Glory -Eclipse missions
Content
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GLORY
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Glory is a starter scenario for Eclipse Phase. It sets
the player characters on the path of a missing person
and leads them into a twisted den of horrors. It includes numerous tips for gamemasters new to running
Eclipse Phase.
Mission Hook
Professor Magnus Qiao-sen Ming needs a team to
investigate the fate of Tara Yu, who is both a colleague
of Ming’s at Titan Autonomous University (TAU) and a
Firewall proxy. Yu was a crow (an investigator into potential x-risks; see p. 358, EP). She was last heard from
while on the trail of a set of hardware memory modules
thought to contain a partial archive of Myrmidon, a
pre-Fall military AGI that became one of the TITANs.
Studying its code might provide important clues as to
the origin of the TITANs—and possibly their fate.
In the course of their investigation, the characters
will be able to accomplish most of their research via
the mesh. Their leads will eventually steer them to raid
the ship of a criminal group that has been infected by
a rogue strain of the Exsurgent virus.
Not Yet Firewall?
This scenario assumes that the characters are already
agents of Firewall. If the characters are not yet sentinels,
this adventure may be used to introduce them to the
organization. In this case, Prof. Ming will approach the
characters about a clandestine job, saying only that they
came recommended for their unique skill sets. He will
not initially reveal the nature of Firewall or its mission.
As the characters learn more about the TITANs and the
Exsurgent virus, however, Ming will feed them tidbits
about some of the secret history. Once the mission is
concluded, Ming will debrief the characters and invite
them to join Firewall (see Stage 5: Debriefing, p. 20).
Starting Setting
Locus (p. 100, EP) is a good location to start in, as
many key NPCs either have ties to the anarchist habitat or reside in or near it. Titan (p. 105, EP) is also a
good starting point, as it allows the initial meeting with
Professor Ming (p. 21) to occur face to face. The player
characters may start from anywhere in the solar system,
however, as the initial meeting and much of the early
research can be conducted via the mesh. In this case, the
gamemaster may wish to relocate some of the NPCs to
make meeting the player characters easier.
Background
Myrmidon was an AGI component of the US military’s
Total Information Tactical Awareness Network. Like
the other AGIs in this network, Myrmidon achieved
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seed AI capability and was later infected by the Exsurgent virus. It is of particular interest to Firewall
because some of the hardware from its primary locus,
a military satellite in an Earth-Moon Lagrange orbit,
was known to have survived the Battle of L4.
Myrmidon was recovered by the Yokyai Kong, a
Thai-led southeast Asian evac fleet. The Kong hoped
to gain an edge in the desperate war against the
TITANs by studying it. The hardware, including the
storage modules, was taken to the Thai governmentin-exile onboard Vishnukam, the Yokyai Kong’s main
habitat, under control of Air Marshal Viprakasit.
Before the hardware could be studied, however, it
was lost during an infamous incident known as the
Oxygen Deck Riots.
The Oxygen Deck Riots were a minor but tragic
incident sparked by the Thai government’s controversial decision to forcibly upload a significant number of
refugees in order to relieve the resource pressures that
were threatening the habitat’s functioning and existence.
Due to massive overcrowding, the station’s life support
systems were in danger of failure and thousands faced
starvation and lack of basic amenities.
For people who had only just escaped Earth with
bodies intact, this was too much. They gladly heeded
the call made by a group of hardline Lao Buddhist
monks to band together and take action. A flash mob
of refugees detained in docked ships cut through the
airlocks of the axial docking facility, boarded Vishnukam, and stormed through to occupy the habitat
life support facilities. They barricaded themselves
in and and demanded the fleet officers abandon
the plan. The government responded by sending in
troops who slaughtered the protesters. This sparked
days of riots and conflict aboard the habitat and
refugee ships, fueled by rumors and fears among
the refugees that the Air Marshal had ordered them
liquidated. Thousands died.
Enter the Wolves
One of the many nationality-based criminal gangs
that muscled their way into evacuee status during the
Fall, the White Khanhs started out as a Hanoi triad.
They had a controlling interest in several of the larger
scum barges and refugee ships that accreted from
the flotsam of the nascent Vietnamese, Laotian, and
Cambodian orbital colonization efforts. During the
chaos of the riots, the White Khanhs pillaged a dozen
separate caches of military and government hardware
and supplies—Myrmidon’s recovered hardware fragments among them—before melting back into the
populace when order was restored. The White Khanhs
quickly sold off the most valuable items and tech and,
Glory Reborn
Nearly a decade later, Phuong Lê, a tech aboard the
Flower, discovered the cache containing the Myrmidon
hardware. They had never been inventoried, so the
tech had no idea what she was unleashing. Lê became
infected by Glory (p. 19), a variant of the Exsurgent
virus (p. 362, EP), and quickly spread the infection to
the other gang members who were in transit or temporary storage on the ship. The Song Cai Flower was
still a year out from the Jovian-Sun L4 point when
things went weird, but it had already been in use as a
safehouse for years. There were dozens of egos aboard
including Dexter Vo, a prominent White Khanhs boss
who’d narrowly avoided several recent attempts on
his life by Vasquez & Associates, a freelance Extropian
judicial cadre.
The Flower’s egocasting facilities allowed infected
White Khanhs to leave the ship, though the nesting
instinct instilled by the infection has now spurred all
of them to return. Luckily, due to the way this particular exsurgent strain works, they did not spread the
infection outside of the Song Cai Flower. According to
the virus’s programming, however, many of them acquired or abducted “mates,” which they uploaded and
brought back to the Flower for infection. Similarly, as
other White Khanhs members egocasted to the ship,
they too became infected. Over the past year, the majority of the White Khanhs in the system succumbed
to the virus, with only a few (unwittingly) escaping.
Until quite recently, the exsurgent White Khanhs
were in regular contact with other White Khanhs cells
scattered around the system. As the infected egos entered the terminal phase of the Glory virus’s life cycle,
however, they suffered a slow mental degradation and
finally ceased communication with other members of
the gang about a month prior to this scenario.
Firewall Attention
The White Khanhs became the subject of numerous
rumors as their infected members began exhibiting
strange behaviors and acting in a bizarre, cult-like
fashion. Slightly over a year ago, Dexter Vo engineered a
coup within the gang and took over leadership with the
help of other exsurgent members. Infected gang members
also grew increasingly interested in committing violent
atrocities rather than tending to their traditional rackets.
This opened the door for other gangs to move in on their
territory and so their influence waned.
Programmer-archeologist Tara Yu, a TAU faculty
member and operative of Firewall, got wind of the
White Khanhs and their transformation from violent
gang to weird cult about a year ago. Her interest
stemmed from a lead provided by one of the Air
Marshal’s former staffers, pointing toward the White
Khanhs as a possible culprit for the theft of the Myrmidon hardware.
In an unfortunate show of overconfidence, Yu tried
to recover the Myrmidon hardware herself. Though
she had assistance from a hacker named Morteza Bey
and specialized recovery hardware built by Mason
Wang, a Martian AI hardware wünderkind, Yu infiltrated the Song Cai Flower with only a bot and two
custom AIs as backup.
Yu discovered the Myrmidon memory modules and
attempted to copy the data from them, exposing herself
to the Glory virus in the process. Thanks to her precautions, she resisted the full effects of the hack but was
rendered unconscious. The exsurgent White Khanhs
discovered and captured her. Lacking the lucidity to
effectively interrogate her, however, they instead forcibly resleeved her to another morph and cannibalized
her new body, which lacked a cortical stack.
The Current Situation
About a month ago, the exsurgent White Khanhs
entered the terminal phase of their lifecycle (see the
Glory sidebar, p. 4). In this case, however, given her
situation aboard a spacecraft, the Mother exsurgent
(Phuong Lê) has developed a novel plan for immolating herself and dispersing her seeds.
The exsurgents have cannibalized the engines and
power plants from two other spacecraft, adding them
to the Song Cai Flower. These rockets are set to initiate a burn about two weeks from the start of the
scenario that will take them once around Saturn for a
gravity assist, then spiraling sunward at a steep angle
to the plane of the ecliptic, far from any planets or
ships. Without interference, the exsurgent colony will
dive into the sun, burning up but leaving their seeds
to be spread to other worlds on the solar winds via
directed panspermia.
Prior to this time, the White Khanhs were still somewhat active, to the point of directing one of their other
cells to launch a retributive strike against Morteza Bey
(p. 21), the hacker who assisted Yu. Of late, though,
the exsurgents have lost most of their faculty for transhuman reason, devoting themselves completely to
preparing for their dive into the sun. This gives the PCs
a much better chance than they might otherwise have
of successfully boarding the Flower.
glory
now heavily armed, made a protection pact with the
Yokyai Kong officers. They would act as informants
to head off future riots if allowed to continue their
activities. The Myrmidon hardware was not initially
identified as having any use and was stored in a series
of crates on a small freighter, the Song Cai Flower.
In an act of astonishing foresight, and as an aid to
expanding their operations, the White Khanhs decided
to set up a safe haven and darkcasting relay for egos
on the lam. They wanted a location well off the beaten
path, but they did not have the resources to construct
a habitat of their own in the outer system. Instead
they outfitted the Song Cai Flower with reactors, food
vats, and a healthy supply of volatiles and reactor
mass, then launched it toward the outer system using
a stolen nuclear electric booster.
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glory
Glory is a unique strain of the Exsurgent virus carried
by the TITAN Myrmidon. Glory works as an “Apple
of Knowledge” (AOK) hack—a type of long-acting
mind hack, not unlike a basilisk hack, that mentally
rewrites its host. Glory requires that its victims both
perceive and comprehend the vector message, however, which is a monkey puzzle—a schematic for an
incredibly advanced exotech nanohive. The hack creates a deep-seated obsession with fabricating a copy
of the hive.
To absorb Glory fully, one must have sufficient
technical background to understand the message.
Phuong Lê became infected because she was skilled
in programming and nanofabrication; someone else
might have been unaffected. Once Glory finds a carrier—someone with enough technical skill to create a
Glory nanobot hive—then the virus may be spread via
nanobots, and so direct physical infection becomes
possible.
The first person to become infected by Glory nanobots becomes the “Mother” and immediately seeks
to infect a mate. The initial carrier’s infection is transmitted via blood, saliva, or other bodily fluids. Once
these nanobots enter another person’s bloodstream,
they also become infected.
Glory nanobot infection induces numerous psychological and physiological changes in the subject,
eventually transforming them into a specific type of
exsurgent life form known as immolators. Immolators are further divided into two sub-types: breeders and drones. Immolator exsurgents are based on
a parasitic alien life form with a distinct life cycle.
This parasite infects a target population, establishes
a nest within this host population, and then slowly
consumes its host both by infection (creating other
exsurgents) and anthropophagy (cannibalism). When
the host population has been converted or devoured,
the breeder immolators enter the breeding phase
of their life cycle. In this stage, the male exsurgents
inseminate their female partners. These females then
incubate their developing zygotes in the immolator
colony’s many-wombed Mother (using a retractable
ovipositor). The Mother typically swells and bloats
during this period, consuming the other immolators
and filling herself with billions of embryos in the
form of nanocrystalline spores.
Once a critical mass of embryos reach maturity,
the Mother and her colony sacrifice themselves and
distribute these alien seeds within a new target host
population. This is typically accomplished when the
Mother self-immolates within a targeted area; the
nanocrystal seeds are hardy enough to survive the
fire and small and light enough to be distributed by
winds over a wide area, where they will then hatch
into nanobot swarms to infect new subjects. If necessary, more manual measures can be taken, such as
physically blowing up the Mother or even cutting the
Mother into little pieces (each containing nanocrystal
seeds) that are hand-delivered by suicidal immolators
across a targeted area (such as a habitat).
Before the physical exsurgent transformation takes
place, however, the infection first modifies the victim’s
behavior, turning them into a cunning and aggressive
sociopath with a yen for cannibalism. It also instills
infected hosts with a nesting instinct and a strong
desire to infect a potential mate, either by seduction
or force. The subject’s personality and lucidity are
slowly eroded over time, pushing them down a slow
descent into madness. Glory-infected exsurgents will
cooperate with other immolators, but everyone else
in the universe is prey.
