/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

I'm thinking of running a couple of adventures focused on weird far-out shit. I need your help /epg/. What are your top tree crazy cool elements in the setting I can base an adventure on?

I dunno, start with any of the explicit plot hooks in the books, maybe?

Are these new players?

Kinda. They know the basic of the setting and have played through Continuity though.

So they're familiar with mutant exsurgents and derelict spacecraft. I'd say hit them with maybe some of the weird ego AI type stuff, like Think Before Asking or the Devotees.

After having a read through this setting, a few things really bother me.

The problem of continuity (the unbroken chain of consciousness and memories that guarantees you are you) obviously comes up in two places. Resleeving, and egocasting. And i get that its *meant* to be unsettling. This IS a horror game. But the weird thing about this setting is that, as far as i can see, they seem to have technology that would many of the horrifying implications largely moot.

Just to start with, to open with both barrels on continuity in the setting. If you tell someone, "An exact copy of you exists on earth right now. Will you kill yourself with this pistol right now if I make him a billionaire?". Your answer should be no. Its a version of you, and you might feel better knowing its out there if death is inevitable. But its not you and you don't profit.

> Re-sleeving.

So, for biological morphs this is actually pretty non-stressful as far as continuity goes, because it makes it clear that people can be and are conscious for the experience. You may be in a nanogel pond with a corpse, but you're awake and sensible for the entire process over an hour or so, so any innate terror at the process is probably going to be pretty minimal.

For the digital life though you are... well, digital. 0 and 1. You must copy yourself and delete the original, and its instant so there's no ambiguity or time to adjust.

Ironically, the life that handles resleeving more easily also has the more terifying implications behind it. You *could* run both of yourselves in parallel synced up and then delete the old one, which achieves something similar to the biomorph and is less terrifying. But still, it's instant, so how do you even tell if you even really have continuity? Your memories don't have a gap in them, but unlike the biolife you didn't spend the time watching a movie while wondering about what that neo-orangutan bitch at work is going to say about your new body. Its impossible to tell if you have genuine continuity or an illusion of one.

There's all sorts of philosophical arguments to this stuff, and people who bring it up in universe get told they're stupid and it doesn't matter (even though it obviously does, see the killed for cash example above). But the biggest problem I have to this is that in-setting it doesn't seem like it should be an issue.

We have advanced cybernetics. Why not go full Ghost In The Shell, and just mount everyone's brain in a cybershell? Pod bodies already use a hybrid system as is, and human brains are already covered in cybernetic meshware. You could replace your nanovat by giving every morph's head a damn lid. And for people already housed inside a cyberbrain, the fact that its not removable makes no sense whatsoever. There's probably more than one model out there. But at least for human sized morphs a standard is already going to exist.

It's quicker for biomorphs, obvious for synth-morphs, less terrifying for everyone concerned and - crucially - entirely within the technology of the setting.

> Re-Sleeving II: Electric Boogaloo (Or re-sleeving from Cortical Stacks)

So cortical stacks. They make sense. Even given the analogy above, it makes sense that people would get these even if they don't actually grant immortality. After all, hope is hope. And if nothing else anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows the agony involved. If you had some way of ensuring your own loved ones didn't suffer that agony, you'd make sure you had a backup even if - again - they do not grant immortality.

Or could they?

The the reason that cortical stacks are not you when you die is that they only contain a detailed brainscan. If your brain explodes, the cortical stack can be picked up and your last scan recovered. Great. But - and this is more speculation on my part - we already have seamless interaction of organic and cyberware in-setting. Couldn't just just engineer human brains not to store the memories and personality in their organic matter at all, and keep it entirely within the cortical stack? It already interacts with the brain constantly. Time lags can't be an issue. And it cannot be hacked in-setting.

It's a small difference. But it's the difference of dying and waking up a copy, and dying and waking up and knowing some part of yourself has been carried over. And of course, it might not actually be possible within the settings technology. But its something to think about.

>The problem of continuity (the unbroken chain of consciousness and memories that guarantees you are you)
That's a completely arbitrary definition of selfhood which doesn't even stand up to scrutiny when you look at how surgical anesthesia works. Quit acting like it's a given.

> Ego-casting.

