The future setting of Eclipse Phase introduces a number of technological elements that have a strong impact on transhuman society. These include backups and uploading, resleeving, egocasting, forking, nano-fabrication reputation systems, space habitats, and space travel, among others.
The transhuman mind is no longer a prisoner of the biological hardware on which it originates. Through various mechanisms, biological brains may be digitally emulated, allowing people to make a backup of their minds, including their entire personality, memories, and skills—a process known as uploading.
The primary use of backups is to ensure the person’s ego can be retrieved in case of death, in which case they
may be resleeved . For this reason, almost everyone in the solar system is equipped with a
cortical stack
. Backups may also be safely archived in secure storage (p. 269) or used to create
infomorphs (p. 264). A person may also egocast themselves across the solar system as a form of travel (p.
276).
Cortical stack implants deploy a network of nanobots throughout the brain that take a snapshot of the mind’s neural state, storing the data as a backup within the cortical stack. The average transhuman’s cortical stack backs up their ego 86,400 times per day. Only the most recent backup is kept within the stack; older ones are overwritten. Pods and synthmorphs also can be equipped with cortical stacks (though AI-piloted bots often lack this feature), though these versions maintain an updated copy of the ego running in the morph’s cyberbrain.
In the case of death, accidental or otherwise, a cortical stack can be retrieved from a corpse and used to recover the character, either as an infomorph or by resleeving them in a new morph. Cortical stacks are diamond-hardened and protected, so they may often be retrieved even if the corpse is badly mangled or damaged. If the corpse cannot be recovered or the cortical stack is destroyed, the backup is lost.
High rollers, well-equipped brinkers, and others in dangerous professions often opt for an emergency farcaster accessory (p. 306) that periodically (usually every 48 hours, but varying according to contract) transmits a backup from the cortical stack to a remote storage facility. This option is quite expensive, however and so is generally only afforded by the wealthy.
Most cortical stacks are carefully excised from a corpse with surgery. In certain circumstances, however, a character may need to extract a cortical stack in the field, whether because transporting the corpse is impractical or because the dead person is an enemy and they either don’t want them knowing who killed them or they want to interrogate them with psychosurgery in a simulspace.
The process of cutting out a cortical stack is called “popping,” as a skilled extractor can usually get the smooth-shelled implant to pop right out by making an incision in the correct place and applying pressure. One does need to be careful that the tiny, blood-slick stack doesn’t slip away once popped.
Popping can be done with a sharp knife and elbow grease, though it is grisly. Popping a stack is a Task Action that requires a Medicine: [any appropriate field] Test with a timeframe of 1 minute and a modifier of +20. Morphs with stacks in non-standard locations or with anatomical shielding (carapace plates, etc.) around the stack may incur penalties to this test at the gamemaster’s discretion. Of course, if you don’t have the time for a precise extraction, you can always just cut the entire head off and take it with you.
Once a cortical stack is retrieved, it may be loaded into an ego bridge (p. 328) and used to bring the ego back, either as an infomorph or by resleeving.
Living Subjects: Cortical stacks may be excised from living people, but the process is usually fatal (or at least paralyzing) as it involves cutting through the spinal column. If the target is not unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, they must first be immobilized in melee combat (see Subdual, p. 204). Cutting out the stack is handled like a Medicine Task Action as above, but this process inflicts 3d10 + 10 damage on the target. If the test fails, they still inflict 1d10 + 10 damage to the target. If the person removing the stack wants to leave the target alive or harm them as little as possible, they suffer a –20 modifier on the test, but may reduce the damage by 1d10 per 10 full points of MoS. Living through the process of having your stack removed is traumatic; anyone who does so suffers 1d10 mental stress.
Cortical stacks have an Armor of 20 and a Durability of 20 for anyone attempting to destroy them.
Uploading a backup into secure storage is usually handled with a brain scan at the storage facility’s clinic using a bread box-sized unit called an ego bridge (p. 328). When activated, the ego bridge’s sensor array twists open like a morning glory blossom, revealing an enclosure with a neck rest that automatically adjusts itself to morphs with oddly-sized or -shaped heads. The neck rest deploys millions of specialized nanobots into the brain and central nervous system. The petals are full of sensors that image the brain using a combination of MRI, sonogram, and positional information broadcast by the nanobot swarm in the morph’s brain. The ego bridge then builds a digital copy of the person’s brain, which is stored away in the service’s highly secure, off-the-mesh, hardwired data vaults.
In the case of pods, the ego bridge scans the biological brain bits and also accesses the cyberbrain to copy the parts of the ego residing there. For synthmorphs, who have no biological brain, the process is much simpler, as it simply requires accessing and making a copy of their cyberbrain.
In a standard clinic with an undamaged morph, uploading takes only 10 minutes, 5 with a pod. In other situations, however, the process may take longer if the gamemaster so decides. Uploading from a synthmorph or extracted cortical stack is instantaneous. The ego bridge largely operates itself. While oversight by a medical specialist is a good idea, no test is necessary.
If an uploading character does not plan to return to their morph, it is usually put on ice until someone else resleeves into it. If a new resleeve is not ready and the uploading character doesn’t want to leave a potential copy of themselves behind, they can have the morph’s mind wiped by the nanobots as part of the uploading process.
In ideal circumstances, a person who is intentionally resleeving can arrange for the uploading and resleeving
process to occur without any noticeable loss of continuity. Though the experience of switching from one morph to
another is still a bit jarring, the transition itself can be made into a seamless process, with no gaps in awareness or
memory, which helps reduce associated mental stress.
In this case, during the process of uploading, the ego bridge is also connected to another ego bridge and the new sleeve. This connection can even be made wirelessly or by farcaster link (with a maximum distance of 10,000 kilometers).
As the mind is uploaded, the ego bridge builds a virtual brain by copying the morph’s brain bit by bit, using the data gained from the brain scan. At the same time, this data is slowly copied to the new sleeve as nanobots rewire the sleeve’s brain structure (a much slower process). As the transfer occurs, the nanobots in the brain sever individual neural connections and re-route them to their duplicates in the virtual brain, and then eventually to the new brain. Effectively, the character’s ego is running partially on the meat brain and partially on the virtual copy. By the time the nanobots sever the last of the neural connections in the old brain, the ego is running completely on the virtual brain and the new sleeve’s brain. Once the resleeving is completed, the virtual brain is shut down.
In terms of perceptions, the character, who is awake during this process, experiences a very gradual shift from one morph to the other. As the process takes hours, however (or even longer if done via farcaster), the subject usually entertains themselves with some AR media, VR, or even XP to pass the time.
It is possible to upload the mind of a person who has recently died as long as the nanobots have time to scan the brain before cell deterioration kicks in too heavily, which takes approximately 2 hours. It is possible to sustain a corpse for longer by placing it in a healing vat (p. 326) for nanostasis. Post-death uploads may suffer integrity damage; see Backup Complications, p. 270. Cyberbrains may also be retrieved from a destroyed synthmorph and reactivated, assuming they are not damaged too heavily (gamemaster discretion).
Though rare, some people engage in a process called destructive uploading, where the biological brain is literally sliced apart and scanned piece by piece. Considered abhorrent and wasteful by most transhumans, brain-peeling is practiced by some bioconservative factions who view it as the only “pure” method of uploading or the only real way to transfer the “soul.” Such people typically refuse to resleeve, living out the rest of their lives as infomorphs, quite often in dedicated simulspaces that are treated as a sort of virtual afterlife.
Almost everyone, with the exception of neo-primitivists and very young children, has a cortical stack. In the event of death, however, a cortical stack alone will not ensure resurrection unless you have acquired backup insurance (p. 330) to cover the costs of your resleeving Going without backup insurance for any length of time is taking a severe risk. Some jurisdictions (such as the Titanian Commonwealth) have a practice of bringing everyone back, even if only to an infomorph state, or at least filing the most recent backup away in dead storage just in case someone decides to pay to resurrect them later. Other authorities will simply destroy the stack or, worse, sell it on the black market to a soul-trading syndicate such as Nine Lives. Backup insurance typically includes a subscription to an uploading facility, usually requiring a visit every 6 months, to ensure that backup is held in safe storage in case of cortical stack loss. People with risky jobs (construction bot supervisor, hypercorp exoplanet staff, girl who fights vicious giant eels for rich jaded audiences, etc.) may back up once a week, or even daily. In the event of a verified death where the cortical stack could not be retrieved, the most recent backup is used to resleeve the person. At the basic level, backup insurance will bring the character back as an infomorph, at which point they can access their credit and purchase a new morph. More expensive versions will automatically resleeve you in the pre-purchased morph of your choice. The exceedingly rich will often have customized clones (often of their original body) waiting on ice for them.
Backup insurance often involves a missing person clause, which states that a person will be brought back if they have not checked in for X amount of time (a calendar function automatically handled by your muse) and cannot be located.
It is worth noting that some criminal syndicates also offer backup insurance at a much reduced rate. The likelihood that copies of your backup are being used for illicit purposes, however, is quite high. For some people, however, what happens to a copy of themselves is of no concern.
Backup insurance is not always perfect. Though insurance providers are required to make a reasonable effort to retrieve your cortical stack, for many hypercorps this is a simple cost-benefit analysis that often will not work in the character’s favor. If you died in a dangerous area such as the Zone on Mars, in a remote area such as the Kuiper Belt, or are simply difficult to track down (pushed out an airlock somewhere), odds are against your cortical stack being retrieved— instead you will be re-instanced from a backup.
Jurisdiction can also play an important role. The insurance offered by many inner system providers is automatically nullified if you travel to an anarchist habitat, gatecrash, break the law, or engage in certain life-threatening activities like suicide sports or scavenging in TITAN-infected ruins. At the least, they will refuse to retrieve your stack in these circumstances. Likewise, if you struck a backup insurance deal with a medical collective from an autonomist habitat and then go and die on a hypercorp station, the hypercorp is very likely to refuse to recognize the authority of a bunch of anarchists and won’t hand your stack over.
Even an archived backup and a missing person clause is no guarantee. A determined enemy could capture you, pry the backup insurance access codes from your muse, keep you on ice or quietly kill you, and then regularly “check in” on your behalf using the access codes so that the insurance provider never realizes you are dead or missing. Though this requires quite a bit of effort, it is often less difficult than dealing with an immortal opponent who keeps coming back no matter how often you kill them.
Other dangers also exist. An entire habitat may be destroyed, taking you, your backups, and your insurance provider’s records with it. A resourceful enemy might penetrate a provider’s security and delete your backups, or simply bribe the right people to make sure they get “accidentally” corrupted. Given these possibilities, the paranoid often make sure to get multiple redundant backup policies, assuming they can afford it.
In most cases, backing up/uploading is risk free unless someone tampers with the equipment. If the character suffered brain or neurological damage, the backup is transferred via farcasting, or the upload is made from a dead character, then the backup may be damaged due to missing neural information. In any of these instances, make a LUC Test for the character. If the test fails, they suffer 1 point of mental stress per 10 full points of MoF. Note that this stress (and possible trauma applies to the backup, not the original character. If the backup is used to re-instantiate the character, however, then the stress is applied.
Resleeving (also called remorphing) is the process of giving a new body to an ego. Changing bodies is a normal part of life for hundreds of millions of transhumans, and it is an even more frequent occurrence for people in certain professions. Characters involved in specialized work may resleeve as often as once a month. Those who travel frequently may do so even more often. Also, given the number of infugees who died during the Fall but have now acquired a new morph, the vast majority of transhumanity has resleeved at least once. As such, most transhumans are accustomed to resleeving.
Adjusting to a new body takes time and a bit of effort (see Integration, ). Resleeving is also difficult
psychologically, as reflected by continuity (
) and alienation (
).
Once an ego fully inhabits a new morph, the new morph’s cortical stack needs ten minutes to amass a complete backup of the ego.
