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Infomorphs, Forks, and Muses

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Wed, 2014-12-24 03:03

eaton

Infomorphs, Forks, and Muses

So I'm putting together some relatively complicated NPC backstories for an upcoming adventure, and ran into a couple of questions about the interaction between Infomorphs and Muses. If I understand correctly,

Pretty much everyone has a muse, even Infomorphs.
Beta forks (at least) retain the muses of their source egos.
Muses can observe and record the experiences of their owners.
An ego can use an Informorph or fork as a muse.

That raises a lot of curious questions, including:

Does an Infomorph serving as another Ego's muse have a muse of its own? How many angels dance on the head of a pin?
Wouldn't editing the memories of an Ego would require editing its Muse as well, to keep the muse from spilling the beans?
Theoretically, could a Muse to be smarter than the Gamma fork that it "serves?"

The "gut check" answers to these are pretty easy ("Maybe, but it would be silly; Yes; Yes, but Gamma forks aren't used that way) but I'm curious if there are any wrinkles I'm overlooking or more in-depth treatment of these issues that need to be considered.

Wed, 2014-12-24 03:14

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

eaton wrote:

eaton wrote:
That raises a lot of curious questions, including: Does an Infomorph serving as another Ego's muse have a muse of its own?

Generally speaking, a forked copy of someone who is a muse is going to be a beta fork. It's not really them, but it's an AI with their personality overlay. Mesh inserts can't run a full infomorph, only a dumb AI. A [i]Ghostrider[/i], on the other hand, is perfectly capable of running an infomorph. I would presume that a ghostrider is also capable of running the infomorph's muse, if you have a full infomorph in a ghostrider.

eaton wrote:
How many angels dance on the head of a pin?

An arbitrary number ranging from zero (if you don't believe in angels,) to infinity (if you believe angelic power is absolute.)

eaton wrote:
Wouldn't editing the memories of an Ego would require editing its Muse as well, to keep the muse from spilling the beans?

Yes it would. Muses are, however, significantly easier to edit than people. Depending on how tricky you suspect the person and the muse to be, however, you're probably just going to wipe their mesh inserts, muse included. Smart people backup their muses along with their egos.

eaton wrote:
Theoretically, could a Muse to be smarter than the Gamma fork that it "serves?"

Nobody intentionally makes Gamma forks, so a Gamma fork is very unlikely to have a muse. A Muse is, however, likely to be more capable than a Gamma.

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Wed, 2014-12-24 09:35

Forseti

In my adventure I had similar

In my adventure I had similar problems to solve. Players begin as beta forks with memories and Muses deleted. The forks were obtained by Nine Lives at receiving end of their darkcaster and intended to work in virtual sweatshop exping avatars for sale. For such role Muses were not needed and were deleted wholly - it should be easy enough to do as Muse is separate entity, a piece of code and can be wiped without affecting the Ego. Egos memories could get in a way so were wiped too - that was far more complicated as memories are intertwined with skills so it is possible for characters to eventually remember scraps of memories back. In course of adventure one character is resleeved into hijacked Hazer morph that has Muse left in cranial computer. Upon restarting in new body Ego finds that Muse refuses to cooperate as character's crypto keys are invalid so Muse enters mode similar to one you see when using pirated Windows. That's example what can be done. Possibilities are many and things can be tweaked as long as they aren't upsetting the game. So as ShadowDragon mentioned: only AI (Muse) in cranial computer, ghostrider needed to host additional Ego (treat as another cranial computer so with an AI companion only). I think that you could substitute delta fork for AI here - its basically a bit more complicated chatbot. And one more restriction: only one AI/delta fork per cranial computer. Beta forks can be edited as needed so could retain Muses or not. Muse certainly can be instructed by prime Ego to restrict its capabilities when copied to fork. It can be edited too but this would require relevant skills and time. On the other side trimming/cracking could be necessary if Muse has copy protection. Frankly, I think that there should exists AIs less sophisticated than Muse to serve the forks as mesh interaction, basic security and planner agent. You wouldn't have to bother with Muse calibration but just plug and play such agent. That would solve problems with licensing the Muses, sharing crypto keys and such.

Wed, 2014-12-24 11:47

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

*makes a note to add a ghost

*makes a note to add a ghost rider to tavarus' equipment tables* I would say alot depends on the manufacturer of the info morph. i would think by and large most infomorphs that are not an infugee or biological in origin to be museless.

Wed, 2014-12-24 11:59

eaton

I'm putting something

I'm putting something together that sounds similar to Forseti's forknapping scenario: a Beta Fork of a skilled hacker whose pre-sweatshop memories were wiped by Nine Lives before they rented out a bank of him. He was "busted out" by a Pre-Fall loved one whose ultimate goal is tracking down the alpha fork with intact family memories. He now works with said person, but they've hidden the relationship from him and he's none the wiser about their connection. They currently work as a team, with his infomorph in her ghostrider module. Given the background, I think it makes sense for him to be museless; although he's still pretty effective at hacking and tactical support, he does suffer from the -5 aptitude penalty, the 60 point skill cap, and a handful of fun psych disorders. I'm trying to decide if she might have (essentially) replaced her muse with him. We'll see.

Wed, 2014-12-24 21:09

UnitOmega

Actually, you can run a full

Actually, you can run a full infomorph in Mesh Inserts or an Ecto, it's just really shitty to do so. And there's only effectively one Ego "slot", so if an Ego is in the "Muse" slot, you can't get a Muse.

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