For rules on exposure to the Glory virus, see p. 19.
upping the ante
Gamemasters who wish to make this scenario more
challenging may adapt it in one of the following
ways:
n The nesting instinct of the exsurgent immolators can be eliminated, making the infected
White Khanhs more likely—perhaps even actively
attempting—to spread the infection to new habitats. The scenario could in fact start with one such
outbreak, which investigators could then trace back
to the source.
n Rather than suffering mental degradation, the
exsurgent White Khanhs may be given a greater
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capacity for rational action. This should spur the
group to be more pro-active, such as siccing White
Khanhs hackers to actively track and investigate
characters who make inquiries about them. This
could result in the White Khanhs attacking the
player characters while they are still in the investigatory phase of the scenario.
n Dexter Vo can be treated as a more capable and
dangerous leader. This version of Dexter may have
backed up an (infected) version of himself elsewhere in the system, giving the gamemaster the
option of making him a recurring villain, as well as
seeding the possibility of a new Glory outbreak.
important characters
Here’s a brief synopsis of the main characters that
appear in this scenario:
Allies
Magnus Ming: Professor at Titan Autonomous
University, Firewall router (p. 21)
Tara Yu (deceased): Programmer-archeologist,
TAU professor, Firewall crow
Morteza Bey: Anarchist hacker and reclaimer,
former associate of Yu (pp. 8 and 21)
Nia Zheng (aka Sammy Li): Former White Khanhs
enforcer (pp. 10 and 22)
Achilles & Tortoise (disabled): A custom robot AI
and paired AI used by Yu (pp. 7 and 21)
Firewall needs you to find a missing agent, Tara Yu.
To the best of our knowledge, Yu was most recently
investigating the current whereabouts of military
computer hardware recovered from a station in
Earth orbit that was destroyed during the Fall, in
the Battle of L4.
Yu has been missing for over a month now. Long
silences are not unusual during some of her undercover research missions, but she missed her
last scheduled check-in. Last we knew, she was on
Locus. We need you to track her down, ascertain
her status if alive, recover her cortical stack if dead,
and if necessary continue or assist her search for
the missing hardware.
READ ALOUD
Mason Wang: Anarchist hacker, former associate
of Yu (pp. 7 and 21)
out to be a clearing in a shielded garden dome on the
shore of Titan’s methane seas.
If this adventure is used to bring the PCs together,
Ming will start the meeting by having the sentinels
introduce themselves to each other. He will then
explain the mission (gamemasters are encouraged to
read this aloud):
Antagonists
Dexter Vo: White Khanhs boss (pp. 3 and 24)
Phuong Lê (“Mother”): White Khanhs technician
cum exsurgent colony queen (pp. 16 and 24)
Ji: Dexter Vo’s protege (p. 23)
Sit: White Khanhs technician, formerly Phuong
Lê’s lover (p. 23)
others
Patrona Vasquez: Agent of Nomic (pp. 10 and 22)
Stage 1: Meeting Ming
Professor Ming is a respected researcher among the
Argonauts, an influential faculty member at TAU, and
a router for Firewall. As a fairly public figure, he is
cautious in his role as a Firewall proxy and will not
initially reveal the nature of Firewall or its mission.
Ming will contact the characters through encrypted
and secure Firewall channels, calling them to a meeting within the next 24 hours. Unless some or all of the
PCs are on Titan, the initial meeting will take place in
a private virtual space on the mesh. The simulspace
environment is an abstract attempt to replicate an
unknown alien species’ virtual reality sensorium, and
should come across as strange and unsettling. Characters who are not in Titan’s neighborhood will most
likely need to attend the meeting by sending a fork
(see Forking and Merging, p. 273, EP). If they are on
Titan, Ming will invite them to his office at TAU’s Department of Computational Archeology, which turns
If the characters are experienced sentinels, Ming
further explains that Yu was looking for hardware
fragments from a TITAN known as Myrmidon for
study. Otherwise, he will only share this information
with the PCs if they come close to recovering the
modules. Ming knows nothing else about Yu’s findings, other than that she believed the Myrmidon hardware was no longer in the inner system and so she
was following leads further out. He does not know
about her work with Mason Wang or Morteza Bey
(see below), nor does he know the White Khanhs are
involved or anything about their Exsurgent infection.
Ming has no wish to send investigators ignorant of
the Exsurgent threat to their deaths and will instruct
them on some necessary precautions when recovering
the Myrmidon hardware.
Yu’s backup cannot be reached because her insurance policy specifies her life timeout at six months;
she must be missing for at least that long before she’s
reinstanced. This is longer than customary but not
unheard of for someone doing dangerous long-haul
exploratory work. If proof of her death is provided
to her insurer, they’ll reinstance her, and the PCs can
interview her—when she gets out of psych.
Ming is, and should come across as, a generally
benevolent figure. If investigators prove their skill and
good intentions on this mission, he can be a source of
further work and a useful contact. Ming’s game stats
can be found on p. 21.
The PCs can do most of their initial investigation by chasing down leads via the mesh, but Ming
will make it clear at the outset that recovering the
memory modules will likely require physical travel or
egocasting. In case of travel, Firewall will attempt to
provision the group with morphs roughly equivalent
glory
Myrmidon: Archived TITAN
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to those the PCs have now and appropriate insurance policies (see Morph Brokerage, p. 276, EP).
Ming won’t cover costs for egocasting or supplying
morphs if he believes the PCs are on a wild good
chase. He will ask to review the leads and evidence
they’ve gathered and discuss their reasons for egocasting beforehand.
Other than this support, the PCs will largely be on
their own. Firewall will not cover other costs unless
the characters make a particularly good case for it,
and the assignment isn’t important enough for Firewall to prioritize any further resources on it (though if
the PCs supply evidence of an active Exsurgent infection, this will rapidly change).
Stage 2: Pursuing Leads
The sentinels have several options for investigating Yu’s disappearance. These involve researching
Yu online (using the Research skill) and via social
networks (using Reputation). These methods
should turn up several leads, including two of Yu’s
contacts, Mason Wang and Morteza Bey. Once the
characters discover that Yu was looking into the
White Khanhs, further efforts should lead them to
Nia Zheng. All of this digging may bring the PCs
to the attention of Patrona Vasquez. Each of these
options is covered below.
How direct to be in providing the characters with
leads is left to the discretion of the GM. Some GMs
may wish to make the PCs work harder in the legwork phase of the adventure, in which case throwing
in some misdirection is appropriate. GMs who wish
to minimize this phase and get to the infiltration of
the ship may opt to provide positive modifiers on
the Research/Networking rolls, or simply have Ming
provide more information up front.
ResearchIng Tara Yu
Yu’s activities as a Firewall agent made her uncommonly cautious. She has no publicly accessible lifelog
and maintains a fairly low mesh profile. Likewise,
inquiries into Yu’s activities and associates largely
draw blanks—she’s put a wall between her normal
life and the things she does for Firewall. With the
exception of Ming, her associates from TAU believe
she was on sabbatical. Nevertheless, successful Research Tests (see p. 249, EP) will turn up the following information:
n A list of Yu’s associates. Networking Tests can
reveal which ones are actually important (see
below).
n Yu’s recent travels. In the past several months, Yu
has sent several forks to the Vishnukam station in
Earth orbit, to interview people and research the
missing Myrmidon hardware. Slightly over a month
ago, she egocast to Locus.
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Checking Social Networks
Characters who successfully use their Networking
skill and social networks (see pp. 287-291, EP) to dig
into Yu can find out more:
n @-rep and r-rep (Moderate favor): Yu received big
favors from both Mason Wang (p. 7) and Morteza
Bey (p. 8) in the past two months (using Yu’s list
of associates will provide a +10 modifier on these
tests). Specifically inquiring about Yu’s departure
from Locus will reveal that she egocast to Casa
Arturo a month ago (see p. 11; this is a separate
Moderate favor). Likewise, successful social networking on Casa Arturo (another Moderate favor)
will uncover that Yu pulled a major favor to borrow
a small spacecraft called the Kesyrah, which is now
several weeks overdue. Where she took this shuttle
is unknown, but its limited fuel capacity and range
indicate it is likely she traveled somewhere in the
Jovian Greeks.
n C-rep (Low favor): Investigating Yu’s activities
on the Vishnukam station will discover that she interviewed the Air Marshall and several government
officials and researched the White Khanhs crime
gang there (inquiries not focused on Vishnukam
suffer a -30 modifier, however).
n G-rep (Moderate favor): Checking criminal connections will uncover that Yu used her networking
connections to track down and talk to someone
named Nia Zheng (p. 10) and was investigating
White Khanhs activities in the outer system. An
Excellent Success here will reveal that Yu took a
special interest in the gang’s Song Cai Flower craft.
n I-rep (Low favor): As with @-rep, above.
Researching the White Khanhs
Mesh research into the White Khanhs will uncover a
decent amount of information, reports, and rumors
on this gang and their activities and history. To isolate
the key facts, a second Research Test to analyze the
data is necessary (see p. 249, EP); an appropriate skill
(such as Interest: Triads) can serve as a complementary skill to this test (p. 173, EP). The gamemaster can
adapt and supply any information provided in this
scenario’s background (p. 2) that would be known
outside the gang. For example, the characters may
learn about the group’s recent switch to violent and
cult-like behavior, Dexter Vo’s coup, their decline and
the fact that they’ve lost ground to other gangs, etc. As
a rule of thumb, every 10 points of MoS on the second
Research Test will reveal a new insight.
If any character successfully exercises their g-rep
and Guanxi socnet connections, they can determine
that the White Khanhs has a secret hideout with a
Moderate (Level 3) favor. Finding out any details
about the Song Cai Flower, such as where to find it,
counts as a High (Level 4) favor.
If the characters attempt to track down any still
active White Khanhs members, they will have a difficult time. All of the infected gang members have
returned to the nest. The few who remain are laying
Outside Help
The GM should take note of any efforts the characters
make to keep their inquiries into the gang quiet (see
Keeping Quiet, p. 289, EP). If they don’t, Patrona
Vasquez (p. 10) may hear about their interest and contact them. The gamemaster can leave this to chance,
making a Networking: Criminal Test for Vasquez to
see if she finds out, or simply introduce her if the characters are in need of more information and/or allies.
Mason Wang
Characters who learn of Wang’s favor for Yu (see
above) can easily track the anarchist hacker down on
Locus. Game stats for Wang can be found on p. 21.
Researching Wang
There is a lot of information on Wang publicly available,
no Research Test required. Wang is a Martian who did
graduate work as a programmer-archeologist at TAU,
where he was briefly a student of both Ming and Yu. If
asked about him, Ming remembers little except to say
that he was “talented but not terribly serious.”
After taking a doctorate, Wang returned to Mars,
where he founded a software company and spent five
years on typical corp AI projects. Later he felt the
pull of the outer system again and sold his business
to finance construction of a private habitat in the
neighborhood of Locus. He’s been living there for the
last two years, participating in projects with a number
of Locus research pods, which has netted him a fair
amount of positive reputation. His major motives are
profit, self-promotion, and sex. Though only a handful of people know, Wang was Yu’s lover for a time
during his studies at TAU and they remained in contact afterward (discoverable with @-rep, High favor).
Wang is part of Blue Pod, a Locus-based affinity
group interested in the intersection of art and AI/AGI
research. The group has a large module on Locus
in which they regularly throw @-list parties and art
events. Their true (secret) interest, however, lies in
studying the TITANs and the Exsurgent virus (which
they call “the Vector”). They have correctly guessed
that the TITANs ran afoul of alien technology, though
they believe that it had to do with the Pandora Gates
and have no idea about the Bracewell probe.
Unlike Firewall, Wang and his associates are much
less cautious and more interested in finding evidence
of alien technology and taking advantage of it than in
protecting humanity—and their methods reflect this.
Yu was interested in recruiting Wang into Firewall, not
knowing Blue Pod’s true nature, and confided some
of her suspicions about Myrmidon to him. (At the
gamemaster’s discretion, Blue Pod’s real agenda can
be ascertained with an @-rep High favor).