Resleeving takes about an hour in a properly equipped clinic. In essence, the process works like uploading in reverse. The new sleeve is hooked up to an ego bridge which infiltrates the brain with nanobots that physically restructure the brain’s neural structure and connections according to the map provided by the backup. Sleeving takes six times as long as uploading because the nanobot swarm working as a wet printer in the template brain needs to duplicate the entire physical structure of the ego’s neural network. For resleeving, a “wet” ego bridge is used, meaning that the sleeve and ego bridge are submerged in a vat filled with nanogel.
The resleeving process for pods takes only half an hour, as pods brains are half biological and half cyberbrain.
Resleeving And The Gamesmaster
The gamemaster has a fine amount of control over what a character can obtain when resleeving.
The characters may be supplied with new morphs by Firewall or whatever employer/patron
for whom they are currently working. In this case, the gamemaster can simply assign whatever
morphs they see fit — with complete control over enhancements, traits, etc. While morphs should
be tailored for the mission at hand, this presents an opportunity for the gamemaster to throw the
characters some new toys to play with and also some new challenges to overcome. Gamemasters
are encouraged to mix it up, have fun, and give players something they can work with without
necessarily giving them everything they want.
In other cases, the availability of desired morphs may be limited by the resleeving location. A
small outpost in the wilds of Mars is unlikely to have a wide selection of morphs — in fact, a
few rusters and synthmorphs may be all they have. Similarly, large habitats have a high demand
for good morphs, so there may be a waiting list for top-of-the-line sylphs or remade morphs, for
example. In the same vein, available morphs are going to be subject to local legalities, so getting
that reaper morph may be out of the question. Characters could always turn to black market
morph providers, but these come with their own risks.
What this means is that gamemasters should never be afraid to say no if a character is pursuing
a morph that is unreasonable or potentially disruptive to the game. While it’s good form to give
the players what they want once in a while, it also makes for more interesting roleplaying to
saddle them with morphs that are a little different than what they were hoping for or that come
with some interesting challenges, such as a physical addiction. For extra fun, leave the character
unaware of a morph’s negative traits or secret implants until they reveal themselves. As always,
the goal is to have fun, but variety often helps with that.
Resleeving into the cyberbrain of a synthmorph is much easier and quicker, being a matter of copying the backup
into the cyberbrain (an instantaneous affair) and then running the backup in its virtual brain state (1 Action Turn).
The drawback to synthmorphs is that they are more difficult to acclimate to (see Integration, ),
they are vulnerable to cyberbrain hacking (p. 261), and synthmorphs are viewed as low class in some
cultures.
Characters inhabiting a synthmorph cyberbrain may voluntarily choose to evacuate by copying themselves as an infomorph onto another device. This takes 1 full Action Turn. See Infomorph Resleeving, p. 273.
The costs involved for the resleeving process itself are generally subsumed in the costs of the backup insurance and/or the new sleeve itself. Costs for individual morphs are noted in the descriptions starting on p. 139. See Morph Brokerage (p. 276) for rules on finding and acquiring morphs.
Getting used to a new body typically takes some time. The character must become acclimated to the changes in height, weight, sex, and capabilities, which often requires unlearning ways of doing things that worked fine for their previous form. Resleeving in a synthetic morph or an uplift is also quite confusing at first, given the drastically different morphologies, change in limb structure (and sometimes amount of limbs), and so on. Luckily, transhuman minds are adaptive things, and this process is aided by the application of mental “patches” during the resleeving process that give the character a bit of a boost for using their new body.
An ego in a new morph makes an Integration Test upon taking control of the body, rolling SOM x 3 (morph
bonuses do not apply) and applying modifiers from the Integration and Alienation Modifiers table. The result of the
test is explained on the Integration Test table, .
TEST RESULT | EFFECT |
Critical Failure | Character is unable to acclimate to the new morph— |
something is just not right. Character suffers a –30 | |
modifier to all physical actions until resleeved. | |
Severe Failure (MoF 30+) | Character has serious trouble acclimating to the new |
morph. They suffer a –10 modifier to all actions for 2 days | |
plus 1 day per 10 full points of MoF. | |
Failure | Character has some trouble acclimating to new morph. |
They suffer a –10 modifier to all physical actions for 2 | |
days plus 1 day per 10 full points of MoF. | |
Success | Standard acclimation period. The character suffers a –10 |
modifier to all physical actions for 1 day. | |
Excellent Success (MoS 30+) | No ill effects. Character acclimates to new morph in no |
more than a few minutes. | |
Critical Success | Lookin’ good! This morph is an exceptionally good fit for |
the character. No ill effects; gain 1 Moxie point for use in | |
that game session only. | |
TEST RESULT | EFFECT |
Familiar; character has used this exact morph extensively in the past | +30 |
Clone of prior morph | +20 |
Character’s original morph type (what they were raised with) | +20 |
Adaptability trait (Level 2) | +20 |
Adaptability trait (Level 1) | +10 |
Character has previously used this type of morph | +10 |
First time resleeving | –10 |
Character is an AGI sleeving into a physical body | –10 |
Character is an uplift resleeving in a non-uplift (of their type) body | –10 |
Synthetic morph | –10 |
Sex change (from last morph) | –10 |
Morph is heavily modified | –10 |
Morphing Disorder trait (Level 1) | –10 |
Morphing Disorder trait (Level 2) | –20 |
Infomorph (does not apply to AGIs) (Alienation Test only) | –20 |
Fork (Alienation Test only) | –20 |
Morphing Disorder trait (Level 3) | –30 |
Exotic morph (octomorph, neo-avian, novacrab, swarmanoid, etc.) | –30 |
After loss of continuity, the other major factor impacting resleeving characters is alienation. Once the ego has its
new sleeve under control, it’s time to look in the mirror. The alienation test reflects the experience of coming to
terms with a new face, skin, and brain. For example, transferring to a radically different morph (such as a
swarmanoid) can be difficult to grasp. Uplifts often have difficulty getting acquainted with the differing hormonal
urges of a human biomorph and vice versa. While the character’s ego is as it was in their last sleeve,
the brains and neurochemistry of many morphs may alter aptitudes like WIL or COG. The effects
of this can be frustrating or disorienting. Every character makes an Alienation Test to reflect how
mentally stressful it is to get a grip on their new body, rolling INT x 3 and apply modifiers from the
Integration and Alienation Modifiers table. Consult the Alienation Test table to determine the effects.
TEST RESULT | EFFECT |
Critical Failure | Extreme Dysmorphia. The character doesn’t like their new sleeve at all |
and suffers 2 stress points per 10 full points of MoF. | |
Failure | Character is uneasy about the new morph and suffers 1 stress point |
per 10 full points of MoF. | |
Success | Character adapts to their new look well. No ill effects. |
Critical Success | Best. Morph. Ever. The new morph jives perfectly with the character’s |
sense of self, and even enhances it somewhat. The character actually | |
heals 1d10 ÷ 2 (round up) stress points. | |
Perhaps the biggest shock that strikes most resleeving characters is the loss of continuity of self. This is particularly true for characters who died. If their cortical stack was retrieved, they will remember their own death. If they were restored from an archived backup, they will not remember their death, but they will have lost an entire period of their life—all the way back to their last backup. In fact, if their body was not recovered, they may not even know that they are dead for certain—there may be a surviving copy of themselves out there. The driving point in this loss of continuity is a sort of existential crisis—they are no longer the original person they once were. This leads some to question whether they are who they think they are, or are they some poor imitation and not a real person at all? To determine how this loss of continuity affects a character, make a Continuity Test by rolling WIL x 3. Every character suffers stress from loss of continuity, as noted on the Continuity Stress table. Reduce this stress damage by 1 point per 10 full points of MoS on the Continuity Test, or increase it by 1 point for every 10 full points of MoF.
Rather than resleeving into a physical body, a backup may instead by instantiated as an infomorph, a purely digital form. Infomorphs are distinct from backups in that backups are inert files. Infomorphs are backups imprinted onto a virtual brain template and run as a program. This virtual brain state must be run on a specific device and follows all of the rules noted for infomorphs on p. 264. Infomorphs may copy themselves to other devices, typically erasing themselves from the previous device as they go. Infomorphs that copy without erasing are treated as forks. Characters instantiating as infomorphs must make Continuity and Alienation Tests, just like resleeving. Infomorphs may be resleeved into physical morphs, following normal resleeving rules.
I wake up with a taste like guava and umami fresh on my tongue. Last night there was laughter. We drank quinoa wine, and I was introduced to people I had never met before, though I had years of intimate knowledge of most of them. Half of Illyria Module is curled naked around me in my sleeping chamber. Last night we made music with synthesizers, wood blocks, and a lur. We drank mushroom tea brewed in water from a rogue comet. Looking around me as the morning sun starts to light the far orbital horizon of Ceres, it appears we had an orgy. Last night was my resleeving party. This version of me—me 3.0—is ready for life. —Zheng du Thierry, Carnival of the Goat
With all of these backups of transhuman minds on file and an abundance of mesh space on which to run them as virtual brains, one might wonder what’s to stop post-Fall transhumanity from multiplying its numbers by running additional copies of them. The short answer is: nothing, aside from massive social stigma and thorny psychological issues. Taking a backup of a transhuman mind, copying it, and re-instancing it as an infomorph is called forking. It’s one of the most useful and still-controversial applications of transhumanity’s brain science.
There are four classifications of forks: alpha, beta, delta, and gamma. Though typically copied as infomorphs there is nothing preventing a fork from being sleeved in a physical morph as well, other than legalities and custom.
SITUATION | STRESS VALUE |
Backup from cortical stack | |
Character remembers peaceful or not notable death | 1d10 ÷ 2 (round down) |
Character remembers sudden or violent death | 1d10 |
Backup from archive | |
Short memory gap (less than 1 day) | 1d10 ÷ 2 (round down) |
Memory gap greater than one day | 1d10 |
Not knowing if/how you died | +2 |
Uploading-to-resleeve with continuity (p. 269) | 0 |
Uploading-to-resleeve without continuity | 1d10 ÷ 2 (round down) |
Character is a fork | 2 |
An alpha fork is an exact copy of the original ego, re-instanced as a separate infomorph. An alpha fork may be
created by copying and running an infomorph (from a backup, infomorph, synthmorph cyberbrain,
or a removed cortical stack in an ego bridge). Alpha forks mat be generated from biomorph brains
using an ego bridge and the same process as uploading (p. 268). Alpha forks are an exact copy of
the character’s ego, with all of the same skills, memories, stats, traits, personality, etc. New alpha
forks must make an Alienation Test (), and possibly a Continuity Test (
) if copied from a
backup.
Creating alpha forks is illegal in many jurisdictions including most of the inner system and the Jovian Republic. In others it tends to be viewed with distaste, though there are some habitats/cultures in which it is encouraged.
Beta forks are partial copies of the ego. They are intentionally hobbled so as to not to be considered an equal to the
character, for legal and other reasons. Beta forks have most of the same skills as the original ego, though sometimes
reduced. Their memories are also drastically curtailed, usually tailored to whatever task they are intended to
perform. Beta forks are created by taking an alpha fork and running it through a process known as neural pruning
(p. 274). They are legal and even common in many places, except for bioconservative holdouts like the Jovian
Republic, though delta forks are more favored. Beta forks rarely have anything resembling civil rights or
citizenship and are usually treated as the property of the originating ego. They are commonly used as
digital aids or to represent the original ego when communicating with others over great distances.
A beta fork’s stats are determined as follows:
Additional changes may apply as determined by the neural pruning test. Beta forks take 1 minute to generate.
Delta forks are extremely limited copies of an ego. They are more akin to AI templates upon which the ego’s surface
personality traits are imprinted. Also created via neural pruning, delta forks are highly functional (as competent as
a beta fork or AI) but have extremely limited skills and heavily edited memories, usually to the point of being
functional amnesiacs.
A delta fork’s stats are determined as follows:
Additional changes may apply as determined by the neural pruning test. Delta forks take 1 Action Turn to generate.
More commonly known as vapors, gamma forks are massively incomplete, corrupted, or heavily damaged copies of an ego. Vapors are not intentionally created and are instead the results of botched uploads, scrambled backups, incomplete or jammed farcasts, or infomorphs/forks that were somehow damaged or went insane. It is extremely rare for anyone to purposely create a vapor for anything other than research use, although they can crop up in some interesting places. For example, poorly made skill software occasionally includes enough of the personality traits and memories of the person the skill was taken from that it can behave in a vapor-like fashion when used.
