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Tag, you're it!

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Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Tag, you're it!
This scenario is based on one or more of the PCs having a serious but not too individually powerful enemy. The kind of enemy that gets added during character creation and then is promptly forgotten. Until, in this case, they send a posthumous revenge. The PC receives an unusual gift: a cache of top secret information. The information documents some seriously immoral activities done by very powerful people - it could be research files from illegal hypercorp research gained from dissecting asyncs, interrogations performed by Project Ozma, or a gerontocrat's hobby of extreme mutilation. The kind of information worth killing for. The cache was sent from their personal enemy together with a kind of will: "Congratulations! Tag, you're it! If you read this, then I am most likely dead or worse. But before you celebrate, I want to share the joy with you. As you can probably tell, I happened upon some intel that is incompatible with a peaceful life. I have tried to keep it under wraps, but I suspect they will get me eventually. In which case threatening with making it public might be my only solution. However, if that fails, then the enemy is more ruthless and powerful than I had expected. In which case the only thing I can do is to arrange that my "insurance" gets delivered to people I can trust... or hate profoundly. Good luck!" Suddenly the PC is in deep trouble. Maybe the enemy sent the information in an untraceable way to their trusted parties, but certainly not to the PC. The powerful enemies will soon show up and try to get rid of the leak with extreme prejudice. In the nicest case they just need to stay away long enough for trusted parties to make the information public in a sensible manner, making the PC irrelevant. But what if the conspiracy holds a grudge, or think it can do damage control by disappearing anybody who was ever in contact with the information? Worse, the PC might be the only one with the cache, or at least the conspiracy thinks so. So all the resources get thrown at them. In a cruel twist the enemy has falsified the information: there is no deadly conspiracy out to kill the PC, and they are running from shadows. In fact, the enemy is just keeping hidden and splitting his sides with laughter at the paranoia he has created.
Extropian
King Shere King Shere's picture
Re: Tag, you're it!
Good idea, but agents secret conspiracy agents this attack would be like splashing water on a duck, though to have this spring would be frustrating In this situation Agent (firewall) modus operandi might be: Read as Cover has been blown, identity is a target Solution: abandon current identity/cover and get a new (fake) one. Pass the touch so another firewall cell can be activated and go into hiding until cover crisis is averted. Im sure long lasting firewall agents need to swap their identities & go into slumber occasionally to avoid capture from counter terrorist operatives.
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: Tag, you're it!
Of course, identity-swapping is quite easy to do for people in Eclipse Phase (take into account, however, that you will loose a lot of reputation from that... I'd rule that you will keep the value of the faction sponsoring the identity change, or people the player tells about... with the added risk of leaks, compromising the new Identity). However, there are a lot of ways to make it much more complicated. First of all, remember: enemy is a sub-plot, not a main plot. That means that the players will be in the middle of something when this comes (for example, infiltrated in the Jovian Republic, with minimal support and hardware...) and they are unable to switch identities, or at least not fully. Second, a new identity issued by Firewall because of this (an enemy of a player, and not because of a mission) will count as a favour by Firewall. So at least, the player spent a favour from one of his reps. And this might happen again in the future, by the way, so the players might feel some pressure about solving their problems (that is, the enemy... and how is that bastard finding their new identities!). Third, it will be a good excuse to add a new layer to the game, a little hard sometimes when you are dealing with players that keep a low profile while on mission and are used to be the hunters, with only the group of enemies in front of them. But if suddenly they have to watch their back, the game can be reoriented (at least for a time) in a spionage-themed one where the players act both as hunters and prey, like spies in enemy territory (Cold War books can be a really good source of inspiration for this. John le Carré's ones are quite good in that regard, even if we consider how slow-paced they are). Also, old-school spy books can have a deep impact in the game. After all, if you are used to life in a society as advanced as the one in EP, you won't usually look into thinks shown in that old books unless, of course, you are a Jovian Spy, or have skills like Interest (Cold-war era novels), Knowledge (20th century spionage), or similar stuff. Things like using some physical markings that would look inocuous to everybody, place small items where they will fall if that door/window is used, etc... (EP people would look for AR stuff, or hidden programs in the door's software!).
Anarhista Anarhista's picture
Re: Tag, you're it!
Bwahahah. I LOVE how yours devious, scheming and double-dealing minds work! My players didn't have enemies when they created the characters but they will most certainly meet and make someone like this.... O, the beautiful chaos when this happens during difficult and delicate extraction of well protected target... OK, now I should add something useful to he thread but I'm laughing to hard, later. :D
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.