This is by far the most iffy part of the setting. You walk into a room, you get scanned, your copy gets sent across the universe and then your old corpse is dragged out of the room. Or it walks out and you just sent a copy. It genuinely does not matter, which should be just one of many massive red-flags. Unlike the re-sleeving there's no process or gradual nature to it. It's a suicide booth with a transmitter. Continuity of self is absolutely broken, although admittedly not for long since your transmission goes at the speed of light. But still, there is a clear break of death and waking up.

Except, why? This setting has quantum entanglement communications (Instantaneous, absolutely no delay communication). Admittedly, they are apparently very expensive. So that's a definite issue with my suggestion. But still, the aforementioned biomorph resleeving in a pond with a corpse is at least basically non-stressful. Quantum communication is instant. It doesn't matter that the other you who is getting their brain rewritten is across the room or across the universe. You could still do the leasurely 'ill watch a movie while bitching about my ex on Spacebook' re-sleeve with your new body on the other side of the communicator.

Again, this might not be feasible at all if QC are very expensive and rare. But it solves ego-casting's inherent murderous nature entirely.

---

Anyway, just my immediate thoughts after having a good read of the setting.

> TL:DR - A horror setting might be intentionally horrifying.

Continuity IS broken when you lose consciousness, fall asleep or whatever.

The difference is that you haven't - or at least you assume you haven't - changed your body in the meantime.

You assume you are still you without actual proof because you have no reason to assume otherwise.

It's not a definition of self-hood and its not meant to be, its just a loose description of why brain uploading would frighten people.

And anyway. The point of my posts was not to really to argue about continuity so much as it was to point out that there are ways to alleviate the problem achievable in-setting that aren't being used.

>The difference is that you haven't - or at least you assume you haven't - changed your body in the meantime.
>You assume you are still you without actual proof because you have no reason to assume otherwise.
What does switching bodies have to do with it? What reason do you have to think you're still you when you wake up in the morning? You assume it without any actual proof (not that there could ever be proof since selfhood is an arbitrary condition) because waking up in the morning is just a fact of life.

>It's not a definition of self-hood and its not meant to be, its just a loose description of why brain uploading would frighten people.
Resleeving is a fact of life in the setting just as waking up is for you. People got the fuck over it.

QC is also data capped. You have a finite number of the entangled qubits which while good for text, audio and even video if you have a large storage would very quickly be expended by large data transmissions of Egos and similar complexity. It also can only be done between the entangled devices, which must be physically met then entangled, then separated.

So basically, when you run out of qubits to send an ego, you need to take apart your egocasting rig, take out the bits which contain the entangled particle, hike them all the way back across the solar system to wherever the mated link is, re-entangle them with all the qubits, and ship it all the way back then build it again. Or you can just suck it up and sleep through it like sleeping through a plane ride across an ocean like a normal person.

>And it cannot be hacked in-setting.

Er... It HASN'T been hacked to anyone's knowledge, thus far. As far as hacking a cortical stack is concerned, that depends on what kind of access you have to it - if it's already popped, then you have physical access, and you can do whatever the fuck you want to it - load up the ego into a simulspace and you can literally turn the ego into anything.

Cortical stacks don't generally get hacked because it's easier to fuck with the transhuman brain than with it's last-ditch back-up. If you infect one of the back-up copies of a transhuman, then until that copy comes out of storage, you basically spent your resources on nothing. If that copy gets over-written by a newer one, then you actually spent your resources on nothing.

On the other hand, if you infect an active transhuman, you gained an active agent - who can then get himself backed up before you make him do anything suspicious.

There's no reward in infecting a backup nobody will use or care about when you could infect an actual meat-sleeved ego that is active.

Digital resleeving isn't instant though, it takes something between 2-10 seconds. That's still very disorienting but thanks to error checking and likely some attempts to keep continuity maintained I'd expect continuity to not break. It'd probably be like falling down unexpectedly, but landing in a new body. Very disorienting.

I don't see what the difference would be between the cortical stack having the only copy of your memories vs there being two copies in your head. A copy is a copy even if no others exist. It's the same information either way, and this is extra true if they're stored in the same physical location.

Continuity is helpful because if you have it, it's very easy to claim you're the same person even if a lot changes. Losing continuity doesn't really mean that you become a different person.

