So I'll be starting my campaign soon about a team of sentinels investigating an exhuman terrorist attack on Gateway that will lead them to darker intrigues and whatnot while the complete destruction of Gateway will be played by the public as a attempt to seize the gate or as corporate sabotage from Pathfinder. Some of the exhumans had their forks and other supplies sent through the gate as part of their payment, the attack was actually to seize alien samples from the Phlo research labs. As of now I have a few plot points already set up for the agents to investigate:
-the exhuman group that got away through conventional means (and maybe have the party hunt for the ones that went through the gate)
-the exhumans hijacked and toke control of the Mesh very easily, meaning someone high up at Nimbus could be involved
- I'll be starting with the modified Glory scenario with the White Khans and Vo still on the loose in addition to other criminal groups that are infected
Other than that those are the plot threads that are somewhat well formed in my head. If there are any comments or critiques they are appreciated.
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Placing Bread Crumbs
Tue, 2014-02-18 17:41
#1
Adaptive Radiation
Placing Bread Crumbs
Tue, 2014-02-18 19:41
#2
Undocking
I'll fire out some questions
I'll fire out some questions and see where it goes.
Do the players know that this game will be focusing on exhumans, xenos and gatecrashing? Not to spoil, but allow the players to create characters with appropriate beliefs and backgrounds. If someone makes a barsoomian who wants to take down the Consortium, then that character will be sorely misplaced.
Stealing alien samples is cool, you just need to decide what the alien samples are and how they work. And maybe the exhumans are working with someone to support their cause in some way.
Are these the same exhumans who attacked the Discord Gate in the fluff, or exhumans you are creating?
By conventional means do you mean out of Gateway on foot through all the security and the surrounding habitat? Quite the feat.
Could there be someone at Nimbus involved, or could someone at Nimbus be an exhuman in disguise?
How does Glory fit into the exhuman story?
Wed, 2014-02-19 00:07
#3
Adaptive Radiation
I have mentioned to my
I have mentioned to my players that I exhumans will be involved. I will also be hinting that Pathfinder may have been the one who orchestrated the attack to sabotage the competition.
The samples are a couple of petri dishes worth of Tanakan cells that the exhumans are getting for a hidden TITAN and it will be using its knowledge and the unique Tanakan genetics to create all kinds of new exsurgent types. The players won't know about it, but after a week or two of in game time, the first of escalating exsurgent attacks will be hitting the system.
No these were going to be separate exhuman mercenaries but part of their reward for the attack was that their forks would be able to meet with their allies outside of the system.
The attack on Gateway was one that would take many different moving parts that the players would eventually find out. First, an update of Gateway's security system would be applied to the station a year before the game starts. The update will have very well hidden backdoors that the exhumans would be able to exploit courtsey of the high ranking friend at Nimbus. This exploit would allow exhuman agents to enter disguised as normal transhumans as well as smuggle in combat flexbot modules for later. A week before the security system will receive a new update that will erase the old backdoor as well as place a new one. This backdoor will allow an exhuman infomorph named Lain to become admin for Gateway's entire mesh. Next the attack begins with a ship that will be ignored by the station thanks to Lain landing and unleashing quite a bit of well armed exhuman for the obvious first attack. At the same time, the hidden agents will be attacking the station as well as the hidden flexbots which will have spent some time joining to create around ten well armed giant war bots. The attack will be a distraction for either exhuman agents or rouge flexbot modules to steal the samples while Gatekeeper will be helpless as they are hit from multiple directions suddenly and with no access to their mesh have no communications or security as well as no control over the train system that links Gateway. By the end, the exhumans will have fled by ship, farcasting, suicide, or through the gate with everyone to distraught and broken to notice the missing samples.
The Glory adventure has been changed in that Tara You was one of many Firewall agents sent to track down the missing cargo of a few Gatekeeper transports that were attacked and robbed by multiple criminal groups with the White Khans being one such group that sold off the cargo. These heists were also set up by the TITAN in order to kill two birds with one stone, hitting Gatekeeper where it hurts to soften them for the exhumans and to plant more exsurgent agents by infecting the Khans and other criminals through their payment of some very cutting-edge fabbers.
Wed, 2014-02-19 01:13
#4
consumerdestroyer
Are these exhumans themselves
Are these exhumans themselves infected with the exsurgent virus and more exsurgent than exhuman, or are they just using it as a tool that is kept at a remove from their activities to avoid infection? If the latter, are they only using the Glory strain as a weapon or are they seeking out other strains to unleash?
What about motivations? If they're infected, I guess it's clear, but if they're using TITAN virii as weapons against transhumanity, is this to prove that their exhuman path is superior and the weak transhumans will fall prey to the exsurgent virus where they will not? Are you building them as exhumans who are immune to both the AOK hack (which works on synthmorph cyberbrains and AGIs just as well as biomorph organic brains) and the contact/nanoswarm versions of the virus? What kind of exhuman are they? Just trying to get a feel for why you're pairing the TITAN exsurgent stuff and the non-TITAN exhuman stuff, as usually exhumans steer as clear of exsurgent viruses as the transhumanity they've left behind (seeing as, by and large, the various exsurgent virii can usually affect them as well). And, while I imagine the answers to the above will answer this anyway, but just in case: what kind of exhuman are they? What have they modified about their ways of thinking to make themselves "superior" to the transhumanity they've left behind? Are they genehackers and psychosurgeons trying to make the perfect biomorphic existence without regard to anthropocentric values, or synthmorph designers and cyberbrain hackers attempting a digital/mechanical perfection?
Wed, 2014-02-19 16:06
#5
Undocking
I'd recommend scrapping the
I'd recommend scrapping the exhumans and making them all exsurgents. It adds another degree of separation that doesn't add an appropriate amount of complexity. As @consumerdestroyer mentioned, exhumans are going to avoid exsurgents about as much as transhumans do.
Also, leaving the Gateway complex and the surrounding compound would be an extremely hard thing to do without somebody shooting you. Plus: escape by suicide or gate is much more intriguing.
Maybe they know of a gate in Sol system that nobody else knows about to get back. Even better: they infect gatecrashers and have them spread the virus.
Lain? Serial Experiements?
Thu, 2014-02-20 14:31
#6
Adaptive Radiation
Maybe I should be a bit more
Maybe I should be a bit more specific that this isn't really a normal TITAN but a Promeathean that has gone off the deep end either from the exsurgent virus or as a consequence of its growth with the difference being that it understands subtlety and knows that too much direct action will alert all the other Promeatheans, so it was going to use the cover of corperate sabotage and general panic and paranoia around the system that could start a war between the autonomists and the PC till nothing could stop the exsurgent virus it created from the Tanakan samples, called the Pando virus. Not to mention the White Khans are also running around spreading Glor.y The exhumans were a group of brinker mercenaries called Texhnophile that thought they were just taking a job from a hypercorp especially since they take jobs from corps all the time and they've been using the payments from said jobs to mod themselves and build a generation ship that they were going to use to leave the system. The fact that this was a well known group that had history with the corps as well as having inside help from Nimbus was meant to lead investigators away from the true being behind it.
Sat, 2014-02-22 19:05
#7
Undocking
That definitely helps for two
That definitely helps for two accounts: one, the fact that your singularity AI is of a different sort and two, the reason why the exhumans are involved. Seems legit. Perhaps the exhumans are unknowingly infected by the exsurgent virus as a move by the Promethean to remove them.