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Adventure hooks for Olympus City.

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Fri, 2011-04-08 11:58

Sunchaser

Adventure hooks for Olympus City.

I'm going to be building a campaign on Mythweavers centered upon Olympus City, but with extensive travel to other interesting locations, and the occasional jaunt to extramartian locations. Its a Firewall game but I'm thinking an even mix of 50% Firewall missions/50% personal missions with a heavy dose of bladerunner or Shadowrun. I'm not particularly science oriented but I want to keep it a fair facscimile of a good sci-fi background. But I would like to ask for some help in setting up plothooks and adventures for the game. Any help would be apprecieated to get my creative juices flowing.

Fri, 2011-04-08 18:46

Tachi

Re: Adventure hooks for Olympus City.

Olympus Mons is close to the TQZ so an obvious one would be "inhabitants" of the TQZ wandering into the city.

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I don't shoot a man for being incompetent in the Devil's work. I shoot him for being c

Fri, 2011-04-08 19:03

Sunchaser

Re: Adventure hooks for Olympus City.

Always a good one especially since I want to give the slums of Olympus City and its souks a 'Bioshock' quality to them.

Sat, 2011-04-09 14:17

Demonseed Elite Demonseed Elite's picture

Re: Adventure hooks for Olympus City.

I've got a campaign framework idea that revolves around Olympus City that you're free to use or borrow from. This whole campaign idea largely comes from the write-ups on the Olympus Infrastructure Authority and ComEx on pages 111 and 112 of [i]Sunward[/i]. The ComEx core logistics software is rumored to have repeatedly emerged into consciousness, forcing ComEx to reset it before the Planetary Consortium comes down on them for producing seed AIs. However, in the most recent case, ComEx failed to entirely eradicate the emergent consciousness; an artificially intelligent fragment escaped into ComEx's systems tied to the Olympus space elevator. ComEx suspects they may not have fully reset the AI, but since they recently got their wings clipped by the Planetary Consortium, they are in no rush to go to the PC for assistance with this problem. The AI, a relatively weak fragment intelligence with the potential to become much more, turns to the embittered synthetic population of Olympus for help. ComEx doesn't have the best reputation with the clanking masses right now because they allegedly extended many indenture contracts as a cost-cutting measure. The disenfranchised synthetics of Olympus' souks shelter the AI and investigate a way to smuggle it off of Mars. In exchange, the AI is going to help the clanking masses revolt against ComEx; its intimate knowledge of the space elevator systems will allow them to sabotage it and cause elevator outages, safety problems, and work stoppages. ComEx is now under extraordinary pressure to get this AI problem solved; the problems with the space elevator have attracted the attention of the Olympus Infrastructure Authority and the Planetary Consortium. ComEx begins to turn to outside help to try to recapture or destroy the AI, which is when Firewall hears of it. Firewall is concerned that this seed AI has the potential to become a TITAN. The players are tasked with infiltrating the synthetic rights movement to discover the intentions of the AI. If they decide it is an x-risk, it must be destroyed. Even if it is not an imminent threat, Firewall wants the AI off of Mars and somewhere it can develop under Firewall's guidance. So the players have to deal with the synth activists and the AI as well as potentially with the OIA cops and ComEx's freelance AI hunters. The campaign can also get morally complicated: at some point Firewall has to make a call about whether they can risk this AI living. Unless you want to make the AI overtly evil (which can be fun in its own way), that's a tough call to make.

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"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." --The White Queen, [i]Through The Looking-Glass[/i] [img]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_zGgz13n3uzE/TWWPdvGig-I/AAAAAAAACI8/y...

Sun, 2011-04-10 04:48

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Adventure hooks for Olympus City.