Because vapors are anomalies rather than purposeful creations, the characteristics of individual gamma forks are left to the gamemaster. They should have some or all of the following: reduced skills, reduced aptitudes, incomplete or incoherent memories, negative mental traits, and persistent mental stress or traumas including derangements and/or disorders.
Neural pruning is the art of taking a backup/infomorph and trimming it down to size so that it functions as either a beta or delta fork.
Beta forks are created by taking a virtual mind state that is intentionally inhibited and filtering a copy of the ego through it. Like a topiary shrub, the portions of the character’s neural network that exceed the capacities of the intended fork are trimmed away. In addition to the changes noted under Beta Forks (p. 273), characters may voluntarily choose to delete/decrease skills and remove memories.
Delta forks are created by excising the ego’s surface personality traits and applying them to an AI template. In this case the ego’s memories are usually excluded entirely—it is easier to start with a blank delta fork and feed them the specific memories/knowledge they need. As with beta forks, characters making delta forks may voluntarily choose to delete/decrease skills and keep specific memories. If an alpha fork is not available to prune, a delta fork can be whipped up from a biomorph brain with an ego bridge and 1 minute. Many people sleeved in biomorphs keep delta forks on hand in storage, to whip up on the fly as needed.
Transhumanity’s grasp of neuroscience extends to scanning and copying a mind, but the most intricate workings of memory are still imperfectly understood. Making precise edits to individual portions of a neural network (to alter recollections, skills, and the like) is still a black art. The difficulty with neural pruning is that taking a weed whacker to the tree of memory isn’t an exact science. Specific memories may not be excised or chosen—at best, memories may be handled in broad clumps, typically grouped by time periods no finer than 6 months. For simplicity, most beta forks are created by removing all memories older than 1 year.
When creating a beta or delta fork, the character must make a Psychosurgery Test (other parties may make this test on the character’s behalf, representing that the character is giving them access to prune the fork appropriately). If the character succeeds, the fork is created as desired. If the test fails, the gamemaster chooses one of the following penalties for every 10 full points of MoF. Some of these penalties may be combined for a cumulative effect:
Rather than generating forks on the fly, some characters prefer to have carefully-pruned forks on hand, stored as inert files that can be called up, copied, and run as needed. These forks are crafted with long-term psychosurgery, meaning that they suffer fewer drawbacks and the memories may be more finely tuned.
Long-term neural pruning requires a Psychosurgery Test as above, but with a +30 modifier. Delta forks take 1 week to prune this way, beta forks take 1 month. Additional modifications may be made to the fork using any of the normal rules for psychosurgery (p. 229).
It is worth noting that some people prefer to use forks of themselves or loved ones rather than a muse. Likewise, some wealthy hyperelites are known to keep copies of their younger backups on hand, sometimes for decades, and re-instance these when their prime ego has enough skill and experience to completely outclass its younger selves. Though technically these are alpha forks, their lag behind the original ego is comparable in degree to that of a beta fork. This is rumored to be the method used by the Pax Familiae in instancing her army of cloned selves.
Gamemasters are encouraged to allow players to roleplay their character’s own forks. It is important to note, however, that even with alpha forks, once the fork and originating ego diverge, they develop onward as separate people. The events that shape the primary ego’s personality, character, and knowledge will not happen—or even if they do, probably not in the same way—to the fork, and vice versa. The exact dividing line between an ego and a fork is a central philosophical and legal debate among many transhumans. This means that gamemaster should not be afraid to pull a fork out of a player character’s hands and make them into an NPC if they start too diverge too greatly. Similarly, if a fork begins to learn information that the main character does not (yet) have access to, it is probably also better to run the fork as an NPC in order to avoid metagaming. It is entirely possible that a fork might decide that it will no longer obey the originating ego and carry about doing its own thing. This usually only occurs with alpha forks, who are essentially a full copy anyway, and as time passes the idea of merging back with the original ego becomes unappealing. Beta and delta forks are quite aware of their nature as incomplete copies, and so usually return back home to the ego for reintegration. In rare cases, however, even these might make a break for life on their own.
Merging is the process of re-integrating a previously-spawned fork with the originating ego. Merging is performed on
conscious egos/forks, transferring both to a single, merged ego. The process is not difficult to undergo when two
forks have only been apart a short time. As forks spend more time apart, though, merging bll, a Psychosurgery Test
is called for (made either by the ego or another character overseeing the process). The Merging table lists modifiers
for this test as well as the result of success or failure. For synthmorphs, merging takes one full Action Turn. For
biomorphs, an ego bridge (p. 328) or mnemonic augmentation (p. 307) is required to merge, and the
process takes 10 minutes. The result of the process is a unified ego, whether or not the Merging Test
succeeds. Psychotherapy (p. 209) and psychosurgery (p. 229) can troubleshoot bad merges over time.
TIME APART | MODIFIER | SUCCESS | FAILURE |
Under 1 hour | +30 | Seamless ego with memories | Memories intact, (1d10 ÷ 2, round down) – 1 SV |
intact from both | |||
1–4 hours | +20 | Solid bond, memories intact | Memories intact, (1d10 ÷ 2, round down) SV |
4–12 hours | +10 | Memories intact, 1 SV | Minor memory loss, (1d10 ÷ 2, round up) SV |
12 hours–1 day | +0 | Memories intact, 2 SV | Moderate memory loss, (1d10 ÷ 2, round up) + 2 SV |
1 day–3 days | –10 | Memories intact, 3 SV | Major memory loss, 1d10 + 2 SV |
3 days–1 week | –20 | Memories intact, 4 SV | Major memory loss, 1d10 + 4 SV |
1 week+ | –30 | Minor memory loss, 5 SV | Severe memory loss, 1d10 + 6 SV |
THE SELF
Forking and merging have changed the way transhumanity thinks about the self and what it
means to have a well-integrated personality.
While forking is child’s play from a technological standpoint, the psychological and social effects
of cloning a mind mean that most people are cautious about employing forks. Some jurisdictions
ban forking outright for all but medical uses, while others have severe restrictions. In many
hypercorp jurisdictions, for instance, alpha forks are illegal and letting a beta fork run for more
than 4 hours without merging violates the modern descendants of 20th-century anti-trust laws.
Similarly, the Jovian Junta and other bioconservatives ban forking entirely.
Disposing of unwanted forks is another thorny issue. In some places, it’s as simple as deleting
them, because a stored mind has no legal status. In others, a fork that doesn’t wish to merge
back with its originating ego might be accorded some rights, though these are generally only
granted to alpha forks.
Most significantly, though, running a shortterm fork of oneself for periods of an hour or less is
an easy task for many transhumans. Many people use forks of themselves to get work done in
everyday life, and almost everyone has at least experimented with forking at some point.
Transhumans view forking a bit like early 21st-century humans viewed drinking and drug use. A
bit might be okay, but someone overdoing it will be stigmatized. This is because most transhumans
understand the psychological consequences of overusing forks.
In spite of being a spacefaring civilization with outposts throughout the solar system and beyond, transhumanity makes scant use of spacecraft for interplanetary travel. Shuttlecraft using a variety of propulsion systems make regular trips between habitats, planetary surfaces, and moons. But for any trip longer than 1.5 million kilometers—the distance a fusion drive craft can cover in a day—people egocast. Egocasting is transhumanity’s most advanced personal transportation technology, though only the character’s ego actually travels. Egocasting combines the technologies of uploading and quantum farcasting to transfer a backup (or sometimes even a conscious ego, see p. 269) over interplanetary distances.
Though egocasting occurs at the speed of light, egocasting times vary drastically with distance. Egocasting within a cluster or planetary system is usually just a matter of minutes. Egocasting from the sun to the Kuiper Belt, however, takes between 40 and 70 hours, and so egocasting all of the way across the solar system can take even longer.
Once an ego arrives at the destination receiver, it can be archived, run as an infomorph, or resleeved as normal.
Beaming yourself across interplanetary space is a mature technology and usually works seamlessly. Because
egocasting uses quantum farcasters, there is no danger of radio interference cooking the signal and causing data loss.
Normally the entire process is mediated by the character’s backup service, and security breaches are uncommon.
However, there are several risks involved in egocasting The most obvious is that the character’s consciousness is
transferred as a digital backup file at the destination. If the egocaster on the other end is not trusted or the
networks at the destination are privately controlled by the receiver, the character is potentially putting
themself at the mercy of their host. Most hypercorps consider meddling with a transmitted ego to be a
serious breach of etiquette, whereas autonomist types would find it unthinkably repressive. However,
political extremist groups and criminal organizations in control of egocasters suffer from fewer restraints.
A more subtle risk is the possibility for hackers to exploit security holes in the egocaster and its attached virtual
space to steal a fork of the character. This is extremely difficult to do. It almost never happens during a normal
upload, because the uploading services are security conscious to the point of paranoia. Even so, the forks stolen by
such attempts more often than not end up being vapors, because the intruder is usually stopped before a full copy
can be obtained.
Characters who want to egocast without the attention of public officials like Immigration and Customs must seek out so-called darkcasting services—illegal farcaster transceivers typically operated by criminal syndicates and other clandestine groups. To locate such a service, a character must use their Networking skill and possibly their reputation (p. 285).
Morphs are a major commodity in transhuman society. The technology and materials needed to grow new morphs are cheap and abundant, though they take time. Cloned biomorphs take at least a year and a half, even with accelerated growth. Pods, which are typically pieced together from vat-grown parts, take about 6 months. Synthmorphs like cases and synths can be produced in a day, whereas more complicated models can take a week or more. Theoretically, supply will one day outstrip demand to the point where flesh is free.
Characters have several options for acquiring morphs when they travel by egocast, suffer heavy damage, or just feel like a new body. When egocasting, the most common method for travelers of middling means is to store their current morph in a body bank’s secure facility and lease a morph at their destination Less commonly, characters may rely on public resleeving facilities, or, if they have the means, they may purchase a new morph outright. Characters who expect to stay at their destination indefinitely or who decide to resleeve but aren’t traveling might instead opt for a trade-in on their old body, leaving it behind permanently in most cases.
As noted under Resleeving and the Gamemaster , finding the model of morph you want is not always easy.
While many basic morph types (cases, synths, splicers) are generally available, characters can also locate new While
many basic morph types (cases, synths, splicers) are generally available, characters can also locate new morphs using
their Networking skills (see Reputation and Social Networks, p. 285). Certain morph types are harder to find then
others; the gamemaster should apply an appropriate modifier for any morphs that seem rare or unusual (for
example, swarmanoids or reapers). Likewise, some morphs may simply be unavailable in a given locale. Rusters
are rarely available off of Mars, for example, while on Europa, most morphs are exotic local aquatic
varieties.
The gamemaster determines which factions are able to provide new morphs in a given locale. Factions will not provide morphs that are unavailable to that faction as starting characters. If the faction is not the dominant one in that locale, a penalty should be applied ranging from –10 to –30. Despite having a presence in a given locale, some factions may be unable to provide morphs at all.
If the character is seeking a customized morph with specific implants or enhancements, the search will be more challenging. The gamemaster should apply a –10 to –30 modifier here as well, depending on the extent and legality of the modifications sought.
Once a morph is located, the character may call in favors (p. 285) or pay credits for it. Morph costs are noted on the Morph Costs table. In the inner system, morph prices are often inflated by demand in the market such that the most desirable morph types can cost a small fortune. Outsystem, prices in rep are more reasonable but still steep due to population pressures on life support-dependent outer system settlements. For travelers and frequent body hoppers, there are a number of ways to defray these costs.
Finding morphs for travelers and the bodiless is a specialized skill demanding deep social networks and a flair for negotiation. In general, it’s a seller’s market, so brokers (or “matchmakers,” as they’re called in the open economy) act as agents for the person seeking a body. The Morph Costs table assumes a 10% fee paid to the broker. Characters wishing to cut out the middleman may reduce cost by 10% but take a –30 penalty on their Networking Test to locate an available morph.
