the mystery: let your players speculate, play up some of their expectations, and don’t feel constrained by any of the “facts” presented above.

Seed

• During a gatecrashing expedition, the PCs come across a species of grass that is a 99% match for an Earth species believed extinct after the Fall. Further exploration finds more anomalous plant species…and then perhaps a chunk of wreckage. Could it be that the Chattanooga landed or crashed on this exoplanet? If so, how did it get here…and where’s the rest of it?

225: Bruixera

ENTRY 225: Bruixera

“Rumor and legend.”

- Otoxa, Firewall Agent

There is a whisper, in the dark corners of the Mesh where secrets are the only wealth and gossip is the common currency of spies, criminals, and patriots. A hidden habitat for exsurgents, populated by innocent morphs infected by the TITANs’ viruses and fleeing capture and liquidation. A haven for transhumans on their way to becoming monsters, a combination of terrorist training camp and exhuman enclave.

Unfortunately for Firewall and the rest of the powers that be in the system, Bruixera remains no more than a ghost, an exsurgent Agartha or Shangri-La, a name screamed by once-human throats and smeared in infectious feces on the walls of their hide-outs. Most who are aware of the stories of Bruixera consider it just an idea—a new Sodom, a dark Avalon that desperate, scared people undergoing terrible, painful transformations latch onto. The Kingfishers, a group of anti-exsurgent counterintelligence agents at Firewall have even used rumors of Bruixera to entrap suspected exsurgents and collaborators. Very, very few consider that Bruixera is anything but a fairy tale.

Those few know that Bruixera is real. The information is compartmentalized and kept from the majority of Firewall, kept within the Witchhunters clique that studies long-term trends and patterns of infection. Disparate data suggests that Bruixera is a comment memetic element embedded in multiple forms of the digital exsurgent virus, which manifests as a migratory compulsion whenever an individual in an exsurgent network achieves a certain number of connections. The affected exsurgents drop out of their networks, and through circuitous routes start traveling…to where exactly Witchhunters have not yet been able to determine, though the three most likely possibilities include the Zone on Mars, a hidden habitat on Uranus, and—most dangerous or unlikely of all—a secret bunker located on the ruined Earth near the south pole.

Using Bruixera

Bruixera is a myth, and as such it is free for gamemasters to have fun with. It might be a literal hive where transhumans live like insects or mole rats, bare caricatures of their old forms, breeding and swarming; or a chaotic souk where mad, mutated capitalists trade the knowledge of the TITANs for weapons, sex, and further initiations; or simply a run-down habitat barely fit for human habitation where transhumans fleeing Firewall because of their illness have come to live or die in whatever peace they can manage. Almost certainly it has an exsurgent population of anywhere from a couple hundred to ten thousand, most of which is likely infected with multiple strains of the exsurgent virus, and almost certainly a character cannot find the habitat unless they are infected. It is unlikely for PCs to ever visit Bruixera, but as a mythical location it makes a nice background element to seed along in a campaign, or finding Bruixera might be the goal of an especially difficult one—even if it turns out Bruixera doesn’t exist, getting to the point where they make that discovery would be quite a journey in itself.

And, for the ambitious gamemaster, it might be the centerpiece of a particularly difficult and rewarding campaign: having the PCs (infected deliberately or accidentally with a strain of the exsurgent virus) infiltrate an exsurgent cell, rise through the ranks through successful acts of terrorism, and then find the way to Bruixera...a great prize for anyone that captures it, though most Firewall cliques would be happy to nuke it until it glows then break out the antimatter to do a proper job of it. Of course, that means days or weeks of degeneration likely ending in the PC’s death, but if they’re going to die anyway…what a way to go.

180: Echo Point

ENTRY 180: Echo Point

The very first radio signal humanity ever sent from Earth still hurtles through the void. Every transmission that was ever made forms a part of the endless wave of invisible radio energy moving through space at the speed of light. Before the Pandora Gates were discovered, the first any alien species would have known of humanity would have been those calls into the great darkness.

