Eclipse Phase

[applewood]

Just finished a Halloween style EP one-shot.  Loosely based on Little Shop of Horrors, the firewall agents had to find out what happened to a missing scum swarm agri-biologist and a martian biomorph designer and their research vessel "The Seymour".  They found a genetic hacking blacksite dedicated to 'growing' people to colonize the exoplanet Solemn.  The issue: the seed stocks for growing biomorphs had been infected with the exsurgent virus and the entire habitat had  become jungle full of giant venus fly traps whose method of reproduction was pod people.  Many fires were started Much sanity was lost.  Also, never let a a real-world chemist play god in a sci-rpg chemistry set.

[trinite]

Awesome.

[clockworkjoe]

In the middle of the Jovian Republic chapter of Duality. Players are amazed that traditional tradecraft works in places because the Jovians don't rely on AGIs and wireless mesh.

[applewood]

Currently working on specking out Proxy Blue Plate Special.  She Gladys from  A Very Thorough Murder.  Her Simulspace avatar  is a female cafeteria waitress, with five hardened traits (titans, exsurgents, continuity, violence, social engineering).  She has 1 moxie, and the unlucky, immortalty blues, drug addiction (nicotine) negative traits.  In my campaign she is the go to Firewall proxy for the undiscovered since she has seen all the shit.

[Eagle_Eye]

I recently saw Big Hero 6, man that movie can be used as Eclipse Phase Fuel if you look at it in that mindset.  Not gonna be spoilery quite yet since it's still in theaters, but there's some scenes.

[clockworkjoe]

Saw a comment about Manjappa escaping death at the end of Know Evil in the comments for Outside Context Problem. Didn't want to reply there because it's a bit of a derail BUT we can talk about it here. Anyway, it's certainly possible to avoid permanent death in Eclipse Phase, but that kind of thing is far from certain, even for an operator like Manjappa. The key thing to remember is everyone in EP is operating with the same standards of knowledge (discounting aliens/TITANs but we're talking about transhumans avoiding death). Any tricky thing you can think of, the opposition can also think of and work around. Science does not favor stealth either.

Manjappa could have built any number of bolt holes/backup sites in remote locations like asteroids in the outer belt, but everything leaves a trace behind and Ozma/Firewall would certainly be on the lookout for them. Also, there ain't no such thing as stealth in space: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php

The TL;DR version of that document basically says any technologically advanced device you run in space generates waste heat and heat can be detected from MASSIVE distances. It's easy to detect heat signatures in space. If you want to run a hidden body bank and farcasting facility in space, it will be very hard to do so for long periods of time. Of course in EP there are tens of thousands of habitats and ships in space, so no one can keep track of them. The only way to hide is in plain sight - disguise it as something else. Of course, Ozma/Firewall will be monitoring those habitats and ships.

The best protection in EP is not technological but social - you are better off if you have the backing of a violent and skilled conspiracy like Ozma or Firewall. Any escape route Manjappa builds would have to be perfectly built and maintained. A single mistake could doom it. Hell, this doesn't even discount opportunistic threats - space pirates and crime cartels probably prey on brinker/isolated habitats all the time - if you're laying low, you can't call the Autonomist militia or Titanian fleet to protect you.

[Zombieneighbours]

Eclipse phase being transhumanist horror and conspiracy:

If I where going to have Manjappa return, it would be as alpha fork who has been embedded within firewall from its earliest origins, as a fall back plan in case things went pear shaped. A small number of proxies are aware of his true identity, but consider this alpha to be to useful a tool to get rid of, and so he is protected by the organisation itself, which he is slowly taking over from the inside.   

[clockworkjoe]

Manjappa is just a transhuman - he does not even have async powers. His value to Firewall would be his inside intel on Ozma, which is finite, once Ozma fork of Manjappa is shut down. No proxy would allow him to run ops or do anything where he could subvert anything. Also, Firewall is a compartmentalized conspiracy, so even if he corrupts one server, he would be unable to touch other servers.

Plus, no matter how smart he is, he is not going to outwit the Prometheans.