If a character seeks to have a customized morph (with extra bioware, cyberware, or nanoware implants or robotic enhancements), the costs for these enhancements are added to the morph’s cost (if the gamemaster chooses, discount package deals may apply). Likewise, morphs may come saddled with positive or negative morph traits (p. 145). These traits raise or lower the morph’s cost at a rate of +500 credits per CP for positive traits, or –200 credits per CP of negative traits. Negative traits typically reflect abuses the morph has suffered at the hands of previous occupants.
For those who wish to leave their old morph behind permanently, trade-ins on current morphs are an option. The high demand for bodies means that a buyer is almost always available unless the gamemaster finds extenuating circumstances. Morphs may be traded in for the value shown on the Morph Costs table adjusted for any positive or negative traits), less a 10% physical exam and finder’s fee. This is either paid to the morph broker in cred or rendered as a favor using rep.
Characters on missions for rich or influential patrons may have morphs provided for them. Normally such provisions are made for the duration of a job, although less commonly the morph itself might be payment for services rendered. Gamemasters are encouraged to be creative with such arrangements, though players should be advised that such bargains can quickly turn Faustian.
Black market body traders promise to provide the buyer with morphs and upgrades of choice regardless of a habitat’s laws against weapons or implants, in addition to bypassing standard arrival registration via darkcasting. Illegal morphs usually come with a price markup (+25% at least), whereas used morphs with unsavory backgrounds (and traits) can usually be acquired on the cheap (–25%).
MORPH TYPE | COST |
Biomorphs
| |
Flats, Splicers | High |
Octomorphs | Expensive (30,000+) |
Furies, Ghosts, Remade | Expensive (40,000+) |
Futuras | Expensive (50,000+) |
All others | Expensive |
Pods | |
Workers, Pleasure Pods | High |
Novacrabs | Expensive (30,000+) |
Synthmorphs
| |
Cases | Moderate |
Synths, Dragonflies | High |
Slitheroids, Swarmanoids | Expensive |
Flexbots | Expensive (30,000+) |
Arachnoids | Expensive (40,000+) |
Reapers | Expensive (50,000+) |
Positive morph traits | +500 per CP |
Negative morph traits | –200 per CP |
Characters who find themselves too destitute to afford a new morph can strike a deal for indentured service—a “deal” that is rarely advantageous to the new indenture. Typical contracts require years of indentured labor—terraforming Mars, herding comets, asteroid mining, constructing habitats, colonizing exoplanets, etc.—in exchange for a cheap synthetic morph or splicer at the end of the term. Gamemasters may use their discretion in offering such terms, though in many cases the terms offered will temporarily or permanently end the character’s career as a free agent. Hypercorps using indentured labor are notorious for changing the terms at a whim, extending the service period, or slamming the indenture with a slew of hidden and outrageous charges that were not made clear up front. Characters may, of course, enter into such service fully intending to grab their morph and run at the first opportunity, but the hypercorps are very protective of their investments. Indentures are closely monitored and tracked, and the hypercorps are not above sending ego hunters to retrieve a runaway.
Some locales, notably Titan, have a well-developed public resleeving infrastructure intended to provide a body to anyone who needs one. Morphs provided are usually unremarkable cases, synths, or splicers with no Positive traits or optional implants. Anyone holding citizenship in a locale with public resleeving may apply for a body. Wait times are between a month and two years, with Reputation influencing wait times at the gamemaster’s discretion.
For temporary visits where an infomorph won’t do, morphs may be leased rather than bought. The cost to rent a morph is 1% of its cost per day, plus a Low charge for resleeving. This cost includes rental insurance (see below). If the rental insurance is waived (not always possible unless you have a good Rep), the rental cost may be reduced by half.
Characters who are leasing a morph may also use their previous morph as collateral. In this case, deduct the cost of the character’s current morph from the rental morph before calculating the 1% cost per day, with a minimal rental cost of 10 credits per day.
Characters visiting the inner system or Jovian Republic may be able to lease morphs belonging to prisoners. In most jurisdictions, criminals are sentenced to terms in rehabilitative simulspace with a stipulation that the prisoner’s morph becomes state property during their term of incarceration. Morphs acquired this way often have complicated histories but also tend to have modifications useful to Firewall agents. Conversely, characters who find themselves imprisoned may be subject to having their body leased out during incarceration.
The effects of taking a penal lease are at the discretion of the gamemaster. A character may have to pull some strings with their Reputation in order to lease such a morph, especially if it has restricted or illegal modifications. Negative traits, cases of mistaken identity, and unfortunate encounters with friends and associates of the morph’s former occupant are among the possible drawbacks to this type of arrangement. On the up side, penal leases may reduce costs for both leasing and insuring the morph, again subject to the gamemaster’s discretion.
Leased morphs must be covered by an insurance policy, which often restricts the character from breaking the law or taking the morph anywhere too dangerous or lawless. Characters may purchase hazard insurance that will cover taking the morph into certain dangerous situations, but this will double the rental price at minimum.
If a character suffers extensive organic damage or death while insured, the insurance will cover 80% of the morph’s cost, meaning that the character is expected to pay the other 20%. If they cannot pay, their possessions or their stored morph may be seized in payment.
If a character violates their insurance policy by intentionally putting themself in harm’s way above the threat level at which the policy was purchased, without first communicating with and rendering payment to the insurer, the policy may be declared void. If the leased morph dies under a voided policy and the character cannot pay to replace it, their possessions and stored morph may be subject to seizure.
Seizure takes different forms depending upon the local economy and legal system. In hypercorp space, it is a straightforward seizure of liquid assets, including forced uploading if the character’s morph is seized. Elsewhere, the character is more likely to end up owing a lot of favors or taking severe hits to their reputation, but they are unlikely to undergo forced uploading or outright physical seizure of their morph.
Given the nature of resleeving technologies, identity is a fluid concept in Eclipse Phase. Transhumans are used to the idea of identifying people by how they look or even by their biometric data, but this is no longer a certified method. What you look like may drastically change from one day to the next. You may see an olympian you recognize, but perhaps it’s been awhile, so you’re no longer certain that it’s the same person still in that morph. If you’re sleeved in a popular off-the-rack morph, there may be hundreds of other cloned morphs that look exactly like you out there—perhaps useful if you desire to blend in. Similarly security services can no longer rely on biometric technologies. Forensics may be able to identify an individual morph’s presence at a crime scene, but proving who was in that morph at the time is another matter.
Identity is, of course, tied to ego, and various authorities have instituted verification and security measures based on this. Within the inner system, each ego is given an ID number, which is used to validate their identity, citizenship, legal status, credit accounts, licensing, etc. This ego ID is verifiable by the person’s brainwave patterns, which remain the same even when resleeving. When an ego uploads, the uploading service is required to incorporate this ego ID into the person’s backup/infomorph. Likewise, when that person resleeves, the service handling the procedure is required by law to verify the ego’s ID before downloading The ego ID is then hardcoded into the morph itself in the form of a nanotattoo on the tip of the person’s index finger. This nanotat can be easily scanned at security checkpoints to verify identity.
Though efficient, this system is far from perfect. For one, ID record-keeping is far from standardized and varies drastically from habitat to habitat. Most do not share records with each other unless they are part of the same political alliance in order to protect their citizens’ privacy. For example, Lunar-Lagrange Alliance stations do not share citizenship ID data with the Planetary Consortium, though they do share with each other. On top of this, many identity records were lost during the Fall, a situation that was undoubtedly exploited by those who preferred to erase their past or adopt a new persona. These all make for a situation where identity records are patchwork at best. Officials must also rely on the security of other habitats for ID verification. If a person egocasts to Nectar on Mars from Qing Long in the Martian Trojans, and the Nectar officials have no record of this person, they can only trust that the Qing Long officials did their job when verifying the subject’s ID and background. To make matters worse, many autonomist habitats operate without identity checks altogether. Though some ID measures are still used, both to prevent reputation system gaming and to be able to identify bodies in the case of death, these uses are significantly more lax and few records are kept. Therefore, when autonomists and the like egocast to habitats that require ID, they are assigned a temporary ID for the duration of their stay (and sometimes any future visits).
There are three ways to verify someone’s identity: nanotat scan, brainwave scan, and checking the cryptographic hash on a digital mind.
Special encoded nanobots are used to create a small nanotat on a person’s index finger. These nanobots contain encoded information that includes their name and identity, brainwave pattern, citizenship/legal status, credit account number, insurance information, and licenses. Depending on the local habitat laws, it may include other information such as criminal history, travel history, restricted implants, employment records, and so on. This nanotat may be read by anyone with a special ID scanner that reads the nanobot encoding. ID nanotats include information on the company that did the resleeving, so that the data may be accessed and verified with their records online. The data on the nanotat is also cryptographically signed with the company’s public key, meaning that anyone who checks the data and the signature online can tell if the data has been altered.
Brainwave scans are one of the few types of biometric prints that stay with an ego no matter what morph it is in. They are impractical for most security purposes as they require a scan with a combination electroencephalogram and neuroimaging device, referred to as a brainprint scanner, which takes approximately 5 minutes. This device measures the subject’s baseline brainwave pattern as well as the subject’s brainwave signature responses when they think certain thoughts or sense certain patterns. These scans are all but impossible to fool, however, barring hacking of the brainprint scanner itself, and so are considered quite reliable. For this reason they are occasionally used in high-security facilities.
It is worth noting that infection by some variants of the Exsurgent virus, notably the Watts-Macleod strain (p. 367), sometimes alters a person’s brainwave patterns, but not in every case.
Digital ID codes are often incorporated into backups and infomorphs. Not only does this help identify who the backup belongs to, but it serves as an electronic signature for verifying ID when the backup is to be resleeved. This digital code typically contains the same information as the nanotat ID, and is signed with a cryptographic hash that makes it difficult to forge and which can be verified online. AIs and AGIs also feature such built-in codes.
Firewall sentinels and clandestine agents often have a need to hide or alter their identities. While ID system are challenging, they are not insurmountable.
The easiest way to bypass security checks is to establish a fake ID. Given the patchwork nature of identity records and the lack of any centralized authority, this is not very difficult. Numerous crime syndicates and even some autonomist groups maintain a thriving ID fabrication business, often with complete histories and medical covers for implants that might be restricted or illegal.
These IDs are usually registered with habitats that are either known criminal havens, have autonomist sympathies or are isolated and remote. Though the ID is actually verifiable and registered with these stations, the potential shady origins of such IDs is known to most inner system authorities and so the character may be exposed to extra scrutiny or monitoring. Fake IDs may be acquired that are registered with more respected authorities but this often requires a much higher expense or connections to hypercorp clandestine operations.
Black market darkcast and resleeving options offer fake IDs as a matter of course.
Special nanobot treatments may be manufactured to erase, rewrite, or replace nanotat IDs. Erasing a nanotat is easy, but not having one is a crime and immediate grounds for suspicion in many habitats. Rewriting a nanotat is also easy, though this means that the nanotat will fail its authorization online unless the encryption has also been cracked (p. 253). Replacing a nanotat ID with a fake one is just as possible, and is part of the process of acquiring a fake ID.
Digital ID codes may also be tampered with, though like nanotat IDs this will mean that the ID fails online verification unless the encryption is also defeated (p. 253).
Transhumanity is not just a spacefaring race, it is also largely space-dwelling. While a substantial portion of transhumanity inhabits planetary bodies like Mars, Luna, Venus, and the moons of the gas giants, the balance live in a variety of space habitats, ranging from the old-fashioned O’Neill cylinders of the inner system to the Cole bubbles of the outer system.
Space habitats come in many sizes and configurations from survivalist outposts designed to support ten or fewer people to miniature worlds in resource-rich areas housing as many as ten million people. In heavily settled regions of space, such as Martian orbit, habitats may be integrated into local infrastructure, relying to some extent on supply shipments from other orbital installations.