Now, something is sending them back. First noticed in AF 8, radio telescopes pointed in the direction of Barnard’s Star began picking up distorted, patchy transmissions from BF 2. Analysis of the content shows it to be a continuous broadcast stream—presumably everything that the listeners at Echo Point have picked up, amplified and sent back. These re-broadcasts have continued in near-real time, and now listeners have started picking up signals sent out during the early days of the Fall.

As transhumans tune in and relive the first days of the end of their world, others still wonder at the future. No source has been observed for the re-transmissions; astrophysicists have fairly ruled out any natural source of reflection might be responsible for the echo, and whatever alien ship, satellite, or other apparatus has so far evaded detection. So Echo Point remains a mystery, all of transhumanity’s greatest fears and worst memories cast back at it…and all anybody can wonder now is why.

Using Echo Point

Transhumanity may be looking toward the future, but it still has a lot of baggage from the past to work through first. Echo Point is a mechanism for gamemasters to address lingering issues form the Fall—old wounds, forgotten memories, secrets better left buried. Echo Point itself is a mystery, left open for the gamemaster to decide what to do. At (presumably) five light years or so out, it remains beyond current limits of transhuman technology to reach (barring a very fortuitous Pandora Gate opening nearby). Whether an alien effort to communicate or some trick of the TITANs, Echo Point could do a lot of damage just in the chaos it creates in the time it takes to go through the Fall and its aftermath.

Seeds

• A group of hackers has begun broadcasting the transmissions live from Echo Point through the habitat’s systems. Many are reliving bad memories from the fall, and a small riot has broken out. Caught in the chaos and confusion, will the player characters seek to hide, help, or take advantage of the distraction?
• Sabotage is occurring at several of the major listening stations tuned in to Echo Point, their facilities raided, files scrambled or erased. Firewall believes that among the Echo Point transmissions are secrets that someone wants to keep under wraps—TITANs collaborators, profiteers, hidden exsurgents, something. They’ve tracked one of the saboteurs to the PC’s habitat…an aged flat who’s just burned the last of his favors. The PCs are asked to apprehend him. Firewall wants answers, but the old man isn’t ready to go without a fight.

176: The Iktomi Vault

ENTRY 176: The Iktomi Vault

The shattered settlements of the Iktomi on Echo V are spread out in networks across the world, the remnants of shattered, overgrown highways and aqueducts connecting broken city to broken city. Yet the whole of the surface of the world was no occupied by the Iktomi—maps from space show regions that were inhospitable or otherwise neglected, free from Iktomi structures. Some were deserts and forests, beneath which the satellite maps showed former riverbeds and forgotten townships long buried by sand or crawling plants. On the ocean shore off one continent lay an entire nation that seemed to have fallen into the sea, to lay undisturbed. And in one isolated rocky butte—a geological anomaly, far from the Iktomi cities old or new—they discovered the vault.

Perhaps once it had been a natural cave, but if so the ancient Iktomi had mined it out and enlarged it into a deep shaft reaching into a natural hollow in the butte through a series of three chambers, each of which had been guarded by massive stone doors, heavily engraved with undecipherable signs in matte white and black, and the walls and floor as well are decorated in eye-catching interlocking circles and geometric designs of bright primary colors. Test samples from materials in the vault leads Xenoarchaeologists to believe that the initial period of creation for the vault was about twelve thousand years ago, and that is featured at least three subsequent periods of activity where the vault was opened, expanded, and resealed, and the three chambers leading into the natural hollow show considerable defenses had been erected, including some sort of jamming devices to disable wireless signals, the remains of three automated laser emplacements, and explosives set in the walls to collapse the chambers if the doors had been breached.

The reason for these defenses remains unknown, but whatever they guarded was obviously insufficient, as the entire complex has been breached. The massive stone discs that were rolled into place like bank vaults to seal each chamber lie shattered, the automated weapons melted from heat characteristic with plasma weapons, the designs carved into walls and ceiling pock-marked from various other weapons-fire and the heavy tread of some six-legged arthropod vehicle. The innermost chamber has yet to be breached by xenoarchaeologists—a partial detonation of the final security measure has blocked access to it, but based on the residual radiation leaking through the loose stone, the current belief is that the site contains several tons of radioactive material, though this may be an overestimation as many of the materials used in the third cavern are based on pitchblende and radium; robots armed with UV lights have reported distinct fluorescent patterns are visible that are different from the brightly-colored markings in the previous two chambers.