Your body is still fully functional, the ego just isn't in it any more. It's not a corpse at all.

This is why I said that continuity loss isn't proof of anything. You might lose awareness for a few milliseconds or maybe minutes depending on how long the resleeving process is, but that doesn't change who you are. It's like how getting knocked out out spending time dead (but cold) don't make you a new person.
>but you're in a new place
I think people really overstate how important this is. The human mind is almost totally location-invarient. If you suddenly were really close to a black hole or something maybe it would be different, but the laws of physics which the mind operates on don't really change with location.
>But you're in a new/different body
That one might make some sense. Losing consciousness and waking up as a robot would be weird, and potentially closer to suddenly being a new person. Morphs can apparently change the way their egos act to a degree. I think the fact the memories and opinions don't change is enough to keep someone the same person though.

Lack is what people should really worry about.

Since QC is actually instant it would also be possible to send into the very recent past, which really throws a wrench into the question of which is the original. EP doesn't really address that at all though, so it's probably best to just ignore that.

Also, it's a pair only. This means you'd need a bout a jillion different links for each different location you need to transmit to, or suck up WAY more bandwidth than you should routing yourself through multiple stations.

The stack is input only without specialty hardware - but the specialty hardware is the Ego Bridge. Which aren't currently portable - but other than that fairly accessible to most nefarious people.

> What does switching bodies have to do with it?

The difference between going under for surgery and being resleeved is my body has changed. Waking up in a brand new body (without major scars around the head area) would certainly make me worried I was not the original me.

> Its a fact of life.

Just because something is a 'fact of life' doesn't mean the problem magically goes away. Committing suicide for the most minor dishonor was a 'fact of life' for Samurai. I imagine some still found it stressful.

> Resleeving is a fact of life in the setting just as waking up is for you. People got the fuck over it.

Then why does the game literally provide you mechanics for judging how stressful re-sleeving, loss of continuity etc. is on your character? The game literally tells you that people find it frightening. People have not got the fuck over it. People are ignoring it in-universe because the implications are horrifying.

Anyway. Step down the hostility.

>Continuity is helpful because if you have it, it's very easy to claim you're the same person even if a lot changes
Tell that to Phineas Gage

>Waking up in a brand new body (without major scars around the head area) would certainly make me worried I was not the original me.
Why would that make you more worried than waking up in any other scenario?
>Just because something is a 'fact of life' doesn't mean the problem magically goes away.
Then why aren't you concerned about whether you're the same person when you wake up in the morning?
>Then why does the game literally provide you mechanics for judging how stressful re-sleeving, loss of continuity etc. is on your character?
Losing continuity can be stressful without making you question whether you're the same person.

There's spider-bots which can read from a cortical stack in The Devotees, so you don't need an ego bridge, or they can be pretty portable.

I'm fairly certain he briefly lost consciousness, but that's actually what I was thinking of when I said "very easy" instead of something absolute. He's the exception.

>He's the exception
He's only an exception to how long it takes to become a different person.

So basically, what you are telling me via your responses is that you would totally take the deal i mentioned.

An identical copy of you exists on the planet right now. I will make him rich beyond his wildest dreams if you let me shoot you in the head. He will have every memory up to and including me shooting you in the head.

You are okay with this? Y/N.

If there is nothing more to you than your memories and personality, and it does not matter which brain you are storing them in, this deal is okay to you. Correct?

I've sort of been overwhelmed by the responses, though i am reading them all. Did want to reply specifically to this though.

>I don't see what the difference would be between the cortical stack having the only copy of your memories vs there being two copies in your head. A copy is a copy even if no others exist. It's the same information either way, and this is extra true if they're stored in the same physical location.

Factually we know there is no difference. But beyond that, it should still make people uncomfortable. Again, use the scenario of 'man offers to make your exact duplicate rich if he can kill you' as a touchstone.

The duplicate is every bit of your information, personality and memory. Yet he is not you, because you are you.

The cortical stack as a backup drive is similar. There is no actual difference except to the person who is the drive.

The vast majority of people who had reservations about resleeving died in the Fall. As a result, the setting is heavily self-selected in favor of people being ok with dying as long as copies exist somewhere.

