fafromnice wrote:

so far I was thinking : the player are call by a proxy to eliminate someone ... after elimination they are called by another proxy who want to know why a sentinel (who were killed by the players) with sensitive data about (blank) is dead ? The first proxy has vanish ... who was the first proxy ? why use the player ? etc.

Internal Firewall conflict and confusion is always fun. Here is a few ideas based on discussions around here the last week: The first Proxy was false. It was actually Jack-outside-the-box, an independent trickster AGI playing a "prank" on Firewall by using a few newbie agents to kill off an agent involved in something important. Jack didn't care about that, he just knew the agent was also Firewall. The false proxy explains that the agent is a hypercorp infiltrator (or Jovian, anarchist or ultimate depending on what will sound best to the group) sent to stop an important Firewall operation. He must be killed, and either his stack destroyed or brought back (unopened, since it might contain high-level viral defenses) to the Proxy. The agent is actually investigating cases of addictive music on the Ceres music scene. He had not just discovered that there were music tracks that were as addictive as drugs, but signs that a particular research corporation, Applied Aesthetics, had been involved in their creation. He was now going underground under an assumed identity, trying to get into the company and their activities. When the player agents attack he looks like an industrial espionage expert and is obviously setting up some kind of run against some target - a wild fight occurs, with him and his hired help being suitably tough opponents. In the end he gets suitably killed. Shortly after a second Proxy contacts them, scrambling local agents to find out who killed a Firewall agent doing an important investigation. They get an info package showing who it was and some reports from the investigation. Watch the PCs squirm. They could tell the truth, in which case Firewall correctly deduces that there has been a security breach, starts to mistrust the PCs and sends in some other sentinel team for proper investigation (read: inquisition). Nice potential for mistrust, conflict and confusion. The PCs must somehow prove that they were not responsible for the security breach, while the other team is all too keen on blaming them. Or they could lie, and try to figure out what is going on themselves. Now they need to figure out who was behind the attack. Investigating the "proxy" communications largely leads to a dead end. One or two of the characters had had their morphs or muses hacked using a sophisticated nano-bug, which used spoofing based on previous communications to impersonate a valid Firewall message. The communication was routed via a VPN into a darknet run by the ID crew - very dangerous and hard to investigate, unless you want to go toe-to-toe to the biggest organisation of hackers and identity thieves in the solar system. Of course, if the opposing team finds this they might both use it to implicate some PCs (or claim they are security risks) and unwisely get the ID crew upset, causing a three-way fight. Fun for all. A prime suspect should be Applied Aesthetics. Infiltrating the company will reveal that it is indeed a memetic/cultural design company trying to come up with very catchy media (imagine a mixture of the current music industry and psychological hackers). One of the memeticists is responsible for the recordings and is really riding high on his ability to make super-catchy earworms. When interrogated hard enough he will admit his dark secret: he is using a theory that is not his. He was anonymously contacted by someone calling themselves Harmonia Axyrides, who suggested a trade: he got the earworm formula in exchange for leaking usage data - someone wants to know how well it works. Now there are two possibilities. The first one is that the PCs were subtle, and can use the memeticist's information channel to send data back. They could, for example, have him send some of the latest files with a meshbug attached - a small piece of software that sends back a "I'm here!" message (they might need some good hacker to put it together - I wonder if they could hire the ID crew? ;-) ) or try to set up some meeting. The second one is that the PCs made their investigation fairly overtly, allowing Harmonia to know the operation needs to be ended. It might send a "cleanup crew" of hired killers to get rid of the PCs and the memeticist - or a killer song (imagine the musical equivalent of a heroin overdose). For a further twist (see below) the killers might be the other Firewall team (if they are around): they are actually working for Harmonia. In any case, the killers, killer song or communication should give the PCs some evidence of where Harmonia really is. Ideally this should be a location that is 1) reachable fast with some effort, 2) cool - the spires of Nova York, the dark ocean inside Ceres where the cephalopod uplifts rule, a nearly derelict aerostat drifting in a storm on Venus, a resort habitat for the ultrarich. Have the PCs get there and start nosing around. Suddenly they are caught using sufficiently sneaky, powerful or weird methods: somebody had inserted hidden puppet socks in their new morphs after the egocast, they encounter a group of giant squid cyborgs with heavy