Eclipse Phase or, how I love driving players insane

[Aerozord]

I decided to try something different with my eclipse phase group. Let me start you off with some backstory

Before the last campaign the players came into possession of a very rare and supposedly cursed diamond. When an offer for it came up they agreed and went to meet the buyer at an asteroid known as Hotel California. A place full of squatters and those that wish to disappear. Of course the players were expecting me to pull a fast one. Two stayed behind, the other two went to make the deal. of course the buyers attempted to steal the diamond.

However any time they injured the attackers tendrils erupted from the wounds. One of the characters is ripped apart (the player left the game just before) and the other was losing limbs trying to flee. When reinforcements finally arrived he thought 'screw it' and let them have the diamond, they retreated to their ship.

Once there their proxy informed them to go back and investigate. Clearly something was up. They went back and discovered completely unaltered DNA and their friends missing body. Immediately they began speculating on what was going on as clearly those were not human.

At around this time our bounty hunter notices someone. A bounty she personally delivered true death to. Running after him, the others follow thinking it was a trap. She finds herself in a room, all those she had killed surrounding her. Lights flashing as they shift from normal human to rotting corpses. As she attempts to fight them off her muse (an AI that functions as a personal assistant) keeps insisting nothing is there as these things rip apart her vacsuit and begin biting and cutting her.

The lights flicker and they are all gone, the bounty hunter still injured with much of her equipment damaged. Immediately they head back to the ship. The door seems to malfunction but eventually opens and lets them in. They find two people dressed like those that stole the diamond in the medical bay.

They question them, "Why are you on our ship?"
"We aren't on your ship"

In a flash they are right outside the airlock again. The doors do not malfunction and everything seems to work fine. They get the bounty hunter healed up while the scientist checks out the engines. The ship seems different, inconsistencies crop up. Matter and anti-matter tanks switching places, logs changing when viewed again. Fuel vanishing and reappearing.

The bounty hunter begins seeing the closest thing to a main villain in our campaigns (they have a history). Telling her "you know what you have to do, dont listen to your fear" as the trauma of the attacks are getting to her. Our archeologist just hears whispering runrunrunrunrunrun. While the scientist goes to regroup with the others. Finding their bodies. He rushes over to one as she is dying, coughing up blood on him, with her dying breath "THEY WONT TURN ME" a flash and he is right outside. Entering the room, they are all ok, but blood is still on his clothes.

The scientist just hearing in his head, "They cant be trusted, they will betray you, blow it all up, its your only chance."

The players talk and try to plan, freaking out. The bounty hunter practically curled up in a ball. The archeologist talks about just having his character kill himself and remains convinced they arent in reality and this is the sci-fi equivalent of Silent Hill. While the scientist is in deep denial. Insisting he isn't seeing anything, everything is fine, they are all fine.

Culminating at the end of the session where he is in the engineering room attempting to take control of the ship. When they try and stop him. "ITS FINE, WE ARE ALL FINE, SO NO REASON TO STAY HERE, WE ARE FINE."

[Red Mage Black]

Eclipse Phase, "If you want to start off insane, play a powerful Async."

[Arhra]

Originally Posted by Red Mage Black

Eclipse Phase, "If you want to start off insane, play a powerful Async."

It's unnecessary.

The world ended ten years ago. Most people have whatever quick patch psychological adjustments could be rolled out en-mass as part of the resurrection triage immediately following the Fall and a lot of bad dreams about what became of their original copy.

So all those people around you, drinking and partying and carousing... are they just doing this because they're broken, and it's too painful to think about it?

Honestly Eclipse Phase is full of polite veneers over barely functioning basket-cases. It's ugly when it cracks.

[PhoenixFlame]

I just have one question; Why a diamond? They're not exactly valuable in the transhuman future, unless it was from earth or something. I suppose the curse was the main thing, but that seems a fairly mundane object to put one on. Diamonds in eclipse phase are the sort of thing you find in mid-quality battle armor trauma plates.

My own story is pretty fun, though. I start out plenty insane as a lost generation async, and I'm an exobiologist. As far as I'm aware, I live on Titan.

I wake in a storage locker, crudely strapped in with zip-ties. An ego-bridge has been spliced into the locker with a fiber cable. I have no memory of how I got here, the emergency lights are on, it's microgravity, there's a ton of crap in the air floating about (Mostly blood, sweat, and stranger things I don't take time to identify.) I have the strangest sensation I've just eaten something. I pull myself free, zip ties yielding to my augmented strength, (My morph is a moderately augmented futura, not combat-spec but still post-normal) and pan about the room. It's a small, space-conscious habitat module, but I'm not in a cot, so that's strange. I check the nearest locker, where I find my sidearm, lab clothing, and emergency vacsuit. So far, so good. Go nowhere without a heavy rail pistol, it's like American express.

I query my medichines and take a look at the fabricator. It's offline, but someone carved a fractal design by hand into the scanner flap. It's surprisingly intricate, so I surmise it was probably done by a synth or someone with fine motor skills. Possibly myself, but I don't recall doing it. Medichines query fine, so I ask what I ate last. Apparrently, some splicer morph.

Awkward. I retch, but am unwilling to vomit in microgravity, but pull myself to the sink and wash the blood out of my mouth. Look back at myself through the window at my pale, slit-irised, albino face, and fix my pale hair. I liked the look, but understood it made some people uncomfortable. Served them right, I suppose, they made me uncomfortable by thinking. I exit, and notice a man outside in a chameleon-coated hardsuit, floating through the corridor.

