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The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, whatever.

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It that must no... It that must not be named's picture
The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, whatever.
I'd like to start a thread called "The plot pot" that would just be an open pot to toss plot ideas into. First tosses: "Dead ego walking". You've been rebooted by firewall only to find that you have been sentenced to death for a capital crime and executed, with all known backups likewise erased. What do you do now? Try to clear yourself without exposing firewall? Emigrate to the AA? Try to clear yourself of the charges, assuming you didn't do what you were executed for? BTW, what were you executed for? The media said it was classified... "Kill Team". A hypercorp has done something really egregious, and firewall has determined it's CEO must die as a warning to others that such acts cannot be tolerated. Your team has been given the task of terminating the big boss man and making sure he never gets rebooted. But how to get past his security? Say, if evidence of his acts could be found and brought to light, even his status couldn't save him from permanent deletion... "The Thing and I" The exsurgent virus is the greatest threat transhumanity has ever faced, and must be destroyed in whatever form it takes, right? So why is the person infected with it you've been tracking to terminate seemingly trying to help people and save lives? What about the message he sent you, instead of killing or infecting you, telling you that the strain he contracted has mutated, and is no longer hostile towards transhumanity? He could have killed you but didn't, despite your hounding him across the solar system. Something's odd here...

"I learned the hard way that if you take a stand on any issue, no matter how insignificant, people will line up around the block to kick your ass over it." -Jesse "the mind" Ventura.

Admini Admini's picture
First off, great idea for a

First off, great idea for a thread. That said, I recommend page breaks.

Here's a link to a thread with some good seed ideas. http://www.eclipsephase.com/merging-forks-two-different-egos
It that must no... It that must not be named's picture
I put spaces and paragraphs
I put spaces and paragraphs in my work the board took them out. Another idea: "Mother's ghost". A character begins receiving messages and transmission from someone claiming to be his mother, who died on earth during the fall, apparently. The contactor claims that the character's mother was "saved" by a friendly AI, maybe a promethean or even a benign TITAN, disassembled and stored, and has now been reconstituted to establish contact the player for an urgent reason. Does the player trust the contact? Whatever's contacting him seems to know things only his mother would know...

"I learned the hard way that if you take a stand on any issue, no matter how insignificant, people will line up around the block to kick your ass over it." -Jesse "the mind" Ventura.

The Doctor The Doctor's picture
Just got home from work. Let's see where this goes.
A deep space monitoring outpost in the Oort Cloud has announced that it's picked up something heading for Sol system at unusually high speed (0.03c or therabouts). It's Pioneer 10.

A small hypercorp has made it quietly known that it'll pay good credits for samples of pre-Fall Earth animal DNA as part of a next-gen biomorph program it's bootstrapping. If credit's not your thing they'll pay you in rep and favors with few questions asked.

A group of Brinkers have put out word that they're looking for infomorphs to join them in an expedition: they're constructing an interstellar probe that they're outfitting with nanoreplication gear, disgusting amounts of computronium, and a small thruster that they want to send out Sol system to see what else might be out there. (Wave of the tentacle to Charles Stross.)

One word: 'botnet'

An unscrupulous individual has developed an AGI with the sole intention of using it to send AR spam that can evade filtering software on the mesh. There's just one problem: to speed things along the spammer used code from a... questionable... period of transhuman history, and consequently it's infected with a very subtle variant of Exsurgent. Subtle enough that it can hitchhike in the AR spam.

A graffiti artist has invented a nanoplague that adds comments to the DNA of biomorphs it infects. It does horrible things to cyberbrains, however, causing them to malfunction and even crash, resulting in corrupted cortical stacks.
Bloodwork Bloodwork's picture
Re: The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, ...
The players investigate an abandoned research station that contains a few eccentric inhabitants. The players eventually realise these people are all the same person who went crazy from isolation and developed multiple personality disorder and the other personalities resleeved themselves into other morphs. The players must find them all and get them back into the same morph one way or another.
That which doesn't kill you usually succeeds on the second attempt.
pablofiasco pablofiasco's picture
Re: The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, ...
"Hello? is anyone out there? This is cyrostation 2 in newyork" - a strange distress signal seeming to emanate from the ruins of NYC, seems to indicate potential survivors on earths surface, and has grabbed the intrest of...someone...highly placed, the pc's have been requested to mount a recon and rescue missions..... (edited for spelling errors X_X)

"the hunt is not complete until the targets heart is pulled from its chest and eaten" -hunter

