248: Jules Khyyan

ENTRY 248: Jules Khyyan

“It was a temple carved into the rock, like some lost fragment of a doomed world cast into the void. Stiglitz and I went out on the tether for a spacewalk. There were six chambers…not Earth construction, because each room was a dodecahedron, supported by cross-bracing pillars. There were friezes on the wall with such detail and color, and a mosaic of broken glass that glowed with a soft blue light…I think it spells something...”

- Miners stumble across “Serreno No. 3”

It is easy for a reasonably competent transhuman to lose themselves in the Vulcanoids. No habitat or political body polices all those rocks, and with a well-equipped small ship a transhuman can live out there for months or maybe a year moving from rock to rock, picking out whatever’s easy to get at, never seeing another transhuman until they come back to port to offload their haul, replace the filters, and take on fuel and air. Many of them are loners, the kind of transhumans that would call themselves brinkers if they didn’t hate the label. Self-sufficient, quiet types that can go strange in their hermitages. Yet most of them keep the radio on to the local bands, to listen in on the chatter and keep an ear out for the tell-tale SOS signals—some to be ready to help, others to scavenge what they can. From these transmissions they know each other by name and callsign: Cap’n Meergan, Black Vanna, Jan-nick-Jan, the Cyberclops…and the seldom heard poetry of Jules Khyyan.

Few have met Khyyan, even among the Vulcanoids miners he’s a recluse, seldom socializing, patently ignoring every hypercorp bugging him for mineral surveys. He trades gold and platinum, but mining is his craft and art. Some estimate he has dug as many as a dozen tombs, temples, houses, and other dwellings out of the asteroids there…digging in to the rock with his tools, spending months finishing off things by hand, with pick and chisel, alone in the dark, signing each one with a poem.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
12	10	15	13	10	14	15	-

Morph: Infomorph

Skills: Academics: Architecture 35, Art: Poetry 55, Art: Sculpture 55, Deception 35, Hardware: Electronics 45, Impersonation 45, Infosec 36, Interests: Exomining 65, Interfacing 52, Language: Native Arabic 85, Language: English 55, Networking: Autonomists 50, Perception 50, Profession: Miner 50, Programming 40

Disadvantages: Mental Derangement (Obsession with art), Social Stigma (AGI)

Using Jules Khyyan

There are people that will pay to find a reclusive poet/sculptor. His work need not be brilliant, for it is detailed and extensive; in a society that values the man-hours that went into a creation more than the end product, Khyyan has unknowingly gained a sizable following in the Planetary Consortium, with many calling him one of space’s native artists. So far, only the sheer logistics of actually moving one of his installations has kept museums and collectors from dragging them out of their existing orbits—not that a sufficiently obsessive and connected effort might not be launched. Still, there remains a question of how many such installations exist, where they are, and perhaps most importantly why Khyyan creates his art…all questions and attention that the reclusive AGI has diligently run from.

197: The Last Caliphate

ENTRY 197: The Last Caliphate

Thawra is a mid-sized habitat cored out of one of the Vulcanoids; founded by Islamic refugees of the Fall and boasting one of the largest Neo-Islamic communities in the solar system, it has been nicknamed “The Last Caliphate” by the media of the Planetary Consortium. It is a habitat marked by intricate fractal mosaics but no depictions of the human form, very little augmentation but extensive development of genetically engineered biomorphs, and a strongly insular community that is amazingly tolerant of outsiders. The habitat itself is made up of nested domes (in case one is breached), all of which are decorated or stylized with various architectural frills taken from Earth-based Islamic cultures…minarets, cupolas, American Islamic murals, mocárabe and muqarnas, among many more. Architecture is one of Thawra’s major exports, with the Caliphate holding a treasury of over a thousand years of designs and decoration techniques from Islamic cultures, which are being adapted to new nanofabrication and macrofabrication methods.

Led by the Calipha Amatullah, the Thawra community is a constitutional elected monarchy based both on the political and religious traditions of early and postmodern autonomous communities. Key to the community concept is absolute and knowing participation: no one is born into the Last Caliphate. Applicants must submit to testing of their knowledge and compatibility with Thawra’s laws and philosophy, including the acceptance of Allah, the forbidding of usury, and the fair treatment of other peoples; and the ulama often consult the subject’s rep score and challenge or question various incidents. Those who apply for and are accepted are made full members of the community, and are expected to contribute a part of their work and resources towards the maintenance and expansion of Thawra—which means not only a duty to clean air filters and replace micrometeorite ablation tiles, but regular participation in and attendance at social events, particularly the famous group debates mediated during the evenings before prayer, and voting. The Caliph or Calipha and other positions (heads of Maintenance, Legal, Education, etc.) are elected by the Islamic citizens by a democratic process known as shura, with new elections and re-elections staggered so a new election occurs every cycle (28 days), with the average term of office lasting 13 cycles. In addition to overall executive power, the Calipha is the spiritual leader of the community, the guiding philosopher for its goals and development with undisputed authority, bound only by constitutional and religious laws...until their term concludes, when they may be voted out.

Using the Last Caliphate

A combination of old and new, the Last Caliphate is a playground for players and gamemasters to explore both what Islam was, is, and could be—for better, worse, or indifferent. The Caliphate structure described here is not the traditional Islamic political-religious structure, nor are its principles and actions entirely in keeping with any modern Islamic teachings; this is a fictional community, where weird pressures have forced refugees of different Earth Islamic cultures together. The result has been compromise, amalgamation, resynthesis…and revolution. Undoubtedly, there are many that will disclaim Thawra for the changes it has made to various traditional Islamic beliefs and culture; and others that will claim its changes haven’t gone far enough. However the gamemaster decides to play it, keep in mind that the Last Caliphate is neither an Islamic paradise or a repressive, conservative regime, but somewhere in the middle…people trying to live their life right by the principles they hold and the traditions they are familiar with.

Seeds

• Thawra architects have unveiled the Mosque Engine, a scale model of a nanoconstruction system which could potentially convert entire planets into habitats—just add air, water, fusion reactor, and transhumans. Their test site is a nearby Vulcanoid massing just 100 tons; powered by an antimatter cell the Mosque Engine should direct its nanite host to mine and rebuild the entire asteroid into a rotating disk-like structure. However, someone has interrupted the test and stolen the Engine; the Calipha of the Last Caliphate quietly hires the PCs to recover or destroy the engine before it can be perverted into a weapon.
• With the destruction of Earth apparently imminent, it is rumored some of the faithful stole the Black Stone from the Kaaba in Mecca, and launched it into space. Neo-Islamic scholar Suraa believes she has located the apocryphal ship…and wishes the PCs to help her retrieve it and bring it back to Thawra intact, where they have the resources to open it properly without damaging the contents…if the Black Stone is even there. This places them in the line of fire to several other groups, who would either claim the artifact or see it destroyed.

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.