>>Posted on Hellfire, a secure Firewall invitation-only BBS at 13:06 on November 7th, 11 AF

Some sources say it was a modified strain of the Exsurgent Virus. Others claim it was a new breed of hunter-seeker supervirus engineered by the same mysterious extraterrestrial intelligence responsible for corrupting the TITANs. Hearsay and conspiracy theories are abound, but the only thing that's certain is this: it changed the face of transhumanity forever. An aggressive digital virus that is suspected to have been injected into our infomation networks as early as the Fall, it remained dormant until its simultaneous system-wide activation on New Year's Day, AF11. Habitat officials all over the solar system began getting reports of resleeves gone terribly wrong, of backups all across the mesh getting corrupted by some deadly agent. Fears immediately arose that the TITANs have returned and we were witnessing the opening salvo of a destructive infowar assault, and military forces all over the system mobilized even as the epidemic spread. No, spread is the wrong word...we now know that the virus was engineered to be intelligent, to bide its time and slowly infiltrate our information networks until the infection was complete and total. The only thing that spread was our awareness of the greatest horror to befall transhumanity since the Fall. Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. Nobody died this time...yet, in a way, everybody did. It took us some time to realize the truth, but when we did, it hit us like a freight train: every single existing ego backup in the solar system had either been wiped or corrupted. Any attempts to upload via ego bridge resulted in a corrupt file. The technology that granted us effective immortality had been subverted, and transhumanity had to once again look into the depths of what it meant to die.

Hypercorp research teams were quick to come on to the scene to figure out what exactly happened, and we now know more about the virus than in those initial months of fear, panic, and mistrust. One of the first things that became evident was that the virus bore a striking structural and behavioral similarity to existing strains of the Exsurgent Virus, so much so that it has been officially categorized as a new strain, named Ambrose-Savage by the scientific community. We also discovered that for whatever reason, the virus had no effect on the fidelity of an ego backup contained within a cortical stack, though if the backup is transferred to alternate storage, it immediately becomes active. A new generation of ego bridges designed to produce nanobots that read and act upon instructions contained directly within a cortical stack was immediately conceptualized, engineered, and mass produced, thereby allowing resleeving technology to continue to work with the proviso that the cortical stack be transferrable from one morph to another. We also know that the virus doesn't affect the egos of children from about ages zero to three years old - such children can have their egos backed up potentially an infinite amount of times without its integrity being compromised. However, once the child begins to learn to talk, clean backups become impossible. Scientists suspect that the virus is triggered by the development of the Broca and Wernicke circuitry in the brain that control language processing, but such theories, just like many theories about the virus, have yet to be proven.

What does this mean for you, sentinel of Firewall? It means that the galaxy is a very, very different place than it was even a year ago. When people realized that the destruction of their cortical stack meant permanent death, law enforcement agents all over the solar system reneged on their contracts, no longer willing to risk their life in the name of public service. The crime rate shot up to unprecedented levels, until the bioconservative elites of the Jovian Republic offered their police services to the solar system at large. Some habitats refused, but many more accepted, with the only other choice being subjugation by criminal warlords. As far as they were concerned, the Junta was the least of the two evils. These days, many of these habitats have retaken control of their turf, but the Jovian presence doesn't fade away so easily - their influence still lingers in many habitats across the galaxy, and the fat cats lording over Junta are at least as powerful in today's solar system as the Planetary Consortium. And these guys really don't like Firewall agents, so if I were you, I would watch your back when you're on mission in Jovian territory.

Still, the Junta is the least of your worries. For whatever reason, your life has led you here, to Firewall, a career choice that can easily end in your permanent deletion from the noble ranks of transhumanity. Guard your stack, friend. Guard it with your life, because it is your life. Maybe one day the labcoats will figure out how to immunize the ego against the effects of the Ambrose-Savage strain. But until that day comes, you're playing for keeps. Good luck, sentinel...I guarantee you will need it.