Now I admit my character is impulsive, but when you see a chameleon coated man in a fully-sealed armored space suit on a space station while the cabin is pressurized, and he's invisible, and the emergency lights are on and there's blood floating around, and you have a sidearm capable of punching through most forms of armor? You shoot him.

I lock my grip, time slowing as my perceptions dialate, and flick the selector to fully automatic. After all, I don't want to miss. There's a stattaco crack of supersonic projectiles as the infiltrator returns fire with his own sidearm, but he has a low caliber projectile weapon, and is a much worse shot. Not everyone grows up with their siblings trying repeatedly (and sometimes succeeding) to murder them for six years, you know?

He goes down, and I immediately tag my victim, looking for identification. Turns out he's still alive, and is pleading with me in a language I don't understand. Muse identifies as Hindi, but hell if I speak Hindi, and there's no mesh access here. I have her translate, but it's not very good. Apparrently this guy's muse didn't load when he sleeved recently, in the same state as I did, and he's one of the station personnel, but that isn't his normal body. I apologise for ventilating him, apply a nanobandage and first aid (I'm an exobiologist, after all), and chastise him for being invisible.

He also warns me of the demons on the station. I assume he is insane, but feel something watching me. I happen to have Omni-awareness, so I have a knack when someone's watching me, even if it's a stack of money with googly eyes. Looking up, a fungoid quadruped with scything talons looks down at me from the ventilation duct, the fan having been carefully torn away. I also feel the sense of malice and curiosity, a giddiness towards my shooting the indian man. Son of a bitch. Reflexively my hand snaps skyward and a crack of railgun fire echos faster than my muse can warn me about the risk of puncturing the hull. A pained squeal confirms I hit (several) times, but the creature flees. I rig a can of repair spray, tossing it up the vent and detonate it to seal the entrance, then bar the door. I decide I don't like demons much. It summons a few friends with it's shrieking, and they attempt to pry open the interior door, but apparently are not quite strong enough to manage it. They desist after a few penetrating shots from my railgun.

I like railguns a lot, they've saved my life on countless occasions. I've killed my sister with them four times now, in self defense alone. Not very good with knives, something of a mental block after having my eyes carved out with them. Firearms are more civilized and can be elegant in their own way.

We proceed onwards, and locate an airlock that's been jammed with debris. The inner door is sealed but there's a hardsuit jammed inside, and the outer door is breached. Said hardsuit is tethered. I assume the operator is dead, so I briefly consider detaching him and repairing the breach, but compassion gets the better of me, and I seal the section, don my emergency vacsuit, cycle the inner door and pull him back in. Turns out he isn't dead, merely hibernating. Using my medkit's adrenaline, I attempt to revive him. He violently snaps to, and begins raving about things that I cannot possibly decipher. Deciding I don't have time to question him, I grab him by the helmet, shock him with my eelware, and slam his face against the bulkhead. He goes out like a light. I'm not often subtle.

I then proceed to deep scan him while going over the morph with my intuitive memory. He deep scans surprisingly easily, and I find I don't even need to make physical contact, which is strange. I sift through a few memories of his, and learn a couple truths.

1.) He's from a corporate wildfire protocol team sent to exterminate all the survivors of the station.
2.) He's a lost generation async like myself, which explains my ease of scanning him.
3.) He's a Nico Larkin biosculpt Fury Morph with extensive combat augmentations.
4.) He knows my sister intimately. I suspect they may be lovers, but I can't confirm it.
5.) He's not unconscious at all.

He disarms me with effortless ease, grabs my companion, blanks his memory and hurls him out the airlock. Almost simultaneously, a nanotoxin spur pokes against my gut as he smiles and whispers sweet nothings to me. I immediately note he's misidentified me as my sister. We have identical morph preferences, after all. I shrink back and mention that he has the wrong person, and that I am not even sure where I am or what is going on.

I'm a poor liar. This actually is incorrect, I'm a poor impulsive liar. It's easy to deceive someone with forethought, but not in a panic. Not when you're watching an innocent man careen through space while being pressed against the wall by a fury twice your weight in a suit four times as armored who exudes an almost sexually predatory vibe.

He calms down, and offers me to look outside. I do so, and the sun is blue. For those of you tuning in just now, the sun isn't supposed to be blue. I stare, gape, panic, and then calm down. When you're as deranged as I am, things that shatter the mind of the ordinary person don't effect you much. So we're on an explanetary station with honest-to-god aliens on board and my psychopathic sister's slasher boyfriend is tenderly apologizing for having to kill me and kindly allows me to get a head start for 'old times sake'.

How kind.

The story continues, but I'll write more later, maybe.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by PhoenixFlame

I just have one question; Why a diamond? They're not exactly valuable in the transhuman future, unless it was from earth or something. I suppose the curse was the main thing, but that seems a fairly mundane object to put one on. Diamonds in eclipse phase are the sort of thing you find in mid-quality battle armor trauma plates.

Its a pre-solar diamond. Its a plot hook I found in the Rimward expansion book. Originally I just wanted them to sweat. Made a good scape-goat for bad rolls. Then when I had this story idea I figured it would be a great mcguffin especially with them so eager to get rid of it.