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Pre-Fall Campaign and Timeline Questions

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Sun, 2015-12-20 16:20

atamajakki atamajakki's picture

Pre-Fall Campaign and Timeline Questions

I've always loved the idea or a game at least partially set on Earth before the Fall, but the little nuggets about the organizations that would help create Firewall really inspired me. I'm especially enamored with Bletchley Park, but that's neither here nor there. I'm curious about a lot of things regarding pre-Fall Earth. I know the timeline is intentionally obscured in order to avoid the risk of us running over the top of it, but is there a general idea of how distant from today the current setting is? I know Mesh access was omnipresent (and so the necessary implants would've been as well), but how common were cortical stacks and exotic morphs? Had humanity been undying transhuman immortals for decades, or are post-Fall demographics skewed because those that could restore from backup or egocast to safety were the only survivors?

Sun, 2015-12-20 19:01

Kojak

Cortical stacks are only at

Cortical stacks are only at most 30 years old in AF 10, going by the timeline given in the core book. Longevity therapies for the immensely wealth and powerful are likewise only 70 years old at most. Make of those facts what you will.

—

"I wonder if in some weird Freudian way, Kojak was sucking on his own head." - Steve Webster on Kojak's lollipop

Mon, 2015-12-21 05:35

MrWigggles MrWigggles's picture

I always been fuzzy on that

I always been fuzzy on that too. I'm currently running a character that I have an original space colonist. She was an asteroid miner, part of the first group that went to found the Titanium Commonwealth. I placed her age at 167. I dont know if thats too young or to old.

Mon, 2015-12-21 15:32

atamajakki atamajakki's picture

I've got th vague idea of

I've got the vague idea of ~200 years in the future for the setting, seeing as the nations of today still mostly seem to be intact.

Mon, 2015-12-21 18:24

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

IIRc there is an NPC that is

IIRc there is an NPC that is near exact clone of Lady Gaga that i am not sure if it could be argued as canon or not that she is the oldest person in the setting and just barely scraped by on the longevity stuff to get to the point of ego bridging. I think someone else on here knows which one i am talking about and can further elaborate

Tue, 2015-12-22 02:55

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

There are some people who've

There are some people who've used some information to gauge the setting to be somewhere around 2143, so more like 120 years if they're right.

Tue, 2015-12-22 07:57

NimbleJack3 NimbleJack3's picture

The person running the

ORCACommander wrote:
IIRc there is an NPC that is near exact clone of Lady Gaga that i am not sure if it could be argued as canon or not that she is the oldest person in the setting and just barely scraped by on the longevity stuff to get to the point of ego bridging. I think someone else on here knows which one i am talking about and can further elaborate

The person running the Carnival Of The Goat is, if not actually Lady Gaga herself, someone who shares her exact name.

Tue, 2015-12-22 12:04

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

atamajakki wrote:I know Mesh

atamajakki wrote:
I know Mesh access was omnipresent (and so the necessary implants would've been as well), but how common were cortical stacks and exotic morphs?

Exotic morphs were a lot more common pre-Fall. Partly this is cultural--transhuman cultural survival memes coming into play after a near apocalypse. Partly it's practical. A morph that offloads sensory input and navigation to the surrounding Mesh, for example, wouldn't be legal anywhere post-Fall.

—

J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Tue, 2015-12-22 19:36

atamajakki atamajakki's picture

jackgraham wrote:atamajakki

jackgraham wrote:
atamajakki wrote:
I know Mesh access was omnipresent (and so the necessary implants would've been as well), but how common were cortical stacks and exotic morphs?
Exotic morphs were a lot more common pre-Fall. Partly this is cultural--transhuman cultural survival memes coming into play after a near apocalypse. Partly it's practical. A morph that offloads sensory input and navigation to the surrounding Mesh, for example, wouldn't be legal anywhere post-Fall.

So universal stacks and backups predate the Fall by a few generations? Or were they exclusively for the well-off? I'm curious if the Fall bottlenecked transhumanity to a small population of those with stacks/backups, or if they were commonplace on Earth by the time the Fall hit.

Tue, 2015-12-22 22:08

#10

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

I believe the Fall

I believe the Fall bottlenecked transhumanity by bandwidth from earth more than anything else. People off-world or lucky enough to beam themselves off or get off physically were lucky enough to escape. A backup stored on earth is still lost after all. From some of the stuff from Firewall I think stacks were very common, sort of like Altered Carbon. I'm thinking of the reference with the Ultimates and the refugees.

Tue, 2015-12-22 22:23

#11

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

Also another reference peice

Also another reference peice from altered carbon is that 9 lives is literally swimming in them like baron samedi

Wed, 2015-12-23 17:01

#12

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:I

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
I believe the Fall bottlenecked transhumanity by bandwidth from earth more than anything else. People off-world or lucky enough to beam themselves off or get off physically were lucky enough to escape. A backup stored on earth is still lost after all. From some of the stuff from Firewall I think stacks were very common, sort of like Altered Carbon. I'm thinking of the reference with the Ultimates and the refugees.

Yes, they were nigh ubiquitous, although they hadn't been around that long. There had only been 1-2 generations of people with stacks before the Fall hit.

—

J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Wed, 2015-12-23 17:03

#13

SquireNed

jackgraham wrote

jackgraham wrote:
Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
I believe the Fall bottlenecked transhumanity by bandwidth from earth more than anything else. People off-world or lucky enough to beam themselves off or get off physically were lucky enough to escape. A backup stored on earth is still lost after all. From some of the stuff from Firewall I think stacks were very common, sort of like Altered Carbon. I'm thinking of the reference with the Ultimates and the refugees.
Yes, they were nigh ubiquitous, although they hadn't been around that long. There had only been 1-2 generations of people with stacks before the Fall hit.

What about life extension and things like cyberbrains? Were those mainstream about the same time cortical stacks, or were they older? I sort of picture the 2050's/70's being the end of "old age" in the Eclipse Phase timeline, basically being the point where a significant group of people is able to get enough life extension to hit clinical immortality.

Fri, 2015-12-25 12:56

#14

atamajakki atamajakki's picture

Plausibility

It sounds a little crazy, but I suppose we did go from horse-drawn carriages to space flight in one human lifetime... I can't image getting a cortical stack implanted feels too great.