/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

Easy one is new 'safe' ways of creating seed AI that are either not safe or compromised by Exsurgents.

Argonaut exoplanet research on the gates or gate programming which threatens to detonate the gates of make them unusable.

Solar manipulation experiments that might cause a Coronal Mass Ejection.

Advanced memetics that could be used to load transhumanity with anarchoprimitivism memes or something similarly dangerous.

Sibyl waifu ai headmate when?

>Argonaut exoplanet research on the gates or gate programming which threatens to detonate the gates of make them unusable.

Destroying dangerous TITAN technology isn't an X-risk, it's a service to transhumanity

I kind of hope they introduce an exsurgent strain that can communicate no matter where they are in the universe - sort of like a max-range mindnet sleight. Just so we'll have megacorps using them as low bandwidth communication nets on other colonies that scream binary and swearing 24/7.

Favourite exoplants? I'm rather fond of Bluewood, just because it manages to seem ominous and brooding without being insane and dangerous. And, you know, near earth gravity. Probably a massive draw for some gerontocrats.

Sky Ark because dinosaurs as a second, I guess.

It's definitely an X-risk if it creates decently sized black holes in the solar system

An incubator for the giant factor egg. Or worse, a replication attempt through use of titan-tech they don't quite understand on a smaller scale. The entire thing is probably just a solar-scale bomb anyway, for when they're done screwing us over.

Exploration into the dark between Gates. Sure, some people don't come back. Functionally, the transition is instant. But some people report plenty of time spent within, and a sensation of being watched. What if they worked out how to go looking in the transition?

the way I imagined explaining it is tachyons are neutrinos travelling backwards in time, so we're currently being bombarded with messages from possible futures but we dont have a way of receiving them.
until now.
suddenly Dione starts picking up thousands of communications from all points in the possible future, not all of them happy. Many contain dire warnings, begging the past not to do certain things.
How Firewall investigates and reacts to this... well theres your game.

Anders Sandberg did two versions of this with the Naos corporation as the 'baddies', the oracle in Think Before Asking and the child observer in My Invisible Friend.

The gates grow back, they self-repair. Or are you thinking a Stargate plot where the gates are also made of a material that will annihilate whole planets if set off right?

might be a way to use sunwhales.

X-risks mentions "a new art movement causing cultural ennui", a meme that causes transhuman wide apathy.
that would be pretty interesting to play out, it would probably make heavy use of sanity rules and I would have PC's revert to backups once the listlessness of the meme theyre fighting overcomes them. Because they have to know the meme to fight it, and its a race to come up with a counter meme or reasons to live and continue society before the apathy overcomes them.

theres rules for making up new exsurgent strains, you can do it. post your results here :)

What about White Holes? Some researchers working on gate singularities have revealed a tiny piece of hyperdimensional physics for the emergence of stuff from a gate. Nothing about its removal, or transmission, folding space, coordinates etc.

They think they might be able to harness it for repulsors and spaceflight or whatever you need, but instead its just a way to poke a hole in reality and have stuff flood out of it. Place experiment wherever you wish to cause widespread destruction.

It's easy to make up a new strain - hell, the haunting strain is the base of most of them. That and a unique power, just like a vittrad swap. I just like the idea of babbling oracles that are trying to escape and infect their users at the same time.

And most of that is just a distraction so that something can listen to what's being said.

>bombarded with messages from possible futures
Tachyons are inconsistent with this idea of the future (also, all of physics)

Can quantum entanglement communicators lead to causality violations?

Nah. Supraluminal information transfer is kind of fucky in ways I'll admit I don't fully understand. FTL drive causality is more because of the way mass and time and energy all sort of get in there and fuck wildly.

eh, so what. I'm making it up. As if my players have a firm grasp on theoretical particles.

I dont know, what do you propose?

>Many contain dire warnings, begging the past not to do certain things.

One of the warnings is "do not learn how to decipher these messages; if you can read this, you're already fucked".

Just that QE comms, ansibels and other forms of FTL messaging have the same paradox potential as FTL travel.
Imagine observing a ship via telescope when you see it hit an asteroid and explode. You, being a generous sort of guy, signal them with you FTL comm and warn them. Your signal reaches them just in time and disaster is avoided....?
Then what, does the paradox destroy spacetime? Is there a physics reason why this can't happen?