The player characters can also learn that right
around the time Yu disappeared, Wang uncharacteristically dropped out of sight for a month, only recently
emerging again. Publicly, he cited a problem with a
programming project: “Deep issues with the code
base that required utmost concentration.” Digging any
deeper is difficult, but a Moderate favor using @-rep
reveals that Wang spent an entire month sequestered
on his private hab near Locus, apparently seeing no
one and not responding to any outside communications—a lifetime for someone like him.
Wang Industries—his private hab—is a few days’
travel from Locus by rocket. The habitat is a conspicuously novel design—a “matrioshka hab,” designed as
a series of nested spheres, such that the outer layers
are able to reuse some of the waste energy from the
inner ones. How well this design actually works is a
matter of debate; old sundogs generally deem it too
clever by half.
Contacting Wang
Wang will cooperate to a limited extent with anyone
who approaches him about Yu, as long as they have an
@-rep of at least 20 or prove that they work for Ming.
Wang is guilt-wracked about Yu’s disappearance but
won’t willingly come clean with the full story. He will
simply say that Yu asked him to build a custom robot
and AI package, providing details on both Tortoise
and Achilles, without saying what they were to be
used for. The last he heard from her, she was on the
Casa Arturo habitat (see Stage 3: Investigating the
Song Cai Flower, p. 11).
If the characters bribe, threaten, or kidnap/torture Wang—a risky proposition given his many new
friends on Locus—he will provide the full story. Yu
approached Wang to program and design a custom
robot and two pre-sapient AIs, dubbed Tortoise &
Achilles, for the task of infiltrating the White Khanhs’s
station and retrieving data from the Myrmidon
hardware. The robotic shell, dubbed Achilles, was
a zero-G anthroform of roughly human shape and
height but with an incredibly thin, whip-like build. It
was considerably less advanced than a typical synth,
with limited interfaces and a simple covert ops expert
system AI designed to follow a human infiltrator, ape
their movements, and keep itself concealed.
The bot was also equipped with a rider module to
carry Tortoise, a considerably more sophisticated AI
designed to scan exotic hardware and data structures,
copy the resulting output, perform rudimentary threat
assessments (such as detecting telltale signs of known
software-based strains of the Exsurgent virus), and
quarantine itself with an air gap in emergencies. Basically, Tortoise was a programmer-archeologist expert
system in a box, intended to help Yu avoid any direct
encounters with nasty Exsurgent software.
Unbeknownst to Yu, Tortoise and Achilles were
also designed to transmit (via QE comm; p. 315, EP)
glory
low in confusion at their outfit’s effective collapse, in
fear of what their strangely-behaving compatriots are
up to, or wary of attacks by other gangs who sense
an opportunity. A Minor (Level 2) favor acquired with
g-rep will put the characters on Sammy Li’s trail (p. 10),
as someone who used to be involved with the gang but
recently disappeared and is assumed to have defected.
7
whatever data they captured back to a storage facility Wang had set up. Unfortunately, Wang wasn’t very
cautious and overestimated his skills relative to the
dangers of the Exsurgent virus. Tortoise managed to
send off the data retrieved in Yu’s recovery attempt—as
well as a copy of the Glory virus. This infected the fork
of himself Wang had set up to analyze the data. Luckily, his pre-merge diagnostics sniffed out the problem
before he reintegrated the fork. He sequestered the
corrupt fork for later analysis, interested in the possible applications of such an aggressive virus. The close
call left Wang shaken, however, so he spent the past
month carefully scanning his systems and personal data
for signs of infection. He found nothing, but remains
worried that he might have missed something. (He did
not, but this fear strongly affects his actions).
Wang knows nothing significant about the White
Khanhs or Myrmidon beyond what was required to
design Tortoise and Achilles and doesn’t know anything about Zheng, Vasquez, or Bey.
Wang’s Watchfulness
Contacting Bey
Wang is curious to know Yu’s fate, but more curious
about Myrmidon and the virus he has quarantined.
He will also try to gather information from the investigators. Yu hinted at an organization behind her
efforts and Wang wants to know more about it. He
will attempt to track the sentinels from the point of
contact onward, both to cover up anything they learn
that might incriminate him and to learn more about
the prize Yu was searching for. He will use both his
own considerable hacking skills and his social networks to do this, and he will attempt to cover his own
tracks in the process (applying a –20 modifier to keep
it quiet; see p. 288, EP).
Bey is difficult to get a hold of and will refuse to
meet the investigators in person. He fears provoking
another attack from the White Khanhs if he renders
aid or provides information and is wracked with guilt
about bringing the gangsters down on his roommates.
Someone with substantial @-rep or e-rep (40+) can
talk him into a simulspace meeting, however, provided
they succeed in a Persuasion Test or otherwise convince/coerce him.
If questioned, Bey will reveal that he met Yu
through Saul, and that she recruited him to pursue
infosec and infiltration research prior to and during
her run on the White Khanhs hideout, the Song Cai
Flower. In fact, Bey sent a beta level fork of himself,
sleeved in a synthmorph, along on her mission, overseeing her progress from the Kesyrah, the shuttle Yu
was using. Beyond this, he knows nothing, having
been restored from an earlier backup (the White
Khanhs raiders stole and consumed his head, spacing
his cortical stack). He assumes the gang found the Kesyrah and his fork, traced it back to him, and raided
Xiu’s Greenhouse as retribution. He knows nothing
about Wang or Vasquez.
Bey is very polite but firm in wanting to avoid any
further involvement. His interest in the mission was
based in his Variegationist Reclaimer interests. Yu told
him nothing about Firewall, pitching it as a Reclaimer
op. While he knew it could be dangerous, he feels used
and misled. He will therefore pose a number of direct
questions to the sentinels that they probably can’t—
or shouldn’t—answer (e.g., who are they working for,
what really happened to the White Khanhs, what’s the
real story with Myrmidon, and so on).
The player characters’ responses and their general
trustworthiness will impact how much helpful info
Bey will hand over. If they succeed in a Persuasion
Test (modified by -10 to -30 depending on the
sentinels’ responses), he will reveal the location
Morteza Bey
Characters who learn of Yu’s link to Morteza Bey can
find the hacker on Xiu’s Greenhouse (“Home of Famous
Trojans Bok Choy!”), an anarchist hydroponics outfit
near Locus. Bey’s game stats can be found on p. 21.
Researching Bey and Xiu’s Greenhouse
8
Any cursory lookup of Xiu’s Greenhouse, however,
will note some startling recent news (if the characters
fail to notice this, have a muse make the correlation).
Just a few weeks ago, the garden hab was assaulted
by a small group of unknown assailants who slaughtered most of the inhabitants, apparently as some sort
of warning. The local autonomist defense council is
still looking into the matter and will share what info
they have with any PCs who have @-rep of 20+. This
data includes footage of immolator exsurgents (both
breeders and drones), whom the anarchists assume
are exhumans. If the sentinels circulate this footage,
inquiring about exotic morphs, Patrona Vasquez (p.
10) will hear of it and contact them.
Xiu’s inhabitants lack the will to pursue vengeance
at present. Most are too shell-shocked from the experience and recovering via psychosurgery. A successful
Research Test will note that Bey is listed among those
killed—in fact, his decapitated and mutilated body
was left impaled in the greenhouse.
Bey is young (22) and his main public presence is
a gardening blog dealing largely with his work on
various cultivars of broccoli. Anyone using their
@-rep or e-rep to investigate Bey can find out, as a
Level 2 favor, that Bey is a brilliant hacker and until
recently was in a romantic liaison with Antoin Saul,
a resident of Locus. If they research Saul, he is identifiable as a noteworthy technician, Reclaimer activist, and associate of Tara Yu. An additional Level 3
favor with @-rep or e-rep can ascertain that Saul is a
Variegationist—a group of outer system Reclaimers
who study TITAN relics, such as the dead matrioshka
brain at Iapetus, hoping to learn defenses against the
TITAN technologies still active on Earth. (Antoin
Saul isn’t a useful lead in this scenario, though GMs
may find him useful him as a lead into Reclaimeroriented plotlines of their own.)
Bey’s Video Clips
No matter the outcome, Bey will also share two
surveillance clips with the sentinels. These were captured by Tara Yu’s speck bot and smart dust spies
aboard the Flower, relayed back to Bey’s fork on the
Kesyrah, and transmitted back to Xiu’s Greenhouse
for safekeeping.
Clip 1: The smart dust camera cuts in on a close
two-dimensional shot of a mass of wet noodles being
messily slurped into an immense mouth. The scraggly
mustache framing it drips with broth. Red, curvilinear graphics in a translucent AR frame swirl around
a protuberant mole partially obscured by a dangling
noodle. At last the noodle is sucked into the mouth,
and the graphics blink twice. A positive ID. There is
a flicker of recalibration as more nanobot spies come
online, and the scene dissolves into a better three-D
visual showing the owner of the giant mouth and his
surroundings. The dimly lit, cramped quarters of a
freighter are immediately apparent. The person in the
scene is Dexter Vo.
Clip 2: This is actually a collection of speck bot
footage from Yu’s actual infiltration attempt. The
bots spread out and assemble an interior view of some
parts of the ship, including the utility bay (Area 2),
machine shop (Area 8), and a few parts of the crew
torus, including the medical bay (Area 9a). The specks
also catch shots of Yu emerging from the service airlock accompanied by a thin bot (Achilles). Both are
cloaked in chameleon material, but an AR overlay on
the feed silhouettes their positions. Yu cases the room,
then flattens against a wall as the door from another
room hisses open. The bot eerily mirrors her movements. A male breeder exsurgent (Quang) enters the
room, stops and looks around as if smelling the air,
but never spots Yu. He then passes through the room
into another module.
glory
of the Song Cai Flower. With a MoS of 20+, he’ll
also reveal that he and Yu tried to make contact
with a former White Khanhs member, Nia Zheng
(p. 10), last seen on Locus, but were rebuffed. With
an MoS of 30+, he’ll share all of his Infosec work
on the Song Cai Flower, which gives the PCs a +20
bonus on all Infosec and Infiltration rolls on the
station. What he lacks is a schematic of the station
(many of the modules are so old that they aren’t
self-documenting) and knowledge of the gang’s
daily routine and physical security procedures. He
lost touch with Yu too early in the mission to amass
any information other than external photos and
nanobug footage. After that he maintained radio
silence, waiting to hear from her.
Nia Zheng/Sammy Li
Nia Zheng (formerly known as Sammy Li) is a very
useful source for inside intel on the White Khanhs, but
he is unfortunately hard to track down.
9
Researching Zheng/Li
Sammy Li was a former White Khanhs enforcer and
the gang’s man on Locus. When he realized something
was seriously wrong with the White Khanhs, he cut
ties with the gang and resleeved to avoid reprisals.
As Nia Zheng (a female morph and identity), he is
a minor red market operator in the Barrows, the
beehive Guanxi neighborhood dug into one of the
Patroclus asteroids rotating around Locus. Given the
lack of laws, crime isn’t terribly profitable on Locus,
so Zheng stacks cred by sourcing red tech and selling the designs to inner system triads. He is fearful of
discovery but lacks the funds to egocast off Locus and
resleeve in the inner system—his eventual goal.
Player characters who learn both Li’s and Zheng’s
names may not initially realize they are the same
person. Mesh research into Sammy Li easily reveals
that he was a White Khanhs operative on Locus (no
test required), originally from Vishnukam, who went
missing about four months ago. This is right around
the time that Nia Zheng seems to have appeared on
Locus (no Research Test required). Characters who
put the clues together and ask the right people on
Locus (a High g-rep favor) can verify that Zheng is
Li’s new identity.
a note on npc
gender identity
For generic pronouns, Eclipse Phase uses the
Singular They rule (p. 114, EP). In the case
of specific characters, however, we use the
gender pronoun (he or she—or it for neuters) that is “preferred” by the character, no
matter the sex of the morph they are in. This
can sometimes be confusing, such as when
they are in a morph of the opposite sex, but
unfortunately the English language isn’t wellequipped to handle this in any better way.