It's a pretty shit deal tbqh, as you'll probably just shoot, and never make the copy. Save yourself a neat billion bucks with me having no way to know you did that. Otherwise it'd be fairly tempting.

Well. In fairness, i probably could have just shot you without offering the deal then!

But yeah. For the purposes of the thought experiment assume i am legit. Believable beyond any shadow of a doubt (maybe ive offered this deal to people before. Im famous for it. And hated by people who must clean carpets where i go).

Also, 'fairly tempting'? Why? Why isn't accepting the deal completely and obviously one-sided, to the point where you'd have to be a total idiot not to take it?

If continuity is not a problem. If it does not matter in the slightest as long as the information is preserved, agreeing is the only sane option.

A gun with wheels is mobile, this doesn't make it portable.

Primarily it's because suddenly coming into a lot of money can really fuck your life up, especially if a lot of people know about it. I've read a lot of stories about that, and I'm not 100% sure I want to risk that.

Excluding that issue and reducing this to the basic "would you break continuity for a reward" aspect I'm not 100% sure that continuity doesn't matter. I believe that Computationalism is true and that continuity isn't really a problem (I've been under general anesthetic) so what would be left is indeed me.

But I have two reservations: First Physicalism might be true, in which case properly copying the information in a mind over to a new physical brain might not copy true. We don't know enough about the mind and brain yet to totally rule that out.

Secondly, that new me would probably be a fork in EP terms, so I likely wouldn't retain *my* subjective experience, even though another me (which really would be me) does. I haven't thought through it enough to decide how attached I am to my current subjective experience, or how much that really matters. I'm not even sure how long the continuity chain of my subjective experience is, or what that even means in objective terms.

Finally, I'm a fairly risk-adverse person, so while this discussion is mostly theoretical I'm not really comfortable with going through with an essentially irreversible decision without knowing much about the empirical mechanics which underly it. Basically I don't know enough about the mind or mechanics of resleeving to be completely comfortable with going through with it, though under the beliefs which I think are true it should be fine.

>Portable servers on spidery legs crawl through the piles, inserting jacks, rezzing egos, and labeling stacks according to what they find.

page 16 The Devotees. They're portable servers, so about carry-on luggage sized. That includes the hardware needed to run 10 egos.

Yeah, and I'm pretty sure cortical stacks don't actually have access jacks and the hardware in Portable Servers doesn't mention they can directly access a stack.

So, while a lovely thematic element to Legba, forgive me if I'm not going to apply it as a general rule of the setting we should count on just because Caleb Stokes wrote that in.

That said, the core book is a little confusing on the subject. In gear it says they are a "vat" device but when they are first mentioned in uploading it says they're about as big as a bread box. And like most gear no mention is made of powering them.

You don't need an ego-bridge to access a cortical stack, and the hardware needed to access one is pretty small, seeing as it fits in a Spare morph, which also has all the stuff like legs and eyes, while being the size of a big football.

I don't think those were standard portable servers (the legs are definitely nonstandard) but the hardware needed to access a stack should be pretty small. I think they fit within the technical limits of EP tech.

Well, if an ego bridge is at most the size of a bread box - if you only needed to plug in a stack and not an entire head sized object you could probably build the Spare, as the negative space it needs to work with would be smaller.

People typically say one can only read a stack from a bridge, and in the text I can only ever find specific mention of using a Bridge or another specific piece of equipment (I/E the Spare) to do so.

Hey guys, rookie question but maybe you can help.
Do the costs of multi level traits stack?

Example: Psi 1 is 20, Psi 2 is 25.
If I have psi 1, does 2 just cost 5.

Im probably missing something in my book, so if there's a page number let me know.

That's how I always interpreted it based on the other traits

You don't need to buy both traits, so you can just buy psi 2 for 25.

Where it gets confusing is whether a Lost character who already has psi 1 needs to pay 5 or 25 for psi 2. Personally as a GM I'd just charge 5 for it, because psi is more flavorful than strong.

I figure it's a specialized access port which is most frequently found on Spares and ego bridges, but I don't see why it couldn't be built as a standalone device.