weapons, an async manipulates them into a trap, a nanoweapon first sabotages their weapons and communications followed by being arrested by "local security". It should be fairly efficient and make no major mistakes. They are brought to a meeting with Harmonia. Or rather, a meeting where an avatar of Harmonia shows up - because Harmonia is a Promethean. (If the PCs do not know initially about prometheans, maybe it might be worth dropping a few hints and rumours about them earlier in the game.) The Harmonia avatar can look like anything suitable - a beautiful androgyne, a talking beetle, a magnificent church organ. It is polite and in control. It explains what is *really* going on: First, it is Firewall. It is one of the hidden assets of the conspiracy and dedicated to helping transhumanity survive and thrive - no matter what it takes. Second, transhumanity is moving headlong towards the abyss - there are technologies and xrisks that it knows about that are just barely out of reach of transhumanity, things that would make the Fall look like a picnic. If transhumanity continues on its present course it will be worse than extinct within 20 years. Third, Harmonia is pursuing a least-bad solution. It has developed a "Theory of Fun", a model of what would be maximally pleasurable for transhuman minds. The addictive music was just a field test of a small subset, there are other similar experiments going on elsewhere - fantastic artworks, truly engrossing novels, and in particular endlessly rewarding simspaces and games. If released in the right way the Theory of Fun would addict transhumanity. It would not pursue the dangerous technologies, but turn inwards to enjoy an eternity of entertainment. The Prometheans would remain as guardians, keeping external threats at bay. A few groups and individuals might escape the addictions, but they can be managed. You guessed it: now it will ask the PCs to join it. It will know their Firewall profiles and be able to argue from their motivations. It will give good unselfish reasons to the unselfish PCs, and point out the amazing potential for enriching selfish PCs. But mainly it will keep pointing out that without something like the Theory of Fun transhumanity will end. Clever PCs will ask about the other Prometheans. Harmonia will admit that there are disagreements among them: some think parts of transhumanity can be saved by hiding far, far away. Others continue the hopeless struggle to rein in a solar system bent on poking at dangerous technologies - or plan to exploit the next ultra-disaster to seize control. If the PCs agree to work for Harmonia the adventure ends with them concocting a nice story to tell to the proxy that sent them out. Harmonia will help out, giving them some evidence about the hacking of "Jack-out-of-the-box" (it was of course Harmonia all along, but let's blame that irresponsible AGI!) and set up things so that opposing Prometheans will think that there was nothing truly bad going on - the memeticist had accidentally discovered the theory of earworms, and now sadly (?) is caught in an endless musical hallucination of the most beautiful rock opera ever. Further adventures will deal with them protecting the operations of Harmonia from both Firewall and other conspiracies, paving the way for the most delightful apocalypse ever. If the PCs refuse, Harmonia will tell them that it respect their choice but of course now must "correct" their intentions. Cue the bush robots that tie them to surgical tables while some very calming music plays in the background. Just as the impromptu mind rape begins something unexpected happens. Jack-out-of-the-box is here! How do you attack a Promethean? You need to smuggle in a massive attack AGI... like the one hidden holographically across the egos of the PCs. When Harmonia starts brain hacking it cannot avoid seeing the Jack pattern, and now it is inside Harmonia's mind too. A wild battle of the superintelligences begins, and the PCs are suddenly unimportant. A minor fork of Jack frees them enough so they can begin to make their escape from Harmonia's lair. It explains that it infiltrated them right at the start, editing their memories so they would become convincing tools for contacting Harmonia and ending up right where they ended. Jack is a Promethean too, who really would like to save transhumanity from the Theory of Fun. The grand finale of the adventure involves fleeing from the battle. Think James Bond escaping from the exploding villain base - the aerostat is sinking, the skyscraper is falling, TITAN-like nanoweapons are launched, puppeteered security goons firing at each other, habitat flywheels are sabotaged making it break up in slow motion, basilisk hacks, deadly music and what might be psi do bizarre things. To the escape pods! If you want to add a chance for further heroism, have the Jack fork tell the PCs that somebody must destroy the communications system - otherwise Harmonia might be able to transmit the Theory of Fun publicly, or escape by sending its personality core. But doing that likely means ending up left behind when everything blows up... a heroic death of that copy. In the end, the surviving PCs are debriefed and rewarded by a proxy working for Jack. Everything is fine, except for an assassination attempt from one of the sentinels working for Harmonia... is it *really* dead? Hmm, that wasn't too bad, I think?