Still, citing the risks and difficulties of clearing a way into the central hollow, xenoarchaeologists are currently excavating what might be the remains of a nearby worksite that could give clues into what the Iktomi were storing in their vault, and why. Some researchers have also pointed out the disturbing similarities between the Iktomi vault and human long-term radioactive waste storage facilities.

172: The Neptunium Skull

ENTRY 172: The Neptunium Skull

Distance impedes nearly all communication; both the physical distance measured in kilometers and the conceptual distance between one ego and another, or one community and another. Information comes through various channels and becomes distorted or misinterpreted in passing from one receiver to the next, rumors growing as they are told and retold, and even the most diligent wiki on the Mesh cannot perfectly control all of what its members post. Space gives birth to legends.

One such legend regards the Neptunium Skull: 59.88 kg of neptunium-236, cast or carved or otherwise shaped into the semblance of the skull of a human female. Those are the facts; the rest is mostly conjecture. Its likely first appearance was a line on a security report from Rhea, when an “irregular near-critical mass” of neptunium was listed as among the missing following a break-in at a radioactive materials storage facility. A few weeks later, a Ruster yegg fresh from a “honeymoon” on Saturn died of radiation poisoning, mumbling about a skull—her partner/wife escaped custody and was never seen again. The first “official” sighting was when the St. Catherine Tong handed over the Skull to the administration of New Quebec, in exchange for the release of sixteen of its members from various forms of incarceration or service. The accepting official, Davier Jose Cheecha, was later indicted in scandal when the skull disappeared from its secure vault, and fled for the Outer Rim.

So the tales go, on and on—the Neptunium Skull crops up here and there throughout the solar system, an objective of inestimable worth and danger, leaving a trail of broken lives and contamination in its wake.

Mechanics

The Neptunium Skull is radioactive. Any unshielded exposure to the Neptunium Skull results in radiation poisoning for biomorphs (see Eclipse Phase, p.201); synthmorphs tend to become contaminated and may suffer flawed and corrupted backups, as well as passing the contamination on to others by exposure. Currently, due to shape, density, and mass the Neptunium Skull is subcritical and will not create a sustained nuclear reaction. This can be easily overcome however, so there remains the possibility that under the right conditions the Neptunium Skull can be converted into a nuclear weapon. The effects of this happening are left up to the gamemaster, but should probably involve “BIG BADDA BOOM” and radiation poisoning and contamination for any nearby morphs that survive.

Using the Neptunium Skull

A deadly sort of MacGuffin, the Neptunium Skull represents an object of nearly incalculable worth and danger all rolled into one. The industrial effort required to synthesize and separate that much neptunium-236 is tremendous, the idea that it is running loose in the solar system-wide grey market frightening. While not apparently designed for use in a nuclear weapon, the mass is sufficient that it could easily be used for such a purpose. However, the greater appeal of the Neptunium Skull is: who made it, and why? The shape and properties of the Neptuniun Skull also make it easy to transfer legends of real-life “cursed” and apocryphal objects like the Hope Diamond or the Crystal Skulls to the Neptunium Skull; some deluded individuals may even believe that the Skull contains the ability to enhance psi powers in some fashion. NPCs may play up this and other reputed powers of the skull, but the very real threat of carrying a massive ingot of refined radioactive isotope should be more than sufficient threat for most players.