Actually wasn't there some morph, called a spare or something. It was a very small, cheap, and mostly useless synth used by gatecrashers that is mostly meant to get a person from being dead to at least contributing some brainpower and moving again. I believe it accepted stacks directly.

>tfw no slutty AGI girlfriend

I've been thinking of running a hypercorp game set on Mars, with the caveat that everyone are actually startup managers and small business owners with a free version of the Entrepeneur trait at Level 3. A story about a bunch of dudes, dudettes and neo-synergist hermaphroditic hypergibbons just trying to cut it in New New Silicon Valley, and occasionally being paged to deal with ridiculously corrupt and bureaucratic hypercorps sometimes shitting the bed and releasing X-Risks.

Depends on when the copy is made. Do it after the deal and my answer is definitely, assuming you can prove copy fidelity.

>no slutty AGI girlfriend
>Not being a slutty AGI with lots of girlfriends, boyfriends, and futafriends

B-but I like my body and being a boy.

I never said you had to be a girl, but it is an option as is everything in-between.

...

I'd totally fit my Spare with a holographic display and good AR software, so that I can still more or less walk around after my morph is incapacitated.

...

Delete these vile temptresses!

Why try to remove the background?

So how can I use that Agency.exe?
I downloaded it and ran it, but nothing happens.

It's a signal jammer. It emits radio noise that's much louder than the remote control fror the drone, thus preventing it from receiving control signals. Cheap drones will crash. More expensive ones will either attempt to land or attempt to return to where they were launched from. It will have no effect on an autonomous drone flying a preset course.

I ran it and got "Agency.exe has stopped functioning"

Spares are pretty cute. I know that, in the future of EP, I'd be one of those weird people who sleeve in shit like that.

At least you're not the type to use those sort of things as sex toys like me.

If you rip them originally, they have a black backdrop which people who have wanted the images in the past said they didn't care for.

...

So, I am reading the section on Earth in Sunward and it strikes me that Veeky Forums has some weird meme about the place. I always read here that Earth is dead, but in the books it is clear that there are whole region where life remains, the surviving population is counted as between 50,000 to 50,000,000. There is even mention of some cities being restored and inhabited by transhuman trying to make them functionable again(Panama City for example). Also there are at least 4 Reclaimer bases plus one Ozma one in there.
So where did this weird meme ''Earth is dead'' came from? It is ravaged but it can be reclaimed.

Also the description of LLA is very very clear that they are Bioconservative, could be easily Jovian allies and their main meme is Reclaiming Earth.

That's not public knowledge in-setting, it's still cordoned, and it's still lousy with TITAN machines and exsurgents.

Well, the whole "life remains" thing is kind of in the air. Ozone is pretty fucked up so UV is harsh for humans, most air and water is contaminated with particulates at the very least, blast winter is playing with normal climate and some regions are still "hot" from WMD use. Even if some plant or microbial life remains (and maybe small animals, macrofauna is toast) that doesn't necessarily mean Earth as a whole is just "ripe for the picking".

This isn't discounting the fact that otherwise healthy soil is riddled with TITAN nanotech and sometimes that forest isn't a forest, it's a TITAN Forest which moves and eats you.

Also, those habitation mentions are fairly vague on scale and included in the sidebars - and Sidebars are not necessarily perfect 100% accurate "they happened", they're more like optional elements. Otherwise Project OZMA is like a dozen different things.

>Also the description of LLA is very very clear that they are Bioconservative, could be easily Jovian allies and their main meme is Reclaiming Earth.

Your bait is stale, but for starters just because they both prefer biomorphs and don't trust AIs doesn't mean they are friends. Lunars love their advanced biomorphs (Lunar Flyer) and are supported currently by a large underclass of synthmorph workers who they figuratively don't treat like actual people, unlike the jovian republic which might literally not treat them as actual people. Also Luna still holds strong cultural baggage of Earth and are mostly Indian or Chinese.

Much more likely the pro-Reclamation Lunars and Jovians (who are not everyone mind, that's just one aspect of the Jovian government politics and that's who matters, the pleb rabble rousers don't actually decide anything) would quietly back the parts of the Reclaimer movement they like until such time as a mass return might be possible, at which point Lunars have first dibs because they're right there.