---

Eclipse Phase: Mortality is an alternate universe Eclipse Phase play-by-post campaign that I intend to run here on Dumpshock. As you've no doubt surmised from the intro, this game will be diverging from canon in some major ways. I had the idea for the game when I was thinking about death and what it means to die in EP - this initial run will be an exercise to explore the theme of what happens when you re-introduce death to a galaxy that has bet it all on its own immortality. In all other ways, it will follow what's presented in the corebook, with the only difference being that your characters no longer get infinite respawns.

Things to know about this game:

• It will not begin immediately. I plan on accepting character concepts for a minimum of two weeks to this date, after which I'll give those approved some more time to stat up their characters and finalize their choices. Part of the reason for this is that I'll be doing some traveling over the next few weeks, and I don't want to start the game until I can invest fully in it. Use the time to think up cool characters - feel free to post more than one if you want!

• As far as character concepts go, a biographical sketch is a minimum, and any stories or vignettes to flesh 'em out and make 'em real will definitely not hurt your chances of getting accepted. Once again, I'm offering more time than usual for everyone to build their characters, so take advantage of it.

• Speaking of getting accepted, I don't know how many players will apply, but since this is my first Eclipse Phase game, I'm offering a maximum of four slots to keep things manageable. If there's more than four applicants, then I will regretfully not be able to accomodate everyone, though once I get a better feel for the system, we may do some additional recruiting. Acceptance will not be first-come-first-serve, so make 'em good. Also, people have expressed interest in running their own EP games in the other thread, so keep an eye out for other games popping up!

I can't think of anything else for now so we'll end this post here. Show me what you got, Dumpshock.

I've waited for this.

I will put up a more detailed character concept as soon as I have it more fleshed out.
My rough outline is free-spirited space-mercenary. He will very likely have a Fury Morph, stem from a group of isolates and sympathize with the anarchists.

So excited. I just woke up, but after I get my shower, get to work, and get my morning soda, I'll see if I can't get something together.

Count me in!

I'm going with a re-instantiated (born in 1950s black guy who spent his time in Vietnam and law enforcement) who is now a member of the Ultimate faction (hence his six-armed slitheroid). During his years as infomoprh after the Fall he got more and more into the idea that human life as we knew it is in-efficient and too short-lived. Yeah. Something along that line. Spent his time in a mercenary unit, equipped with a cheap synth moph, until he had earned enough money to buy his Slitheroid morph.

Got a chance to digest the story pitch, and I like it. A bunch of new ideas came up, too. A couple of questions: Based on this description of the Ambrose-Savage virus, would those who are currently infomorphs (without a cortical stack - maybe running on a computer somewhere, or in a ghost module) be able to be sleeved into a morph with a stack, or would all of the infogees be on their last leg, since they were not sleeved at the time of the outbreak, and if anything happens to the infomorph, their backups are no good. Also, what happens if you create a fork that you don't sleeve into a morph - or if one of the infomorphs above makes a copy of itself (a fork). I assume the fork is corrupted, since the idea is to keep transhumanity mortal. In that case, do augmentations like "Multiprocessing" no longer work (or would it work fine, since the forks come off the stack)?

You mentioned "allowing resleeving technology to continue to work with the proviso that the cortical stack be transferrable from one morph to another". Are there limitations on transferring a stack from one morph to another (like, is the stack for a cyberbrain different from the stack for a biological brain, do different morphs need different stacks, etc)? Or did you just mean that the old morph generally has to be dead (or a vegetable) in order to take the stack out and put it in a new morph?

Some other observations (I hope this isn't annoying, I am just working on a backstory or two and want to make sure I get the details right with your vision - so correctly if I am making some false assumptions)...

It occurred to me that the egocasting, backup insurance, gatecrashing, and the morph brokerage businesses would have all taken a big hit, in 11 AF.

Egocasting is probably a thing of the past, since you can no longer copy yourself, and if you could and sent it to point-B, you wouldn't be able to sleeve into anything once you got there. This was always an expensive alternative to physically sitting through a long space-flight, but I got the impression that it was fairly common, for convenience sake. Sure, they could put you in hibernation for the duration of the year-long space flight, but then you basically miss out on a year of your life.