More commonly, especially in the outer system, habitats are independent entities. This usually means that in addition to the main space station, the habitat is attended by a host of support structures, including zero-g factories, gas and volatiles refineries, foundries, defense satellites, and mining bases.
Habitats—especially large ones—sometimes have visitors, as well. Majors habitats are crossroads in space. In addition to scheduled bulk freighter stops, they may have hangers-on such as scum barges, prospectors or out-of-work autonomous bot swarms.
Many habitats have some form of transportation network. This is most common in large cylindrical habitats with centrifugal gravity. Common solutions for public transit include monorail trains, trams, and dirigible skybuses. Common personal transit options included bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, and microlight aircraft, with larger vehicles being uncommon and usually reserved for official use.
Most habitats with large interior spaces also use augmented reality overlays to create consensual hallucinations of a sky and clouds, to which most residents keep their AR channels tuned. One would think that in space, talking about the weather would have disappeared from transhumanity’s repertoire of small talk, but the habit persists—only the weather discussed is usually virtual (if it’s not real “weather”—solar flare activity and the like).
Clusters are the most common form of microgravity habitat. Clusters consist of networks of spherical or rectangular modules made of light materials and connected by floatways. Typically business and residential modules are clustered around arterial floatways and infrastructure modules such as farms, power, and waste recycling. Limited artificial gravity areas may exists, frequently parks or other public places and specialized modules like resleeving facilities (morphs often keep better when stored in gravity). Arterial floatways in large clusters may have “fast lanes” where a constantly moving conveyor of grab-loops speeds people along.
Clusters are most commonly found in volatile-rich environments like the Trojans and the ring systems of the gas giants (particularly Saturn). Clusters are rare in the Jovian system because shielding a cluster of individual modules rather than one large station from Jupiter’s intense magnetosphere is hideously inefficient.
Cluster colonies can have anywhere from 50 to 250,000 inhabitants.
Cole bubbles (or “bubbleworlds”) are found mostly in the main asteroid belt, where the large nickel-iron asteroids used to construct them are abundant. Bubbleworlds are less common in the Trojans and Greeks, where crusty ice asteroids predominate. A Cole bubble is similar in many respects to an O’Neill cylinder, but there are no longitudinal windows. Sunlight instead enters through axial mirror arrays. The bubbleworld is also constructed very differently, using a large solar array to heat a pocket of water inside of a metal asteroid so that the metal expands. Rotating the asteroid causes the malleable material to form a cylinder, which is then capped off and the water drained. The inside can then be pressurized, built out, and planted. Cole bubbles can also be spun for gravity, according to the whims of the inhabitants, though the gravity lowers as you near the poles of the bubble, with zero gravity at the axis of rotation.
Cole bubbles are among the largest structures transhumanity has created in space. The largest Cole habitat, Extropia, has a population of 10 million.
Hamilton cylinders are a new technology. There are only three fully operational Hamilton cylinders in the system, but the design shows great promise and is likely to be widely adopted over the coming period. Hamilton cylinders are grown using a complex genomic algorithm that orchestrates nanoscale building machines. These nanobots build the habitat slowly over time, a process more like growing than construction.
Similar to O’Neill cylinders and Cole bubbles, a Hamilton cylinder is a cylindrical habitat rotating on its long axis to provide gravity Two of the known Hamilton cylinders orbit Saturn in positions skimming the rings near the Cassini division. From this position, they can graze on silicates and volatiles using harvester ships.
None of the currently-operating Hamilton cylinders have grown to full size yet, but estimates say they could each house up to 3 million people.
Found mostly in the orbits of Earth, Luna, Venus, and Mars, O’Neill cylinders were among transhumanity’s first large space habitat designs O’Neill cylinders are no longer built, having been replaced by more efficient designs, but are still home to tens of millions of transhumans. O’Neill cylinders were constructed from metals mined on Luna or Mercury, Lunar volatiles (including Lunar polar ice), and asteroidal silicates.
A typical O’Neill habitat is thirty-five kilometers long, eight kilometers in diameter, and rotates around its long axis at a speed sufficient for centrifugal force to create one Earth gravity on the inner wall of the cylinder. Smaller cylinders exist, though these usually feature lower gravity (typically Mars standard). Cylinders are sometimes joined together, end-to-end, for extra long habitats. A spaceport is situated at one end on the rotational axis of the cylinder (where there is no gravity). Arrivals by space use a lift or microlight launch pad to get down to the habitat floor.
The inside of an O’Neill cylinder has six alternating strips of ground and window running from one cap of the cylinder to the other. One narrow end of an O’Neill cylinder points toward the sun. The opposite end is the mooring point for three immense reflectors angled to reflect sunlight into the windows. Smart materials coating the windows and reflectors prevent fluctuations in solar activity from delivering too much heat. The air inside the cylinder and its metal superstructure provide radiation shielding.
The land in most O’Neill cylinders is one-third agricultural (a combination of food vats and high-yield photosynthetic crops), one-third park land, and one-third mixed use residential and business. O’Neill habitats have a day and night cycle regulated by the position of the external mirrors. The business and residential sections of the cylinder usually alternate with the park land over two of the strips of land; cropland usually takes up the third. Bridges cross the windows every kilometer or so, linking the land strips. The interior climate, the architectural style of the structures, and the types of vegetation and fauna present vary with the tastes of the habitats’ designers.
Depending upon size, O’Neill cylinders can house from 25,000 to 2 million people.
Antique research stations and survivalist prospector outposts often fit this description. Tin can habitats are only a few notches up from the early 21st-century International Space Station. Tin cans usually consist of one or more modules connected to solar panels and other utilities by an open truss. Deluxe models feature actual floatways or crawlways between modules, while barebones setups require a vacsuit or vac-resistant morph to go from room to room. Food growing capacity is severely limited and there may be no farcasters, but fabricators are available, as well as mooring for shuttles and perhaps prospecting craft.
Tin cans rarely house more than 50 people.
Interchangeably called toruses, toroids, donuts, and wheels, these circular space habitats were a cheap alternative to the O’Neill cylinder used for smaller installations. Like O’Neill cylinders, toruses are seldom constructed anymore, but many are still encountered in the inner system, particularly in Earth and Lunar orbit.
A toroidal habitat looks like a donut 1 kilometer in diameter, rotating on great spokes. There is a zero-g spaceport at the wheel’s hub. Visitors take a lift down one of the spokes to the level of the donut, where rotation creates one Earth gravity.
The plan of toroidal habitats varies greatly, as many were designed for specific scientific or military purposes and only later taken over as habitats by entrepreneurs or squatters. Many have a succession of decks in the donut. Most of those designed for long-term self-sufficient habitation have smart material-covered glass windows for growing plants along much of the inside surface of the torus. Toroidal habitats equipped for farming normally face the sun in a direction perpendicular to their rotational axis, but then use a slow processional wobble of that axis to create a day/night cycle.
Toruses were usually built to accommodate small crews of 500 or fewer people, though some larger ones exist, able to house 50,000. A few rare double-toruses also exist, like two large wheels spinning in opposite directions, joined at the axis.
How characters gain entry to a habitat and what type of screening they’re likely to undergo depends upon how they arrive. Some habitats are close to other settlements, while others are physically isolated by the vast, empty distances of interplanetary space.
Habitats in dense planetary systems receive most of their visitors via conventional space travel. Immigration and customs infrastructure is geared toward receiving visitors via their spaceport, and the processing of arrivals is in most ways analogous to a twentieth century airport. Isolated habitats, on the other hand, tend to receive almost all of their visitors via egocast.
Arrivals by spacecraft undergo, at minimum, an ego ID check, scans to detect pathogens, hostile nanobots, explosives, or radiation, and an inspection of their personal effects. Some habitats go farther, including rigorous secondary screenings using scout nanoswarms scans of all electronic systems for malware, and/or aggressive interrogation of a fork of the subject. Even autonomist enclaves enforce automated scans for anything that might pose a danger to the habitat or any signs of hypercorp saboteur efforts.
Restricted goods vary according to local legalities. Many habitats, particularly those controlled by autonomist or criminal factions, allow personal weaponry as long as its nothing you can use to blow a hole in the structure or indiscriminately kill dozens of people. Others, notably the Jovian Republic and hypercorp stations, disallow lethal weapons of all kinds, except for people who have acquired special permits and authorization (sometimes available by bribing the right people or pulling favors with rep). Nonlethal weapons are generally allowed. Other restricted items may include nanofabricators, nanoswarms, malware and hacker software, drugs and narcoalgorithms, certain types of XP recordings, covert operations tools, and so on. Certain types of morphs may also be restricted, such as reapers, furies, or uplifts.
Certain habitats may insist that visitors—or at least the ones they don’t like the looks of—submit to specific forms of monitoring or surveillance for the duration of their stay. This might include taggant nanoswarms, hosting a police AI in your mesh inserts, or even physical tailing by an armed security drone. Other stations will require that their visitors leave a fork as a form of collateral at the door—in case they commit a crime, the fork can be interrogated.
Finally, though rare, some habitats go so far as to charge all visitors an “air tax”—a fee for using the station’s publicly available resources while they are present. This is generally only common in isolated habitats with strained resources, and is considered especially obnoxious by most autonomists.
Some syndicates run a good business in smuggling certain goods or even people into habitats. This is generally accomplished through bribed security personnel, but is also sometimes handled as falsified credentials that will allow the subject to breeze past security checks. Such services are typically quite expensive.
For those hoping to gain quiet and unobserved access, there is always the option of taking a spacewalk and trying to break in through an unattended airlock. Such attempts are quite often dangerous and futile, as most habitats have dedicated sensor and security systems to monitor their exterior surface and in particular any access points. Still, it is a possibility for a resourceful team with a skilled hacker, though armed sentry bots are a particular danger.
Arrivals by egocast are sometimes interviewed by habitat authorities in a simulspace before resleeving. Depending upon the habitat’s attitude toward civil rights, this process can be relatively reasonable or quite invasive. A minimal entry inspection includes an ID check, a brief interview with a customs AI, and a review of the specs of the morph into which the arriving ego plans to resleeve. Habitats with draconian immigration measures may use harsh psychosurgery interrogation techniques on suspect infomorphs. Egocast backups have little recourse to avoid this treatment—station authorities can simply file them away in cold storage if they choose—so it is wise to investigate custom procedures before you send yourself over.
Because many people, particularly autonomists and brinkers, don’t appreciate this kind of reception, various uploading services have stepped in to provide pre-customs resleeving for characters traveling to habitats with suspect screening methods. For often-exorbitant fees, the traveler egocasts into an extraterritorial substation close to their intended destination, resleeves there, and then travels to their destination by rocket.
Various darkcast services, normally run by established crime syndicates, sometimes offer an alternative method of egocasting in and possibly even resleeving. Darkcast services are quite expensive, however, and the character is at the mercy of the syndicate operators In rare cases, some political factions or even hypercorps might operate their own darkcast systems, which a character with good networking skills might be able to take advantage of.
In some circumstances, characters will prefer to travel physically through space rather than egocasting. In Eclipse Phase, spacecraft are primarily dealt with as a setting environment rather than a vehicle/gear to use. Spacecraft largely pilot themselves via the onboard AI. Though characters can also take over with their Pilot: Spacecraft skill, the situation rarely calls for it.
In densely inhabited planetary systems such as Mars and Saturn, most travel between cities, surface stations, and orbital habitats within 200,000 kilometers is by small hydrogen-fueled (or sometimes methane-fueled) rockets. This form of travel is incredibly cheap, very fast, and avoids the occasional personality glitches that crop up during egocasting. LOTVs (lander and orbital transfer vehicles, p. 348) are commonly used. Spacecraft leaving a planetary body need to be able to generate enough thrust to escape the gravity well (see Escaping Gravity Wells, p. 346).