154: The Martian Cryptids

ENTRY 154: The Martian Cryptids

When transhumanity arrived, Mars was a dead planet. Some still hold there was no life on Mars at all before humans made Marsfall. Now, though far from terraformed, Mars teems with life in and around the habitats and terraforming gardens. Yet no transhuman can say precisely what species are present on Mars; there is no master database of all animals, plants, and bacteria brought to Mars, or engineered since transhumanity arrived. As well, much of Mars remains ares incognita, unvisited and unexplored at the ground level, known only from the cameras and sensors of orbiting satellites and the occasional aerial sweep. So perhaps it comes as little surprise that Barsoomians see things out on the fringes, and come across strange carcasses from time to time after a dust storm has blown through, and some ruster takes a few pictures and uploads another entry in the Martian Cryptids database.

A classical open-editing environment, the Martial Cryptids is configured to allow any user to upload sightings and evidence; a devout community of bored scientists and cryptozoologists then begin the long battle of evaluating the rumors, collating data, sometimes even raising funds for expeditions to find evidence of cryptids with a high probability of actually existing. Most of the two hundred or so cryptids currently in the database are assumed to be the result of outside agencies, brought or engineered by transhumans, TITANs, or Factors; pre-Marsfall cryptids are generally considered hoaxes even by some of the most uncritical zoologists. Some of the favorite/most probable Martian cryptids include:

Aram snail-tortoise: A hypothetical silicon-based organism with multiple sightings in the Aram Chaos. The creatures are supposedly similar to gastropods and move on a single large pseudopod, protected by inarticulate iron-rich exoskeleton or shell which the foot draws into when dust storms come. Most reported examples are 6-8 centimeters long. “Aram shells” retrieved from the Aram Chaos region have so far proved to be inorganic hematite-silicon rocks.

Borget’s sunflower: A wild, self-reproducing “petal” nanoplant with hexagonal solar-panel “leaves” in Reull Vallis, supposedly crafted by famed narcoalgorithm programmer Glenda Borget after a trip inside the Zone and containing primitive maker-facilities sufficient to create new copies of itself from available materials. More conspiracy-minded cryptozoologists point to anomalous movements in the region shortly after rumors first emerged as part of a deliberate coverup.

Marsman: Known only through poor video and still photo footage, as well as hundreds of sightings, the Marsman appears to be a heavily modified, perhaps experimental morph combining traits of rusters and neo-hominids. Unlike typical Barsoomians, the Marsman reportedly is perfectly adapted to the current Martian environment, requiring no survival gear. Scientists decry this as highly improbable, but the number of sightings and mounting evidence suggest there might be something more than popular hallucination.

Using the Martian Cryptids

The Martian Cryptids Database, besides being the most popular source of data on Martian cryptids, also serves as a focal point for bounties proving the existence of any given cryptid, and the starting point of most expeditions that set out to prove/disprove the existence of such beasties, and as such may serve as jumping-off points for adventures. Some of the cryptids listed may be victims of the exsurgent virus, experiments of the TITANs, critters imported from exoplanets, genetic experiments that got away, or hallucinations brought about by stress, sleeplessness, loneliness, and low oxygen out on the fringes. Any way you cut it, cryptids can be a good excuse to get the PCs out to some of the unexplored places of Mars. Other sizable planetary habitats like Titan, Europa, and many exoplanets likely have their own cryptid databases.

152: Mitochondria 2.0

ENTRY 152: Mitochondria 2.0

In the orbital habitats above Mercury and Venus, in the nursery edu-creches on Luna and the kindertainment pods of Mars, the kids aren’t alright. Oh, they’re mostly healthy enough, displaying the usual signs one would expect for biomorphs conceived, carried, born, and raised in different gravities, but even accounting for expected morphological differences, something strange is going on.

The first red flag was eight years ago on Mars, an outbreak of mitochondrial diseases in newborns. Initially the suspect was environmental factors, increased radiation or maybe a toxic leak causing random mutations, but close typing of the mDNA showed very consistent, nearly identical mitochondria—as if all the kids had come from the same mother, even though their non-mitochondrial DNA matched their expected parents. After two years of research, no causal finding could be produced, and the investigation was cold-cased.

