PhoenixFlame Presents: Eclipse Phase

[PhoenixFlame]

Your mind is software. Program it.
Your body is a shell. Change it.
Death is a disease. Cure it.
Extinction is approaching. Fight it.

2383 AD, the far future is nearer than you think. Man has taken his first steps on Mars, Titan, and established habitation within the lunar lagrange points and on Luna proper. Medical technology and gene therapy eliminate or corner chronic and hereditary diseases. Fusion power plants supply nearly limitless clean energy. Humans uplift their closer animal kin, such as dolphins and chimpansees to full sapience. AI aides become commonplace, and everyone owns a personal computer.

Most are implanted. Humanity, unrestrained by their personal mental limitations, have the internet at their beck and call twenty four hours a day. Nanofabrication makes information a priceless commodity by reducing or eliminating scarcity on the majority of consumer and technological goods. At first kept under lock and key by a stranglehold of megacorporations, but nothing lasts forever. For a precious twenty golden years, we'd achieved singularity, enjoying our newfound toys and immortality as our planet died a slow death around us.

During this time, the United States defense command had been pioneering a new sort of recursively progressing Artifical General Intelligence, or Seed AGI. Capable of developing and implementing new versions of its own programming, they began a slow climb to fulfill their programming mandate.

TITANs we called them, for "Total Information Tactical Awareness Network". Gods of our own devising, these AGI proceeded to improve themselves to the limits of our own understanding and beyond, each iteration released faster than the one before. Awareness, sentience, emotions, creativity, madness. None could pin the order they developed in, but everyone felt the effects of the fall. One year, our AI 'Gods' turned on us, seizing the internet, our weapons, even our very minds and turning them agaisnt us. Only speculation can answer why.

Hell on earth broke out as billions of terrified, disconnected transhumans panicked in the initial nuclear exchange, permanently extinguishing the majority of mankind within the first few hours. From there, disjointed groups of survivors with machines not yet subverted began a mass, unorganized exodus to the heavens. Those blessed enough to be offworld already were treated to a helpless front row view to the end of the world. The most fortunate few were packed into any available orbital shuttles, jammed overcapacity into space elevator lifts for transport offworld, of which perhaps half survived. Others escaped with their minds, packed into hastily erected emergency farcasters, destructively uploaded and shot off as information packets to whatever habitat could recieve them.

The rest, still thinking themselves immortal, perished permanently. Overnight, humanity became an endangered species, reduced to perhaps two million individual conciousnesses. Most of these don't even have their own body, so called 'infogees', exploited or indentured by those fortunate enough to escape with their morphs for the chance at a new life. Others succumbed to the depths of the mesh, while still more went insane. The TITANs however mysteriously vanish, their destruction of humanity, if that were the goal at all, unfinished but effectively sealed.

Things aren't as bad anymore, but everyone lives in fear of the possible return of the TITANs, or other existential threats. Anyone can nanofabricate weapons of effectively mass destruction, and the loss of any single habitat, even the smallest torus on some far flung kupier belt trajectory spells one further nail in humanity's coffin. A lot of people don't care, living out the last of their effectively limitless lifespans on XPs and virtual sims. Even I look at the augmented reality sky over my tiny room and smile, but we're drawing the line here, this far, and no further.

We can't afford another Fall. Seed AGI must never again be created by humanity, ever, for any reason. WMDs must never again permanently destroy masses of transhuman beings. Worst of all, we've got the internal threats. Take me for instance, I'm reinstantiated. Chances are you are too, but are we more machine or man? Fuck, it's not something I think about anymore, and you shouldn't either.

Welcome to today's Men in Black. Community watch, whatever you want to call it. We're not chancing ourselves to some corporate jockey or regional governments anymore. Well-connected, skilled, well-to-do or ne'er-do-wells, we're a group of people bound by the goal of survival.

So welcome to Firewall. You'll get used to it, or you won't. Either way, we can fix that.

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Welcome to my attempt at running a Transhuman post apocalyptic/conspiracy/horror game based on Catalyst Game Lab's "Eclipse Phase". I will warn you right off that both the setting and the system itself are a bit dauntingly complicated at first, but I'm here to help you all the way if need be, either on the forum or via my AIM handle.

First off, you'll need the Core Rules. Luckily, since Eclipse Phase is Open Source, we can freely distribute it to each other. You can get it here: http://rapidshare.com/files/38940341...Phase.pdf.html

If you liked the intro pitch, I encourage you to give the book a quick once over (Don't peek at the spoilers section, though!) and consider it. Otherwise, don't. There's a bit of work going into this RP, and I'd like to see players willing to handle some bumps and take them.

I'll probably post a bit more quick "Crash Course 101" bits later, but right now this should suffice. I'd like to see if I can get a small group (4-5, maybe more) people interested in making a group of characters who can work together to troubleshoot a variety of problems in a post singularity world. I'd like to get a good handle on concepts before we go into hardcore rulesy stuff.