For distances of 200,000 to 1.5 million kilometers, somewhat larger (and more expensive) fusion- and plasma-drive craft make regular runs. Nuclear electric ion drives were once used on some of these routes, but the poor efficiency of these fission systems and the need for radioactive heavy metal reaction mass means that they are almost never used anymore. Faster antimatter-drive couriers are also commonly used. These ships lack the thrust to escape from the gravity wells of large planets or moons, so they station themselves in orbit and use smaller ships (typically LOTVs) with higher thrust to transport people to and from the planetary surface. For distances beyond 1.5 million kilometers, almost everyone uses egocasting
Spacecraft use various types of reaction drives (see Spacecraft Propulsion, p. 347), meaning that they burn fuel (reaction mass) and direct the heated output in one direction, which pushes the spacecraft in the opposite direction. Travel over any major distance typically involves a period of high-acceleration burn for several hours at the beginning of the flight, where up to half of the reaction mass is spent to drive up the craft’s velocity The ship then coasts for the majority of the flight at that speed, until it approaches its destination, where it flips over and burns an equal amount of reaction mass in the opposite direction to decrease velocity. Though some craft burn half their reaction mass to get up to the best speed possible, this doesn’t leave much room for additional maneuvering or emergencies Many craft therefore only burn up to a quarter or a third of their fuel in initial accelerations, so they have some to spare in case they need it. A few tricks can be used to save fuel and build speed, such as slingshotting around the gravity wells of larger planets or aerobraking in a planet’s upper atmosphere. Travel times between locations are constantly changing as various bodies move in their orbits around the solar system. Within a cluster or planetary system, travel takes a matter of hours. Within the 286 inner system, travel can take days or weeks. Travel to, from, or within the outer system can take much longer, and is usually a matter of several months.
Most ships operate at zero-g, except for a few larger craft that are able to spin habitat modules for low gravity. Periods of high-acceleration also produce temporary gravity in a downward direction, towards the burn.
Space is a valuable commodity on board spacecraft, so room is often tight. Sleeping and personal quarters are rarely bigger than large closets, just enough room for a sleeping bag and personal effects. Depending on the size of the craft, there may be a communal recreation area. The crew tend to only be busy at the beginning and end of a trip, when they must deal with acceleration/deceleration and maneuvering around other space traffic. The rest of the trip they spend dealing with repairs or otherwise killing time, often by accessing XP or VR simulations or playing AR games. While spacecraft have their own local mesh network, they are usually too far to interact with the mesh networks of other habitats without significant communications lag, so they must make do with their own archive of entertainment options. Many long-haul ships are crewed by hibernoid morphs, who hunker down for a long nap.
Combat in space tends to take place over long distances using massive beam weapons, railguns, and missiles. It also tends to be nasty, brutish, and short. Significant damage to a vessel can cause atmospheric decompression, killing any biomorph crew who aren’t suited up and strapped down.
For the most part, it is recommended that space combat be treated as a plot device, part of the background story that helps create drama and tension, rather than an event that characters actively participate in. This is not to say the characters cannot play a role in the combat, or that their actions will have no effect on the outcome. They may become involved in damage control, negotiate with hostile forces, repel boarders, target weapons with Gunnery skill, stage a mutiny, attempt to hack the networks of approaching vessels, escape out the airlock, hide out while the pirates sack the ship, or similar affairs. It is recommended however, that gamemasters steer clear of space combat situations that could easily lead to the whole team dying due to a few bad dice rolls.
In order to create an object in a nanofabricator (whether a cornucopia machine, fabber, or maker; see p. 327), three things are needed: raw materials, blueprints and time.
Raw materials are generally easy to acquire, as most nanofabricators are equipped with disassembler units that will break down just about anything into its constituent molecules. Feedstock may also be purchased (at a cost of Trivial). Many habitats route their recycling and waste products directly into disassemblers.
Most nanofabricators are pre-loaded with blueprints for general purpose items: food, simple clothing, basic tools, etc. Blueprints for other goods may be acquired in several ways:
Once the blueprints are acquired, they are simply loaded into the nanofabricator.
Blueprints for many goods may be found for free online, disseminated by an active open source software movement. The availability of such plans typically depends on the local mesh. In autonomist habitats, a simple Research Test is likely to turn up the open source blueprints you need (applying modifiers for unusual items). In more restricted habitats, open source blueprints may be harder to find, as they will be securely hidden from the prying eyes of the authorities In this case, the character will need to use their Rep to gain access, bribe a local hacker group, or do something similar.
Note that restricted nanofabricators may not accept open source blueprints (see Blueprint Restrictions).
Some nanofabricators are equipped with pre-programmed restrictions not to accept blueprints for restricted items (such as weapons) or non-licensed items (such as black market or open source blueprints). These restrictions may be circumvented by hacking the nanofabricator and re-programming it, following normal hacking rules (p. 254).
A dedicated character may simply decide to program their own blueprints, though this is a time-consuming endeavor. To do so, the character must make a Programming (Nanofabrication) Test with a timeframe of one week per cost level of the item. For example, a Trivial cost item takes 1 week, a Low cost item takes 2 weeks, a Moderate item 3 weeks, and so on. Academics Nanotechnology skill or a skill appropriate to the object’s design may be used as a complementary skill (p. 173) for this test. A fork or muse may also be assigned to such a programming task.
Once the raw materials and blueprints are in, most nanofabrication is simply a matter of time. The exact timeframe to create an object varies, but roughly approximates 1 hour per cost category of the item (1 hour for Trivial, 2 for Low, 3 for Moderate, etc.). The gamemaster may feel free to modify this period as appropriate for the object.
Nanofabrication is typically handled as a Programming Nanofabrication Test. In most cases, this can be treated as a Simple Success Test (p. 118), with a failed roll simply indicating that the item has some minor imperfections, or perhaps took longer to make.
In some cases, the gamemaster may call for an actual Success Test, meaning that failure is more of a possibility. This should only be done for items that are exotic, extremely complicated, or for which the blueprints are incomplete or otherwise suspect. This test can also be made if the raw materials are limited.
The character operating the nanofabricator can make this test or it can be left up to the nanofabricator’s built-in AI. Most such Such AIs have a Programming (Nanofabrication) skill of 30 (see AIs and Muses, p. 331).
“Once upon a time, there was a planet so incredibly primitive that its inhabitants still used money. That planet is called ‘Mars.”’
—Professor Magnus Ming, Titan Autonomous University
The conflict between market capitalism and other forms of economics is one of transhumanity’s last great culture wars, and it’s still being fought. Transhumanity’s expansion into the solar system created myriad opportunities to experiment with new economic systems Many failed, but the reputation economies of the outer system have proven both utilitarian and robust in a way that no previous challenger to market capitalism has managed.
The reputation economy, sometimes called the gift economy or open economy, is one in which the material plenty created by nanofabrication and the longevity granted by uploading and backups have removed considerations of supply versus scarcity from the economic equation—destroying classical economics in the process.
The regimented societies of the inner system and the Jovian Junta have used societal controls and careful regulation of the technologies of abundance on their populations, thus keeping to a transitional economy system that is largely an outgrowth of classical economics. No one could get away with doing this in the outer system. In the Trojans and Greeks, much of the belt, free Jupiter, and anywhere outward from Saturn, the reputation economy rules.
How did this happen? For one thing, money is a nuisance when you’re an autonomous member of an autonomous collective whose nearest three neighbors (each 100,000 kilometers away) are also autonomous collectives. All of you are almost completely self-sufficient in terms of material resources. You have a fleet of robots that harvest water, volatiles, reactor mass, metals, and silicates. You have a nanofabricator to make all of your small items, a community factory for large ones, and a machine shop where you can build anything else—with help and advice from an AI with the combined knowledge and experience of a top flight engineering team, if you even need it. You grow your own food.
Money is for people who don’t know how to take care of themselves. Transhumanity is only a few decades away from being a mature Type I Kardashev civilization, having largely mastered the material resources of its own solar system. A character from the outer system most likely finds the whole concept of money an embarrassment.
However, material abundance hasn’t eliminated the value of certain goods and services. A transhuman’s lunch might be free, but innovative ideas, new designs, health care, sex, and dirty work don’t grow in fabricators. What if you need gene therapy on your morph to grow infrared sensing cells on your face? How about someone to assassinate your renegade beta fork after she set off a hallucinogen grenade at your gallery opening and kidnapped your boyfriend? What if you really need a spanking? You call on your social network. If your network is sufficiently deep and numerous, and your reputation is good enough, someone will help you out.
In the inner system, the reputation economy doesn’t replace money for the exchange of goods and services, but it does hold sway over the network of favors and influence. Calling on contacts, getting information, and making sure you’re in the best place to see and be seen all involve calling on your social network.
Social networks represent the people you know, and the people they know, and so on. It starts with your friends and family, spreads out to your co-workers, neighbors, and colleagues, and expands all the way out to your acquaintances, from the neo-hominid waitron at your favorite cafe to the sylph you flirt with at the club. In the always-online, fully-meshed universe of Eclipse Phase, this goes even further, encompassing all of the people you’ve linked to via social mesh networks, everyone who watches your blog/lifelog/updates, and everyone you interact with on various mesh forums. Now add in the friend-of-a-friend factor, and everyone has an impressive ability to reach out to people they know, people they sort of know, and people you don’t know but who are somehow linked to you in one degree or another.
Of course, social networks are not homogeneous. Among the ever-diversifying ranks of transhumanity, there is a tendency to coalesce around various shared characteristics, whether those be cultural background, personal interests, professional ties, local connections, political affiliations, subcultural obsessions, or simply common interest from being part of the same subspecies clade. The social network of an info-anarchist hacker is likely to bear little resemblance to that of a hypercorp socialite or an isolate brinker. Nevertheless social networks quite frequently overlap, often in unexpected and interesting ways. Most people can be considered members of several different types of social networks. This overlap is what links disparate groupings of transhumans together.
Just being connected, of course, doesn’t mean you have several thousand idle transhumans at your beck and call. If you hope to gather the latest gossip, get advice from an expert, find someone who can fix your problems acquire a piece of gray market tech, or spread a meme, you need to know both who to talk to in that social network and how to go about getting what you need, especially if you hope to keep things quiet and not raise any flags.
This is where your Networking: [Field] skills come in (p. 182). Networking represents your ability to maneuver through this web of personal and impersonal connections to find who and what you need. This could be handled by word-of-mouth, posting the right queries in the right places on the mesh, monitoring the right personal profiles and forums, harnessing the power of the mob with crowdsourcing, or any number of similar creative tactics.
Each field you have in Networking represents a particular network grouping, a common interest that ties people together. Most of these fields are based on factions (Autonomists, Hypercorp, etc.) and tie into a special reputation network (see the Reputation Networks table, p. 287). At the gamemaster’s discretion other groupings of people could be connected through these skills and rep systems. For example, artists and journalists of all stripes can fall under the Networking: Media skill and f-rep, no matter if they are autonomist or hypercorp. Likewise, being a diverse group, brinkers do not universally fall into any of the categories, and are instead spread out between them. If the gamemaster and players agree, other Networking fields and rep networks may be added, representing other spheres of interest, such as AR Games, Sports, Slash Fiction, etc.
The exact uses for which you may exploit your social networks are noted below. While in some cases the defining element is who you know and how good you are at reaching out to them, in others the defining element is how known you are. You might be connected to thousands of people, but if you don’t have clout, your efforts to make use of these connections is limited. This is where Reputation comes into play.
Reputation is a measurement of your social currency. In the gift economies of the outer system, social reputation has effectively replaced money. Unlike credit, however, reputation is far more stable.
Within Eclipse Phase, reputation scores are facilitated by online social networks. Almost everyone is a member of one or more of these reputation networks. It is a trivial matter to ping the current Rep score and history of someone you are dealing with—your muse often does this automatically, marking an entoptic Rep score badge on anyone with whom you interact, updated in real time, so you will see if they suddenly take a hit or become popular. The 7 most common networks are noted on the Reputation Networks table. Gamemasters and characters may decide to add others appropriate to their game. You purchase a Rep score in one or more of these networks during character creation. Rep scores are rated between 0 and 99, just like skills. These ratings determine your ability to acquire goods, services, and information and favors, as noted below. These scores may be raised or lowered during game play according to your character’s actions.