Backup insurance would now only be worth the bit about them trying their best to retrieve your stack for you - they can't actually use your old backup if they fail, or if you fail to check in after a while. On one hand, you would no longer be paying for the resleeving fees, but since there would be a lot stronger of a demand for them to seriously get your stack back, insurance rates have probably gone up considerably for people in dangerous professions - for example, Gatecrashers.

Gatecrashing may still attract some crazy thrill-seekers, but I suspect fewer people are willing to send their one and only backup on a (possibly one-way) trip to a random location in the universe.

As for morph brokerage, it sounds as though all morphs would be basically custom made now, and only used once. The cortical stack can't be removed without killing or crippling the morph, and they sound as though they are now flash-once devices. So, if you die, and your stack is recovered, they might be able to grow a new morph around your stack in a vat - but you're not going to be able to re-sell that used morph anywhere ever again, so that morph is now yours, until it dies and you move to your next body. I imagine it would be like if everyone had to buy a brand new car, without the possibility of buying a used car, or selling their used car when they want to get a new one.

Psychosurgery also may or may not have taken a hit. As I read it before, it was usually performed on digital mind-states, and involved forking, and manipulation of the copy before application on the "main" ego. I suppose that it could still be performed on an active morph, but people may also be more wary of it, since if something went wrong, they can no longer just hit Ctrl-Z and revert to a safe backup. It would now be quite a bit more like actual brain surgery.

BlackHat: love the thought-provoking questions, i'm still chewing over the in-game ramifications of the story thread i'm following, but here's what i'm thinking:

the state of infomorphs is much like sapient AIs in shadowrun - they can download into a cyberbrain and pilot a synthmorph, but biomorphs are out the question since the resleeving process requires a clean backup. in the same vein, forking is no longer possible since the process comes off a backup and not the stack itself.

to keep things simple, i'm gonna say cortical stacks are universally transferable between different types of morphs. however, you may need to use a specialized ego bridge that has writing capabilities for the morph that you want to sleeve into. resleeving as a whole is a much, much more complicated process, and the days of being able to resleeve on a whim are long gone.

your observations seem sound to me. if you have any more thoughts, please don't hesitate to post them!

Ooh, ooh, me, me, can I play?

I'll play nice, pwomise....

edit

Whoa, those are some pretty substantial changes.

What are you intending to take out of the system?

Casual re-sleeving obviously but what about Forking? Is that intended or a by-product?

I'll certainly need to start from scratch on a completely different character concept.

Okay, this makes sense - might want to also think about how pods fit in, but since they have a partially biological brain (and need an ego-bridge to upload) they're probably lumped in with biologicals. So, infomorphs and synthmorphs can still change morphs the way you change a suit (by evacuating the cyberbrain, and entering a new one) which would allow there to still be a trade in synthetic morphs. Biological morphs sound like they are still one-time use. In either case, there is only going to be one of you in the universe (unless there were multiples of you before AF11, but those forks will quickly diverge into their own individual egos, since you can't merge them back in).

Here's a tricky one. If you can swap a stack from a biological morph, and put it in a synthetic morph, then that person can still switch between the two whenever they can afford a new morph. While in a cyberbrain, if they can evacuate the brain as an infomorph - couldn't the stack then be removed and reused in another morph (where, effectively, a fork of that character was just created)? Or, were you thinking that an infomorph would effectively have to "jam" the puppet sock of the cyberbrain of any synthetic morphs it wanted to "be" (from a ghost module or something) - but then they would never get backed up on the stack. I assume your intention is to prevent forks, altogether, but not to single out infomorphs as unable to be backed up to cortical stacks. Egos in flats are already screwed, but maybe for infomorphs you could say that any current infomorphs can be put into a cortical stack, but then they'er stuck in it, just like everyone else (otherwise they take their chances without a backup like a flat). I think if you allow an ego in a cortical stack to leave the stack behind and become an infomorph, in any way, you've opened the door back up to forking and backups - because the stack would still be functional.