Six years ago on Locus a few weird health spikes showed a group of eight-year-olds were found to have increased brown adipose tissue, up to 15% by body weight. The culprit was believed to be the presence of mutated mitochondria, which were identical in all of the children—again, as if they had the same mitochondrial parent, even though the children were conceived from different female donors. The reproductive health center which had performed the fertilization and egg implantation procedures was investigated, but aside from typical gene selectivity treatments, nothing unusual had occurred.

Four years ago, investigators finally got a suspect. Four adults on Aphrodite Prime started suffering liver failure, their mitochondria failing to produce the enzymes necessary to detoxify the ammonia produced from protein metabolism. One of the station personnel had been present on Mars and Locus during the past outbreaks, but managed to avoid both investigations: a nomadic lab assistant and amateur genehacker named Hamish Haal. When the Venusian security moved in, they found someone had beaten them to the punch: Haal had died under torture in his quarters. His personal dataspace was empty, wiped clean. Examination of his mitochondria found the same mDNA sequence as in the victims.

For the last four years, new reports have been sporadic, and various groups have taken it on themselves to attempt to track down and identify Haal’s victims, who could number in the hundreds or low thousands. The mechanism he used to alter or replace the mitochondria is still not fully understood; current theories lean toward a retrovirus. The reasons for Haal’s crime apparently died with him, and the identity of his killers and the state of his research remains unknown. There are many that question whether he was even working alone, or was killed as part of a conspiracy. All that is clear is that the damage is done. A new source of mDNA is out there, somewhere, quietly proliferating through transhumanity.

Seed

• Haal’s mother died on Luna, and a portion of her genetic material was kept in a genebank while the rest was destroyed. The M2.0 Victims Network approaches the PCs and asks them to “liberate” the sample, to see if the mDNA Haal used is derived from his mother or another source. If the PCs are successful, they discover that not only is the mDNA not the source, the sample they liberated has no close kinship to Haal himself—the woman everyone thought was his genetic parent was just a surrogate. This raises even more questions about Haal’s identity, but the victims’ representative thanks the PCs for their aid, as every piece of the puzzle helps.

147: Blackbodies

ENTRY 147: Blackbodies

Transhumanity is not alone in the universe, but it need not bother the Factors or gate to an exoplanet for proof. They were first revealed by Eva Motowski, an ice prospector/scientist mapping the slow tidal movements of Saturn’s rings, caused by some of the shepherd moons that prevent the rings from dispersing. Overlapping measurements from different angles revealed the presence of a small, angular superblack object which Motowski speculated might be carbon agglutination. A probe sent into the region found no trace of it, but reports of similar artifacts came in from Jol Kebana, an amateur astronomer on Titan. The ice prospector and astronomer collaborated, seeking out other telescopes and sensors pointed in the right direction at the right time, and over the course of several weeks traced out a probable trajectory for the object. Presenting their data, they convinced the operators of three radio telescopes to direct their equipment toward a specific region of trans-Saturnian space for a period of 72 hours.

This time, there were four of them.

That was the last time the blackbodies were seen around Saturn, although a handful of possible sightings have been made around Neptune. Consensus in the scientific community about the nature of the blackbodies is fairly solid: small superblack craft whose hulls absorb the majority of electromagnetic radiation, or at least the kinds of light and radio waves that transhumanity typically uses in its long-range sensors. In theory this is near-perfect camouflage so long as the vessel is not viewed only against black space in a vacuum. The effect is not perfect however, so that different angles absorb and emit slightly more or less energy; a single telescope might get lucky, two or more pointed at the same spot from different angles are much more likely to pick up the craft.

Questions remain, however. If the surmise on the technology is correct, the vessels should build up a vast amount of waste heat—all the energy it absorbs and does not emit. Aside from the heat problem, the technology involved is within current transhuman capabilities. Given that, it is reasonable to assume the blackbodies’ originate from one of the existing factions, the Factors, or the TITANs, though certain parties still prefer the idea of a new, unknown extraterrestrial race that is spying on transhumanity prior to making contact. The Factors for their part have not answered any questions about the craft, and none of the major factions have demonstrated craft with similar capabilities so far.