In game terms, you take advantage of your connections and personal cred every time you need a favor. A favor is broadly defined as anything you try to get via your social networks, whether that be information, aid, goods, and so on. Different types of favors are described under Favors, p. 289.
To pursue a favor, you start by looking around. This calls for a Networking Test to determine if you can find the person, people, or information you need. This represents talking to people you know, spreading the word to people they know, posting queries to the social network at large, digging through various profiles, chat rooms, etc. to find someone who might help you out, and so on. Networking Tests are subject to modifiers for the level of the favor (see below), the amount the character is trying to keep quiet about the request (see below), and any other factors noted on the Networking Modifiers table or determined by the gamemaster. Networking Tests are Task Actions—it takes time to call in favors or track down information. The timeframe depends on the level of favor, as noted on the Favors table, p. 289.
Network name | Rep name | Networking field | Factions and others |
The Circle-A List | @-Rep | Autonomists | anarchists, Barsoomians, Extropians, Titanian, and scum |
CivicNet | c-Rep | Hypercorps | hypercorps, Jovians, Lunars, Martians, Venusians |
EcoWave | e-Rep | Ecologists | nano-ecologists, preservationists, and reclaimers |
Fame | f-Rep | Media | socialites (also artists, glitterati, and media) |
Guanxi | g-Rep | Criminals | criminals |
The Eye | i-Rep | Firewall | Firewall |
Research Network Associates | r-Rep | Scientists | argonauts (also technologists, researchers, and scientists) |
|
Rep scores are broken down into five levels, reflecting your standing within that community. Every 20 points of Rep equals one level. See the Reputation Levels table for a breakdown.
Likewise, favors are also broken down into five levels, rated from Trivial to Scarce (see Favors, p. 289, for specific examples). The standard level of favor you can expect to get from a social network is based on your level of Rep in that network. If you want to pursue a favor above your level, you can do so, but you will suffer a negative modifier on your Networking Test. This reflects that someone with low standing has a hard time getting people to go out of their way for them. Similarly, if you pursue a favor below your level, you receive a positive modifier to your Networking Test, reflecting that your prestige makes it easier to acquire minor things that you need. For each level the favor falls under or above your Rep score level, apply a + or –10 modifier, as appropriate.
SITUATION | MODIFIER |
Favor level exceeds Rep level | –10 per level |
Rep level exceeds favor level | +10 per level |
Keeping quiet | –Variable (see p. 288) |
Burning Rep | +Rep amount burned |
Paying extra | +10 per level |
REPUTATION SCORE | REPUTATION LEVEL |
0–19 | Levek 1 |
20–39 | Levek 2 |
40–59 | Levek 3 |
60–79 | Levek 4 |
80–99 | Levek 5 |
Jaqui’s on a scum barge and she needs to get a hold of a weapon fast. She has a specific weapon in mind, but it’s pricey—its cost is High. She decides her best approach is to try talking to the scum on the ship to try and find someone who can lend or sell her such a weapon, using her @-rep and her Networking: Autonomist skill of 50. Acquiring a High cost item counts as a Level 4 High favor (see Acquire/Unloads Goods, p. 289). Jaqui’s @-rep is 53, which is only Level 3. Since the favor is one level higher than her rep level, she suffers a –10 modifier on her Networking Test. Jaqui must roll a 40 or less (50 – 10) to find a weapon supplier.
Favors don’t necessarily come for free. Depending on what you’re after, you may also need to exchange for it.
In the capitalist and transitional economies of the inner system and Jovian Junta, you may need to buy the goods or services you are after with credit. Even information might be paid for by bribing the right person. Once spent, that credit is gone until you earn more.
In the anarchistic reputation economies of the outer system, you can get what you need for free. In this case, you are acquiring goods and services based on the strength of your reputation.
Jaqui rolls a 39—she makes it! After posting some public notices on the scum social network (she’s not worried about legalities or hiding what she’s doing—this is a scum ship after all), she gets directed to a weapons dealer with a good rep. While a scum arms merchant normally sells their wares for credit, Jaqui is scum herself, so she’s able to use her scum community standing and get the weapon for free. This uses up a High favor, however.
Even in the gift economies, reputation only gets you so far. There are limits to how often you can ask for help before you start coming across as pushy or a leech. In game terms, this is expressed as a refresh rate—the amount of time you must wait to pass before you can seek out a favor of that level again without seeming demanding. Refresh rates are noted on the Favors table (p. 289).
If you need to seek another favor before the refresh rate has expired, you have two choices. You can expend a higher level favor instead, keeping in mind that higher level favors refresh more slowly. Alternatively you can burn reputation (see below).
Now that Jaqui’s got her weapon, she needs another favor—she needs to find someone who doesn’t want to be found. The person she’s after is scum, so once again she turns to the scum for help. The gamemaster decides that this is another Level 4 favor (see Acquire Information, p. 291). Once again, with her Networking: Autonomist of 50 and Level 3 rep, she must roll a 40 or less. She gets a 21, and finds someone who has the information she needs. Jaqui now has a choice. To get this information, she either needs to pay the person in credits (a High cost) or she she needs to expend another Level 4 favor. She’s low on money, so she decides to use her rep again. Level 4 favors only refresh once a month, though, and Jaqui used her last one just a few hours ago. Her only choice is to expend a higher favor, so she expends a Level 5 to get the intel she needs.
In some cases, getting what you need may be more important than not stepping on people’s tentacles. In situations of dire need, you can burn some of your Rep score to get the job done, meaning that you exchange a loss of Rep for a shot at a favor. This reflects that you are pushing the bounds of how far people are willing to go for you. While you still might get what you need, your online reputation rating takes a hit as people flag you for being needy.
There are two reasons to burn Rep score. The first is to get a bonus on your Networking Test. This indicates that you are pulling strings and calling in markers to get the favor you’re after. This is particularly useful when you are trying to obtain a favor that’s of a level higher than your Rep, but abuse it too often and you will soon have no social standing at all. Every point of Rep you burn gives you an equivalent positive modifier on the Networking Test, up to a maximum of +30.
The second option is to burn Rep to seek a favor before it has refreshed. This reflects that you are asking for too much in a short period. The amount of Rep you must burn in this case depends on the level of favor you are seeking, as noted on the Favors table (p. 289).
Jaqui’s got her weapon and her target’s whereabouts, but she needs one more thing: a hacker. She needs someone who can open some doors and defeat some security systems so she can get to the target she’s after in his hideout. Since she’s on a scum barge, Jaqui feels that, once again, her best option is to work her scum contacts. The gamemaster determines that this will be another Level 4 favor. Rolling against a target number of 40 again, she gets a 13—her luck is holding. She finds a hacker, but now she needs to make an exchange for their services. Once again she decides not to spend credit and use her @-rep instead. Jaqui’s already used up both her Level 4 and Level 5 @-rep favors, though, so she has no choice but to burn reputation. A Level 4 favor costs 10 Rep to burn. Jaqui spends it, sending her @-rep from 53 to 43—she’s been pulling in a lot of big favors in a short amount of time, and her friends and acquaintances are expressing their annoyance by lowering her social standing.
The problem with using social networks for favors is that you end up letting lots of other people know what you’re up to. When you’re involved in a clandestine operation, that could be exactly what you don’t want. The only way to diminish this is to take your requests to trusted friends and ask them to keep quiet, but this diminishes the pool of people at your disposal. In game terms, you can try to keep word of what you’re doing quiet, but this makes it harder to get what you need. For every negative modifier you apply to your Networking Test, the same negative modifier applies to anyone making a Networking Test to find out what you’re up to.
Revisiting one of our previous examples, we go back to the point where Jaqui was trying to ascertain someone’s hideout location. Because the person she’s after is scum, they’re on a scum ship, and Jaqui is using her Networking: Autonomist skill to find them, there’s a good chance that if she starts asking around to everyone, word might trickle back to the person she’s after. She doesn’t want them to know she’s on their tail, though, so she decides to make her inquiries more discreet. She applies a –20 modifier to her Networking Test, which lowers her target number from 40 to 20. As noted before, she rolls a 21, which is a failure. She spends a Moxie point to flip the roll, though, making it a 12—a success. Because Jaqui took that –20 hit, representing the fact that she was keeping her research quiet, her target will suffer a –20 modifier when he makes his Networking Test to see if he gets word that someone is asking around about his hideout.
Creative players can undoubtedly come up with many uses for their social networks, but a few of the more common are detailed here. Gamemasters should use their discretion as to how much roleplaying interaction and Networking Tests are included in using a social network. For normal goods, straightforward information queries, or small favors, neither dice rolling nor roleplaying may be required For major requests, interactions with contacts, and mission assistance, dice rolls and/or roleplaying interaction with contacts from the social network should usually occur. Gamemasters may wish to keep track of the NPC contacts in each character’s social networks and make them recurring characters.
FAVOR LEVEL | TIMEFRAME | BURNING REP COST | REFRESH RATE |
1 (Trivial) | 1 minute | 0 | 1 hour |
2 (Low) | 30 minutes | 1 | 1 day |
3 (Moderate) | 1 hour | 5 | 1 week |
4 (High) | 1 day | 10 | 1 month |
5 (Scarce) | 3 days | 20 | 3 months |
Social networks are a good way to find items that you can’t buy legally or make at home. Depending on who you’re getting the goods from, this will cost you credit or require an appropriate Rep score. This favor can also be used to sell or give away such items, making some money or perhaps even some Rep in the process.
LEVEL | SERVICE |
1 | Acquire/unload item with an expense of Trivial. |
2 | Acquire/unload item with an expense of Low. |
3 | Acquire/unload item with an expense of Moderate. |
4 | Acquire/unload item with an expense of High. |
5 | Acquire/unload item with an expense of Expensive |
When you lack the skills or education you need, or you just need another set of arms, you can call out to your social network to find someone to help you out. If you are looking for someone with a particular skill, the result of your successful Networking Test roll is the skill rating of the person you find. The higher your Networking skill, the better able you are to find highly-skilled professionals.
Cole needs to find an astrobiologist who can help him identify an alien critter. He rolls his Networking: Scientist skill of 50 and gets a 43—a success. He tracks down someone with Academics: Astrobiology skill of 43 (his roll) who can help him out. When the astrobiologist looks the critter over, the gamemaster makes a roll for the NPC using that skill of 43.
When you can’t find the information online or you don’t have the time or capability to look, you can turn to people in your social network and tap their accumulated knowledge base.
It is important to note that reputation is closely tied to identity. If you are undercover and using a fake ID, you can’t really call on your Rep score without giving yourself away. As a result, many people using false identities end up building up a separate set of Rep scores for their alter ego. Note that since many social network interactions take place online, it is possible for someone to secretly make use of their real identity while masquerading as someone else, as long as they’re careful about it. If anyone happens to be spying on their activity via the mesh, they stand a chance of being found out.
