So I'm going to be starting an Eclipse Phase campaign soon, and my players have come to expect big, campaign-level plot twists from me. Reading Ego Hunter has given me an idea for a possible plot twist and I wanted to get some feedback. :)
So what if the players in my campaign are all Beta Forks of the same person and don't know it. As an extra little oomph, what if they are all personalities from someone with multiple personality disorder who were all spun off as forks sometime before the fall. As the campaign progresses I'll give little hints that something about their pasts isn't quite right and things from time to time won't quite add up. I'm thinking the "Alpha" may in fact be a major villain of the campaign in some way, or may in fact be their "proxy".
This whole concept is really just starting to gestate, and I wanted to get it out there while it's in the formative stages so I can get some other ideas thrown into the mix. I'll expand this post as I start to nail down the idea a bit. I still need to figure out who or what has brought these characters back together into Firewall and to what end. The idea I'm thinking of is very much inspired by the movie "Identity".
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Plot twist inspired by Ego Hunter
Fri, 2011-03-25 09:56
#1
Cereth
Plot twist inspired by Ego Hunter
Fri, 2011-03-25 12:34
#2
nezumi.hebereke
Re: Plot twist inspired by Ego Hunter
It would be difficult to not notice you're a beta fork, unless that gap is filled in by something. They wouldn't have complete memories or skillsets. The exception there is, if you take a beta fork and then add other stuff to it, they would be a gestalt entity based off of a beta fork + whatever (sort of like spam, really).
The 'you're all forks, but of a guy with multiple personalities' seems like a bit of a stretch. If you're looking for a reason why the characters act differently, you can say the forks were all given false memories or skill training or whatnot so they can fit their roles, and they naturally adopted the personality imprinted in those memories.
That also gives another interesting idea for a run - the characters were someone else, but somehow they got impressed with someone else's memories (but not a full wipe), and the personality just naturally accepted the memories and continued on the personality in them. Needs some work, but just a thought.
Fri, 2011-03-25 13:13
#3
Arenamontanus
Re: Plot twist inspired by Ego Hunter
Psychosurgery can make forks think they are the original - or even give them fake pasts. Maybe they are cut-and-paste people, with memories copied from other people in someone's ego banks. Might lead to an interesting experience when they discover someone who has one of their childhood memories.
This sounds just like the kind of nastiness the Nine Lives triad might be doing. The real question is of course why - why did they do it, or why did someone pay them to do it?
Multiple personalities might not be a disorder if it can be handled well (see Walter John William's "Aristoi" or Peter Watts' "Blindsight" for two takes on augmented MPD). Having constantly running forks of your personalities might allow you to function extremely well - they are easily merged back, yet have different perspectives and abilities. A long-running person like that might be very powerful - and potentially crazy in new and subtle ways.
A beta that has been running for a long time might not be distinguishable from a real person any more. Unlike a gamma which is an AI with a personality stretched over it, they seem to be cut-down neural networks. So if one is downloaded into a biomorph and then uploaded again their ego file would likely contain a complete neural network. Give them a few years of experience and divergence and they will truly be alphas.
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Sat, 2011-03-26 22:19
#4
Cereth
Re: Plot twist inspired by Ego Hunter
I am also thinking about recruiting one of the players to be my "co-conspirator" and will serve as the alpha personality and his end game goal will be to subsume (or re-integrate) the other characters over time. As a group we enjoy some inter-party intrigue and I think the player I have in mind could pull it off without giving anything away.
I was thinking the beta-forks would have been created pre-fall so over the coarse of ten years they would not be distinguishable from a real person anymore. The multiple personality idea sounded interesting to me and kinda' bizarre. I'd like to give my players a good mind f*ck. I was thinking it could be the result of some reckless, pre-fall mega-corp experiment gone awry.
I will check out those sources for more inspiration, Arenamontanus. :)
Sun, 2011-03-27 05:42
#5
Arenamontanus
Re: Plot twist inspired by Ego Hunter
Of course a true mindscrew would be them not to be forks, but the enemy giving them compelling evidence they are...
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Sun, 2011-03-27 13:02
#6
Cereth
Re: Plot twist inspired by Ego Hunter
Yes, that would be a double mindscrew. :)
I'm thinking that Firewall and their proxy will know that they are betas and will have brought them together as a group to stop their alpha, which will be up to some nefarious, existential threat to transhumanity. (probably won't have one of them be my co-conspirator...can't think of a good reason for them to have been brought together in Firewall using that angle) They still won't be told that they are betas and will have to figure that out on their own. Firewall will be using them to stop their alpha because who best to stop him than people who basically were "him".
I like the whole "multiple personality as benefit" concept as depicted in "Aristoi" and that will have been the whole point of the experiment in the first place, but then the fall happened and those personalities were scattered to the four winds. Maybe the alpha is even actively hunting the characters seeking to "bring them home". I've really just read the synopsis of "Aristoi", but am going to pick it up 'cause I'm sure there are some other juicy bits in there.
I'm still planning on running a version of your "Lurking in Every Flower" as an opening too, which should be quite interesting given all this other stuff.
Sun, 2011-04-03 09:01
#7
Cereth
Re: Plot twist inspired by Ego Hunter
Researching this whole plot twist idea has got me reading "Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity" by Thomas Metzinger. Holy crap is that some far out, existential stuff. I'm pretty sure I only understand about a tenth of what he is saying, but it is still pretty interesting.