Interesting observation that I don't think would have impact for a few years, but this would lead to biological morphs becoming even greater symbols of affluence (or access to free nanofabs) while those who struggle to afford morphs would be forced to use synthetic morphs because the cost for maintaining and replacing them is much lower (since they can be reused, and it doesn't kill the old body to move to a new one). With fabbers, the old (dead) bio-morph could be "disassembled" as feedstock for creating new morphs, but in most areas, people would still have to pay a lot of money (or call in big favors) to replace their biological morph.

Other amusing ideas... woe to the guy who got the multiple personality implant installed. It might have sounded fun at the time, but now he can never get the fork of himself that he put in there out, and both of them get saved to the same cortical stack that neither of them can ever replace. After a few weeks, that fork is going to start diverging from him, and start wanting more control of their body, and he'll eventually be struggling against a stranger to maintain control of any body they are put in.

I have a lot of interesting ideas, but I'll try to focus on one (or maybe two if I have the time). I'm currently leaning towards a carefree and adventurous con-man/face (using the con-man premade as a starting point, and mixing in the socialite escort) who was accidentally re-instated after the Fall and made the most of his "second chance" by freeloading around the solar system on his wit, charm, reputation (notoriety?) and moxie - and who continues to do so even after the A-S virus outbreak when most of transhumanity became scared and overly paranoid/careful. I think achieving immortality and having it taken away would probably make people more paranoid about dying than they were back when transhumanity was actually mortal, but this guy would still intend to live life to its fullest, and cross his fingers that when he dies, it'll be somewhere where his stack can be found and resleeved (or that some scientist solves the problem before that day comes). At least, if he dies for good, he can claim he really lived, and went out with a bang (he's living on borrowed time, anyway) instead of living as some clanking wageslave in a gilded cage. I am also liking the idea I am toying around with, that he rented a top-end Sylph morph for some big A-list celebrity event on New Years Eve, only to find he has no way to give it back and is unable to pay for it... so he just sorta kept it... (on the run trait).

I'll try to get a bio and some details up soon, although it sounds like there is no big rush.

kxU can say for sure, but I got the impression that forks/backups (insurance against death) were the intended change - with casual resleeving (changing your body like changing a pair of pants) being the by-product.

very interesting observation. here's my proposed solution to the problem: the infomorph is essentially a shell program to host the ego, not the ego itself. in other words, it can be considered to be another type of morph, like a bio or synthmorph. however, the technology doesn't exist to create a cortical stack for an infomorph, because there was never any need. after all, as purely informational entities, they can just be backed up the traditional way. therefore, in order to activate the backup capabilities of a cortical stack implanted in a synthmorph, an infomorph would need to resleeve, shedding their infomorph shell and transferring the ego directly to the cyberbrain of the synthmorph. once there, they're trapped - they can't make a clean upload without total file corruption, which means they can't become an infomorph again. however, an infomorph can choose not to switch morphs and pilot the synthmorph directly as a infomorph - think of it as something akin to a biomorph piloting a suit of power armor. if they choose to go this route, they would be to jump in and out of the synthmorph at will, but they won't be able to be backed up on a cortical stack, because stacks don't work for infomorphs.

whew, that was a long explanation. i hope that made at least some sense. i love that you're challenging the story pitch - i am far from an expert in the sciences (hell, the last science class i took was back in high school, and i spent most of the time sleeping), and this is a pretty big diversion from canon, so i'll need all you guys' help to flesh it out in a way that makes sense. worst comes to worst, i can just do the gm jedi handwave and say "these aren't the plot holes you're looking for," but i would like to reserve that as a last ditch tactic.


yup, got it in one.

I was thinking about something along these lines...an AI piloting a body around...then again there as so many options I quite like the thought of a neotenic spy/infiltrator and I'll probably want a combat morph at some point Ah well, at least I've thought about some unifying background based loosely around some of the themes in my SR game but I'll get back to you on that one.

