Leodiensian

Mass Effect: 50 A.B.E

I'd definitely be interested. I love biotics so I'll probably end up playing some form of Adept.

Eclipse Phase

Your mind is software. Program it.
Your body is a shell. Upgrade it.
Death is a disease. Cure it.
Extinction is coming. Fight it.

In scientific terminology, the eclipse phase is the time between a virus entering a cell and the cell showing signs of infection. In this period the cell does not appear infected to an outside observer - but it is infected.

Eclipse Phase is also the name of a transhumanist hard sci-fi game by Posthuman Studios. The game will be using this setting and I'll be talking about some of the big ideas of it in this post. It uses a d100 system with a 'blackjack' mechanic - you want to roll high while staying under your skill rank. If you'd like to learn more about it on your own, you can find all the books free to download as PDFs thanks to the Creative Commons licensing they are released under. You can find them for free, reliable download here: http://learntabletoprpgs.com/eclipse-phase.html and more information can be found of Posthuman's own site, www.eclipsephase.com.

Ten years ago, Earth fell to rampant AI's known as the TITANs. They killed the majority of humanity and left the Earth an inhospitable wasteland, surrounded by a quarantine of deadly satellites, in an event now referred to as The Fall. Humanity survived, though in severely diminished numbers, thanks to two factors. First, we had begun interplanetary colonization prior to the Fall, with major colonies on Luna and Mars. Second, the technology of cortical stacks allowed us to digitize human consciousness and extract, copy and upload minds like computer data; combined with advanced robotics and biotechnology, bodies have become replaceable objects, status symbols and equipment. Many who were unable to bodily escaped Earth broadcast their minds into space to be saved in spirit, if not in the flesh. Thanks to cortical stacks, we have a kind of semi-immortality; as long as you have your mind backed up somewhere, death is a temporary inconvenience.

We have colonized almost all of the solar system. Mars is the new cradle of humanity, home to about 200 million people (roughly 2/5ths the total remaining population), under the government of the hypercorporations of the Planetary Consortium. Other major inner-system polities are the Morningstar Constellation, defectors from the Consortium who living in floating cities on Venus and the Luna-Lagrange Alliance, who live in high Earth orbit and under the lunar surface. Out beyond the inner system, the largest population groups the Jovian Junta is a faction of extreme bioconservatives and isolationists with extensive military might, living in Jupiter's orbit and the Titanian Commonwealth, a cybersocialist democracy on one of the moons of Saturn. The outer system is also the home of many anarchists, brinkers, isolationists, Scum, exhumans and other "none-of-the-above" groups. Eclipse Phase has a staggering wealth of social groups and political blocs in its fleshed out setting, with a lot of thought given to politics and economics.

The default assumption for the game is that you will be playing agents of Firewall. Firewall is what you might call a benevolent conspiracy. Drawing agents from all factions and social groups, their agenda is simple; keep humanity from going extinct. This involves identifying and handling 'x-threat's, or existential risks, which are basically anything which could push humanity over the brink and into oblivion. This can cover a lot of stuff, so Firewall has to be a quite diverse organization. Defusing TITAN relics on the lunar surface or doing behind the scenes politics to keep the cold war between the Jovians and the Titanians cold both count as preventing potential extinction events. Of course, this broad base means Firewall is pretty much illegal everywhere as well - so it's good to keep your Firewall status under your hat. (If you don't like the idea of being Firewall agents, let me know of course!)

You are all sentinels, agents of Firewall. Through one avenue or another, you have been instructed to meet in Extropia, a hollowed out asteroid in the Main Belt. A Firewall sentinel named Bundok Callao has gone missing on a job in Extropia and his last report has made your bosses concerned...

Eclipse Phase

Your mind is software. Program it.
Your body is a shell. Upgrade it.
Death is a disease. Cure it.
Extinction is coming. Fight it.

In scientific terminology, the eclipse phase is the time between a virus entering a cell and the cell showing signs of infection. In this period the cell does not appear infected to an outside observer - but it is infected.

Eclipse Phase is also the name of a transhumanist hard sci-fi game by Posthuman Studios. The game will be using this setting and I'll be talking about some of the big ideas of it in this post. If you'd like to learn more about it on your own, you can find all the books free to download as PDFs thanks to the Creative Commons licensing they are released under. You can find them for free, reliable download here: http://learntabletoprpgs.com/eclipse-phase.html and more information can be found of Posthuman's own site, www.eclipsephase.com.

Ten years ago, Earth fell to rampant AI's known as the TITANs. They killed the majority of humanity and left the Earth an inhospitable wasteland, surrounded by a quarantine of deadly satellites, in an event now referred to as The Fall. Humanity survived, though in severely diminished numbers, thanks to two factors. First, we had begun interplanetary colonization prior to the Fall, with major colonies on Luna and Mars. Second, the technology of cortical stacks allowed us to digitize human consciousness and extract, copy and upload minds like computer data; combined with advanced robotics and biotechnology, bodies have become replaceable objects, status symbols and equipment. Many who were unable to bodily escaped Earth broadcast their minds into space to be saved in spirit, if not in the flesh. Thanks to cortical stacks, we have a kind of semi-immortality; as long as you have your mind backed up somewhere, death is a temporary inconvenience.

