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What Caused The Titan Quarantine Zone on Mars?

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Thu, 2010-08-19 16:41
#1
Zen Shooter Zen Shooter's picture
What Caused The Titan Quarantine Zone on Mars?
TITANS, presumably. But there doesn't seem to be any specific information in either EP or S about how the TQZ got that way. It merely says that it *is* that way.
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Thu, 2010-08-19 17:17
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: What Caused The Titan Quarantine Zone on Mars?
I assume there has to have been many places of outbreaks of TITAN devices, not just Caloris 13, Tethys or New Mumbai. Most were small and have been mopped up (with antimatter, if necessary), but a few were too large to do anything about. Presumably the TITANs were active across the solar system, likely by hacking and hijacking automation wherever they needed. In many cases that just led to a habitat with everybody killed, but sometimes they started building and manufacturing stuff. Many such beachheads were hit by human forces and destroyed, but sometimes it was too late and fully capable nanoswarms/warmachines and factories emerged. What has mystified me is why there is just one big TQZ on Mars and not a lot of zones. Maybe one reason is that the smaller ones have not been mentioned (or have been mopped up).
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Thu, 2010-08-19 20:51
jsnead jsnead's picture
Re: What Caused The Titan Quarantine Zone on Mars?
Arenamontanus wrote:
I assume there has to have been many places of outbreaks of TITAN devices, not just Caloris 13, Tethys or New Mumbai. Most were small and have been mopped up (with antimatter, if necessary), but a few were too large to do anything about.
Definitely - on Luna there are many unmapped areas with dormant Exsurgent nanotech that's sitting on the surface, waiting for some morph or robot to step in it. It's not in any sort of zone, because it could be anywhere on Luna, but there also isn's much of it.
Quote:
Presumably the TITANs were active across the solar system, likely by hacking and hijacking automation wherever they needed. In many cases that just led to a habitat with everybody killed, but sometimes they started building and manufacturing stuff. Many such beachheads were hit by human forces and destroyed, but sometimes it was too late and fully capable nanoswarms/warmachines and factories emerged.
Pretty much
Quote:
What has mystified me is why there is just one big TQZ on Mars and not a lot of zones. Maybe one reason is that the smaller ones have not been mentioned (or have been mopped up).
My assumption is that on Mars the Exsurgents started from a single major point (in large part because they originated on Earth, and so may well have just had one major attack ship land on Mars) and spread from there. At this point, all of the small TITAN zones have been cleared, and all that remains is the one big central TQZ.
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Fri, 2010-08-20 04:26
root root's picture
Re: What Caused The Titan Quarantine Zone on Mars?
jsnead][quote=Arenamontanus wrote:
Quote:
What has mystified me is why there is just one big TQZ on Mars and not a lot of zones. Maybe one reason is that the smaller ones have not been mentioned (or have been mopped up).
My assumption is that on Mars the Exsurgents started from a single major point (in large part because they originated on Earth, and so may well have just had one major attack ship land on Mars) and spread from there. At this point, all of the small TITAN zones have been cleared, and all that remains is the one big central TQZ.
It's Mars. Clearly what happened was a miner's revolution given power by TITAN artifacts, and is a legendary conflict that many of the Rusters have mixed feelings about the outcome of. The zone isn't as dangerous as the h-corps say, they are just trying to kill the memory of an almost successful labor rebellion. Or at least, it isn't that dangerous to a true member of the proletariat, but it gets greedy capitalists every time.
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Fri, 2010-08-20 06:26
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: What Caused The Titan Quarantine Zone on Mars?
root wrote:
It's Mars. Clearly what happened was a miner's revolution given power by TITAN artifacts, and is a legendary conflict that many of the Rusters have mixed feelings about the outcome of. The zone isn't as dangerous as the h-corps say, they are just trying to kill the memory of an almost successful labor rebellion. Or at least, it isn't that dangerous to a true member of the proletariat, but it gets greedy capitalists every time.
Hmm, that actually works great as a crackpot theory the PCs might overhear and laugh about. And a bit later discover that some true believers do go into the TQZ. Socialist exsurgents, anyone? Conversely, this might be a neat meme-ops from the Consortium: spread the rumor that some Barsaoomians are (or think they are) allied with the TITANs, or at least stuid enough to traffic in tainted artefacts. That ought to turn some moderates against them.
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Extropian
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Mon, 2014-03-17 14:41
uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture
Arenamontanus wrote
Arenamontanus wrote:
Conversely, this might be a neat meme-ops from the Consortium: spread the rumor that some Barsaoomians are (or think they are) allied with the TITANs, or at least stuid enough to traffic in tainted artefacts. That ought to turn some moderates against them.
The Zone Stalker sample character in Transhuman sort of implies that there are criminal outfits who are trafficking in TITAN tech from the TQZ.
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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
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Mon, 2014-03-17 23:36
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:root
Arenamontanus wrote:
root wrote:
It's Mars. Clearly what happened was a miner's revolution given power by TITAN artifacts, and is a legendary conflict that many of the Rusters have mixed feelings about the outcome of. The zone isn't as dangerous as the h-corps say, they are just trying to kill the memory of an almost successful labor rebellion. Or at least, it isn't that dangerous to a true member of the proletariat, but it gets greedy capitalists every time.