Seed

• Jol Kebana has a divergent theory about the blackbodies: they think that blackbodies actually are a carbon-based lifeform native to Saturnian orbit, and that the angular shape represents the “tacking” of its natural light sails. Using some arcane calculations (and half-assed guesses), Jol believes that the blackbodies will return in the wake of Saturn’s moon Pan—and wants the PCs stationed at different points with cameras to capture a good close-up look at it. Floating alone in space to capture a maybe-living superblack object…nothing could go wrong with that, except perhaps a pirate ship inspired by the blackbody sightings to mimic their appearance.

145: The Faceless

ENTRY 145: The Faceless

Wherever transhumanity goes, it makes legends—some new, some old but adapted to the syntax of the times. One of the most popular, spread on chat-systems throughout the Mesh, is about a small, out-of-the-way site on the Mesh, which takes the appearance of an endless void and a sphinx without a face. Beyond this, the details vary: some claim that it can only be accessed at certain times or in certain ways, though never with a passcode; visitors are said to sometimes go mad, or feel the faceless sphinx pursue them in their dreams. A thousand variations detail what happens when the sphinx catches you, including a sizable amount of erotic fanfiction. Entire XP epics have been produced around the legend of The Faceless, and more than a few petals.

Of course, the site is real. At any given time hackers and fans have whipped up at least a dozen variations, based on different parts of the legend and their own abilities. Some of them are traps containing digital threats; others are mere artistic efforts. Most tend to suffer a degree of vandalism once uncovered, hackers expressing their opinions of the juvenile story in no uncertain terms. Naturally, there is a sizable subsidiary body of legend about those cursed hackers who defaced the sphinx and suffered for it… Mesh scripts tend to focus on the face, subtly playing with the viewer’s senses—drawing their attention, making them feel uneasy, holding their gaze—simple tricks, but sometimes very effective.

Folklorists on Titan have spent years collecting, collating, and tracing the legend, cross-referencing with different pieces of art and fiction, tracking its spread, permutation, and source. Some think they even seeded the story deliberately, to track transhumanity’s vulnerability to memetic warfare, but the most popular study traces the Faceless legend back to an anomalous artifact said to have been discovered on Mars (or Luna, or Pluto, or an exoplanet…), represented by some damaged holographic stills—and indeed, the very earliest surviving images of the Faceless are remarkably consistent.

In these images the body of the sphinx is not that of an unmodified terrestrial lion, nor is the faceless head particularly human; it has six legs and a rusty hide stretched taut over a skeleton with too many bones. Most images the face region jagged and splintered as though broken off; a minority has it carefully sanded blank or eroded away, or even replaced with a gaping hollow.

Using the Faceless

At the most basic level, The Faceless is an internet legend updated to the Mesh, and can be played straight: gamemasters can use variations on the Faceless for any number of adventures where the plot revolves around someone believing (or trying to make others believe) in the legend of the Faceless—someone visits the site and ends up brain dead or insane, babbling about the sphinx for example—or else the site is set up to prey on those aware of the legend, and contains a basilisk hack that activates when a critical audience threshold is reached. On another level, there may actually be something to the whole Faceless legend, a seed of truth that the player characters can track down to uncover a pre-human artifact…and possibly the individual or group that has been working to cover up its existence, so that the Faceless remains just a legend.

134: Marsfall

ENTRY 134: Marsfall

The history of Mars is a damaged recording, broken and burnt by the conflict with the TITANs, and only partially restored and filled in. No-one now remembers the name of the first baby conceived on Mars, or what happened with the diamond cremain time-capsules favored by the first settlers, and most of all no-one knows where and when exactly humanity first fell through the atmosphere and made Marsfall.

Not that ignorance stops any of the Martian city-states from claiming the distinction, particularly Ashoka and New Shanghai. Yet even those habitats, which can show off some of the oldest man-made structures on Mars, relics first built on Earth or Earth-orbit, cannot point to the exact location of Marsfall—though they have tried, and Ashoka even offers an augmented reality-based annotated “Marsfall Trail” for tourists, though it sees frequent defacement from history buffs and revisionists in a bitter and seemingly never-ending battle.

