Well, you know the film, directed by John Woo, starring Travolta and Cage, they change their faces (and body, and voice), one looks like the other, one a terrorist and the other his foe...
What would the best way to implement this in EP?
Change bodies for both of them, each one in a clone of the other?
Interchange egos, can we rewrite a brain occupied by an ego?
Use a healing tank instead, and make anyone looks the other but without changing neither morph nor ego? Can a tank be used to this?
And the rest of the story, you know, in the group of PCs one is not really a friend but an infiltrator. May be this can be done against the unsuspecting Jovian Republic by bioprogressive terrorists...
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Adventure idea: Face/Off
Tue, 2012-07-10 08:42
#1
Monty
Adventure idea: Face/Off
Tue, 2012-07-10 23:14
#2
DivineWrath
Re: Adventure idea: Face/Off
No I don't know it. I might have heard of it though. Could you give a name and explain it a bit more?
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To swap bodies in Eclipse Phase, you would need an ego bridge (core rulebook, p. 328) unless you were dealing with synthmorphs. Rules for backing up egos and uploading egos start on (core rulebook, p. 268).
To scan an ego, it takes 10 minutes per biomorph, 5 minutes for podmorph, and instantaneous for synthmorphs. The rules don't mention if you need to wipe the resident ego if the owner no longer intends to use the body (before someone else can use it latter), or if the resident ego is forcefully evicted. However, medichines can easily put someone into medical stasis so there shouldn't be too much of a problem of someone being "erased and aware" as someone else is being uploaded to their body. Uploading an ego, it takes 1 hour per biomorph, 30 minutes per podmorph, and instantaneous for synthmorph.
So if you wanted to do a forceful swap between biomorphs as quickly as possible, it would likely take 1 hour and 10 minutes. It would also need a pair of ego bridges, and maybe a few doses of medichines.
A Healing Vat is capable of transforming you physical body to appear to be someone else, and to be genetically identically to someone else. However both processes are tricky. Changing your physical appearance could probably be done without too much trouble. Changing your genetic code is trickier, to the point that many services would rather start from scratch. This is made worse if you are trying to make one morph model type appear to be another. This problem is made even worse if the morph has augmentations that the other didn't, especially with bioware which often include genetic enhancements to make the new tissue work and to allow it to regenerate.
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Question. Why forcefully swap bodies when you can erase the other guy and upload a fork? Doing so eliminates the potential problems of the other guy trying to get his (old) body back.
Please note, there are many people who would rather rent bodies from a body bank instead of swapping bodies with someone who happens to be going the other way. Also, producing a new functional synthmorph body usually doesn't take longer than 5 hours using a cornucopia machine.
Wed, 2012-07-11 00:57
#3
Anarhista
Re: Adventure idea: Face/Off
The name of the movie is 'Face/Off' from 1997. and while it was interesting idea in EP is kind of... obsolete. But not without potential: I just can't see (intelligent) bad guy leaving only one that know his plans and can stop him walking around and not permanently dealing with the problem. Maybe some sociopath/sadist that want his nemesis to see how was/is it 'in his shoes'...
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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
Wed, 2012-07-11 01:01
#4
Tyrnis
Re: Adventure idea: Face/Off
Something like Face/Off would be much harder to do successfully in a setting where identity isn't linked to physical form in the first place. While Person A could, with sufficient effort, pose as Person B (skinflex, fake brainprint scan, hacked mesh ID, etc.), it would be extremely difficult to make Person B be mistaken for Person A by more than just the casual passer-by.
Wed, 2012-07-11 04:18
#5
Monty
Re: Adventure idea: Face/Off
Even in the Jovian Republic?
Wed, 2012-07-11 13:28
#6
Tyrnis
Re: Adventure idea: Face/Off
It would be more workable there, potentially.
The criminal half of the pair would have to be someone seen as so dangerous that they needed to be shot on sight, though, otherwise you're still in a position where the non-criminal could just go to the authorities for a brainprint scan (or some similarly quick means of confirming ego-identity.) The Jovians are likely _very_ paranoid about identity confirmation, given the potential threat of transhuman infiltration.
Sun, 2012-07-15 17:56
#7
Monty
Re: Adventure idea: Face/Off
Panopticon. Page 51. In Jovian Republic: "Since resleeving is a restricted technology here, there is no need for morph nanotat IDs or brainprints, though these are recorded from non-Jovian visitors"
So the infiltrator can do his job.