Your whole post is just fank-wank, the book states clearly that there are whole regions with living biosphere(not "some plant or microbial life"), there is nothing mentioned about ''macrofauna is toast''-this is purely your imagination.
Also the habitation is not ''vogue'' they clearly mention Panama city re-settled and people trying to rebuild it as an urban settlement.

> but for starters just because they both prefer biomorphs and don't trust AIs doesn't mean they are friends.

To Reclaim Earth LLA needs to oppose Planetary Consortium and Jovians are both ideologically close to them and have the necessary firepower to back them up.

>tfw no ASI girlfriend
>tfw Firewall keeps killing your attempts to build one

> macrofauna is toast
What silly bullshit, let me quote the book

>Animal bones are just as common, if not more common, than humans. The shores are littered with the remains of murdered sea life. Not all died off, of course. Who knows, there may even be whale uplifts still surviving in the deep oceans. The hardy animals survive and continue to evolve. Some seized upon openings created by the deaths of rival species to expand. I’m not just talking rats and cockroaches, either, though both are doing well I hear.

>Signs of ruins being converted to basic dwellings suggests survivors from surrounding area have regrouped there and are slowly transforming former city into viable population center again.

Yeah, that's not vauge at all.

>The vast majority of complex life forms on Earth went extinct during the Fall.
>The hardy animals survive and continue to evolve. Some seized upon openings created by the deaths of rival species to expand. I’m not just talking rats and cockroaches, either, though both are doing well I hear.

So "majority" of complex life. Not a great term, but they clearly are saying something. Sound like small, adaptable animals lived for now.

>Surface temperatures and wind speeds are more problematic. High winds would uproot all but the sturdiest plants, and in many areas the surface is too frigid for plants to burst through or too hot for plants to survive long. There are many locations, however, with enough wind protection and appropriately moderate temperatures. Large farms would be impossible without heavily shielded walls but smaller growing enclaves are entirely feasible.
>A small percentage of the sampling showed an extremely high salt content, but this was not the norm.
>Some oceans, lakes, and rivers have been drastically de-oxygenated, making them inhospitable to life.

Sounds like conditions where life can exist are sporadic and limited. They exist, but they cannot be large scale without artificial intervention. Reclaimers mention using modified or transgenic plants to overcome, but obviously this is not in nature (and Jovians and Lunars would be opposed if they're such biocon buddies).

You skipped the two sentences before that, that's okay I quoted one of them.

Some more quotes.

>Are there stretches where the plants survived? Some. Not many, though. Little patches along the coasts where the waves never got too bad, isolated pockets and valleys amid the mountains where the rocks kept the temperatures regulated and blocked out the winds. A few oases among the deserts, a handful of gaps in the frozen wastes of Europe where stands of evergreens blocked out the cold and the snow so smaller plants could survive.

Language used here is pretty telling. Small plants, small areas, few areas, "isolated" areas. "Region" I guess is an applicable word, but not really meaningful in this context.

>The air’s gone bad down there, of course, though there isn’t anyone to breathe or pollute it anymore. Yeah, you can still breathe it, even without a lung filter. You wouldn’t want to, though. Whole place smells weird, like chemicals, smoke, and raw sewage—especially the oceans.
>Heat. Don’t go anywhere without sun-shielding. No ozone layer anymore, or very little, especially over what used to be the major population centers, so the UV rays’ll fry you in minutes if you’re not covered. Second-degree sunburn isn’t convenient for intrepid explorers

Yeah, sounds like a great and pleasant place to take a stroll, start farming some corn.

>Speaking of chemicals, it’s important to carry a chemical sensor down there for one big reason: methane. It’s odorless, so you won’t smell it, but if your chem sensor goes off, you’d better run, and fast. Why? Well, Earth’s got these massive methane pockets underground, scattered here and there. Still down there, as far as anyone knows.[snip] Except in areas where the tectonic plates shifted and broke open deposits or cleared new cave systems, allowing more air to get through and warm things up. And places where the radiation produced heat of its own. As far as I can tell, there haven’t been any major methane releases yet...

You have no idea what macrofauna is

> Macrofauna, in soil science, animals that are one centimetre or more long but smaller than an earthworm.

>Yeah, that's not vauge at all.
Yes, it is not vogue at all, what part of ''viable population center'' you do not understand?

