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Basic question about terminating a person

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SEÑOR FASE SEÑOR FASE's picture
Basic question about terminating a person
Hiyas! Yet another basic question, just to be sure I'm on the "right page" (& I want to make sure one of my PCs, who fancies himself an assassin, gets the whole scenario): How do you permanently kill someone with a "typical life" - no "exciting*" jobs, etc. (probably just the "typical" backup insurance, one permanent morph, et al.), - in the Eclipse Phase setting? How do you kill permanently someone with an "exciting" lifestyle (eg., a sentinel/operative)? THANKS! SF *read: life threatening
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: Basic question about terminating a person
You're dealing with the backups too, so either: 1) You can attack the backups (by attacking the backup facilities), then kill the dude. This is pretty tough. 2) You can attack the backups by infecting the dude with something discrete but deadly/dangerous, and let it trickle down to all of the backups. 3) You can attack the dude's persona. If you prove he's an exsurgent, plotting against Big People, etc., the government will take care of everything else for you. In my game, one character has begun kidnapping people (by befriending them, then inviting them to a spa, so no one is bothered that they're gone). He forces them into a simulspace environment (or a physical environment, if time permits) and submits them to aggressive brainwashing, including obedience triggers. He then releases them back into the world, uses the triggers to bring them back for another session, and so on. Rather than killing them, he breaks them. Then he has a pet senator or whatever.
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Basic question about terminating a person
First, remove their resources. Without money or rep, they cannot easily get resleeved and have a hard time affording backup fees. Then you kill their morph, seek out the computer they run their infomorph on (likely a free server) and crash it. A more involved trick: infect them with a slow-acting neurovirus that drives them mad or inserts some trojan code into their ego. Their backups get infected too. Eventually you can activate the trojan and have it destroy them, as well as any copy coming online when it encounters the key. (might make an interesting NPC: must at all times be kept away from the ubiqitious hit jingle, or he crashes). Get them framed for a crime that carries the penalty of permanent ego deletion. While this will not get backups outside the polity it is likely enough for the typical person.
Extropian
CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture
Re: Basic question about terminating a person
Killing someone entirely in Eclipse Phase is difficult, at least in the Inner System. Every time a person egocasts to a station there is a chance of a copy being made and interrogated. Every time a person goes through a secure checkpoint there is a chance of a fork being demanded and interrogated. Storage is cheap enough that putting a copy of your brain scan in an off grid, secure site (Like, under your mattress) is a trivial task. So the solution is that you don't kill them. You destroy them in much more subtle ways. Forknap them, go to town on their Ego, and remerge it with the original. Fiddle with it in ways subtle enough not to throw up any red flags (At least immediately), but powerful enough to potentially destroy their life. Rearrange their brain so that whenever they encounter someone they even potentially like they experience intense anxiety. While you are at, stick in a mental block that attaches seeking help for such an ailment with intense shame. Congratulations, you just destroyed that persons social life, and in such a way that it might go unnoticed for quite some time. If they live in a reputation economy it is even easier. At least in the Inner System such a person might get away with working the night shift. In the Outer System, they suddenly turned into a giant douche, and fuck that guy. Reputation goes down. If you are dead set on actually killing the person, you go the slow route. Cripple their Ego in such a way that it will not become apparent for a year or so. Edit their sense of the world so that they become a staunch bio-conservative, delete all their backups and go live with the rest of the Luddites (:D) in the Republic. Then you throw them out an airlock. Job done. In Eclipse Phase, psychosurgery and the subtle path is king. Shooting someone in the face might get them out the way for a week (And enforce an anxiety disorder or two). Playing the long game gets you results. Dealing with someone like a Sentinel is much, much, MUCH more difficult. A Firewall agent has the backing of an extremely dedicated organization that is basically entirely focused on keeping their people alive. Agents are accessed under the most stressful situations possible, they are put through trials that break most people with ease. And that is before they are told that they are even trying out. Firewall knows that their agents wont break, they have extremely intelligent people (and other things) coming up with ways to check. So all you can do is try to discredit them. And the only way you can do that is by being part of the Org. And if you are part of the Org, why are you trying to discredit them (and why doesn't Firewall know)?
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Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: Basic question about terminating a person
Best ways to get a boring person is to first tamper with their back-up insurance. Hack their muse and get it to stop handling the payments going to the back-up facility (and ignore any messages regarding it), or even have it cancel the service if possible. Then, just kill them, crush the stack, you're done. Alternatively, you can corrupt their back-up or delete it manually, but breaking into a back-up facility, let alone locating the right one, is a monumental task unto itself, and it'll get more heat on your ass than any job is likely worth. As for someone with a more "exciting" lifestyle, that all depends. For the most part, I imagine permanently eliminating these people is significantly more difficult but ultimately similar to the last; find a way to get rid of their back-up, then kill them. Problem is, Firewall keeps back-ups and to find where anyone's is in particular, you need to do significant sluthing. A far more elegant solution is to have them turn traitor on the organization somehow. Their own org then snuffs them out and likely either deletes their back-up or never reinstantiates them, as it's then obvious that they're too great a threat to risk restoring.
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Re: Basic question about terminating a person
I happen to like the quick and dirty shoot em in the face style. But it all depends on your motive and time frame. If you're motivated to eliminate them from the universe but you're pressed for time; 1. get access to a healing vat and an ego bridge 2. shoot them in the face in some way that that evades detection and suppresses their muse as a witness. 3. Heal the body and sleeve yourself into it. 4. go to their backup insureance provider(s) and get backed up. 5. go steal their secret backups from under their mattress. 6. Hide the body. If you have access to mad Hacking skilz. 1. find and hack their backup insureance provider. Kill the backup. 2. call them to let them know that there has been a problem with their backup storage and schedule an appointment to have a new backup made. 3. pay someone to ambush them on the way to get backed up. (4.) alternately if you have access to the insureance provider at the right time you might be able to kill them and their backup with the Ego Bridge.

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: Basic question about terminating a person
I'm afraid, Trik, that your plans have some flaws in it. Plan 1 breaks down at step 4. Back-up companies, like anyone, go by ego ID and brain scan; they're not going to ignore a basic detail like "This is clearly not the ego of the person who was here before" slip by them. Plan 2 breaks down at step 1. Back-up insurance companies keep egos stored in offline, extremely secure servers for that exact reason; you don't want your customers getting a nasty mind virus.
SEÑOR FASE SEÑOR FASE's picture
Re: Basic question about terminating a person
Hiyas! You know what this brings up, right? Endless & immortal archenemies! That is, unless you fake your ID. SF