Contacting Zheng
10
If contacted, Zheng won’t talk without an exorbitant
trade of cred or rep favors—enough for a one-way
egocast to Mars and a ruster morph. Short of hitting Zheng over the head with a shovel and forcibly
uploading him to an interrogation simulspace, there
is one way the PCs can get him to drop his facade
and talk about the White Khanhs. Hardened gangster
he may be, but like many people, he suffers from the
longing for Earth. Among the effects he left on the
Song Cai Flower were his father’s cufflinks, which he
can and will describe down to the tiniest scratch. If
the PCs reveal that their investigation will take them
to the Flower, Li will share everything he knows, provided the PCs attempt to retrieve the cufflinks. He will
want to seal the deal by having the PCs agree to a
fairly standard salvage and retrieval contract administered by Nomic, the Mutualist contract law AI on
Extropia. If PCs won’t agree to this and won’t give
him some other convincing assurance, he’ll refuse to
speak with them any further.
If the sentinels get Zheng talking, though, their efforts will be rewarded. Sammy Li actually spent time
aboard the Song Cai Flower a few months prior to
the outbreak of Glory. He can describe the security
procedures on board and give the PCs a rough idea
of how many gang members were present when he
was there (8). His description of the station personnel includes Dexter Vo, Phuong Lê, and six other
White Khanhs members, four of whom are dangerous in a fight. Best of all, he can provide a schematic
of the station, including the likely location of the
cufflinks, which he left in a duffel bag in the crew
quarters with a few other personal effects. Unlike
most of the White Khanhs aboard, he arrived by ship,
rendezvousing with the Flower while it was still en
route. He assures the PCs that the station itself is
not armed, though the inhabitants definitely are. He
doesn’t know about the engines the White Khanhs
are adding to the station.
Patrona Vasquez
Vasquez is a freelance magistrate who takes contract
work from Nomic, the pre-sapient contract law AI
based on Extropia (p. 97, EP). Vasquez became involved with the White Khanhs during a routine collections operation. The gang had failed to deliver on a
promised lot of kidnapped personality forks. Vasquez
and her team went to Olympus on Mars to enforce
the contract and found themselves in a fight to the
death with a group of (Glory-infected) gang members.
Of her team, three were captured and eaten. She now
has a special grudge against the gang and has made a
hobby of monitoring their activity.
Vasquez has an open request within her social networking to be informed of anyone asking about the
White Khanhs. She will contact the sentinels if she finds
out about their inquiries (see p. 7). She has no interest
in meeting them in person but offers to exchange information. She is currently located on Extropia and will
either exchange text messages or agree to a simulspace
meet-up via beta fork. Vasquez is a tad theatrical; her
simulspace avatar looks like a dominatrix kitted out
for house-to-house urban warfare.
Use Vasquez to narrow the characters’ search if
they seem lost or have cast too wide a net. She knows
about the Song Cai Flower, and while she’s unsure
of its exact location—somewhere in the Greeks, she
believes—she’s sure it is their center of operations.
She hasn’t gone after it herself because she has more
profitable work, but helping other people out will
help settle her score with the White Khanhs. She
warns the agents that the White Khanhs are savage
and dangerous combatants, but she doesn’t know
about Glory. Rather, she believes that White Khanhs
have turned into a narcoalgorithm cult or are possibly taking part in some form of singularity-seeking
Stage 3: Investigating
the Song Cai Flower
Yu’s trail should eventually point the sentinels to the
Song Cai Flower. The Flower is not in the habit of accepting farcast links from anyone any more, not even
White Khanhs members, and no longer establishes
mesh connections with other habitats. The characters’
only real choice is to investigate it physically, and the
best launching point for that is Casa Arturo—the same
station from which Yu initiated her operation.
Casa Arturo
The Casa Arturo cluster hab is the most likely jumping off point for an expedition to the Song Cai
Flower, which trails it by about 100,000 km in the
sparsely-inhabited Paloma Negra neighborhood of
the Jovian Greeks. Casa Arturo is anchored to the
asteroid from which the neighborhood takes its
name, a rare, dark, metal-rich body. The hab has a
similar plan to Lot 49 (p. 102, EP) but is somewhat
larger, with a population of about 1200, most of
whom are fanatical rocket geeks. Most Arturistas
speak Spanish, English, and Mandarin. The mining,
foundry, and shipbuilding facilities here are very
well-developed for a population of this size. Full
egocasting and resleeving facilities are available—
many visitors come to see rocket designs firsthand
and participate in races—and bouncer morphs are
very common here (+20 on Networking Tests; see
Morph Acquisition, p. 277, EP).
Getting to the Flower
Characters with solid @-rep should be able to
borrow or hire a small spacecraft at Casa Arturo
(requiring a successful Networking Test and a Level
4 favor). If the characters fail here and call upon
Firewall for help, Ming will pull some strings to
find them transportation out to the Flower. The
characters are most likely to acquire a SLOTV (p.
349, EP). This is also a good opportunity for the
gamemaster to introduce other NPCs here who can
serve as potential backup, under the guise of ship
crew the PCs have hired.
The Kesyrah
On the approach to the Flower, the characters may
discover the Kesyrah, the SLOTV Yu and Bey hired
from the Arturistas for their mission. The ship is anchored to a small, dust-blackened ice asteroid, where
it blends in so well that it would never be visible from
more than a kilometer away, and its power systems
are still active. The gamemaster may make this discovery automatic or may instead allow any PC watching
the ship’s sensors to make an Interfacing or Perception
Test to detect power emissions from the shuttle.
On the outside, the Kesyrah is a sleek, stealthy ship
with larger than normal engines for its class. The fuselage is matte black, with some strange angles thrown
in to foil radar. Ship geeks notice unusually powerful
cold gas maneuvering jets on a successful Hardware:
Aerospace Test. The only markings are double Xs in
dark gray on the port and starboard engine pods. The
starboard airlock has been blown, probably cut open
from the outside with a plasma torch.
Inside, the ship is cramped, interior space having
been sacrificed for larger engines, powerful cold gas
thrusters, and more fuel. Yu and Bey’s gear floats everywhere; the ship has been ransacked. In the cockpit
is the wreckage of Morteza Bey’s flexbot morph. It’s
been shot, and the synthmorph equivalent of the cortical stack has been popped.
The ship is otherwise functional. PCs may return it
to the Arturistas for a reward of @-rep (+5). They may
also claim/keep it, but if the Arturistas ever find out,
they will most certainly lose @-rep (-5 or more). The
engines are standard hydrogen-oxygen rockets, but
the innovative nozzle design gives them a higher specific impulse, generating about 0.2 g more acceleration
than a standard SLOTV. The ship is also difficult to
detect when maneuvering on cold thrusters only (-20
on Interfacing or Perception Tests to spot).
The Kesyrah is a nice prize. That the White Khanhs
simply left it out here should tell the PCs something
about their state of mind.
The Song Cai Flower
Except for its rotating toroid habitation ring, the Flower
is typical of pre-Fall-era freighters. At the rotating section’s axis is a chain of long, cylindrical modules, from
a windowed greenhouse on one end to the ops center
on the other. In the center is a big, blocky utility module,
from which extend a long docking spar, solar panels,
and a reactor. The torus is painted red and the modules
forming the axle green, both colors dulled by vacuum
ablation, and scarred here and there by microasteroid
impacts. The overall effect is gaudy gone sinister. The
entire station except for the torus is in microgravity.
Anyone who succeeds in an appropriate Knowledge
or Technical skill can tell that several additional fusion
rockets have been attached to the ship’s frame. Close
examination will reveal that these additions are recent
and are not yet complete (though they will be soon).
There are three sizes of airlocks in the hab, rated
by how many people they can hold while the lock is
glory
experiment gone bad—perhaps an attempt to form
a group mind. She can drop a few names, including
Dexter Vo and Sammy Li.
In return, Vasquez will want to know how the PCs’
mission goes down, which might not sit well with
Firewall’s information containment protocols. She
will want to know which gang members they encounter, whether the White Khanhs is still functional as a
group, what kind of fighting strength they still have,
and in particular what happened to turn them from
a successful underworld organization to a wacko
cult. She will expect an update from the PCs within
a reasonable period of time after they complete their
mission (see Debriefing, p. 20).
11
cycling: small (one person), standard (four people),
and service (up to ten people or a small vehicle).
Airlocks take four Action Turns to open, close, cycle,
and open again on the other side. (A character may
move into the airlock on the first turn and out on the
last.) Airlocks leading to and from pressurized areas
on the ship work as normal doors unless a module is
depressurized, in which case they kick in as airlocks.
All have safety features to prevent them closing on
people or objects passing through, though these can
be disabled with a Hardware: Industrial Test at -10.
Ship Security
Luckily for the sentinels, the Flower’s various security
measures are operating below standard efficiency due
to the effects of the Glory virus on the crew. Some
systems—including most of the ship’s exterior hull
sensor systems—have simply fallen into disrepair or
are not monitored because the exsurgents are preoccupied with reproduction and uniformly deranged. Any
characters who exercise stealth in approaching the Song
Cai Flower from a distance are certain to succeed—the
exsurgents simply aren’t watching. Exterior airlocks
are electronically locked, but may be opened using any
of the methods described under Electronic Locks, pp.
291-293, EP. They may also be cut through with appropriate tools (DUR 100, Armor 50, WT 25).
The ship’s local wireless mesh network may be infiltrated by anyone who comes within close proximity
12
(using the rules for hacking and subversion given on
pp. 254-261, EP). The mesh is actively monitored by
Wei, Dexter Vo’s muse.
Wei was a fairly expensive custom security muse
who doubled as a simulspace lovedoll, but Vo’s exposure to Glory warped her as well. Her heuristics
for dealing with security threats are seriously out
of whack, overestimating the dangers of some situations while occasionally ignoring clear threats. Her
personal interaction agents also react inappropriately.
When making threats, delivering warnings, or reacting
to crises, she behaves as if she’s on an exceptionally
large dose of hither (p. 321, EP). Use the stats for a
security AI (p. 332, EP), but apply a -10 penalty on
all attempts to detect intruders and ignore critical successes. Her avatar in AR or simulspace is a tall, sultry
Chinese woman.
Electronic infiltration of the ship is a risky endeavor
as the hacker risks exposure to the Glory virus. Any
intruder who obtains Locked status immediate is exposed to the AOK hack (see Glory Infection, p. 19).
Wei’s job is also to monitor the ship’s internal
surveillance and spime sensor feeds, alerting Vo to
anything unusual, but the AI is distracted and careless
and many of the feeds are disabled. The gamemaster
should roll Perception Tests for the AI (with the -10
modifier noted above) whenever the characters act
without subtlety inside the ship or if they enter the ops
center (Area 7), which Wei watches closely. Alternately
Song Cai Flower Map Key
Area descriptions use the side of the ship from which
the solar panel extends as the arbitrary “up” direction.
“Left” and “right” directions are relative to a character
looking into the area from a given entrance.
1. Docking Spar
The spar is an open truss with a standard docking ring
on one end attached to a heavy plastic umbilicus two
meters wide. It’s a cheap solution that hasn’t stood up
well to extended exposure to space. The docking ring
itself is functional, but the umbilicus has been holed
by micro-asteroids in many places along its length and
won’t pressurize. Characters trying to enter this way
will need to stay in their suits. A standard airlock leads
from here to the utility bay (Area 2).
Two LLOTVs are docked along the length of the
spar. Both have been recently gutted, with engines and
power supplies hastily (and sloppily) removed.
2. Utility Bay
This section houses a well-equipped but poorly-kept
utility shop. On the “up” wall above, where the
solar panel connects, are banks of power storage
and monitoring gear. A small airlock on this wall
gives easy access to the solar panel spar (Area 5).
Characters with Profession skills relating to spaceship or station administration or maintenance who
check the power readings realize on an Easy Test
(+10) that the trickle of power from the solar array
is totally insufficient to operate a ship this size this
far out from the sun; therefore, one or more reactors must still be online.
Two standard airlocks on opposite sides of the bay
lead to the docking spar (Area 1) and reactor module
(Area 3). Left and right of the docking airlock are service airlocks to the greenhouse (Area 6) and machine
shop (Area 8). The wall below has a deeply recessed
service airlock (about 3 meters) that opens to space
and a service crawlway leading to the life support
pods (Area 4).
Just inside the bottom service lock are three large
fuel tanks. Fuel lines run from these to attitudinal
thrusters on the outside of the utility bay and Area
4. These are linked to the thrusters in the ops center
(Area 7), but the ops center has its own fuel supply,
as well as the manual controls for all of the station’s
thrusters. The attitudinal thrusters are sufficient for
station keeping and spinning or stopping the torus,
but not to move the ship any significant distance.