>Sound like
Again making stuff up?

>small, adaptable animals
Whales aren't ''small, adaptable animals''

>. High winds would uproot all but the sturdiest plants
So not all plants.
> and in many areas the surface is too frigid for plants to burst through or too hot for plants to survive long.
Many isn't all, so there are places where plants could exists.

>There are many locations, however, with enough wind protection and appropriately moderate temperatures.
What part of many locations you do not understand?

>Large farms would be impossible without heavily shielded walls but smaller growing enclaves are entirely feasible.
So small farms are possible, larger ones require more effort.

>>Some oceans, lakes, and rivers have been drastically de-oxygenated, making them inhospitable to life.
Some=not all.

>and Jovians and Lunars would be opposed if they're such biocon buddies).
Why would they oppose ? Jovians even use splicers, I doubt they would be concerned by genetically edited plants which is basically early 21st century tech.

>You skipped the two sentences before that, that's okay I quoted one of them.
And proved my point. Plenty of life on Earth survives, not all areas are destroyed, and population centers exist.

The claim that Earth is completely destroyed and not habitable goes against books.

>>Are there stretches where the plants survived? Some
Thanks for confirming that Earth isn't dead like some claimed before
>Language used here is pretty telling. Small plants, small areas, few areas, "isolated" areas.
Again confirming Earth isn't dead.

> Yeah, you can still breathe it, even without a lung filter.
So air is not a concern. Earth isn't polluted much.
>. Whole place smells weird, like chemicals, smoke, and raw sewage—especially the oceans.
Nothing of major concern if you can still breathe, it just smells bad.
> No ozone layer anymore, or very little.
So there are areas with ozone layer.

Page 84 of Sunward specifies that AGIs are illegal in almost all LLA settlements (and even infomorphs are heavily restricted).

Already covered
>don't trust AIs

Okay, well, for starters, stop phoneposting or learn to fucking spellcheck because none of this has anything to do with prevailing fashion or style.

I understand "viable population center". But that is but one small part of that sentence. Do you not understand "signs" or "suggests"? What about "slowly transforming" - meaning it isn't actually a viable population center yet. Do you ignore all the words in the line but the ones which sort of support your argument?

How about a sense of scale, or context? There are square feet in the rainforest which have more biodiversity than square miles of land in like the middle of the US - but if we scratched all of the stuff off the face of the Earth except for a few of those square feet, by most metrics people would say things are pretty dead, barring specific exceptions.

Life is not an off/on light. You cannot just find a particularly stubborn weed in the dirt and say "my god Earth is teeming with life!". Most complex life is dead. Large animals are dead. Big portions of humans are dead. Many areas are uninhabitable, general environmental conditions are adverse to many remaining forms of life so they must be contained to small regions.

Most =/= all but it still = "most".

And I never said earth is completely destroyed and not habitable. My major points were that the viability of Earth is debatable (and it is. Earth is a large body - we can both point to sections which are livable and sections which are not. Is either statement completely untrue?) and that is is not "ripe for the taking", even if you still have plants and small animals.

Also, I contest the reliability and "hard facts" quality of sidebars, but that's a meta level discussion you've refused to engage in.

>Most complex life is dead. Large animals are dead.
It's fine if you want to create your own setting, but please, this is a thread about Eclipse Phase.
>Also, I contest the reliability and "hard facts" quality of sidebars,
Not my problem if you don't like content of the books.

You know "most complex life is extinct" is a line IN the book, right?

It appears, in fact, as "The vast majority of complex life forms on Earth went extinct during the Fall."

Vast majority=not all.
There is nothing indicating all large animals are dead, in fact they mention that even whales might be still alive.

LLA is biochauvinist, not bioconservative. Huge difference.