We have colonized almost all of the solar system. Mars is the new cradle of humanity, home to about 200 million people (roughly 2/5ths the total remaining population), under the government of the hypercorporations of the Planetary Consortium. Other major inner-system polities are the Morningstar Constellation, defectors from the Consortium who living in floating cities on Venus and the Luna-Lagrange Alliance, who live in high Earth orbit and under the lunar surface. Out beyond the inner system, the largest population groups the Jovian Junta is a faction of extreme bioconservatives and isolationists with extensive military might, living in Jupiter's orbit and the Titanian Commonwealth, a cybersocialist democracy on one of the moons of Saturn. The outer system is also the home of many anarchists, brinkers, isolationists, Scum, exhumans and other "none-of-the-above" groups. Eclipse Phase has a staggering wealth of social groups and political blocs in its fleshed out setting, with a lot of thought given to politics and economics.

The default assumption for the game is that you will be playing agents of Firewall. Firewall is what you might call a benevolent conspiracy. Drawing agents from all factions and social groups, their agenda is simple; keep humanity from going extinct. This involves identifying and handling 'x-threat's, or existential risks, which are basically anything which could push humanity over the brink and into oblivion. This can cover a lot of stuff, so Firewall has to be a quite diverse organization. Defusing TITAN relics on the lunar surface or doing behind the scenes politics to keep the cold war between the Jovians and the Titanians cold both count as preventing potential extinction events. Of course, this broad base means Firewall is pretty much illegal everywhere as well - so it's good to keep your Firewall status under your hat. (If you don't like the idea of being Firewall agents, let me know of course!)

You are all sentinels, agents of Firewall. Through one avenue or another, you have been instructed to meet in Extropia, a hollowed out asteroid in the Main Belt. A Firewall sentinel named Bundok Callao has gone missing on a job in Extropia and his last report has made your bosses concerned...

Presenting: Hikikomori Virtual Academy

Having just finished a book about hikkikomori, this might be an interesting chance to put that book-learnin' to practice, heh

Orion Rising

Well I had figured that in the Space Future hacking would actually be a pretty major thing in bounty hunting - tracking people by their presence in local wireless networks, hacking their transactions, security cameras etc...Think about how easy it is for people to track you NOW using digital stuff and then extend that even further.. To say nothing of there's a whole spaceship there you really don't want someone else hacking.

As for Harken: He IS a human, he just swapped his meat body for a robotic one. If that's too sci-fi an idea I guess I could modify him to be just a heavily-bionic organic, like a rabid transhumanist, but I dunno... Would that be acceptable? Why the no-robots rule? What level of sci fi are we talking here for your setting? Is there really no such thing as robotics or advanced cybernetics? We're traveling between solar systems here, so we must have some kind of FTL travel, right? And it's for petty bounty hunting so that means FTL stuff must be pretty commonplace, so the overall tech level must be really high. I'm just unclear on what level of tech-ness is acceptable. And if you're opposed to quite advanced tech, I'd have to throw him out and go for one of the other slots? Pilot, muscle or engineer, right? Must admit, not many of those really appeal to me..

Orion Rising

-Name-
Harken Mackall

-Age-
25

-Job-
Cyber-warfare/communications expert

-Appearance-

Click Here

-Personality-
Harken is an acquired taste, to put it diplomatically. With his flamboyant body movements, variable accents through his vocal unit and love of memes he can come across as someone who's trying to hard to get you to like him - though that wouldn't explain why he seems to spend so much time insulting people. He doesn't just think he's smarter than you, he knows it and he wants to make sure you know it too. He is a quick-witted individual, the kind of person who thinks in sudden flashes of inspiration and intuitions rather than slow deliberations. This can lead to him being somewhat brash and perhaps ill-tempered, acting without proper consideration, but his high level of intelligence means his flashes usually bear out in the long run even if somewhat.. unrefined in the short term.

Harken is an information sponge and is almost constantly browsing local webs, nets and meshes for the latest in cultural trends, gossip, media, memes, news and other such trivia. He will share this trivia with you whether you like it or not and is prone to delivering seemingly non-sequitur responses to questions which only he and a very small Venn diagram overlap of dedicated otaku would find amusing, or indeed comprehend in any way. Sometimes this rampant absorption of information pops up a valuable kernel of data, but most of the time it's basically verbal static. If you know what he's talking about, he's actually quite funny. It's just most people don't know what he's talking about.

Finally, Harken is what he calls a "synthetic supremacist", believing in the inherent superiority of artificial life over biological life. He claims that he was originally a weak, fleshy meatbag who underwent a full-body prosthesis procedure to become essentially a robot with a computer brain running a "human_mind.exe" operating system. He can be aggressively political in his beliefs - not so much to prevent him from working with purely organic or un-augmented people - but he tends to attribute someone's failings to their biological weaknesses. In contrast, he claims to feel his life has greatly improved since he became fully artificial, no longer needing to sleep, eat or perform other such ugly necessities.