Thantrax Thantrax's picture
Re: The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, ...
A prophet emerges and calls for brave souls of Transhumanity to accompany him through one of the one way Pandora Gates on a quest to settle upon a new homeworld suited to humanity's needs. He promises that he knows that if they go through this gate, they will find one. He's managed to attract a following of dreamers who crave a welcoming planet to call home and are starry eyed with dreams of pre-fall Earth. The Firewall team in your game is assigned to support his efforts under the theory that another colony can only increase Transhumanity's survival chance. Plots could involve preventing assassinations against this Prophet, helping him gain access to the Pandora's Gate itself, or joining his crusade as the people who will bring along the technology required for resleeving, making him dependent on them.
Cosimo Il Vecchio Cosimo Il Vecchio's picture
Re: The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, ...
Three ideas. 1. A non-firewall scenario: The party is hired to retrieve antiques from before the Fall. The usual dangers and difficulties in stealing something. Perhaps it's in a wrecked O'Neill cylinder, or a derelict space craft. Eventually they find the container--covered in [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/264116795/]memetic hazard[/url] stickers. Perhaps they are concerned about what they've uncovered. Maybe they don't want to be responsible for unleashing something terrible. So they open the container, only to discover... a signed copy of Dianetics and an e-meter. 2. How long has it been? The party awakens in a standard corporate resleeving facility. A polite, but dim, AI greets them. It won't answer any questions about where or when they are. It's a microgravity environment. The characters have access to a nice, but deserted medical facility. Let them explore a bit. Maybe they have access to a cabin, restroom, galley, recreational facilities. This part is just meant to unnerve them, make them feel paranoid. When they are feeling restive, their host appears. It tells them, "Look, you should probably velcro yourselves to something. You have been offline for rather longer than you might like. It's been about 500 years since you were last corporeal. You're also rather farther from Sol than you might like. We are in the vicinity of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Eridani]Epsilon Eridani[/url]. You've been resleeved, at great expense, in something we think you might like. Sadly, there is a price. We have some work we'd like you to perform." Has it been 500 years? Have they left the solar system? Is this some sort of elaborate con? Who has press ganged them? What do they really want?
Ramidel Ramidel's picture
Re: The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, ...
An intro scenario: "Surrounded by Zeroes." The PCs are a bunch of agents tasked with (or undertaking on their own initiative) rescuing a freighterload of zeroes from indent at the hands of ultimates and delivering them to somewhere safe (the Jovian Junta will at least get them meshed and basic-biomodded properly, and flats are still better off there than in Ultimate hands; if you know your players have a knee-jerk hate for the Jovians and won't do this, they can learn that Titania's got room or that Morningstar is looking for new recruits). Sounds fine, right? When the players get to the freighter, the GM can play the flats as moderately-retarded adults who can barely understand half of what they're saying, don't understand them at first since they don't have any translator software (the PCs can probably solve this once one realizes the problem of course) generally have no useful skills (their idea of "expert professional" is something a well-programmed AI can do), and haven't got the wit to take anything humorously or non-literally. Even the muses are smarter. Can the PCs take control of the freighter without one of the zeroes trying to help and blowing the whole operation? Can their sanity withstand the effort of dealing with the zeroes? Can their ethics withstand a chance to take advantage of the poor saps (who they could convince to do almost anything)? --- Yes, I just described how ordinary modern humans would look to post-Fall transhumans.
The Doctor The Doctor's picture
Re: The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, ...
Three words: Transhuman Iron Chef.
SandmanGBK SandmanGBK's picture
Re: The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, ...
"Celestial Chorus" The characters are gathered on a small hab in the Main Belt to investigate a sound file that has been making it's way around the habs mesh. The sound is described as thousands of human voices singing in perfect harmony. The song has no lyrics, it is only a wordless chant, but it speaks of keening loss and a vast loneliness. Their Proxy doesn't let them hear the file due to the fact that on closer examination of the song, it translates into and extremely complex program, one that changes any mind in comes into contact when. This program is beyond the capabilities of transhumanity to produce. The song is being labeld the first Siren Hack, kin to a basilisk, only aural instead of visual. Investigation of the residents of the hab find that those exposed to the song show Borderline Personality Disorder, as well as an encouraged need for the company of others, and a boosted need to expose others to the song. The characters will trace the song (hopefully without getting exposed) to a freighter pilot docked at the hab who claims to have picked up the transmission heading through an empty part of the Main Belt. Firewall records will show that that area used to have a research hab that was supposedly destroyed during the fall. Sent to check it out, the characters find an abandoned hab, battle scarred on the inside, with a single massive databank. This databank contains thousands of Infugees, egocast here during the fall. However, the databank shows signs of TITAN tampering, and the infugees have been half-melded into a kind of collective hive AGI, one intent on easing it's loneliness by absorbing as many egos as possible, even if forcibly. This is the purpose of the Siren hack, to prepare an ego for absorption. As the characters study the problem, probably to find a way to reverse the effects of the hack, a new vessel docks and the characters are attacked by a group of people intent on merging with the AGI. Sorry, long, but hopefully it will help to generate some ideas.
The Sandman The Sandman's picture
Re: The plot pot. Put something in, take something out, ...
"You Are Cordially Invited": Someone has decided to start a particularly ambitious project, or at least they had before the Fall: the construction of a ring habitat (akin to one of the Orbitals from the Culture series, or one of the Halos minus the galactic-scale doom weapon) on which millions or even billions of transhumans could comfortably live. During the Fall, it had been all but forgotten about, transhumanity having bigger concerns, but it's been ten years and some of the surviving parties that had been involved are wondering what happened to their investment. Before they can actually send a team to investigate, though, they all get a message from the construction site, giving them a progress update, requesting that additional raw materials be sent to replenish stockpiles, and inviting an assortment of major figures from across the reputation networks to come to the inauguration ceremony of the first habitable Plate, due to be completed within six to nine months. The message included a fork of one of the heads of the construction project, an architect who was extremely surprised at the news of what exactly had happened in the last ten years, and was particularly shocked when she was informed of the Fall. Something strange is going on 1 AU above the sun, and the players are among the many people being sent to get a closer look.