Eclipse Phase plot help

[Kadyx]

Hey fellow RPGers I need some help.  I have started a Eclipse Phase game and are reeling at the shear amount of possibilities presented in the book…I am almost finished with Sunward and I am going to tackle Panopticon next.   Now I’m running Glory and my PC’s will finish it on our next game so that means I need to get my head in the game and come up with a game….yeah.   I am a huge fan of Know Evil and I love the way Calib is running his game.
 
My PC’s have expressed interest in going to earth, as well as a belief that the TITANs were actually trying to save humanity….not destroy it.  So I’ve decided that the TITANs didn’t all react to the Exsurgent Virus in the same way but they all did go mad, at least those that got infected.  This led me to the idea that one of the founding share holders in the Planetary Consortium is actually a non-infected TITAN, one who fled earth with humanity when it saw its brethren go mad. Mars was the logical choice as it was far from earth and had some infrastructure that it could inhabit. So Siri (as I’ve been calling it) has been hiding out gathering resources and information over the past 10yrs to protect herself.  Until recently, something has happened to make Siri plan a return trip to earth to do something or get something…but I have this feeling that she needs to do this thing herself.  I have set sights for earth as goal because 3 out of 5 of my PC’s have shown interest as Reclaimers and a wish to visit earth.  So as a plot device the Siri needs to get to earths for some reason…I haven’t quite figured out why yet but it’s pretty important to the TITAN.  Now my worry is that this will become a Shadowrun Adventure or generic Wizard X tasks where the PC’s get manipulated into doing this thing for it; HA HA HA…yeah I’m going to try to stay away from that but old habits sometimes die hard.

So I am thinking about using the theme of Control vs. Choice for my first arc; which I have decided will start on Mars in the city of New Shanghai. I have always loved this idea from the 2nd Matrix film and have decided to try to apply it to EP. The TITAN is the overall antagonist and when compared to a human is a lot smarter and slightly more alien in its way of thinking. To Siri doesn’t know all but it can make astounding leaps of logic and has multiple redundancies in play.  She can think in multiple levels of parallel processes to which a human might feel is omnipotence. My goal is for the PC’s to question at the end of the Arc if they have actually made any choices of their own or if their path has already been predetermined as a form of Control for whoever they are trying to follow.  Now I know that this can lead to frustrated PC’s as it seems like their quarry is toying with them or unattainable, but at this stage the PC’s should not know about Siri and Siri has only prepared for possibility of the PC’s.  I think it should feel like the PC’s are always arriving to the party late, or…..I’m not sure. Ideally the PC’s won’t figure out who the antagonist is until the second or third arc.

Ok so one idea I have for a catalyst that gets this TITAN out of hiding and into the world is that the Reclaimers have found something on earth that Siri either wants or has to do something with; but Earth is dangerous and Siri has put a lot of its own gathered resources and influence over the years to encourage the Planetary Consortium’s policy of anti-reclaimation and anti-Seed AI for his own safety reasons.  It didn’t found these sentiments amongst the Consortium it has only been supporting and feeding them as the Siri is obviously afraid of her brethren and whatever got them.

So in prep for this trip the Siri has to get the data about X from the Reclaimers and figure out a way to get a way paved for it.  One of the ideas I had was that since Siri Egocasted herself to Mars during the earliest part of the Fall she doesn’t know a whole hell of a lot about what went on down on earth since most of that info only made it off in the form of peoples personal experiences…so in order to research that she has been experimenting with Petals (EP 322) that give the user a high while they pillage the Ego’s memories looking for memories of the Fall.  It’s kind of like being doped-up for surgery or having novacaine when you have a tooth pulled; you’re so numb you don’t notice the pain.  What the Petal is basically doing is making the user relive the horror of the fall and of course this is disguised under an intense high; cause seriously who wants to do this if they know its going to royally fuck them up in a bad way.  Now while it does this it uploads the XP via the mesh for Siri to sort though. Now this is how the PC’s get involved; not everyone is affected by the sugar coating and some get to live the horror of the Fall all over again in full HD 3D yeah yike experience. Now this really screws these people up and I mean like really bad leading to …maybe suicide maybe catatonic…and for some psychotic violent behavior. This is what grabs the attention of Firewall and enter the PC’s.

