I've got some friends getting together for a new campaign this weekend, and I'm trying to pull a starter adventure and a long-term campaign out of the ether for Sunday. Here's the gist in one sentence: [b]Barsoomian Extremists Plot to Reignite Mars' Core![/b] In more detail: A cell of off-the-grid Barsoomian extremists is working to acquire exo-tech from a disgruntled gatecrasher team. The gear they're smuggling can ignite a self-sustaining fusion reaction in a high-pressure nickel/iron environment, but is large and unwieldy enough to be a long-term project. From their perspective, reigniting Mars' core will also restart the planet's magnetic field, protecting the atmosphere from being carried away by solar wind and shielding the surface from much of the radiation. This will slow the urgency behind the Tharsis league's terraforming juggernaut. The fact that most hypercorp-controlled cities sit smack-dab on seismic centers and lava flows doesn't hurt, either. Ultimately, the cell hopes to make the planet easier for nomads to survive on while literally tearing out the foundation of every major Consortium city. As, but nothing is ever that simple in EP: The disgruntled gatecrashing team supplying the Barsoomian cell is actually a Pathfinder plant. Ravji Gada, CEO of Pathfinder, is tired of bowing and scraping to the council, and not only wants a seat on the council, he wants to run things. Months earlier, a geological expedition returned with news of an astonishing Iktomi artifact maintain the core of a dead world. Rather than settle for a pat on the head from turning the artifact over to the Terraforming Office, Gada envisioned following the same path to power the coucil did: By controlling the only escape from a devastated world. By triggering a major disaster below the feet of major corporate cities, and organizing terrorist cells to destroy the space elevator and major spaceports beforehand, he leaves the fate of 200 million transhumans in the hands of Pathfinder and its Pandora Gate. With Pathfinder City in a geological stable zone, the corporation and Gada become the new power player and heroes of transhumanity! Obviously, most of the campaign will be set on and around Mars, and my exact plans will change once I see character concepts and hear what my players want, but that's the general idea. The first adventure will be a an introduction set in Pilsner City: everyone ends up unwitting pawns or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The players might be Barsoomians picking up a package for a leader, couriers delivering a package for a Barsoomian to pick up, rangers trailing a smuggling ring through Pilsner City, or Firewall agents sent to sniff around after the the discovery of xeno-tech in the farming community. Once they're all in the same place at the same time, Oversight agents kick in the door and start shooting! They escape (with the packaged handcuffed to one player's wrist), and have to work together to escape the city. Beyond the first adventure, I'm still pulling ideas together. Some things I'd like to include: A VR station orbiting Mars: A virtual world on a space station with no life support, where the residents have created a combination paradise/tourist trap to live in peace and hide from the horrors of reality. Is it transhumanity's future? Or is there nothing to be gained by hiding from your problems? Perhaps on of the geologists Gada has been consulting is a resident... Olympus: A wretched hive of scum and villainy with access to orbit? Of course I need to use it! But how? New Dazhai: The Barsoomian cell needs to get [b]to[/b] the planet's dead core before they can do squat, so they'll quietly hijack equipment and resources from the Fa Jing mines to make their shaft. Company towns and notoriously insular to outsiders, so how are players from a variety of backgrounds going to make enough friends to get anywhere? Gatecrashing: Eventually, the PCs need to find out more about this "world engine" (for lack of a better word), but getting to the now-classified gate address will require either penetrating the deepest levels of Pathfinder security, or flying out to Saturn's Pandora Gate and hoping in through the back door (with a weird alien world or two in-between) I'm open to any suggestions. Especially names. Names for the project, for the terrorist cell, for the xeno-tech, for the planets, random NPCS, anything. I'm not great with names.