[Kamen]

Yeah, as Caleb put it on twitter when I asked about Manjappa, he was a perfect spy, with imperfect intel. The Prometheans were something he could not account for, let alone the Know Evil crew's reckless abandon for getting the job done. I personally don't see Manjappa coming back, if any forks were left OZMA has probably captured them and stripped them down into skillware. The closest I'd think we'd get to M's return is a student/apprentice/heir that's divorced themselves from M's circle or something along those lines. I'm honestly more curious to see if a certain Cowboy is going to become a big bad in the future.

[Tim]

The TL;DR version of that document basically says any technologically advanced device you run in space generates waste heat and heat can be detected from MASSIVE distances. It's easy to detect heat signatures in space. If you want to run a hidden body bank and farcasting facility in space, it will be very hard to do so for long periods of time. Of course in EP there are tens of thousands of habitats and ships in space, so no one can keep track of them. The only way to hide is in plain sight - disguise it as something else. Of course, Ozma/Firewall will be monitoring those habitats and ships.

I completely agree that the best options would be to hide in plain site or alternatively to hide in a place that is difficult to detect. Surface or subsurface on Venus or operating in the one of the gas giants or even subsurface on Mars are all possibilities. The other option is if you are far enough out and moving farther out each moment, and someone like Manjappa who has been playing the game for a long time he could set this up, they might well know where you are but it takes 15 years to get to you so they can't really do anything in time for you to regroup and farcast back off. In that case you don't have to out think the Prometheans, just be in a position they cannot reach you since they can't bend the laws of space/time anymore than you can.

I also also agree that each of the above is fragile in one way or the other and creating social bolt holes is also an excellent strategy.

I would also assume that the value of someone like Manjappa to firewall is beyond his Ozma knowledge. He as been a player long enough that he knows were many bodies are buried from before Ozma was even Ozma. Some of that knowledge is dated and incorrect but enough of it remains that he could be useful.

I am not trying to make Manjappa some sort of infallible super man (I hate when authors fall in love with their villains and they are always 10 steps ahead and when they do mess up and get caught it turns out to be a part of their master plan all along) but I think there are ways that he could  have escaped. That being said I also do think it is more powerful if he is gone as that is a better narrative choice then him rising back up from the dead to be rekilled like a horror movie villain. One possibly I do like is that there are likely a number of ops that were in flight during his death and for lack of a better term his ghost haunts the players as they deal with ops that were run by Manjappa at one point but have spiraled out of control or taken on a life of their own.

[Gorkamorka]

For those that want to buy the game.
It's on the Bundle of holding for the next 9 days.
http://bundleofholding.com/index/current/name/EclipsePhase

[Zombieneighbours]

In defense of my previous post, it is the only way I could see it working.

I wouldn't personally do it, but if I were going to, its how I would.

All that said, I think that an individual who has displayed the  level of trade craft, versatility and skill could be a threat on the inside of firewall (Prometheans be damned), but it would require him having gotten in from the earliest days, having subverted Eye Rep at a fundamental level, and having built personal influence across the entire conspiracy. Certainly no easy task.

Is the idea of a threat attacking firewall in that matter completely beyond belief? Hell no, firewalls two greatest weaknesses are its belief that it has managed to make a structure that can't reasonable be compromised, and B, the belief in the 'infallibility' of the Prometheans, by those few that know of them.   But Manjappa doing it? Nah, that is just strains credibility to much. You get to pull of one impossible superspy routine, and then your done

[clockworkjoe]

Firewall certainly could be compromised but if a single spy at the top of his game could do it, then Firewall would have been wiped out before the game even began.

It would take something like all of Ozma or a TITAN to do it, in my opinion.

[Zombieneighbours]

In any "reasonable" length of time it would require Ozma or a TITAN.

However, I suspect that a sufficiently driven and talented individual could do it, on a long enough time scale. He would have to take decades though, building networks and cells of his own within the structure. Sort of like Jernau Morat Gurgeh playing Azad by appearing to loose at the end of the player of games.

Whatever the case, I think firewall represents Manjappa's single reasonable life boat (their are some unreasonable ones, that he would need to be truly driven/mad to use, such as nine lives).

[Mr-Priest]

Perhaps bit of a silly question but one I could not find the answer to. In the first RPPR eclipse phase podcast did intro adventure "A Glorious Fall" ever get posted online in a playable format? I'd loved to run it as an introduction to the setting for my group.