Table 10.12: Acquire Services | |
LEVEL | SERVICE |
1 | Trivial favor: Get someone to perform services for 15 minutes. Move a chair. Browbeat someone. Catch a ride. Research someone online. Borrow 50 credits. Other Trivial cost services. |
2 | Minor favor: Get someone to perform services for an hour. Move to a new cubicle. Rough someone up. Loan a vehicle. Provide an alibi. Healing vat rental. Minor hacking assistance. Basic legal or police assistance. Borrow 250 credits. Other Low cost services. |
3 | Moderate favor: Get someone to perform services for a day. Move to a habitat in the same cluster. Serious beating. Lookout. Short-distance egocast. Short shuttle trip (under 50,000 km). Minor psychosurgery. Uploading. Reservations at the best restaurant ever. Major legal representation or police favors. Borrow 1,000 credits. Other Moderate cost services. |
4 | Major favor: Get someone to perform services for a month. Move a body. Homicide. Getaway shuttle pilot. Industrial sabotage. Large-volume shipping contract on bulk freighter. Medium-distance egocast. Mid-range shuttle trip (50,000–150,000 km). Moderate psychosurgery. Resleeving. Get out of jail free. Borrow 5,000 credits. Other High cost services. |
5 | Partnership: Get someone to perform services for a year. Move dismembered body. Mass murder. Major embezzlement. Acts of terrorism. Relocate a mid-size asteroid. Long-distance egocast. Long-range shuttle trip (150,000 km or more). Borrow 20,000 credits. Other Expensive cost services. |
LEVEL | SERVICE |
1 | Common Information: Where to eat. What biz a certain hypercorp is in. Who’s in charge. |
2 | Public Information: Make gray market connections. Where the “bad neighborhood” is. Obscure public database info. Who’s the local crime syndicate. Public hypercorp news. |
3 | Private Information: Make black market connections. Where an unlisted hypercorp facility is. Who’s a cop. Who’s a crime syndicate member. Where someone hangs out. Internal hypercorp news. Who’s sleeping with whom. |
4 | Secret Information: Make exotic black market connections. Where a secret corp facility is. Where someone’s hiding out. Secret hypercorp projects. Who’s cheating on whom. |
5 | Top Secret Intel: Where a top secret black-budget lab is. Illegal hypercorp projects. Scandalous data. Blackmail material. |
Firewall sentinels make a regular habit of being in places where they are not supposed to be and bringing things with them that others would prefer they not have. Security has a different character post-Fall than in the 21st century. Due to hyper-abundance, physical security measures such as locks, doors, and walls are less important than in the past to common citizens. People don’t worry about theft as much as in the past because most items can be replaced by a nanofabricator. The items that do tend to engender this type of security are irreplaceable or rare items such as artifacts of Earth.
Post-Fall physical security focuses heavily on surveillance—identifying intruders and tracking them so that they can be interdicted by transhuman or robotic defenders. Surveillance is more effective than in pre-Fall societies because AIs with near-human faculties of pattern recognition and indentured infomorphs can be employed to monitor surveillance data.
The emphasis on surveillance results from the ease with which most material barriers can be breached by high-powered hand weaponry and devices like the covert operations tool (p. 315). However, physical barriers designed to actively resist intruders by healing themselves or attacking tools used to damage them are used at key points in secure installations. Such barriers are typically very expensive and so are used sparingly.
Transhuman, animal, and infolife defenders are cornerstones of most security systems. The availability of a huge pool of infomorph labor to guard facilities means that someone is always on duty, whether as part of the surveillance system or in a robotic shell.
The first step in any security system is simply to enact measure to keep unwanted people out. At a basic level this involves walls, locks, fencing, defensive landscaping security lighting, and entoptic warnings.
Barriers of different sorts present an obstacle that must be cut through or blown apart in order to defeat. Barriers are treated just like other inanimate objects for purposes of attack sand damage; see Ob- jects and Structures, p. 202.
Bug zappers create minute EMP pulses that are harmless to most electronic equipment and implants but wreak havoc on nanobot swarms, microbugs, and specks. Bug zappers are generally applied to surfaces, and as such they only destroy floating/flying swarms or specks if they land. In areas with heavily shielded electronics, they may be installed to destroy targets in an entire room. A zapper instantly destroys all free-crawling or flying nanobots and specks in a room when it goes off, but transhuman flesh is sufficient to prevent it destroying medichines or other implanted nanobots. Infiltrators trying to gather data in areas protected by zappers generally resort to going around them or trying to plant macroscale devices.
Electronic locks (e-locks) are commonly used as a means of maintaining privacy. They are easy to defeat, however, and so are rarely used in very secure areas. E-locks have several advantages over old-fashioned mechanical locks. Different users can have different authentication methods, they can log all events (entry, exit, failed authentications), and they can be connected (usually hardwired but sometimes encrypted wireless) to security systems for remote control and alarm triggering.
E-locks use one of several authentication systems, or sometimes a combination of systems:
Biometric: The lock scans one or more of the user’s biometric prints. Common biometrics include DNA, facial thermographic, fingerprint, gait, hand veins, iris, keystroke, odor, palm, retinal, and voice prints.
Keypad: This is an alphanumeric keypad upon which users enter a specific code. Different users can have different codes.
Token: Authorized users must carry some sort of physical token that interacts with the lock to open the door, such as a keycard, electronic key, etc.
Wireless Code: Users must emit a cryptographic code via near-proximity wireless signal.
Though various technologies exist to defeat each of these systems, there are three methods that work against almost all e-locks. The first is use of a covert operations tool (p. 315), which infiltrates a lock with nanobots that swarm in and engage the electronic mechanism. The drawback to using a COT is that its use is immediately logged by the e-lock and an alarm is triggered. Some e-locks are equipped with guardian nanoswarms (p. 329) to defeat COTs, but the COT nanobots usually manage to open the lock before the guardians eat them.
The second method is to hack the e-lock. Most e-locks are slaved to a security system, so this often means intruding into the security system and then opening the lock from within. This can be difficult, however, especially if the security system is wirelessly isolated or hardwired. The advantage is that, if done right, all evidence of the lock being opened can be erased. The third method is to physically open and manipulate the lock. This requires first opening the lock’s case and then triggering the lock mechanism to open the door. Both of these are handled as separate Hardware: Electronics Task Actions with a timeframe of 1 minute each. In addition, most e-locks have anti-tamper circuits that will set off an alarm if the attacker does not achieve an Excellent Success when opening the case.
The 21st century saw a move from mechanical locks to e-locks and other largely electronic locking mechanisms. These devices worked well for about 50 years, until electronic infiltration capabilities rendered them largely useless. The more recent development of lockbots has more in common with their early mechanical forebears. They are unique, expensive, artisan items.
A typical lockbot is heavily integrated with the portal and barrier it protects. Lockbots usually include an AI or indentured infomorph, self-healing materials (treat as a self-healing barrier), and a swarm of guardian nanobots (p. 329). A lockbot monitors its surroundings and has visual recognition software that knows what its users and its keys look like (Perception skill 40). Picking a lockbot is thus incredibly difficult, because it will shut its orifice and not accept a key that doesn’t look right or that comes from an unrecognized user. Unfamiliar nanobots trying to enter the orifice are targeted and destroyed by the guardian nanobots. Finally, external tools used to harm the portal or the lock will be attacked by fractal appendages extruded from the portal surface or the lock itself. These appendages have a range of 1 meter, attack with skill of 40, and inflict 1d10 +2 DV.
Lockbots are generally immune to being hacked because, for security, they aren’t connected to the mesh. If attacked, however, lockbots are programmed to send out an alarm signal via the mesh.
There are several ways to defeat a lockbot. One is to get a copy or image of the key and then forge a copy (using nanofabrication). Another is to attack the lockbot or the portal it guards with so much force that the lockbot is unable to repair it (usually using ranged weapons, as anything within a meter of a lockbot may be counterattacked). A third is to somehow image the cavity beyond the lockbot’s orifice without the imaging device being destroyed and to then forge the key. All of these are difficult and time-consuming processes.
Some lockbots have the ability to destroy what they’re protecting. For example, lockbots are a common protection for the physical interfaces to hardwired networks. If the lockbot is compromised, it may, as a last resort, destroy the interface it was protecting.
Installed in corridors or doorways, this is essentially a laser trap device. When an unauthorized person enters the portal denial system’s area, it uses lasers to create a grid of plasma channels that are used to deliver a powerful electric current to the target. This system has both lethal and nonlethal settings.
Nonlethal: 1d10 DV + shock (p. 204)
Lethal: 2d10 +5 DV
Walls and doors that are able to rapidly repair themselves are sometimes found in high security installations These barriers are made of materials that automatically expand to “heal” small holes and that are equipped with nanosystems that slowly repair larger amounts of damage. The best of these barriers do no more than slow down the most determined assailants, but in combination with surveillance systems they are a nuisance to invaders and can slow down attempts to flee the scene.
Self-healing barriers heal any single source of damage that is less than 5 points of damage almost immediately, sealing the hole in 1 Action Turn. They will also seal the holes inflicted by a covert ops tool (p. 315) in the same time period. Additionally, these barriers repair larger themselves at the rate of 1d10 damage per 2 hours; once all damage is fixed any wounds are repaired at the rate of 1 per day. Damage of 3 wounds or more may not be repaired by self-healing.
On planetary surfaces, high walls and fences are still common as a first line of defense against interlopers Slippery walls are surface treated with the slip chemical (p. 323), creating a virtually frictionless surface that is exceptionally difficult to climb.
Wireless inhibitors are simple paint jobs or construction materials that block radio signals. They are used to create a contained area in which a wireless network may operate freely without worry that the signals will escape out of the area, where they can be intercepted. Wireless inhibitors allow the convenience of using wireless links within a secure area rather than the clumsier hardwired connections. If an intruder manages to gain access inside the area, however, they can intercept, sniff, and hack wireless devices as normal.
Should security measures fail to keep an intruder out, the second step is to detect an interloper and track their activity.
A lot of post-Fall security centers not around keeping people out of private spaces, but tracking them after they come and go. What little privacy transhumans have, they cherish. Trespassing is a worse offense than theft in many places.
A room protected by a taggant nanoswarm (p. 329) usually has two or more hives, one each at floor and ceiling level (if in gravity; on the opposite side of the room if in microgravity) that generate and recycle nanobots. The taggants emerge from one hive, float through the room, and then return to the other for recharging and reuse. A feed line usually connects the hives so that they can share materials and power.
Anyone passing through the room is likely to be dosed with taggant nanobots. Once they lose proximity to the rest of the hive, they hide and periodically broadcast pulsed transmissions meant to give their position to pursuers or investigators. Some may drop off in clusters to form a breadcrumb trail to the interloper.
Any of the various sensors described in the Gear chapter (p. 294) may be deployed within a facility to monitor and record the passage of personnel, both authorized and not. These sensors are typically slaved to the facility’s security network and closely monitored by security AIs, meaning they are vulnerable to hacking and possibly jamming. A few other sensor types deserve mention here:
Chemical Sniffers: The chem sniffer described on p. 311 can also be set to detect the carbon dioxide exhaled in transhuman breaths. This is useful for detecting intruding biomorphs in areas that are abandoned/off-limits.
Electrical Sensors: Electrical sensors can be set in portals to detect a biomorph’s electromagnetic field in addition to the electrical fields of synthmorphs.
Heartbeat Sensors: These sensitive sensors detect the vibration caused by transhuman heart beats. They can even be used to detect the heartbeats of passengers inside a large vehicle.
Seismic Sensors: Embedded in flooring, these sensors pick up the pressure and vibration of weight and movement.
Weapon scanners come in several varieties, including those that look for the rare elements used in extremely destructive weapons such as nukes, those that attempt to locate personal weaponry, and those that look for detection taggants.
Rare element scanners are nearly flawless and are ubiquitous in habitat customs and spaceports. The only way to circumvent them is to find an alternate route into the protected area.
Personal weapon scanners can monitor a specific area, such as a small room or doorway. They use a number of sensing systems to detect and identify weapons and other dangerous objects, including chemical sniffers and radar/terahertz/infrared/x-ray/ultrasound imaging. They can detect the following items and substances:
Characters trying to sneak weapons and gear past personal weapon scanners must make a Palming Test (if concealing) or an Infiltration Test (if somehow maneuvering around without notice). This is opposed by a Perception Test from the character or AI manning the sensor system.
Some high-security areas will intentionally monitor for wireless radio signals originating within their area as a way of detecting intruders by their communications emissions. These signals can even be used to track the intruder’s location via triangulation and other means (see Physical Tracking, p. 251). To bypass wireless detection systems covert operatives can use line-of-sight laser links (p. 313) for communication or touch-based skinlinks (p. 309).
When all else fails, active countermeasures may be deployed against intruders. While live transhuman guards are sometimes used, robotic sentries are more common, typically AI-driven synthmorphs such as synths, slitheroids, arachnoids, or reapers, with guardian angels (p. 346) providing air support. Occasionally AI-operated gun emplacements—armored turrets that pop out of walls and ceilings—are also applied. In some circumstances, these shells are teleoperated or even jammed by transhuman security.
Additional countermeasures brought to bear will depend on the facility in question. Some sites will engage in active jamming, to deny the intruders any communication. Others will deploy hostile nanoswarms and even chemical weapons.