Perpetual squabbling aside, many historians worry that the actual location of Marsfall—or at least, any surviving records that would point to its location—are located in the TQZ. Even given the cultural significance that the Marsfall site might have to the peoples of Mars, the Planetary Consortium and the Hypercorp Council would rather see it lost and buried forever beneath the sand and dust than have anyone upset the remaining TITAN-tech to uncover it.

Seeds

• Three diamond capsules created from the cremains of the first Martian settlers have been put up for private auction in Noctis-Quianjiao; historians in Ashoka believe the drops of blood held within could be matched against Martian DNA databases to more accurately indicate the Marsfall site by tracing their descendents, and successfully bid on them. Fearing intercession by revisionists from New Shanghai, the Ashokans have hired a dozen small groups of secure carriers, including the PCs, to transport the gems back to Ashoka—of course, most of the groups are decoys carrying counterfeits, but as far as each of them knows they’re carrying the real thing.
• A data archivist doing restoration work has noticed a small detail—a tiny crater some fifty kilometers west of Ashoka that is present on most pre-Fall maps after Marsfall, but not present on any pre-Fall maps from before Marsfall. Given its small size, the crater could have been overlooked even on planetary surveys—but what if? She asks the PCs to help her investigate, with the promise that they can share in the glory. Unfortunately when they get there they find a group of sickly Barsoomians, combing the radioactive dust of the crater for Martian trinitite, a glassy product of early radioactive drives…and the rusters aren’t eager to share.
• Firewall knows that human migration to Mars was not a singular event, and different nation-groups and hypercorps each recorded their own Marsfalls over a given period. That said, they believe that the original Marsfall did occur in the Zone—and they have come across a journal from one of the early settlers that suggests that the original site was deliberately hidden for some reason. While Firewall does not know for sure that this has anything to do with the TITANs, it cannot ignore the possibility that the first man or woman on Mars might have found something…maybe a proto-TITANs artifact, or an indicator to the Martian Gate. Either way, Firewall wants the PCs to penetrate deep into the Zone and find out.

131: The Locker

ENTRY 131: The Locker

In life, they estimate, the beast would have been just a hair over a hundred meters tall, and weighed up to 60,000 metric tons. The first gatecrashers emerged in a hall, a portion of its central spine running along the roof, twenty meter-long vertebrae whose spiny protrusions merged seamlessly with the arching rib-analogues on the outside of the chamber. It wasn’t dark exactly, but most of the light in the ultraviolet spectrum and the air was hot and humid—hovering around 188 degrees Celsius, with an atmosphere laced with hydrofluoric acid that swirled around as a supercritical fluid, condensing on the smooth, cold ribs that faced vacuum. The floor was littered with the corroded remains of dozens of other beings—shells, bones, scraps of clothing and equipment, anything organic, plastic, or glass was highly degraded, and most of the rest had pooled and solidified on the floor under a rime of salt. Short on time, the gatecrashers did a quick survey, took some samples, and retreated back through the gate just before their morphs disintegrated.

There wasn’t much to tell: it was a space-going vessel at least eighty meters long, no crew visible, though almost certainly built by aliens. And they had built it out of the carcass of the most massive megafauna anyone had ever yet recorded. The survivors of the first mission called it the Locker, joking that it was where gatecrashers went to die, and the name stuck.

Mechanics

While first accessed through the Vulcanoid Gate, the Locker is also accessible from the Pandora Gate. The atmosphere in the locker is both toxic and corrosive (Eclipse Phase, p.201), though not quite as corrosive as Venus (damage is only 5 points of damage per minute). Temperature is the other major issue; even a biomorph with temperature tolerance (p.305) or vacuum sealing (p.306) will succumb within a few minutes—less if they stumble into a pool of hydrofluoric acid. The preferred expedition gear for exploring the Locker is a modified hard suit (p.334) with anti-corrosion coating and improved cooling, and even those operate at the upper limits of material tolerances, which mean the suits are no longer self-sealing.