(This was originally done with boosters that have long
since been broken down for parts).
The drone Sit is often working here.
3. Reactor Module
From outside, the reactor module looks like a wide,
flattened donut with no hole in the middle. For characters who have spent a lot of time on or around
spaceships, it’s easily recognizable. A standard airlock
connects it to the utility bay (Area 2). The door to the
reactor is locked, but can be overcome with any of
the methods described on pp. 291-292, EP, with a -10
difficulty modifier.
Inside, the donut contains the toroidal magnetic
containment chamber common to most fusion reactor designs, monitoring equipment, a fuel processor,
and conduits for venting spent fuel and waste heat
into space. The space inside is cramped, with lots
of handholds, and the air is hot. This is one of the
better maintained modules on the Flower, but even
it looks seriously overdue for a visit from maintenance personnel. Two small airlocks on the flat sides
(above and below from the viewpoint of the door
to Area 2) would give access to space but have been
welded shut.
Damage to the reactor walls can temporarily disrupt the magnetic containment field, with dangerous
results. If a character discharges any kind of firearm
or seeker in this area and misses their target with
a Severe Failure (MoF 30+), their attack has struck
and possibly damaged the reactor wall (see stats
below). The containment torus is self-healing (p. 292,
EP). If the donut takes enough damage to exceed its
Durability or suffers a wound, a superheated jet of
plasma escapes the magnetic containment and burns
anyone within 10 meters who fails a Fray Test (3d10
+ 12 [28] DV, AP -10, resisted with Energy armor).
The entire module is also flooded with heavy radiation (exact effects to be determined by gamemaster;
see p. 201, EP).
reactor stats
containment wall
Armor
durability
50
200
wound
threshold
50
4. Life Support Pod
From outside, the life support pod is a blocky, heavily
shielded box. Some of the planes along its surface are
recessed, while along the top side there is a row of
four outward-curving surfaces that suggest cylindrical
shapes continuing inside the module, possibly storage
tanks of some sort. The part-cylindrical surfaces run
the width of the module and are capped at its edge
by four heavy, circular service hatches. Inside, it’s an
orderly but tightly packed maze of condensers, filtration equipment, and algal oxygen vats. The lights in
the room are purple UV tubes (to characters who can
only see in the visible spectrum) for the algae.
glory
the gamemaster can simply have the AI roll to discover
the sentinels whenever it is most advantageous for the
plot. Note that Wei is unlikely to alert the intruders to
their discovery, giving Vo enough time to coordinate a
response—most likely an ambush in either the greenhouse (Area 6) or machine shop (Area 8).
13
66 101 108 111 119 32 116 104
101 32 116 104 117 110 100
101 114 115 32 111 102 32 116
104 101 32 117 112 112 101
114 32 100 101 101 112 59 13
10 70 97 114 44 32 102 97 114
32 98 101 110 101 97 116 104
32 105 110 32 116 104 101 32
97 98 121 115 109 97 108 32
115 101 97 44 13 10 72 105
115 32 97 110 99 105 101 110
116 44 32 100 114 101 97 109
108 101 115 115 44 32 117 110
105 110 118 97 100 101 100 32
115 108 101 101 112 13 10 84
104 101 32 75 114 97 107 101
110 32 115 108 101 101 112
101 116 104 58 32 102 97 105
110 116 101 115 116 32 115
117 110 108 105 103 104 116
115 32 102 108 101 101 13 10
65 98 111 117 116 32 104 105
115 32 115 104 97 100 111 119
121 32 115 105 100 101 115 58
32 97 98 111 118 101 32 104
105 109 32 115 119 101 108
108 13 10 72 117 103 101 32
115 112 111 110 103 101 115
32 111 102 32 109 105 108 108
101 110 110 105 97 108 32 103
114 111 119 116 104 32 97 110
100 32 104 101 105 103 104
116 59 13 10 65 110 100 32
102 97 114 32 97 119 97 121
32 105 110 116 111 32 116 104
101 32 115 105 99 107 108 121
32 108 105 103 104 116 44 13
10 70 114 111 109 32 109 97
110 121 32 97 32 119 111 110
100 114 111 117 115 32 103
114 111 116 32 97 110 100 32
115 101 99 114 101 116 32 99
101 108 108 13 10 85 110 110
117 109 98 101 114 101 100 32
97 110 100 32 101 110 111 114
109 111 117 115 32 112 111
108 121 112 105 13 10 87 105
110 110 111 119 32 119 105
116 104 32 103 105 97 110 116
32 97 114 109 115 32 116 104
101 32 115 108 117 109 98 101
114 105 110 103 32 103 114
101 101 110 46 13 10 84 104
101 114 101 32 104 97 116 104
32 104 101 32 108 97 105 110
32 102 111 114 32 97 103 101
115 32 97 110 100 32 119 105
108 108 32 108 105 101 13 10
66 97 116 116 101 110 105 110
103 32 117 112 111 110 32 104
117 103 101 32 115 101 97 45
119 111 114 109 115 32 105
110 32 104 105 115 32 115 108
101 101 112 44 13 10 85 110
116 105 108 32 116 104 101 32
108 97 116 116 101 114 32 102
105 114 101 32 115 104 97 108
108 32 104 101 97 116 32 116
104 101 32 100 101 101 112 59
13 10 84 104 101 110 32 111
110 99 101 32 98 121 32 109
97 110 32 97 110 100 32 97
110 103 101 108 115 32 116
111 32 98 101 32 115 101 101
110 44 13 10 73 110 32 114
111 97 114 105 110 103 32 104
101 32 115 104 97 108 108 32
114 105 115 101 32 97 110 100
32 111 110 32 116 104 101 32
115 117 114 102 97 99 101 32
100 105 101 46
7
9
8
4
5
2
3
1
6a
6c
1 Docking Spar
2 Utility Bay
3 Reactor Module
4 Life Support Pod
5 Solar Panel
6 Greenhouse/Recycling
a Recycling Vats
b Plant Beds
c Carniculture Vats
d Engine Room
7 Ops Center
8 Machine Shop/Drone Bay
9 Crew Torus
6b
6d
14
5. Solar Panel
6b. Plant Beds
The Flower’s solar panel is a single array about 80
meters long and 7.5 meters wide, projecting from the
top of the utility bay (Area 2). Adjacent to it is a small
airlock. Though the solar panel provides a nearly negligible amount of power to the station, close examination reveals that it has been put to another purpose.
Conductive materials in the panel have been wired to
the station’s communication systems, transforming it
into a massive antenna array with enough bandwidth
for egocasting.
Anyone entering or checking the airlock between
the solar panel and the utility bay will find the broken
(but not destroyed) remains of Achilles, the custom
bot that accompanied Tara Yu. The exsurgents
dumped it here for spacing, but never got around to
cycling the airlock. Though heavily damaged, the bot
may be repaired. It is still carrying the Tortoise AI in
a ghostrider module, which is also carrying a copy
of the Myrmidon data—and the Glory virus. Careless
techs may find themselves exposed to the AOK hack
if they fail to take precautions.
The plant beds occupy the next 50 meters of the
module, moving outward from the hatch to the utility
bay (Area 2). They end in a translucent wall of heavy
plastic, separating them from the carniculture vats
(Area 6c). This wall has two hatches giving access to
the vats on opposite sides of the axial utility conduit.
Originally designed for use in stronger sunlight,
the outer walls of this module are mostly window,
though the windows are dingy and in many places
completely dirt-caked, letting in only faint starlight
from outside. Most of the illumination comes from
stacks of hydroponic plant trays radiating out in
three or four tiers from the axial utility conduit. Each
tier of plants has its own lighting, and the vegetation averages three meters “deep,” moving from the
windows toward the utility conduit. The plants grow
in tangles, with only a fleet of five or six small flying
drones maintaining them. PCs familiar with growing
food on space stations will notice that almost the
entire crop here is high-yield cereal grains and soy,
with virtually no fruits or vegetables. Most of the
crop is being auto-harvested and fed into a processor
connected to the utility conduit. The processor feeds
a thick nutrient line that runs beyond the hatch at
the far end of the plant beds, into the next section
of the module.
The tangles of vegetation afford good concealment;
treat targets hiding among them as having moderate
cover (-20). The exsurgents may choose this as an
ambush spot due to the ample cover.
Diên, one of the exsurgent drones, is usually here
tending to the plants.
6a. Recycling Vats
The first 20 meters of the module are walled off from
the rest and have a foul, septic reek (apply a -10
modifier to all physical and social tests for characters
who spend more than a minute in this room without
breathing equipment). PCs with any ship or habitat
operations-related Knowledge skill immediately realize that the recycling system here, while still functional,
is working below capacity and suffers from a lack of
basic maintenance.
The walls here are crammed with a maze of pipes
and conduits connecting recycling equipment (large
vats, catalyzer units, and the like) to the life support
system, utility bay, machine shop, station plumbing,
and the rest of the greenhouse. This system converts
biological waste, condensation, and meat growth
byproducts from a foul slurry into drinkable water,
fertilizer, and trace elements for the fabricators.
6c. Carniculture Vats
The equipment here is the best maintained that the
PCs have encountered so far. The walls are lined with
massive, green-lit vats designed to grow cultured
meat and extrude it in an edible form. Examining the
contents confirms what the PCs may already have
realized; all of the vats are growing cultured human
flesh—mostly thigh muscle tissue, with a few organ
meats thrown in for variety.
6d. Engine Room
Separated from the vats (Area 6c) by a hastily-constructed metal bulkhead with a single large hatch in
it, the engine room occupies the last 10 meters of the
module—what will be the rear of the ship should the
White Khanhs manage to get it under acceleration.
The builders didn’t put much effort into radiation
shielding. Any character sleeved in an unprotected
biomorph who spends more than five minutes in this
room loses 5 SOM and other radiation effects the
gamemaster desires (p. 201, EP) until they receive
medical attention in a healing vat.
Unlike the attitudinal drives elsewhere on the ship,
the rockets cannibalized from the other spacecraft and
attached outside here are nuclear, so there are no fuel
tanks. Instead, thrust mass comes from two large water
glory
6. Greenhouse/Recycling
This is a huge, cylindrical module nearly 100 meters
long and 20 meters in diameter, separated into four
separate areas (see below). Close inspection reveals
that it was once the passenger module on one of the
immense, heavy-lift rockets used for evacuations
during the Fall. Fittings for acceleration couches and
the like are still present, as well as the pre-Fall equivalent of airplane safety equipment. At some point, great
windows were cut into the module walls, transforming it into a greenhouse. Running along the center of
the module from the hatch to the utility bay (Area
2) back to the new engineering section (Area 6d) is
a one-meter diameter utility conduit with recycling,
water, and nutrient feeds. This conduit connects the
recycling vats (Area 6a) to the plant beds (Area 6b)
and meat vats (Area 6c).
15
pipes running from the utility conduit in 6c. Apparently
the designer’s plan was to pull thruster mass directly
from the station’s water supply—a suicidal plan, on the
face of it, as it would exhaust all of the station’s water,
as a Hardware: Aerospace or appropriate Knowledge
skill will discern. The dormant Mother, however, would
survive long enough to be immolated by the sun.
7. Ops Center
From the outside, ops resembles the bridge module
found on any bulk freighter, implying that it probably
contains sensor systems, emergency thrusters and life
support, and a lot of computing power. The inside,
however, is far different than expected. The walls,
windows, and equipment here are all covered in a 40
centimeter-thick layer of pinkish-gray human flesh—
the transmogrified form of Phuong Lê, the exsurgent
Mother (discovering this fact inflicts mental stress; see
p. 24). The flesh is thicker in some places where Phuong
Lê’s many wombs swell with embryos. Every surface
moves gently to the slow rhythm of respiration and the
flesh occasionally shifts from the pre-natal stirrings of
exsurgent brood. Here and there, manual instrument
banks, designed to operate the station in case the ship’s
mesh fails, protrude from the flesh. The room is lit only
by instrument panels. Lê’s bloated face peers up from a
hump of flesh, surrounded by six spiky maws opening
on what used to be her throat. When not chomping on
raw meat fed to them by Sit, all seven mouths incessantly sing a soft lullaby. Drifting slightly above and
behind Lê’s face are her arms, which have metamorphosed into a pair of 3 meter-long prehensile tentacles
with stubby grasping digits at their tips.