No. The reason that FTL travel is a problem is because to go faster than the speed of light, you'd be going backwards in time. Information isn't mass. The comms are basically the same thing in two places because of the reservoirs.

So I'm wanting to do a game where the players start a movement to take back Earth, by force.

I'm saying a Promethean has developed tech for them to effectively combat TITAN Nanoswarms and leftover warmachines, so that's not an issue.

Any ideas for a campaign like this? Maybe doing some convincing to get factions on their side and rallying a makeshift army to make Earth Transhumanity's again?

Nanoswarms and warmachines are already killable effectively as long as they don't surprise the players. Sometimes even then. If you want promethean tech, then I'd have them come up with something that prevents unattended nanoswarms from continuing to replicate and learn once they're killed the first time. Most of Arabia, for example, is nothing but nanoswarms.

There's something like 50k non-infected humans left on earth. The black hills, the himalayas, etc. It'd be a question of picking one of those communities and sterilizing the zones around and slowly moving outward, uniting communities. There isn't any real way to 'take earth back', because controlling intelligences are all gone. What remains is autonomous and angry. It'd be a multi-century operation to cleanse every part of the planet, given the massively decreased transhuman population.

At least with things no longer replicating themselves humanity would stand a chance of clearing it.

Make them fight necrons

I don't think it would take multiple centuries, not with Promethean help and Transhumanity teaming up for a common purpose. For game purposes I'm going to fudge things of course, things that might not be "realistic" but it will be more "fun".

It'll still take a while to cleanse the whole planet of course, but priority numero uno would be wiping out the biggest TITAN remnant threats, establishing base camps and slowly recolonizing the planet and looking into terraforming for the ecological damage. Maybe build a huge dome hab on-surface and start there (again, not necessarily realistic but I'm going for Rule of Cool and Rule of Fun here).

Honestly, I'm just so tired of how depressing EP is sometimes, I just want to run an epic campaign where Transhumanity unites for a common purpose: taking back their home.

The moment a wide scale movement of forces heads to Earth, there will be a massive shitfight as each faction turns on its now weakened enemies, unless they all agree to go equally - so, never happen.

I'm not entirely sure you know just how fucked earth is. Like, the ecosystems are gone. They mention it's running out of breathable oxygen - not enough trees. The place is lousy with replicating enemies, probably p-gates too. The TITAN forces are still superior to transhuman ones 40 years on, so it'd be a war of slow attrition even with the magic promethean slowdown weapon. The Prometheans cant become directly involved or risk infection.

That's a good question. Wait a sec, I'll che

>For game purposes I'm going to fudge things of course, things that might not be "realistic" but it will be more "fun".

I, too, read Sunward.

I'm not following the EP lore to the letter for this game. I understand what it said in the books, but for my game I'm making it a bit more hopeful.

Then say exactly how you're fudging things, because the exact setting pretty much disallows the entire campaign. Did the TITANs really get the daylights kicked out of them instead of dominating? Did they take their war machines with them? Is there a demented one in charge left behind to allow for some sort of final climactic battle instead of a cleansing? Why is the Consortium (and everyone else) allowing this without using it as an opportunity to murder their rivals? That sort of thing. It'll shape the answers.

But it doesn't work like that. When you actually see the ship explode, it already exploded some time ago, so when you try and contact them via FTL, it doesn't work because there is no recipient.

The players must find a way to steal several thousand high yield antimatter warheads, deliver them to Earth and use them to sterilize the surface before every intelligence agency, state military and mercenary group in the entire fucking system catches up with them.
It's the only way to be sure.

Don't trust the Prometheans, they don't actually want you to reclaim Earth. The only way to truly reclaim transhumanity's home is to aim the the Lunar mass drivers at the Earth-quarantine killsats, some of which either house or are directly controlled by Prometheans. Wipe out the blockade of Earth, its the only way reclamation (and the freedom of transhumanity from underneath the thumb of x-risks like the Prometheans and Firewall) have a chance.