Cheers,

A

And this is equivalent to an infomorph moving into someone's mesh inserts (as a muse) or ghost module, and accessing the puppet sock (available on all cyberbrains)... so I like how nicely that fits with the existing rules.

It sounds like the major rules are (jedi handwaving as necessary to enforce them)
- Everyone only has one version of themselves running around at a time (anything we can think of, some scientist has tried with no success)
- If that version dies, they're not coming back unless the cortical stack is found, and integrated into a new morph (prices for nutcracker nanotoxins just skyrocketed )
- Egos can still switch morphs, but resleeving is more difficult (and theoretically more expensive) since the cortical stack has to come along for the ride (which ruins biological morphs when it is removed)
- Infolifes and AGIs can be sleeved (and backed up), but once they do, there is no going back to a purely digital existence (some might find that a bigger risk than being stackless software)

I think crizh is right, that these are major changes from some of the main themes of Eclipse Phase, but its interesting and sounds like fun to me - and it might require less of a mental leap for we pre-Fall humans to wrap our heads around. One of the things I enjoy about the EP setting is thinking "how would X be different, given the premise changes in this setting" and its been fun to do the same thing with your premise changes (all morning, while I should be working). "How would the world of EP be different from canon, given this campaign's premise changes of X".

It's important to pin down the goals of the changes and then the precise mechanic.

Too vague a mechanic will introduce unintended changes and might be ineffective in preventing the activities targeted.

How do back-ups become corrupt? Is it in the ego-bridge? Why is the same data in a cortical stack immune? What implants are affected and in what way?

What about Forks that were sleeved at the time of the outbreak? What about merging Forks? Merging Forks does not require an ego-bridge and both must be 'running' in a morph at the time. Again, there is Psycho-surgery, is it an intended casualty of the changes? Psychosurgery is usually performed on a digital mind-state but can be performed on an active, sleeved Ego so the changes don't prevent it.

Similarly Forking does not require an ego-bridge, both the multi-tasking and emergency farcaster implants create copies of the ego directly from the cortical stack.

yup, that's a pretty good summary, although people do not necessarily have only one version of themselves out and about. if they forked their ego and sleeved prior to the ambrose-savage outbreak, including sleeving in an infomorph, they can easily have a whole pack of themselves running around, though it would be impossible to merge them into one ego again.

in case it wasn't already apparent, i have a rather quirky GMing style of approaching canon as more of a sandbox than a rock solid structure that cannot be molded. i get weird ideas, and then i test them out in game - sometimes they're a perfect fit, and sometimes they crash and burn, in which case it's time for a retcon. :) i encourage my players to take the same approach - if there's an idea, theme, or storyline that you're just dying to try out with your character, let me know and i'll try my best to work it into the game. :) i think eclipse phase, more so than most other systems, is more conducive to this sort of approach, especially given the creative commons license.


here's my train of thought on this subject: there's a reason ambrose-savage is suspected to be a mutant strain of the exsurgent virus rather than a whole new entity. it's an incredibly effective smart virus that behaves in ways that transhumanity does not yet understand, and its not limited to a single vector or type of hardware (eg an ego bridge). in ooc terms, when i was brainstorming for how exactly to implement this mechanic, the most obvious and effective solution was to borrow from what the game designers themselves already created. the way the exsurgent virus is written, it can do practically anything an evil GM mind can come up with, so i chose to play ball in that court. :) as for why it targets all types of storage media except the cortical stack...that's a rather important plot point that may be revealed later in the campaign. :cyber:

edit: man what is it with the forums going fubar lately. :spin:

Sure, but the intro suggested it has been at least a few months since the outbreak (long enough for them to figure out a way to reuse cortical stacks) which is longer than the socially acceptable duration that most forks operate (after a few weeks, they start to diverge and become their own character). I suppose a sufficiently 'gimped' beta or gamma fork could still be around, but I wouldn't exactly call that another copy of the same transhuman, either.

true, they definitely wouldn't be exactly the same. hell, i'm having all sorts of ideas about power struggles between different forks of the same original ego, fighting over who gets to keep what stuff. kinda like divorce, but ten times as messy.

