So I ran Eclipse Phase the other day. I was not prepared at all, but the other EP GM in the group wasn't, either, and asked me to run. Also, the group wanted to play on Earth.
So, what I did was have them talk to a simulspace projection that was secretly a Promethean and his oddball friend, a delta fork of a Promethean who has lost the rest of her mind somewhere on Earth. These two send the group on a mission to Earth via mass driver firing a hunk of hollowed out rock filled with the PC's, a small, self-assembling return rocket, and suspension gel to keep everything from going splat on impact. They're there to get an "egg," in reality an incredibly intricate mass of circuitry in an egg-shaped translucent vessel containing the remainder of the broken Promethean. There was some filler flavor stuff regarding these two and how they located the egg and the nature of the device, but that's not important in the context of this post.
Anyway, they get down there, fuck around the frozen city a bit (the southern end of the Madrid Metroplex), fight some headhunters, run from a fractal, and locate the egg. It's in a subterranean factory that is now creating little smart material bugs that mass together to make larger baddies. The factory has gone crazy, and it's expanding its powerbase via bug tunnels through the ice and snow all over that section of the city. It's built a mass of ice macro-circuits around the egg in its main control room in an attempt to access the info it knows is inside, thinking it could be a valuable resource. The Factory AI isn't a Titan, it's just crazy and potentially dangerous.
The session ended with bugs coming out of the ice circuits, forming into a big mirror disk in front of the PC's, and the disk molding into a face and saying, "Welcome to my factory." The only problem is, I pulled all of this out of my ass on the fly, and now I'm drawing a blank on what cool stuff to throw in and make a full session between this scene and the return to space. Basically, the objective is get the egg from the AI and get it back to the rocket, where they load up and take off within a couple of hours, which is the limit on the window the Prometheans created in the Earth blockade for the players to return to space and get scooped up by another team.
I've had a stressful week, and I just don't know what cool stuff to throw in here. Any ideas?
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Fleshing out an earth threat
Wed, 2011-04-27 23:28
#1
killerjoel
Fleshing out an earth threat
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Thu, 2011-04-28 09:46
#2
Dramatic Exit
Re: Fleshing out an earth threat
The below is a hopeless cross between Excession by Iain M Banks, Groundhog Day and maybe Inception. Apologies to all involved.
***************
Seconds later, a powerful hack over wireless ensues.
[i]The egg - the half of the Promethean's soul and memories left behind - remembers Madrid in the sun. It remembers the sprawling metroplex, the transport rings, the noise, the pollution, but it also remembers the beaches and the glorious sun. It remembers its fascination with life there, and the people surrounding it. It remembers listening in on endless activities and conversations: parents playing with their kids; heated arguments between business partners and lover's trysts. It was also a hopeless romantic. In some cases - when it knew that two people should be together - it subtly interfered, trying to make their lives better. [/i]
[i]That is, until one time its interference went wrong, devastatingly wrong. Lives were shattered, families broken. The broken part of the Promethean's mind has lived in guilt ever since.[/i]
[i]When the Fall happened and it's mind was lost, it became trapped in a horrifying loop, replaying the scenario over and over in a complex simulspace. It's mania spread into the surrounding factory and AI systems.[/i]
The PCs find themselves in the simulspace and must discover what's happened and how to set the relationship right, to finally heal the Promethean's mind which will, in turn, shut down the factory.
***************
Oh god, I think I hate myself.
Thu, 2011-04-28 06:16
#3
Arenamontanus
Re: Fleshing out an earth threat
Nice simulspace idea. What the factory is actually trying to do (absolutely with no success, it is crazy after all) is to recreate Madrid as it ought to be - sunny, full of humans and life. Unfortunately it tries to do it with ice and rock. In many ways it *is* the Promethean.
"Healing the mind" sounds IMHO a bit too much like saving the day with The Power of Friendship. Nice and cuddly, but not good for the chilling world of EP. I would rather run the mindscape scenario as a way of getting to know the Promethean and its problem, show the PCs the Fall up close (and yes, have horrible trauma-inducing experiences) and give a hint of how much has been lost. What the PCs need to do is to convince the Promethean to let them have the egg so they can try building a better tomorrow in the real world...
...an approach that will turn out to be a total failure (ever tried to argue with someone delusional?) At this point something unexpected happens: one or more of the characters suddenly get taken over by *something*. The possessed characters suddenly towers over/expands through the simspace, doing something incomprehensible (fill in suitable surreal effects here - remember that Dali was Spanish :-) One of the possessed turns to the characters, looks like their simspace contact, and explains "Terribly sorry, dear chaps, but I had a hunch this might be necessary. So I lodged a stowaway fork in one of your minds. Do not mind me, I will be gone in a jiffy." The possessed of course get some nice mental stress from realizing they have a Promethean fork stuck in their brains (how the heck did it get in there?)
Now the Madrid Promethean in the egg is happy to come with the characters. Except that without it the factory reverts to "sanity" and begins to tear down everything, possibly even trying to kill the characters.
Meanwhile, at the rocket... A nanoswarm has noticed it and figured out what is going on. It is laying traps. Just imagine how much fun stuff you can do with nanofacturing! See some of the tricks in this thread.
"When we approached the rocket I realized that something was slightly wrong. Didn't it land next to a big rock? Then the rocket shimmered and turned into a black cloud streaming towards us, shrieking in ultrasound."
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Thu, 2011-04-28 09:22
#4
killerjoel
Re: Fleshing out an earth threat
These are great ideas! Thanks, guys, that's exactly the kick in the creative pants I needed.
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Thu, 2011-04-28 11:50
#5
crisaron
Re: Fleshing out an earth threat
- it's funny boss, I though we where the only humans around here...
- What do you mean?
- Well there is a bunch around our pocket rocket module... and they are trying to fire it up... and they definitively look transhumans, actually one of them is screaming in English we have to hurry, a swarm is on the way to the rocket...
Thu, 2011-04-28 19:10
#6
Quincey Forder
Re: Fleshing out an earth threat
what would be interresting is a suburbia town completely intact, with bots doing the maintenance, but it's absolutely desert. the local market store's fabbers make new merchandises, wrap them, the bots put them on the shelves, then to recycling when the consumption date is passed, since nobody by them
The PCs arrive there, and wakes up the TITAN that dozzed off when everybody died, despite her best -if misguided- effort.
that idea came to me while watching Ergo Proxy, btw. Except the TITAN wouldn't be as vile as that proxy in the show.
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Fri, 2011-05-06 11:04
#7
KevinWI
Re: Fleshing out an earth threat
Ah, that is brilliant!