Seeds

• The last survey of the Locker has revealed what researchers believe is a vacuum-lock leading to the outside hull. While conditions inside the alien craft are hellish, pure vacuum would actually be easier to handle, and if conditions are suitable a small research station or supply point could even be erected on the outside of the craft. TerraGenesis is looking for a few good gatecrashers to go through the Vulcanoid Gate, navigate forty meters of passages partially carved from the bones of some indescribably massive beast, and then venture through an air lock into what everyone hopes is hard vacuum. It’s a big rep boost and a pile of creds for anyone that survives!
• The last group of gatecrashers into the Locker has gone dark and have not returned. Their last transmissions spoke of a possible exsurgent synthmorph and something attacking them. TerraGenesis is looking to launch a rescue mission through the Vulcanoid Gate, but Firewall has caught wind of it and assembles a seek-and-destroy team to go through the Pandora Gate. The PCs can join either group—only to find themselves facing off against not only their opposite numbers, but a group of shifters (p.370) eerily adapted to the environment, able to operate without the corrosive effects.

130: Stars Less Bright

ENTRY 130: Stars Less Bright

Throughout the solar system there drift the uncountable corpses, flotsam carried along by momentum and gravity, cold and dead as rocks. Some are the veterans of old wars, their suits ripped, punctured, and burnt; others have no suit, but were buried at space. Most are victims of accidents or stupidity—the unprepared, the careless, the neglected—eternal reminders of those not fit to strike out on their own into space. Then there are the murdered dead, forced out of an airlock and left to drift and die, and because of those the stars burn less brightly in the sky, and perhaps their finders realize that in a cosmic sense, transhumanity has not come very far at all.

Neugene McNeil was such a case. A splicer out of Ceres, he was captain of a small courier ship, ferrying passengers and cargo to Luna and Mars. A solid rep among the travel crowd, no truck with criminals, no family and very few friends; Neugene managed his affairs well and kept mostly to himself and his ship, the Argimenes. In time, that would be the death of him: Neugene was as like to trade in favors or barter as to demand credits, but the mortgage on the Argimenes was to be paid in credits, and those payments were long passed due. Those who held the title on it as collateral had a hard time catching up, so they hired a repo group to take possession.

They laid in wait in the Main Belt, outside the jurisdiction and distress calls of any habitat, and caught the Argimenes with no passengers, just a hold full of hydrocarbons from Titan, and forced their way inside. Neugene was read the terms he’d signed, and informed of the repossession. Then they kicked him out of an airlock and left him to float and die. He was long used to space, and knew his chances; perhaps he went for the quick death and cut off his oxygen, or perhaps he stuck it out until the end, thinking maybe they’d come back after a time. Yet they never did, and eventually, one way or another, Neugene succumbed, and his cortical stack became corrupted or failed, and the stars less bright for his passing.

Using the Stars Less Bright

Gamemasters may think of this as an extended seed for a story or adventure—the player characters come across this mystery in space, a splicer dead in his vacuumsuit, no sign of violence but reeking of foul play. They may investigate, and with scarce trouble should turn up the outline of his background—his DNA and biometrics on register at Ceres, a history of receipts and docking passes in various public databases in the inner solar system, the name of his ship. The events after that are only a little harder to track—the Argimenes leaving a habitat with McNeil as captain, and next showing up without him, having passed through the bit of space where his corpse was found; following the money should reveal the hypercorp who held the mortgage, and maybe they’ll give up the repo group, or not—and if either finds out the PCs are snooping, they might intervene. What counts as justice at that point is up to the PCs: no habitat had jurisdiction, no friends of McNeil would pay to have them killed. Maybe they’d steal the ship and send it off to the sun with McNeil’s corpse aboard, or maybe they’ll just publish the details to the Mesh and watch the offender’s reps take a hit, or maybe they’ll just take it as an object lesson and move on. Any way it goes, afterwards the stars may burn a little less brightly for them, as they remember that sad face in the vacuum suit that was once Neugene McNeil.