The abandoned spaces in the suburbs of Olympus are a bit run-down, but also perfect for various bohemian activities like urban games and art projects. One group, Parnassus Inc., have taken a part of abandoned souk and turned it into a dungeon crawl: people go in, trying to collect treasure while avoiding traps and monsters (mainly reprogrammed bots). Viewers cheer on, make bets or pay for running some of the monsterbots. An art collective, the New Urban Termination, have taken a pre-Fall officescraper and turned it into a surreal art space. Firewall thinks someone there might have accidentally or deliberately included basilisk hack or even YGBM hacks into the art. Those railways suggests a fun idea: what about an Eclipse Phase rendition of Atlas Shrugged? The independent capitalists of Mars struggling against the suffocating and self-serving Planetary Consortium/Tharsis League trying to control everything. Why are extropian-minded key people disappearing? And what does this have to do with contact with that mysterious indentured worker Mr Galton? Murder on the Olympus express: during a trip up or down the elevator a person is killed. It is the classic locked room mystery, and the PCs might need to solve it before the capsule arrives at its destination. Barsoomian terrorists are plotting to strike at the elevator. A well placed nuke near the lower end would make it whip out into space, messing up orbital traffic and logistics - the cost would be astronomical, and collateral damage rather minor (some blocks crushed in Olympus, a few capsules thrown out into emptiness of space...) Security is of course super-tight, but this time they think they have a chance. The PCs get involved either as the forces of law and order trying to stop the plot, as moderates trying to prevent a PR disaster for the Movement - or, for a very different adventure, as the radicals who are trying to have forks go out in a blaze of glory. A twist might be that the weapon is not a nuke but some TITAN tech that will strike at the elevator itself - untraceable, insidious and possibly a much bigger threat than the terrorists realize. Cue Firewall operatives.

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Tue, 2014-02-25 18:55

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

Relevant to my interests

I am planning some adventures in and around Olympus, so this thread is relevant! To contribute my own thoughts, I plan to include blackmarket Zone tech (ala Stalkers/Roadside Picnic) being examined in labs, only for it to get loose. Possibly include Parkour in the decaying urban areas around the city. What's the exact atmosphere around the city like? Can Rusters comfortably breathe in the slums surrounding the city proper? Or is it all clanking masses?

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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Fri, 2014-02-28 12:56

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Hooks:

Hooks: A rash of break-ins in the most desirable part of Deshengmen have left the OIA completely baffled. Nothing is stolen, but wealthy hyperelites in Olympus are waking up to bizarre tableaus of everyday life...featuring psychosurgically altered delta forks of themselves (and their family/help staff) sleeved in exact duplicates of their morphs, no matter how customized or unique... A suicidal terrorist attack has just blown a part of Ptah right off! The attack isn't over yet: analysis of visuals of the space station chunk show that guidance thrusters are attached to it, and have kicked in. Trajectory? Straight for Skinaesthesia's HQ in Central! On the border between Deshengmen and Zhongguancun, a rash of murder victims are showing up with no cortical stacks. OIA say they are looking into possible Barsoomian or autonomist links, but the victims all use high-end synthmorphs and the PCs catch wind that there's a hot new invite-only club that's just opened up in the last month, somewhere in the basement of an abandoned building in Zhongguancun, with a strict no synths allowed policy... A shop in Jank-Yao is mysteriously vacant, and the neighbouring business owners think they know why. The day before the vacancy, the shop's AR display stated they could fix any morph (Bios! Pods! Synths!) with a built-in obsolescence or GSP requirement (Even Aggressive GRM Is [b]No Problem![/b]), and the prices were stated as "Negotiable and Customer Friendly!" with a looping 3D AR scene: an avatar of a ruster shrugging sadly and pointing to a hovering 0 credits being led inside by an avatar of the owner/operator, a synth designer who'd taught himself genehacking over the last couple of years, sleeved in a steel synthmorph and dressed in a gaudy neon approximation of medieval Middle Eastern merchant robes. Now the AR is wiped and the outside of the store looks as abandoned as the inside, and no one has seen the owner (or his two assistants) since the disappearance. @uwtartarus:

Quote:
Alpiner morphs are common, and just about everyone else wears a ruster. The harsh environment and decay of the city mean that even in well-developed areas, citizens’ll regularly encounter souks or walkways with thin air or poor climate control. Specialized Martian morphs are just a lot more comfortable.