Even for shitty propaganda that makes no sense. I mean, if it's just 'hur dur imma titan', well, titan shit doesn't try to leave the planet. Like, ever. The quarantine just stops transhumans. If it's 'we're reclamationists! Open earth!' then half of those openly laud the quarantine, but keep it in place as a temporary measure during the resettlement process until earth is 'known safe'.

>Homestuck
Why?

i need links, right now.

You need control if the killsat network. Without it, you can't bring in supplies, and are at the mercy of whoever does control the network (who are probably not fans of your movement and will wipe it out at the first opportunity). You'll also need the network for sterilization purposes.

Any plan that doesn't involve getting control of the blockade is doomed.

Doesn't one of the source books specifically say it's possible to run the blockade and has been done before?

Maybe taking back ALL OF EARTH is a bit much for one campaign, but it'd be cool to see one where you reclaim at least a town and its surroundings.

Maybe cook up some shit about how you've been exiled for shitposting on /pol/ again and have been sent to earth for your dank crimes and now have to survive/colonize/escape, maybe take the fight back to whoever sentenced you too like the old Exile games

Sure. You go down as part of a sanctioned movement for the consortium, by egocasting to a bodybank controlled by ozma, by riding an asteroid dr strangelove style from Luna or by crawling down a remnant space elevator. The last one is probably the most dangerous.

I was thinking more that you got banned from meatspace for your distasteful future facebook post-post-post-ironic racist memes. the only thing sanctioned is you going and staying go (but little do they know that you'll only stay go................................ for now)

coming up the space elevator might be a cool setpiece for coming back to the main setting though

Exiled to earth doesn't happen. Maybe if you were smuggled down by reclamators or something and developed from there. Slowly create your glorious /pol/ paradise expanding out from the black hills.

>Exiled to earth doesn't happen.
That's only because the universe hasn't seen a meme this spicy yet. Some memes are funny or sad. Some memes are dangerous or destructive. Some memes are just too damn dank. And now you're going to the dankest place ever known for what you posted. If you think you know memes, we're sending you somewhere where memes truly do not stop and flow like precarious rivers through the cultivated rice fields, never forgiving and certainly not forgetting. forbidden memes from the tree of networks, so dank they drip, memes eternal, without beginning or end. memes that consume all, desu ne

Pretty sure they'd just shoot you.

No, man. You don't shoot someone over memes. At least not that kind, the normal kind. But something has to be done. Sometimes you gotta ban someone from everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

(alternatively, "but then there wouldn't be a campaign")

I think they'd just send you through a gate to an unexplored exoplanet, tied to a drone with a 'care package' and a 'do not return' tattoo on the morph forehead, with a QE communicator.

There you go. They accidentally linked to earth. Stumble on a survivor community who are using some weird morphs. Group assumes they're aliens. Noone disabuses them, and the reclamation campaign starts in ernest, with regular reports to the hypercorpers who laugh it off and ignore it. Later, when they start to push things back, people decide not to tell them - and, in fact, go out of their way to destroy evidence that this is earth - because they're a pack of aspies and don't want the possibility of this being earth rather than a 'fresh start' to throw them.

You're taking this premise and making it sound really boring and railroadey.

Funny, except for the alien angle it's all your premise.

They absolutely would. Luckily, quantum entanglement can't be used to transfer information.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem

Take a physics course. FTL comms implies that the message goes backwards in time for some observers.

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Nah, you're the one bringing in hypercorps and ayyliums and generally writing half the plot before it happens and in a really obnoxious way. 0/10 predetermines too much of the game instead of establishing premises; would not play with.

Kay. Make your own thing instead of begging for others.

askamathematician.com/2012/07/q-how-does-instantaneous-communication-violate-causality/

Take. A. Physics. Course.

Reclaiming/exploring a ruined arcology and establishing long-term bases on Earth is something I've based a campaign on (but never got to run, sadly). There's nothing wrong with it in principle but it's a very, very long way from successfully reclaiming any significant chunk of the planet.

Yes, it is possible to smuggle material through the blockade, but large scale reclaiming operations are logistically impossible as long as the blockade remains under hostile control.

Why is earth so hard to reclaim, anyway? Surely there's nothing there that a few dozen nukes couldn't solve.