-Specialties-
Expert Hacker/Programmer
Short-Range Combatant
Shiny, Shiny Body: Harken's synthetic body provides him with a number of advantages, including enhanced physical attributes and in-built processing power that allows him to perform hacks and other programs spontaneously. It also removes some disadvantages, such as no longer feeling pain or fatigue.

-Shortcomings-
Motormouth
Huge Nerd
Jumps The Gun

-History-
WIP

Code Of The Sword (Samurai/Fantasy/War) OOC

CHARACTER SHEET:
NAME: Haru (Formerly Togashi Haru)
AGE: 29
GENDER: Male
PERSONALITY/TRAITS:: Haru is a highly cynical man, as you would expect from his trade. He is distrustful of authority and tends to see samurai as bound by oaths of fealty - though sometimes he does envy the support they get from their clans. In conversation he comes across as sarcastically charming and sardonic, who realizes almost everything is a joke and laughs at it. He does not hold to any particular ideology or clan loyalty, save himself. He is not cruel, but he sometimes plays with his opponents in order to make his life a little more fun. Recently, he has found himself thinking about the place of ronin in this world and of gathering many of them together under one banner..
COUNTRY: Levania (Formerly Saji)
OCCUPATION: Ronin Mercenary/Assassin
BRIEF BIO: The Togashi Clan were a samurai clan held on retainer to several elite families and organizations with the nation of Saiji. Their main role outside of the battlefield was to be yojimbo - bodyguards, duelists, settling civil disputes through armed combat. They practiced controversial two-sword fighting styles that they closely guarded the secrets of and which other Clans considered unsporting, an unfair advantage. Haru was born out of wedlock to one of the members of the elite families that the Togashi protected, and so he was adopted by the Clan as he was illegitimate and not a member of the patron house.

Over time, Haru learned the art of blade, of fealty and loyalty to one's lord and master. He learned to fight other people's battles and not think for himself. He took orders, fought and spilled blood. He was even pretty good at it. This went fairly well until one day, he was reassigned from guard duty to active combat during one of the proxy battles in Levania. He saw active combat against a regiment of Corus samurai, cutting through them until something went wrong. A monstrous samurai lumbered out of the mist towards him, challenged him to a duel. The man was more like a demon, swollen and pulsing from within by some unknown force. They crossed blades and Haru was victorious - but at a cost. The demon samurai's tainted blood splashed him in the eyes. He reeled back in pain and his squadmates pulled him back out of the field for medical care.

Things did not go well from there. It seemed at first that the beast's blood might have been acidic and burned his eyes, but he had healed within days - and no-one had expected him to heal at all. His eyes had also changed color - going from a normal brown to a decidedly unnatural shade of silver. Haru seemed to be seeing even more clearly than before, in fact. One day, Haru observed from out of a window a friend of his tripping and hurting himself in the street, so he hurried down to help him back up - only to see him walking along, then tripping exactly as Haru had seen. He had seen the future. When he came forward with this discovery, he was rejected and reviled as a freak, tainted by the blood of the monster he'd killed. He was offered the chance to purify his soul through ritual suicide, which Haru rejected. He chose instead to become a ronin, a masterless samurai. He rejected his clan name and departed Saji to reside in Levania full time, the only place for an exile such as him.

Now he works as a mercenary and assassin, using his deadly skills for the highest bidder. Though the Togashi no longer consider him a member, some of the patron families remember his skill and covertly made contact with him in order to take out contracts. Where once he was a bodyguard, now he was a hired killer, totally abandoning his former honor. He would journey to the other countries to strike people in their homes, or ambush target samurai during their missions in Levania. Untouchable by his opponents, now more at home in the night than in the day, he soon build quite a legend around himself..

PIC/CHARACTER DESCRIPTION:

ETHER INFECTED?: Y
Haru's eyes have been changed by the contact with another Ether-infected individual's blood, giving him heightened accuracy, hand-eye co-ordination and advanced sight - he can see in multiple spectra of light, including infrared and ultraviolet. He also has limited local precognition; so long as he can see, he can perceive the events that will occur around him a few seconds into the future. This only applies for as long as he can see and does not extend to anything beyond a few seconds. In practical terms, it means he can anticipate danger very well, predict his opponents' attacks etc - but he can't see how large scale battles will turn out, if someone's going to betray him next week or anything that will occur where he can't see etc. However, like all Ether-infected individuals, this power comes at a price. As his vision's sensitivity heightened, he began to find everyday light painful and blinding, forcing him to resort to wearing shaded goggles in order to function normally in daylight. While he can see perfectly well in darkest night, he would now be blind in the day without his goggles.

Game of Thrones-esque RP (Political/War)

Definitely interested!