Wei, Dexter Vo’s muse, pays close attention to
surveillance feeds coming from this module, and any
detected intruders will be attacked soon after. Characters exposed to Lê’s body fluids (which could easily
happen in a firefight) have the standard chance of
contracting Glory (p. 19). Lê will initially ignore PCs,
but if they try to damage her, she will lash out with
her tentacles and psi sleights.
Lê’s breeder mate, Bian, is usually found here, inseminating the Mother. One of the drones, Wu, is typically here as well, feeding and caring for Phuong Lê.
8. Machine Shop/Drone Bay
The station’s fleet of harvester drones are still operational, and PCs may occasionally see them entering
or leaving the station alone or in small groups. There
are ten drones in all, and at any time half of them
will be away from the ship harvesting water and other
materials from nearby rocks.
The machine shop contains a large-format cornucopia machine, a number of smaller makers, materials
storage, tools, and a pair of repair tender rocket sleds
designed to move heavy equipment out to docked
shuttles. Two flexbots (p. 144, EP) are racked on
one wall; neither is occupied, but they’re in working
condition. There are two large service airlocks, one
of which is occupied by a rocket sled, and a bank of
16
9. Crew Torus
The rotating crew torus is 250 meters in diameter, with
over 750 meters of floor space. Gravity at floor level
is Mars standard (0.36 g). Large portions of the torus
are unused space, filled with junk or simply empty.
Access is obtained via spokes leading to the machine
shop (Area 8), or by two small airlocks on opposite
ends of the torus.
9a. Med Bay/Resleeving Center
This area includes four healing vats (p. 326, EP), ten
morph storage tanks (half of which are occupied by
morphs transformed into immolator exsurgents), an
ego bridge (p. 328, EP), a fabber (p. 327, EP) for
making and disposing of medical supplies, and a fully
operational examination and surgical setup.
9b. Rec Area/Kitchen
The rec area is a maze of couches and padded chairs,
most of which face a huge holovid screen. Also present are the smashed wreckage of a three-dimensional
foosball table, a board game table, a sound-proofed
chamber containing a well-equipped S&M dungeon,
and a racquetball court. The kitchen has two huge
walk-in refrigeration units, food makers, traditional
cooking equipment, and a huge, gleaming meat
grinder designed to combine flesh with a glutinous
rice-derived paste to extrude udon noodles. Almost all
of the food in the refrigeration unit is meat, some of it
recognizably human. In contrast to many of the other
rooms on the station, the kitchen is curiously—almost
clinically—clean and tidy.
Four of the breeders—Bui, Quang, Sang, and
Thanh—are usually here, along with Dexter Vo and Ji.
9c. Crew Quarters
The crew quarters contain twenty rooms of various
sizes. The drones share small rooms with a bunk beds,
except for Dexter Vo and Ji, who sleep in a sumptuous
but rather tacky crime lord pimp den with an immense
circular bed, mirrored ceiling, and lots of bad erotic
art. The breeders don’t sleep anymore, but anyone
searching these rooms will find personal effects of
theirs from before their transformations. The remaining rooms are either unoccupied or belong to people
who were long ago eaten. Sammy Li’s personal effects,
including the cufflinks, can be found in a duffel bag in
an otherwise empty room here, just as he described.
The remaining 3 drones—Quy, Smith, and Nong—
are here when not attending to various tasks.
The Exsurgents
The remaining crew of the Song Cai Flower are the
primary threat aboard the ship. As a group, they’re
extremely dangerous, but the sentinels should have
numerous opportunities to divide and conquer. Aside
from the Mother, Phuong Lê, the exsurgents come in
two forms: breeders and drones. All are mutated from
standard transhuman morphs with southeast Asian
ethnic characteristics (when they look human enough
to tell). See p. 22 for exsurgent stats and descriptions.
Breeders (5)
Breeders have undergone the most extensive somatic
transformations, essentially turning alien, but fortunately for the agents there are only five aboard the
ship (two mated pairs and Phuong Lê’s mate), as the
population was not large enough to sustain more.
When not on alert, the breeders spend most of their
time in the rec area (Area 9b), watching Taiwanese
romantic comedies from the 2020s and copulating
frantically. If called into action to confront intruders
by Dexter Vo, they will attempt to flank the opposition (using airlocks and rocket packs if necessary)
while the drones mount a frontal assault.
glory
vacsuits. In the center of the room is the immense joint
around which the station’s crew torus rotates. Two of
the torus’s four spokes contain lift shafts, while the
other two have dimly lit open floatways with ladder
rungs running along their sides.
The Myrmidon hardware fragments are here, haphazardly stacked in a series of bins shoved under a
workbench. They are relatively easy to find, as they
look like large chunks of slightly-charred military
satellite. The smallest piece is about 20 centimeters
long, while the largest is over 2 meters. The very size
of them should make PCs nervous, as the amount of
computing power in a 2 meter-long processing block is
almost sufficient to birth a seed AI—like the TITANs.
Such systems are illegal in most places. The pieces are
self-documenting, and connecting a power supply to
them is a simple matter for any character with Hardware skill. If any character powers the fragments up
and examines their documentation, they are subject to
the AOK hack effect of the Glory virus (p. 19).
Sitting innocuously on the workbench above the
Myrmidon fragments is the Glory nanobot hive built
by Phuong Lê. From the outside, it doesn’t look like
exsurgent tech; Lê built the alien-looking part inside
of an old perimeter defense drone fuselage. If powered
up, it releases a mist of Glory nanobots that expands
in a sphere at a rate of 1 meter per Action Turn to
a maximum volume of 5 meters across. Characters
standing in the area of effect as the swarm expands
must make a Fray Test to get out of the way. Failure
means the character has the standard chance of contracting Glory from physical exposure (p. 19).
Because the machinery in this room provides a lot of
hard cover (-10 to -30 modifiers), this is another likely
location for the exsurgents to set up an ambush.
Drones (8)
There are 8 drones on board the ship, the rest
having been eaten. One of those still present is
Dexter Vo, who remains the de facto leader. Another is Ji, who is sleeved in Tara Yu’s old morph
(a fact which may cause confusion among the sentinels). These drones can be found around the ship,
tending to various tasks.
17
The drones’ primary purpose is to serve and
protect the breeders, meaning that they do all the
work to maintain and prepare the ship. They will
generally avoid confrontation and only fight if cornered, but they will throw themselves into action to
protect the breeders or Mother, or if ordered by Vo.
Sit will never be sent into a confrontation, however,
as his expertise is needed to ready the ship for its
journey to the sun.
Stage 4: Resolution
How the characters choose to resolve the scenario is
entirely up to them. Several possible courses of action
are outlined below. Additionally, information on the
Glory virus is provided here should the characters
risk infection.
Possible Approaches
The sentinels have a choice in how to approach the
White Khanhs and the Song Cai Flower. A few of the
more likely options are detailed below, but the gamemaster will need to improvise any other courses of
action given the information provided.
Assault
An all-out attack against the White Khanhs is a dangerous proposition, as the gang is heavily armed, ruthless,
and will probably smash the agents’ cortical stacks with
a pneumatic hammer before cooking their morphs for
supper should they go down in a fight. However, for a
combat-oriented group, success is possible with careful
planning and preparation. PCs who simply pick a fight
upon contact with the gang should probably end up in
new morphs for their trouble. Charitable gamemasters
will make this evident from the start.
Bargaining
18
Socially-oriented groups may simply try to open
negotiations with the White Khanhs to buy the
Myrmidon hardware and Tara Yu’s cortical stack.
If consulted, Ming will caution against this, but it
might actually work. Having already been infected,
the White Khanhs no longer care about the TITAN
fragments, and would actually see selling it as a way
to spread the virus. While Dexter Vo is still lucid
enough to carry on negotiations, the gang as a whole
will be very erratic when dealing with outsiders. Vo
will make a good show of driving a hard bargain
for the memory modules, demanding nanofabricator
plans to improve the ship’s fusion rockets or cold,
hard credits, depending upon what he thinks he can
get out of the PCs. They will seek to conceal the
Glory virus and its effects, and will keep all physically transformed exsurgents out of sight. If the PCs
can be lured aboard or into some sort of physical
meeting, the White Khanhs will attempt to infect
them by triggering the Glory nanobot hive in their
presence. Where negotiations may fail, however, is
over Yu’s stack. The White Khanhs simply no longer
have it, and they will offer no explanation for this.
The best they can do acknowledge her death, though
they will offer no proof or confirmation.
Infiltration
A combination of electronic and physical infiltration
might allow the characters to locate the hardware
and information they need. Details for both are listed
under Ship Security, p. 12. Characters who successfully hack the ship’s network can locate the Myrmidon
fragments through internal surveillance/spime feeds,
uncover the Flower’s future trajectory (into the sun),
spy on the exsurgents, and discover the video clip
that details Tara Yu’s final moments (p. 19). A quiet
and focused physical intrusion offers the best chance
for retrieving the Myrmidon modules with minimal
confrontations with the exsurgents.
Sabotage
The team may decide that the best way of dealing with the White Khanhs is to sabotage critical
systems on the ship and then either let them die or
force them to negotiate. A determined group with a
good plan should be able to succeed at this, but the
GM should not make it easy. The obvious targets
are the life support system and the reactor, both of
which are adjacent to the utility bay (Area 2) and
the fuel storage tanks, which are on the outside of
the machine shop (Area 8). Characters who make
appropriate Knowledge skill tests can determine
that all three of these weak points are milspec
hardware, heavily shielded against kinetic attacks
and radiation. All three were acquired during the
Oxygen Deck Riots and bolted on to the ship when
the White Khanhs assembled it.
Getting the reactor to melt down is almost impossible, but determined hackers can take it offline,
leaving the station with about eight hours of reserve
power (the trickle coming in from the solar panel is
negligible). Doing so requires an Infosec Test with a
difficulty of -30. Once initiated, the shutdown process takes 10 minutes. During this time, Wei receives
an Infosec Test every two minutes to notice the process, unless the hacker intentionally seeks to disable
the alerts (requiring a separate Infosec Test at -30).
If she succeeds, Wei will first attempt to reverse the
process. This will succeed automatically unless the
hacker is actively guiding the shutdown; in this case
make an Opposed Infosec Test between the hacker
and Wei. If the hacker succeeds, Wei cannot stop the
reactor going offline, but the intruder is immediately
upgraded to Spotted status.
Even if Wei successfully keeps the reactor from
going offline, she will suspect an infiltration attempt,
inform Dexter Vo (who will initiate a physical search
of the ship), and trigger a Passive Alert (p. 257, EP).
Upgrade the hacker to Spotted status and make an
Opposed Infosec Test as Wei attempts to zero in on
the intruder (see Zeroing In, p. 256, EP). If she succeeds, the hacker is elevated to Locked status (p. 256,
Footage of Tara Yu
Should a hacker infiltrate the ship’s mesh and perform
an image recognition search using Tara Yu’s last
known morph, in addition to locating Ji (in Tara Yu’s
old morph), they will find only a single video clip with
a successful Research Test. The clip presents the following scene:
Three White Khanhs thugs—two breeders and a
drone (Diên)—hold a naked, hairless man wrapped
from neck to toe in sheets of a translucent, organic
material that looks like a cross between a sausage
casing and cling film over the mouth of a gleaming,
bladed apparatus on a stainless steel kitchen counter.
Dexter Vo sits on a kitchen stool just out of splatter distance. Tara Yu’s morph (actually Ji) stands
behind him, hands on his shoulders and leaning
slightly against him. Anyone who makes a successful
Kinesics Test can guess from the woman’s carriage
and accent that she is not actually Yu, and that Yu is
likely sleeved in the naked man’s body, judging from
the look on the prisoner’s face.
Without further ado, the thugs begin feeding Yu
into the grinder. Yu screams herself raw as droplets
of blood spatter the counter. At the other end of the
grinder, the machine extrudes perfect, smooth noodles.