Hmm, that actually works great as a crackpot theory the PCs might overhear and laugh about. And a bit later discover that some true believers do go into the TQZ. Socialist exsurgents, anyone? Conversely, this might be a neat meme-ops from the Consortium: spread the rumor that some Barsaoomians are (or think they are) allied with the TITANs, or at least stuid enough to traffic in tainted artefacts. That ought to turn some moderates against them.
Exsurgent Space Assholes? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcUBI-YVRY8
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Fri, 2014-04-11 22:24
Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture
With the adventure/sourcebook
With the adventure/sourcebook Zone Stalkers in the works we'll likely get some canon answers soon...but let's speculate anyway! During the Fall the TITANs launched missiles loaded with nanotech throughout the system. Some of these splattered on Luna and ,lacking the right conditions ( available materials?,temperature?) went dormant. On Mars, it seems they targeted one of the more populous regions the time to increase potential vectors. Probably several of these missiles hit in the area of the White Zone as the area has been nuked a number of times without fully eliminating the threat. Whatever happened to the TITANs left the technology in the zone in "beachhead" mode as it seems to be keeping itself functional despite efforts to the contrary and making more combat assets with available materials but not actively engaging the rest of the planet. Another good question is if "nuke the site from orbit" is humanities standard response. How did things get so far gone on Iapetus?
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Sat, 2014-04-12 03:34
uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture
iapetus
Iapetus is much more distant. Titan was barely colonized by the time of the Fall. And rather than war effort, it was some sort of creepy inhuman experiment.
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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
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Tue, 2014-04-15 22:10
Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture
Rereading Rimward and it
Rereading Rimward and it sounds like whatever happened did so REALLY quickly! Before , I thought there was some time between the start of the infection and the complete transformation of the moon . Now I'm seeing it like the creation of the Fortress of Solitude in the Superman movie on a global scale! The Commonwealth did manage to take a few shots at it but things were done before anything truly effective was brought to bear. I'd have strongly considered pulverizing the entire structure just to be sure!
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Fri, 2014-04-18 07:46
Kassil Kassil's picture
Chernoborg wrote:Rereading
Chernoborg wrote:
Rereading Rimward and it sounds like whatever happened did so REALLY quickly! Before , I thought there was some time between the start of the infection and the complete transformation of the moon . Now I'm seeing it like the creation of the Fortress of Solitude in the Superman movie on a global scale! The Commonwealth did manage to take a few shots at it but things were done before anything truly effective was brought to bear. I'd have strongly considered pulverizing the entire structure just to be sure!
Good luck with that. Iapetus is roughly 4600 km around, with a pre-TITAN mass of 1.8060 x 10^21 kg. 'Pulverize the entire structure' on the scale available to transhumanity would amount to 'collapse the surface tunnels and seal them by remelting the icy surface, hoping nothing exsurgent will come crawling out'. Admittedly, it might be a functional plan, but it also permits everything left inside all the time it could ever need to develop into a threat capable of crushing the entire Jovian system and rebuilding it into an extinction/exsurgent threat.
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"Don't eat the jelly, that's a protoplasm someone sleeved into."
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Fri, 2014-04-18 23:43
Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture
Heh, yeah that may have been
Heh, yeah that may have been a bit of hyperbole on my part. Anything that could pulverize (such a fun word) the entire moon would risk spreading whatever caused the problem to the rest of the system. Anyway, judging from Caloris 18, New Mumbai,Quarain and the entire Earth , "throw a blanket over it!" seems to be the primary strategy for dealing with the worst sites.
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Sat, 2014-04-19 05:15
Kassil Kassil's picture
Fair enough.
Fair enough. Given how people tend to behave when hit with massive trauma, it doesn't surprise me much that they prefer to hide it over anything else; after all, a lot of veterans who saw horrific things in wartime will tend to prefer to not talk about it. I could see someone trying to do the melt-and-seal approach on Iapetus, though, hoping that if they make a thick enough ice scab in the tunnels at the surface, whatever's below might be trapped.
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"Don't eat the jelly, that's a protoplasm someone sleeved into."
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Mon, 2014-04-21 22:22
jackgraham jackgraham's picture
Zone Stalkers is fully
Zone Stalkers is fully written and will be appearing soon. And I'm glad you guys are happy speculating on this stuff, because some of your questions aren't going to be answered. Sorry. But in any case, it's all about the White Zone. What the White Zone really _is_, though, is something that, like the nature of the ETI, we're leaving to individual GMs. Hey, you may not get a big reveal. But on the other hand, you'll never have to decide how you feel about the EP equivalent of [i]Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand[/i]. ;)
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Fri, 2014-04-25 21:39
Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture
The Revelation
"And so, after surviving all the many and varied Terrors of the White Zone , you gaze upon the Heart of Darkness itself and discover to your ineffable horror....a Blancmange!" Whew! Bullet dodged!
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