>b-b-buh muh nukular winter
Modern nukes are very clean, let alone sci-fi future tech ones. Even the worst projections about "nuclear winter" only last for days to a week, and even then, it can't be worse than the sky being full of laser cannons that just fire on whatever and whenever they feel like.

TITAN stuff burrows. How many nukes before you're sure you got it all? Is it worth saving the planet by sandblasting off the surface of it? That's the part with everything you care about.

A reclamation effort would certainly use many nukes, but you need other plans for low-level infection areas.

how do you burrow in orbit

Because it's full of hostile infectious quasi-alien life and self-replicating death machines, and is surrounded by a shell of orbiting weapons platforms and electronic warfare systems?

I don't know why you think a dozen nukes would do fucking anything. We used WMDs en masse during the Fall - we still lost. We periodically drop kinetic impact ors - asteroids - on anything that looks even vaguely like TITAN activities, have been doing so for a decade, and it's achieved nothing. What exactly are a dozen nukes going do?

Good to know. Luck Eclipse Phase is just a game in that case

wat

Well if you goal is to remove the kill sat network then nukes are a horribly inefficient choice. All you'd do is trigger retaliation and probably kick off a massive Kessler event that would make it almost impossible to approach earth

aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html

Nukes solve everything, right?

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youtube.com/watch?v=Syyj0lrWQdc

So the Earth is totally ruined, and humanity is now a hothouse species. Is that what you're saying?

Humanity isn't really a species anymore

Then what is it?

Humanity is extinct outside of Jupiter. The rest of the system is overrun by aggressive rogue AIs that think they're human.

Literally a meme. I'm not even joking.

Calm down Cleetus

Fuck this. This is a bad future. I'm returning to the past and undoing the future that is Eclipse Phase.

I remember reading that there are flats living on the Moon and certain parts of Earth that the TITAN overlooked, like the Appalachian mountains and the jungle in Southeast Asia.

You could argue that splicers are still human.

>You could argue that splicers are still human.

You could, but you'd be wrong. If it doesn't have the same hereditary diseases as our proud and noble forefathers, it's not human!

You could also argue that just because they aren't the same species doesn't mean they aren't human.

It may look grim but it's really just a matter of perspective. Earth may be gone but there's a whole galaxy out there waiting for us.
The transhumans my seem weird but they are still people even if some of them are intelligent octopuses.
In a thousand years the Fall might look like the start of golden age. Even better your characters could still be alive to see that

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You probably also think that reading makes people lazy and nonproductive members of society.

Earth is totally ruined, yes. Mind, it's not (necessarily) impossible to fix - the TITAN remnants and Exsurgent strains are incredibly dangerous, but in principle could be eradicated with sufficient resources. The environment could be fixed, the ecology regrown or recreated. But the resources needed are vast, the political challenge immense (in terms of arranging the operation, and who owns what when you're done), success isn't guaranteed and it could blow back horrifically (always a possibility with TITANS or Exsurgents).

Perhaps most importantly...the apocalypse was ten years ago. The horrors of losing the war and subsequent evacuation are still fresh. Most people just aren't ready to face the challenges again.

archiveofourown.org/collections/sloppyseconds2016/works/7420807

And here we are.

>feisty fascist fujoshi
o i am laffin

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>Number and color coded threat ranking index
>Not going BROYGBIVW
Fuck's sake, Posthuman. Report for termination immediately. Then restore from backup and do it right.

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Wait a sec, I'm pretty sure I recognise that manip from years ago.....

It's actually pretty surprising how little Eclipse Phase fiction I can find. Is there any site I'm missing that has (probably shit) Eclipse Phase (fan ?)fiction?

Actually is if fanfic if the license is copyleft? Inquiring minds want to know!

>is if fanfic if the license is copyleft
It depends how deep you can throat devcock.

There's little to no fanfiction because it's such a niche setting. Anyone with decent writing skills should be running a campaign anyway.

>is if fanfic if the license is copyleft?
Yes. Just fewer legal restrictions on it.

Almost all of it is here in /epg/

Is it possible to make power armor in CotV?

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Yes.
What's CotV.