Would there be any reason to wipe the Ego from the infomorph data construct when uploading the Ego to the synthmorph?

You effectively create an Alpha fork in the synthmorph shell which is then backed up in the morph's cortical stack.

Presumably so long as you never store an Ego anywhere purely as data it never suffers corruption. Data coming from an emergency farcaster could be substantiated on the fly in an infomorph creating a series of Alpha Forks that can never be turned off for fear of losing them to data corruption.

While I'd love to play Eclipse Phase, and I've been one of the most fervent about wanting to play it on here, this campaign changes some of the rules around a bit much for my liking. Don't get me wrong it sounds awesome and the pitch was excellent, but I'd like to play a vanilla game world before I commit to a campaign that changes some of the basic rules of the setting around. That and the character I wanna play wouldn't work out well in this campaign due to the changes. But that said I think this is going to be a fun game and I'll definitely read it and keep up with it.

you are absolutely right. i've just reread the relevant sections in the book, and it would actually be impossible to get a clean backup of an ego sleeved in an infomorph into a synthmorph cyberbrain. that leaves infomorphs with only the second option: to control their body via puppet sock. good catch!

no worries! i knew even before i put up the topic that the game would not be to everybody's tastes, and i'm totally cool with that. after all, one of the reasons this game came into existence was to satiate my own intellectual curiosity. we'll do our best to give ya'll in the audience a good show.

I know EP isn’t meant to be the same universe as SR, at least in theory, but I’ve continued some of the themes and background from my game Emerging over to here…hope that’s ok… this is initial thoughts only, comments etc (especially pointing out I’m way off canon / KxU’s story) welcomed.

Still Waters Community
They fled Earth around BF23 when they finally accepted the writing on the wall; the burgeoning power of the hypercorps, the desperate repression of the ‘have nots’ and the unabated destruction of natural habitats. Influenced by the original Argonauts movement they had tried to stay as long as possible to help those who couldn’t help themselves but their situation became untenable and they were forced to leave. They absconded in a Paradise Liner, originally designed to transport a pristine ecosphere in to space for the pleasure of decadent thrill seekers, and have since tagged on various smaller craft so that the original structure is barely recognisable.

One crucial difference between them and the Argonauts is that they believe that whilst humanity should be free to improve itself, they should never have forgotten how to die, thus removing the very essence of humanity. They point to the rampant abuses of the Earth and its inhabitants at the hands of the hypercorps and other exploiters as evidence for this uncaring attitude they wish to avoid. For them, the resurgent virus that has stopped prevented the indefinite extension of life has been a blessing…although they recognise that voicing this opinion in the wrong environment could be extremely hazardous.

They now drift through the solar system, seemingly aimlessly, presenting themselves as wayfaring Scum or tech dealing Argonauts depending on who they meet.

More to come when I have some extra time…I have several ideas for morphs/egos that I would fit in to this background…

A

Aha! Dual Cortical stacks.

You could replace an Emergency Farcaster with a second Cortical Stack. You could build an armoured mechanism that could be entangled with a key that causes it to eject the secondary stack. All sorts of shenanigans then follow.

You could replace a full stack with a fresh clean one to create a Fork. You could insert a full stack and use the new nano-ego bridge to over-write the existing ego allowing simple re-sleeving in a borrowed Morph, the original ego could later be replaced in the same way.

Ego-casting would still be out of the question but a Cortical Stack could be shipped fairly cheaply by fast courier

Still working on the character write up. The two-week timeframe, and mention of bios and vignettes, seemed to suggest I should probably take my time - plus I'll be away from the internet until Monday.

Aria: totally dig the character concept, i'm very much looking forward to seeing how you flesh it out!

crizh: stop giving me evil GM ideas, you

all: my internet access is going to be spotty for the next few days, so feel free to take as much time as you need for your characters.

ugh, i hate to do this but i'm going to have to put a hold on this game. something urgent came up that i have to attend to and i'll be out of commission for an indefinite period of time. thank you to everyone for the interest, and the thought-provoking discussions!