Avra Don is a Council rep from Remembrance and the current president of the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance. She has run the LLA for the past eight years, and despite many tumultuous years immediately post-Fall, is now considered the most successful president the Alliance has followed. Though up for re-election, her chances of winning a third term seem likely. Dubbed the Fullerene Lady for her sometimes hard-line stances, Don is determined to restore the Alliance to its heyday, bringing eyes and credits back to the Earth-Lunar system and becoming once again a leader in transhuman commerce. Though she cannot be called a bioconservative, some of her political positions stray in that direction, especially with concern to nanotechnology restrictions and AIs. Her leadership is in fact responsible for the LLA having some of the more conservative and restrictive policies in the solar system, outside of the Jovian Republic. Her distinct ideology is not easy to pin down, however, as it strays across political lines. Though she is strong supporter of the hypercorps, privatization, and free markets, she holds some strong anti-Consortium stances and actually favored the Morningstar Constellation’s independence, though relations with the latter have been strained. She is consistently criticized for promoting economic policies that have done nothing to ease the plight of the infugees and clanking masses.

>might

All the animals you know and love are either deader-than-dead or fucking cryptid-level of rarity.

Large animals is a logical conclusion based on biology. Larger organisms take longer to adapt and require more resources, they will be extinguished by lacks of those resources and altered conditions outside their evolutionary niche.

This is a contributor in why big dinosaurs went extinct, ice age megafauna went extinct, and why projected climate change will probably kill large mammals like polar bears and elephants. This is also assuming TITAN machines don't shoot up large land species who can't have huge populations left by 21XX.

The theorized whales would be uplifted, also.

You know that quotation has as much argument for as against, right?

Hey, people keep rats as pets. Those are explicitly stated to be alive, so you never know. Maybe he likes them?

The scale on this image is completely fucked

The ship would have to be the size of a planet

>what part of ''viable population center'' you do not understand?
The part where it's a maybe and could just as easily be exsurgent activity

Fair point.
As a rule of thumb I would say anything that can be termed an invasive/colonizing species probably survived unless there are specific reasons to believe otherwise.

>What's perspective?

A question the artist was unable to answer

Why do you think that ship isn't close to the foreground?

I think you mean "what is artistic license"

No, I mean "things that are closer seem bigger"

Jovian and Lunar bioconservatism are very different. The signature lunar morph is a winged exalt, the signature Jovian morph is a flat. That alone shows how different their use of transhuman tech. They're also a a transitional economy, which means that individuals have nanofabber access, though I imagine it's a bit more limited than Venus or Mars thanks to the low-key paranoia of the LLA.

Lunar bioconservatism:
>Open-air nanoswarms and cyberbrains are a security risk and I don't want to deal with them because I'm still dealing with nanotech TITAN traps and info weapons frequently.

Jovian bioconversatism:
>Resleeving eats your soul and altering the human body much is against gods will.
Or the government version because remember, the source of Jovian bioconservatism isn't the state.
>Nuclear weapons are easier to justify giving to commando teams than robots, even if they lack any AI. It goes well beyond the prudent precautionism the LLA advocates into super-paranoid places.

From the LLA's point of view the Jovians are a technologically repressive organization which is jumping at shadows when there are actually things casting them.

From the Jovian's point of view the LLA are a bunch of frankenfreaks who don't have any problem with resleeving, use heavily altered morphs on a whim, and allow unprecedented access to nanotech.

The LLA is very weakly bioconservative, and primarily to the very real threats TITAN weapons on the moon represent. They don't have it listed as a major meme for example. They also have a problem with the clanking masses which fill the outskirts of lunar cities.

Earth is dead because even though there's still living things on it, everything has been effected by the TITANs, and likely will always be. They sunk their claws in down to the core, and there's enough physics-breaking self-replicating shit down there that reclaiming earth is a pipe dream.

Holographic projectors and the sound system are actually pretty cheap.

Nice fan made setting, too bad it isn't EP.

Bullshit.

Not him, but its really odd to have you declare the exact way the setting is described in the books as 'fan made'

Maybe when you get into contact with the author you can have him officially recognise your own fan made whatever as canon, and then you can ask him why he wrote something different into the god damn books.

I see the pattern now. We have laughed at the jove posters for their ludicrous assertions which do not properly fit the profile or intention of the books. Now they have come to annoy us by telling us how we are wrong about everything, even though, y'know, plenty of people are quoting straight out of the book.

Entire quotations too, not just the couple of words that make our arguments look good.

REMINDER
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That's probably the guy who was talking about how all nanotech was reverse engineered from the TITANs or whatever trying to get revenge.

At last I see the truth

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