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ego bridge as brain eraser

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jackgraham jackgraham's picture
ego bridge as brain eraser
In case any of you were wondering, yeah, you could totally restrain an unwilling biomorph in an ego bridge and goop their brain with it. I just thought of it now (how did it take me this long?), so don't ask me what the rules are.
J A C K   G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth!   http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham
UnitOmega UnitOmega's picture
Quote:so don't ask me what
Quote:
so don't ask me what the rules are.
Like erasing an Ego with Brainhacking, only slower and more painful, and everybody in the room need to roll some serious Stress checks? Y'know, cuz the guy on the slab is probably screaming bloody murder while it happens.
H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/
MrWigggles MrWigggles's picture
I dont think it'd be slow at
I dont think it'd be slow at all. It depends on the prep time, but if you had say, a 'legal' empty brain scan. It should take just moments to up load. Presumably, for any long term storage, they probably have a something like this already. Its always best to reformat a recently wiped drive.
UnitOmega UnitOmega's picture
I meant relatively, I'm
I meant relatively, I'm pretty sure transferring or deleting an Ego stored in a Cyberbrain takes a Complex Action, while the process to resleeve into a biomorph or copy the Ego out of one takes like, a minute.
H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/
MrWigggles MrWigggles's picture
OH. So you were talking more
OH. So you were talking more about like, the scene with Hannibal Lector eating the person brain with him still alive?
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
Goop as in turned into
Goop as in turned into useless goo? Or just destroy the ego while leaving an organic brain that could be sleeved? I mean, why waste a good brain? Even a lowly flat or splicer can go for 5k if in good condition. I suppose their immense value is could be one reason why you hadn't considered it. Brain destruction can be accomplished with a base ball bat and a little brute force. Death by brain gooing via ego bridge is a special kind horrible death. Kinda like getting chopped up into 100 pieces. If you wanted a bit more finesse and leave the brain mostly intact, you could drive a nail into the brain through the eye socket. It'll cause brain damage, but the ego would survive. However, I think the person would be justified in wanting to load their last good back up instead of trying to live with the damage. As for rules... I suppose you could use a nanotoxin or some other drug as a starting point. This needs some thought though. I'll be back.
Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture
This reminds me, what exactly
This reminds me, what exactly happened to Tara Yu in Glory? I mean, I know what happens to her EVENTUALLY (noodles), but it was mentioned that one of the exsurgents sleeves into her morph while she's resleeved into another morph (noodles). How exactly did that process work, if there was only one ego bridge on the ship, and the morph she resleeves into (noodles) lacked a cortical stack?
"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address
Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture
Standard resleeving (probably
Standard resleeving (probably) involves "blanking" the old brain to prep the morph for storage or a new ego. I'm guessing its possible to circumvent some safeties and and run the brain so it doesn't copy the info as its wiped away. You could probably cut this down to a needle and nanomachine payload, so basically a nanotoxin. I suspect a nailgun is something medichines can handle, and a nail wouldn't do much to a brain, people have hit themselves with them and failed to notice for a while. Like 50 nails would be a different story though. I bet you could totally slag a brain with an injected dissembler swarm (isn't that basically the necrosis nanotoxin?). What about the reverse though? During resleeving an ego experiences both bodies at once right? So what happens if you stop the process in the middle and keep the virtualized intermediary brain running? Couldn't you "double sleeve" an ego that way? I'm not sure if there are practical uses, but is it possible?
UnitOmega UnitOmega's picture
I mean, we can probably
I mean, we can probably assume that an ego bridge has two ends naturally, being a "bridge", so you could just run a transfer from the original morph to the new one on the same unit. That, or it has an arbitrary amount of local storage to contain egos in dead storage, you pull Tara Yu to archive, wipe the original, beam a new ego into it, then write from local to the noodle-man morph.
H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
I did some looking for stuff
I did some looking for stuff already written. I want some ideas of where to benchmark things. First of, the book says that you can wipe your morph while you upload, in case you want to put it on ice or something and store it for later. So that means that a morph can be wiped in 10 minutes. Nothing about gooping, just a clean wipe. There is a section on destructive uploading, but no time frame is given. It seems to only exist to point out that some people do that kind of thing. The nanotoxin Necrosis is quite dangerous. It seems to be the fastest kill you nanotoxin. 1d10 / 2 damage per action turn for 1 minute (20 action turns). It however doesn't focus on the brain, which is what you want to do if you are brain gooping. That damage seems to be the same for various nanoswarms, whether it be saboteurs or bio-defense swarm (gatecrashing). The nanotoxin Disruption is closest to brain gooping that I can find, but it takes far longer kill a morph than it would take to do a clean wipe of a brain. Aptitude damage once per hour. Maybe a long agonizing death is what you are going for, in which case it might be perfect. Programing nanoswarms to act outside their usual set functions a Programing (Nanoswarm). No time frame is given, but if your plan is to goop someone's brain, you probably want to be prepared in advance so the time shouldn't matter much. Creating a knife with nanotechnology is a 1 hour process. I don't think brain gooping should take longer or be more complex than that. A Monowire Garrote is fairly fast way to kill someone. A precise use of nanotechnology could be as lethal if they get the chance to get into position before they attack. Maybe cause an anerism or cut important blood veins to the brain. ---- With that information in mind, I think an ego bridge should be able to goop someone's brain in 10 minutes. This assumes the target is long dead before then and no effort is made to prolong the suffering. The first step would be put the person in the machine and turn it on. In the first minute, the medichines move into in position. Everything should seem normal for this first minute. Once the attack begins, the target will suffer 1d10 / 2 damage per action turn. In addition, the target should suffer some neural damage or trauma (I haven't decided yet) and/or a wound. The person isn't incapacitated at this point, so they will probably try to get out. You will likely need them strapped into place so they can't escape and have their mesh inserts jammed so they can't call for help. (Would they be aware of damage)? The person shouldn't be alive for long. I wrote this stuff with a conservative mindset. Someone else might decide the effects should be worse. I'm tempted to up the damage to just 1d10 or remove the dice roll and automatically inflict damage per turn. In not really sure what kind of effects this process will have on a living person and what effects it would have if they were conscious (I made some guesses). Since the brain doesn't have pain receptors, I'm not really sure if the victim would notice they were in trouble.
Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture
Well, it takes a disassembler
Well, it takes a disassembler swarm a minute or two to reduce a human body to DR (which is probably pretty goopy considering how nanomachines kill people). A brain is roughly 2% of the body's volume, so if the brain was a starting point for the nanos, a swarm should be able to goop it in a few seconds, fast enough to kill in an action turn. That's quite a different number than you came up with DivineWrath, which I think is because I started with smart acid as a base (probably not what an Ego Bridge uses), and nanotech is really abstract.
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
Maybe you're numbers are
Maybe you're numbers are better. I think I kinda got too locked down in my research. I forgot to ask for a second opinion. I was against someone being killed in one action turn, but when you are strapped down, you could be killed by a bullet to the head. It was fun doing the research though.
MrWigggles MrWigggles's picture
Hrm. I think a potential
Hrm. I think a potential hurdle, we're forgetting is the Muse. Its an independent system, thats seen dozens or scores of ego bridge back ups, on more code base level then their parent Ego has, and should be to 'feel' something is wrong and act against it.
MAD Crab MAD Crab's picture
Physical access is admin
Physical access is admin access. The muse can't do anything to stop an ego bridge from running, and somebody who's strapped you to a chair and is running fdisk on your brain can do the same thing to your mesh inserts. Has to be able to, actually. After all, if you're resleeving it has to copy and wipe the mesh inserts too.