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Locking out an Informorph

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Deadite Deadite's picture
Locking out an Informorph
In a current game, the PC informorph hacker has accessed the local mesh with hidden status and knows that there is an NPC infomorph riding security in the mesh. The PC wants to lock the NPC out of the mesh. The closest I can find in the rules is locking out someone's mesh access, which is an unopposed Infosec roll with a -30 modifier. This seems to be more for locking out those people who are accessing the particular mesh through wireless inserts, not infomorphs living in that mesh. Is this right, or am I missing another rules set somewhere?
Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: Locking out an Informorph
When you say, 'in the mesh', do you mean a mesh insert? Or is it 'the local mesh'? At some point, an infomorph is on a specific, actual device. Maybe it's a major central server or something, but it's not 'the mesh'. :/
Deadite Deadite's picture
Re: Locking out an Informorph
Yerameyahu wrote:
When you say, 'in the mesh', do you mean a mesh insert? Or is it 'the local mesh'? At some point, an infomorph is on a specific, actual device. Maybe it's a major central server or something, but it's not 'the mesh'. :/
I mean 'local mesh', sorry for lack of clarity. In more detail, the PC is on a small(ish) ship with the central control server (and secondary servers) communicating via a single, local mesh with an NPC infomorph living inside the central control server and watching security on the system. The PC basically wants to lock this infomorph out of the broader ship's mesh, which will basically confine it to its server and stop it from alerting other, more physical security. Now, since the infomorph is basically living in the primary server, is it possible to lock it out of being able to access the ship's mesh without shutting the system down entirely? Would it be better to view the parts of the central server that the infomorph resides in as similar to a cyberbrain and use those hacking rules?
Deadite Deadite's picture
Re: Locking out an Informorph
I just found the AGI/Infomorph part of 'Crashing Software', p260, which I think will cover what I need. Thanks. :)
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Locking out an Informorph
We had a nice case in my most recent game. An exhuman infomorph had infiltrated the mesh inserts of a PC. It had reached hidden status and quietly replaced his muse - not too easy to notice, since his muse was a former piece of spam that mostly did cryptic things. A few hours later the informorph had quietly copied itself into local blueprints, the controls of the expedition CM and a lot of other places. It had built railgun equipped bots, secretly taken two resting PCs hostage, and was now busy turning the base camp into its fortress. When the PCs found out sparks really began to fly - the infected PC had all his implants shut off from his control, the tacnet became a viral swamp, and all the local defenses turned on the team. Had it been a bit less badass team things would have gone very badly... now they just lost the two hostages, burned the basecamp to cinders, and then spent almost a day obsessively cleaning their software. Ah, the wonders of trauma-induced OCD... In this case I assumed that the initial intruder had digged himself in so deep that nothing but a hardware reset could dislodge him (doing a hardware reset on your implants while in a spacesuit is also a bit challenging). Worse, it had left code in a lot of the equipment to allow it to bounce back. The later forks had not had time to be so through in their hacking, so they could be ousted with sufficiently good InfoSec rolls - and they were of course doing counter-attacks.
Extropian
Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture
Re: Locking out an Informorph
Arenamontanus, this is awesome on an epic scale! do you have the XP (read: actual play) of this? Know Evil would have a serious contender for the title as most kick ass AP around!
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