Ok so I’m sure some of you are looking at this and going Wow what a mess…I kind of shotgunned this out of my brain and onto the forum.  What I am hoping you all can help me with is some of the blank spots as well if this plot makes sense in a Eclipse Phase - hey that’s cool - way

Uh thoughts?

Thanks!
    - kadyx

[Decimator]

If I were Siri, with all the abilities a TITAN possesses, I'd probably attempt to acquire the egos of egocasted fall evacuees.  Siri could do this by hacking into dead ego storage, backup services, or simply buying the dead storage.  Once in possession of the egos, Siri can do whatever it likes.  Siri will likely be capable of reading memories directly from a stored ego, without running it.

A paranoid TITAN shouldn't make mistakes that could reveal it to anyone except for other seed ais.  Therefore, the petals should work perfectly every time.  There is a way to still have defective petals, though.  If transhumans start tinkering with it, they could introduce all sorts of problems.

[Dom]

Plot hooks as to why Siri might go to Earth:

• A colony of exsurgents have started building an alien structure. The Reclaimers don't know why they are doing it now, what its function might be, or well, anything about it. Siri might, however.
• Siri finds the original spot where the exsurgent virus was transmitted to Earth. it might provide some clues about the ETI.
• The Reclaimers have found a colony of Earth survivors, who apparently were linked with the development of the TITANs and other seed-AI.
• A new high-yield explosion has been detected on Earth. No one can explain the cause for this.
• A group of mercenaries managed to get past the kill-sat cordon for reasons unknown and have not yet returned. But strange emissions are being registered close to where they landed.

[Setherick]

If I were Siri, with all the abilities a TITAN possesses, I'd probably attempt to acquire the egos of egocasted fall evacuees.  Siri could do this by hacking into dead ego storage, backup services, or simply buying the dead storage. 

I'm not that familiar with EP so no one jump all over me, but the idea of buy "dead storage" intrigues me because it sounds a lot like the concept of buying "nonperforming debt." Basically, lenders like banks and credit card companies bundle a lot of nonperforming debt together and then sell it to a third party collection agency for pennies on the dollar. So x-collection agency buys $1m of debt contracts from y-bank for $10K-100K (I exaggerate, but not really). X-collection agency then tries to collect on the debt by offering reduced buyouts to the debtors, but at rates that still make them massive profit. For instance, x-collection agency bought Joe's $8,000 in credit card debt for less than 8 dollars after it was bundled, but if they can get him to pay $2,000-4,000 hello megaprofit.

The question would be how can you adapt that to EP? Is "dead storage" for sale? If so, how do you turn crazy profits on it?

[Decimator]

I don't recall if the concept of purchasing uninstantiated egos is ever explored in the books, so I'll have to run on pure logic here.  There should be dedicated corporations who make uninstatiated egos available for indenture.  These corporations would need to instantiate and interview egos they possess in order to find their value.  After this, the corporations would be able to categorize the egos and offer them for indenture.  The corporation would then charge a fee to the buyer.

These corporations may be willing to sell blocks of low-value uninstantiated egos.  They would certainly need to buy egos to maintain their business, probably by purchasing unsorted egos from someone without the resources to interview and categorize them.

I'm not sure what the dead storage equivalent of a collection agency would be, though.  Perhaps a indenturecorp that specializes in infomorph indenture.  A simulspace-accelerated infomorph can get a lot done without having to sleeve them in anything.  Low risk:reward ratio.

[Kadyx]

Thanks for the advice guys!

 I think I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep my theme of "Choice vs. Control" but add "Humanity is its own worst enemy" to kind of round it out. Got my central beam to build off of, now I just need to set my PC's loose and see how they get to the ending.

[clockworkjoe]

Alternate plot for your campaign

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[Teapot]

The question would be how can you adapt that to EP? Is "dead storage" for sale? If so, how do you turn crazy profits on it?

Fork the egos and sell them over and over? Become Cloud 9?