Anyone who has seen the surveillance clip of Dexter
Vo (p. 9) can make a COG x 3 Test to recognize these
as the same type of noodles he was eating (characters
with eidetic memory or mnemonic augmentation automatically make the connection). There is a pause in the
carnage while Vo flash fries some of the noodles in oil,
then seasons them with fish sauce and passes a bowl
to his moll, who begins eating them with chopsticks
while the thugs force Yu, who has been temporarily
anesthetized, to watch. The footage fades out as the
grinding and screams begin anew.
Watching this clip of torture and cannibalism inflicts 1d10 SV on the viewer if they fail a Willpower
Stress Test (p. 214, EP).
Glory Infection
Characters may be exposed to the Glory virus via two
vectors: an AOK hack or physical infection.
AOK Hack
Any character who meshes with the Myrmidon modules (or the copies held by Tortoise and Wang), an
exsurgent’s cortical stack, or any other infected system
risks exposure to this variant basilisk hack. Wei may
also deploy this hack on any Locked intruders.
This hack is experienced as a prolonged burst of
AR, VR, or other sensory data feeds. If the exposed
character possesses Hardware: Electronics or Programming skill at 60 or more, they must immediately
make a COG + INT + SAV Test. Apply a –10 modifier for every 10 full points their skill(s) exceeds 60.
If this test fails, they become catatonic and paralyzed
for a period of 5 minutes, minus 1 minute per 10
full points of MoF. At the end of this period, they
are mentally reprogrammed and “infected” with the
virus, which in this phase manifests as an overpowering obsession to build a Glory nanobot hive and start
a new immolator colony. Constructing such a hive
requires a Hardware: Electronics (with access to materials) or Programming Test (and access to a fabber);
this is a Task Action with a 1 week timeframe. The
infected character will literally ignore everything else,
including basic hygiene and anything beyond basic
sustenance, until the hive is built.
If an exposed character is broken off from the AOK
hack sensory feed before its duration completes, the
victim still suffers 1d10 mental stress +1 per minute
they were exposed, and they remain mentally shaken,
suffering a –30 modifier to all actions. This modifier
reduces at the rate of 10 per minute. Similarly, an
infected character who is treated with successful psychosurgery within 3 days can be cured of the compulsion to build a hive, at the cost of 1d10 SV.
Physical Infection
Characters exposed to bodily fluids (for example, via
sexual contact or swapping spit) from an infected
character/exsurgent or exposed to nanobots from a
Glory hive are considered infected. If the gamemaster
permits, a Fray Test may be made to avoid infection,
but this should only be allowed in cases where exposure is not certain (for example, the character is
spattered in blood or briefly caught within a cloud
of nanobots). Once a character is physically infected,
there is very little that can be done for them. Merciful
friends will put them out of their misery so they can
resleeve from a backup.
Glory transforms the victim in stages, just like the
xenomorph virus (p. 368, EP) in terms of mental
stress, acquiring psi, and undergoing physical and
mental alterations. There is a 50/50 chance of
glory
EP), the system goes on Active Alert (p. 257, EP), and
Wei will attempt first to infect them with the Glory
virus AOK hack and then, failing that, to lock them
out (see Lockout, p. 257, EP).
Sabotaging the life support (Area 4) demands
physical infiltration and is slower but otherwise
simpler. If the sentinels can do enough damage to
punch through the station’s hull at one spot along
each of the algae tanks, the medium inside vents into
space, freeze drying the algae. Within eight hours
of a breach, the atmosphere in the station will be
unbreathable and remain so for 48 hours, until the
system recovers with intake of recycled material
from the greenhouse. Phuong and the breeders are
the only White Khanhs who can survive this long
without breathable air, though Dexter Vo and the
drones can buy some time by donning vacsuits.
Attacking the fuel tanks is a mistake, as it will serve
primarily to enrage the ship’s occupants without doing
any real damage. The tanks have the same stats as
the reactor containment wall (p. 13). If pierced, they
explode, but the explosion is directed outward, doing
only superficial damage to the station.
19
becoming a breeder or drone, unless the colony has
already reached its capacity on breeders (if no colony
yet exists, the victim will become the Mother and
start one). Breeders eventually transform into full immolator exsurgents, whereas drones do not physically
transform beyond stage 2, and never acquire the Psi
trait. At stage 1, both types acquire sociopathic, callous, and nesting tendencies and become devoted to
the colony; at stage 2, the urge to engage in cannibalism is overwhelming (WIL Test to resist).
Resleeving and Backups
Resleeving does nothing to reverse the psychological
changes inflicted by Glory, but it does stop the character from physically infecting anyone else (unless the
new morph also becomes nanobot-infested). Resleeved
Glory carriers seek to fabricate a Glory hive and reinfect themselves physically as soon as possible.
If a character is allowed to back up after being infected, their backups become compromised as well.
Stage 5: Debriefing
the Flower), Firewall’s response will be more effective.
In this case, another Firewall team will succeed where
the characters failed, destroying the White Khanhs
and capturing the Myrmidon fragments. If the gamemaster is feeling generous, the players may be given a
second shot to finish the mission as the characters in
this new Firewall team.
Dealing with Vasquez
If the characters made a deal with Vasquez (p. 10),
she will expect an update within a reasonable period
of time after they complete the mission. Vasquez will
send a beta fork in a bot shell for the exchange of
information. Allow her Kinesics Tests on each PC to
whom she speaks. If she thinks any of them are lying
or holding out on her, she will not award them @-rep
as noted below (but the characters will still lose –1
i-rep if they divulge too much).
Rez and Rep Awards
Depending on how well the characters did, they will walk
away with some Rez Points and Reputation awards:
This section deals with various matters that arise when
the mission is completed (or failed).
Aftermath
If the characters successfully complete the mission
(that is, they retrieve the Myrmidon modules), they
will be complimented by Ming and Firewall for neutralizing a dangerous threat. Ming is likely to seek out
the characters for future Firewall ops. Firewall is likely
to give the characters’ egos a thorough scanning and
psychosurgery check to ensure none of them were
infected by Glory before egocasting them to wherever they like for resleeving. Any characters who were
killed will be restored from their stack (if retrieved
and uninfected) or backup storage.
Tara Yu will also be revived from storage, though
she will remember nothing of her fate, having been revived from storage. Ming will fill her in on the basics,
and she will thank the sentinels for investigating what
happened to her and finishing the mission.
If the Mission Fails
If the Firewall agents fail the mission (presumably
captured/killed by the White Khanhs), all is not lost.
After 6 months of being missing with no check-in, they
will be declared dead and resleeved according to their
backup insurance policy. Firewall will have attempted
to pick up their trail, but by the time they go looking for the Song Cai Flower, the ship is already on its
way toward the sun. In five years it will dive into the
corona and be consumed, leaving the Mother’s nanocrystal seeds to be dispersed by the solar winds across
the solar system, perhaps leading to new outbreaks in
years to come.
If the sentinels left important information with Firewall before their disappearance, however (such as the
involvement of the White Khanhs and the location of
20
rez & rep
outcome
Character participated in mission
award
1 RP, + 2 i-rep
Tara Yu’s fate was uncovered
1 RP,
+ 5 @-rep or i-rep
The Myrmidon hardware was
retrieved or destroyed
1 RP, +10 i-rep
Team failed but Firewall was alerted to
Song Cai Flower and/or Glory virus
1 RP, +2 i-rep
Team failed without finding Glory virus
1 RP, –2 i-rep
Xiu’s Greenhouse alerted that their
attackers were found and eliminated
+5 @-rep
Kesyrah returned to Casa Arturo
+5 @-rep
Kesyrah kept and Casa Arturo finds out
–5 @-rep
Team shares info on White Khanhs with
Patrona Vasquez
+2 @-rep, –1 i-rep
Character contributed to achieving
success in a significant way
1 RP
The character achieved a
motivational goal (p. 121, EP)
1 RP
The player engaged in good roleplaying
1RP
The player significantly contributed
to the session’s drama, humor
or fun with roleplaying
1 RP
Follow-Up
There are several follow-up plots that the characters
may become entangled in:
Wang’s Virus
As noted on p. 8, Wang has a quarantined copy of the
Myrmidon data—and the Glory virus. Eventually he
Interest in Myrmidon
The investigations made by Yu and the sentinels may
bring Myrmidon to the attention of other interested
parties—hypercorps or singularity seekers who want
the tech, reclaimers who are looking for TITAN
weaknesses, or the mysterious and dangerous Project
Ozma. These groups may pursue the player characters
to find out what they know and what their interest
was. Alternately, one of these groups may acquire the
Myrmidon data from Firewall, prompting Ming to
send the sentinels to retrieve it.
Characters
This section lists game stats and short details on
major NPCs.
Achilles & Tortoise
Infiltration Bot and AI Team
This bot AI and rider AI pair was created by Mason
Wang to assist Tara Yu on her mission (see Contacting
Wang, p. 7).
Achilles is a synth (p. 143, EP) variant with Durability 30 and Wound Threshold of 7. It is equipped with a
chameleon coating and ghostrider module and piloted
by a standard muse (p. 332, EP) that also possesses
Infiltration skill at 40. When found in the Flower, it has
suffered 2 wounds and 40 points of damage.
Tortoise uses the stats for security AIs (p. 332, EP),
and also carries a set of customized software tools
(exploit, sniffer, spoof) that apply a +10 bonus to
appropriate tests. Tortoise also receives a +20 modifier for filtering the effects of AOK or basilisk hacks,
though these defenses are imperfect and do not always
work effectively (GM discretion).
Morteza Bey
Anarchist Hacker and Horticulturist
Morph: Bouncer
Motivation: +Horticulture +Reclaiming Earth
+Hacking
COG
20
COO
15
INT
20
REF
20
SAV
15
SOM
WIL
10
15
MOX
3
INIT
80
SPD
1
LUC
30
TT
6
IR
60
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 30, Fray 25, Freefall 70,
Hardware: Electronics 70, Infiltration 30, Infosec 90,
Interfacing 80, Investigation 40, Kinesics 20, Navigation: 60, Networking: Autonomist 60, Networking:
Ecologist 40, Perception 30, Pilot: Spacecraft 60, Programming 80, Research 60, Scrounging 30
Knowledge Skills: Language: Arabic 60, Language: Farsi 80, Language: Mandarin 70, Profession:
Horticulture (Broccoli) 80, Profession: Profession:
Security Ops 70
Reputation: @-rep 40, e-rep 20
Traits: Expert (Infosec), Limber, Oblivious, Timid
Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh
Inserts, Cortical Stack, Grip Pads, Multitasking, Oxygen
Reserve, Prehensile Feet, Skinlink, Vacuum Sealing
Gear: Light Vacsuit, Quantum Computer (Software:
Exploit, Sniffer, Spoof, Tracking), Utilitool
Roleplaying: Bey speaks with an Arab accent, favors
earth tones, and comes off as a gentle, earthy-crunchy
type—not your typical elite infosec hacker persona.
Professor Magnus Qiao-Sen Ming
Argonaut; Chair of Computational Archeology,
Titan Autonomous University; Firewall Router
Morph: Menton
Motivation: +Firewall +TITANs Research +TechnoProgressivism
COG
30
COO
15
INT
25
REF
15
SAV
20
SOM
WIL
10
25
MOX
5
INIT
80
SPD
1
LUC
50
TT
10
IR
100
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Deception 60, Infosec 80, Interfacing
80, Investigation 70, Kinesics 70, Networking: Autonomists 80, Networking: Ecologists 60, Networking:
Firewall 80, Networking: Scientists 80, Perception 60,
Persuasion 70, Profession: Educator 70, Programming
90, Protocol: Firewall 70, Research 80
Knowledge Skills: Academics: Computational Archeology 80, Academics: Computer Science 80, Interest:
TITAN Rumors 60, Interest: Firewall Scuttlebutt 70,
Interest: Titanian Wilderness 70, Language: English 60,
Language: French 60, Language: Mandarin 80, Language: Norwegian 80
Reputation: @-rep 50, e-rep 30, i-rep 70, r-rep 80
Traits: Allies (Titanian Founders), Expert (Programming), Hyper-Linguist, Math Wiz, Psi Defense 1
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Math Boost, Mnemonic
Augmentation, Multitasking
Gear: Quantum Computer
Roleplaying: Ming is a respected older figure in the
Titanian Commonwealth and has a fatherly figure
demeanor. He frequently tosses out bad puns.
Mason Wang
Anarchist Hacker
Morph: Hibernoid
Motivation: +Horticulture +Reclaiming Earth
+Hacking
COG
25
COO
15
INT
20
REF
15
SAV
20
SOM
WIL
10
10
MOX
1
INIT
70
SPD
1
LUC
20
TT
4
IR
40
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
glory
will either investigate it and become infected, starting
a new outbreak on Locus, or he will sell it the highest
bidder. The characters may be sent to check Wang
out (on suspicion that he has these copies), to stop
the deal, or contain a new outbreak before it gets
out of hand.
Active Skills: Deception 70, Fray 60, Freefall 60,
Gunnery 30, Hardware: Robotics 70, Infosec 70, Interfacing 70, Kinesics 40, Networking: Autonomists 60,
21
Networking: Hypercorps 50, Networking: Scientists
80, Perception 50, Pilot: Groundcraft 25, Programming 80, Unarmed Combat 40
Knowledge Skills: Academics: Computer Science
70, Interest: Locus Society 60, Language: English 70,
Language: Mandarin 80, Profession: Engineering 70,
Profession: Viral Marketing 40
Reputation: @-rep 50, c-rep 30, r-rep 60
Traits: Addiction (Sex, Minor), First Impression,
Math Wiz, Striking Looks
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Circadian Regulation, Cortical Stack, Electrical Sense, Emergency Farcaster, Enhanced Pheromones, Hibernation,
Mnemonic Augmentation, Multitasking, Skinlink
Gear: Nanodetectors, Quantum Computer (Software: AR Illusions, Exploit, Facial/Image Recognition, Tracking), Smart Vac Clothing, Specs, Wristmounted Tools
Roleplaying: Wang is doing the outer system anarchist lifestyle like he just invented it, which can make
him come off as an insufferable douchebag to real
anarchists, scumborn, and others born outsystem.
Nonetheless, he’s a hot commodity in Locus at present, with substantial rep; his prodigious programming
skills and apparent sincerity are sufficient to redeem
him in some quarters. He is an extremely sharp and
ambitious businessman, but will often ask disarmingly naive and seemingly irrelevant questions. Some
of his naiveté is calculated, and some is genuine, born
of deep immaturity and insecurity. Wang is essentially selfish, ruthless, and calculating, but desperately
wants to believe otherwise of himself.
Patrona Vasquez
Freelance Magistrate, Agent of Nomic
Morph: Exalt
Motivation: -Crime +Justice +Libertarianism
COG
25
COO
15
INT
20
REF
15
SAV
30
SOM
WIL
15
25
MOX
4
INIT
70
SPD
1
LUC
50
TT
10
IR
100
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 80, Clubs 60, Fray 80,
Freerunning 60, Gunnery 60, Infiltration 70, Infosec
80, Intimidation 70, Investigation 80, Kinesics 90,
Kinetic Weapons 60, Navigation 30, Networking: Autonomists 80, Networking: Guanxi 80, Networking:
Hypercorps 60, Perception 60, Persuasion 40, Pilot:
Groundcraft 40, Pilot: Spacecraft 60, Programming
35, Protocol 60, Research 80, Unarmed Combat 70
Knowledge Skills: Academics: Jurisprudence 80, Interest: Criminal Syndicates 80, Language: Arabic 60,
Language: English: 60, Language: French 60, Language: Italian 95, Language: German 40, Language:
Mandarin 70, Language: Portuguese: 40, Language:
Spanish 80, Language: Thai 40, Profession: Lawyer 80,
Profession: Police Procedures 80, Profession: Squad
Tactics 60
Reputation: @-rep 90, c-rep 60, g-rep 40
Traits: Expert (Kinesics)
22
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts (Software:
Facial Recognition, Security AI, Tactical Network), Cortical Stack, Endocrine Control, Hyper-Linguist, Mnemonic
Augmentation, Multitasking, Oracles
Roleplaying: Patrona is all business, with a stark lack
of any sense of humor. She is very, very sharp at reading
people, and will not hesitate to point out anything she
discerns about a person’s actions or personality.
Nia Zheng/Sammy Li
Former White Khanhs Criminal
Morph: Pleasure Pod
Motivation: +Hedonism +Technology +Wealth
COG
15
COO
15
INT
20
REF
20
SAV
30
SOM
WIL
20
20
MOX
2
INIT
80
SPD
1
LUC
40
TT
8
IR
80
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 70, Blades 80, Clubs 60,
Deception 60, Fray 70, Free Fall 60, Impersonation 70,
Infiltration 60, Infosec 30, Intimidation 35, Investigation 40, Kinesics 60, Kinetic Weapons 60, Networking: Guanxi 65, Perception 60, Persuasion 60, Pilot:
Groundcraft 30, Research 50, Unarmed Combat 80
Knowledge Skills: Interest: Locus Syndicates 60,
Interest: Martian Triads 40, Language: English 50,
Language: Cantonese 85, Language Russian: 65, Language: Vietnamese 70, Profession: Cool Hunter 60,
Profession: Tech Trader 60
Reputation: @-rep 20, g-rep 40
Traits: Social Stigma (Pleasure Pod) trait
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Clean
Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Cyber Brain, Enhanced
Pheromones, Mnemonic Augmentation, Puppet Sock,
Sex Switch
Roleplaying: Sammy is quite fearful that the Khanhs
will track him down. He’s a tough guy, though, and an
experienced thug, so he’ll face any threats head on. In
the meantime, however, he’s quite enjoying his new
sex and lifestyle and won’t be afraid to flaunt it.
The White Khanhs
These are the exsurgent gang members and crew of
the Song Cai Flower. Many of them wear disturbingly
incongruous knit items that Lê made for them before
she went completely mad and transformed into a
many-wombed growth of wall meat.
Breeders
The five immolator exsurgent breeders (Bian, Bui,
Quang, Sang, and Thanh) are obviously alien and
only barely resemble their original human forms.
Though bipedal and roughly anthropomorphic, their
skin is dull gray in color and obviously thicker and
more leathery. Their jaws and teeth are enlarged
and extended, with jagged protruding canines, and
powerful muscles to allow for dangerous bites. They
have lost all hair but possess patches of short, conical
spines that protrude through the skin (often ripping
their clothing, if they’re bothering to wear any). Their
COG
15
COO
25
INT
15
REF
25
SAV
10
SOM
WIL
25
20
MOX
—
INIT
80
SPD
2
LUC
—
TT
—
IR
—
DUR
40
WT
8
DR
60
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 80, Blades 70, Control 50,
Deception 20, Demolitions 45, Fray 80, Free Fall 80,
Infiltration 80, Infosec 35 (Security 45), Interfacing 45
(Jamming 55), Intimidation 20, Kinetic Weapons 35,
Navigation 35 (Astrogation 45), Perception 60, Pilot:
Spacecraft 60, Psi Assault 60, Research 50, Sense 50,
Unarmed Combat 55
Knowledge Skills: Language: Cantonese 40, Language: Vietnamese 70
Traits: Limber (Level 1), Mental Disorder (Cannibalism, OCD: breeding, nesting), Psi (Level 2), Psi Defense
Psi Sleights: Deep Scan, Ego Sense, Psi Shield, Psychic Stab, Sense Block
Implants: Basic BioMods, Basic Mesh Inserts,
Bioweave Armor (Light), Chameleon Skin (+20 Infilitration), Claws (1d10 + 3 DV, AP -1), Endocrine
Control, Grip Pads, Medichines, Neurachem (Rating
1), Oxygen Reserve, Prehensile Feet, Vacuum Sealing
Gear: Armor Clothing (6/7, with Chameleon Coating), Light Vac Suit (Chameleon Coating), Liquid
Thermite, Plasma Gun (AP -10, DV 3d10 + 12, Mode
SS), Rocket Pack, Utilitool
Roleplaying: Breeders are primarily concerned with
breeding, though they will attack and eat any nonexsurgents on sight.
Drones
Six of the drones (Diên, Nong, Quy, Sit, Smith, and
Wu) are sleeved in standard bouncer morphs (the other
two being Dexter and Ji; see below). Though exsurgents, the Glory virus has only modified their physical
appearances in slight but unnerving ways. They have
given up to tending to their personal hygiene, however,
having descended into madness and focusing their efforts on the immolator breeding regime.
COG
15
COO
15
INT
15
REF
25
SAV
15
SOM
WIL
15
10
MOX
—
INIT
60
SPD
1
LUC
—
TT
—
IR
—
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Fray 60, Free Fall 60, Infosec 30, Kinetic Weapons 50, Perception 40
Knowledge Skills: Language: Cantonese 40, Language: Vietnamese 70
Sit’s Additional Skills: Academics: Engineering 40,
Academics: Nanotechnology 60, Hardware: Aerospace
60, Hardware: Electronics 60, Hardware: Industrial 70,
Language: Thai 80, Navigation 50 (Astrogation 60),
Profession: Station Ops 70, Programming 50 (Nanofabrication 60), Research 60
Wu’s Additional Skills: Deception 70, Language:
Cantonese 70, Medicine: General Medicine 35, Pilot:
Spacecraft 45, Profession: Station Ops 30, Programming 60 (Nanofabrication 70)
Traits: Limber (1), Mental Disorder (Cannibalism,
OCD), Uncanny Valley
Implants: Basic BioMods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Prehensile Feet
Gear: Armor Clothing (6/7), Light Vac Suit, Specs,
Utilitool
Sit’s Additional Gear: Guardian Nanoswarm,
Quantum Computer (Software: Exploit, Facial/Image
Recognition, Tracking), Repair Spray, Skinlink, Tools
Roleplaying: Drones are for the most part no longer
capable of functional interaction or socializing with
transhumans, and will follow any instructions coming
from Dexter, Mother, or the breeders.
Ji
The drone formerly known as Ji has been resleeved
in the striking ghost morph Tara Yu used to infiltrate
the station.
COG
15
COO
25
INT
20
REF
20
SAV
15
SOM
WIL
20
15
MOX
—
INIT
80
SPD
1
LUC
15
TT
5
IR
30
DUR
45
WT
9
DR
68
Active Skills: Deception 60, Fray 60, Free Fall 60,
Impersonation 70, Infosec 30, Investigation 60 (Logical Deduction 70), Kinesics 70, Kinetic Weapons 50,
Networking: Guanxi 70, Perception 40, Persuasion 50
(Seduction 60), Protocol 50
Knowledge Skills: Language: Cantonese 40, Language: Mandarin 60, Language: Vietnamese 70
Traits: Striking Looks (Level 2), Uncanny Valley
Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic BioMods, Basic
Mesh Inserts, Chameleon Skin, Clean Metabolism,
Cortical Stack, Enhanced Vision, Grip Pads
Gear: Armor Clothing (6/7), Light Vac Suit, Specs,
Spray Armor (Armor 2/2), Utilitool
Roleplaying: Ji generally plays the role of Vo’s moll,
accompanying him everywhere.
glory
eyes are wider apart and cat-like, with a horizontal
rather than vertical slit. Their fingers and toes have
fused together into hands/feet with three digits. Their
nails have hardened and elongated so that they possess dangerous claws on both hands and feet. They
are limber like bouncers, able to use their prehensile
feet much like hands. Females exhibit an ovipositor,
growing from their stomach, that is used to deposit
embryos within the immolator Mother. Gamemasters
are encouraged to give them any other alien characteristics they desire and to add more psi sleights to
make them more challenging if necessary.
Characters who encounter these exsurgents must
make a Willpower Stress Test (p. 214, EP) or suffer
1d10 + 3 SV.
Dexter Vo
Though the Glory virus transformed Vo into a drone,
he remains the functional boss of the gang and is the
only one who still retains a semblance of sanity and
lucidity. Vo is 114 years old, an Earth survivor who
brought his syndicate to space through clever dealmaking and ruthless brutality.
23
Vo was the second-ranked boss in the White
Khanhs before he became infected with Glory and orchestrated a series of bloody betrayals that eliminated
all of the other significant bosses. Vo is one of the
few exsurgent Khanhs retaining a cortical stack and
maintaining regular backups. Gamemasters who wish
to use him as a recurring villain can equip him with
an emergency farcaster system (p. 306, EP). Dexter’s
teeth have been filed sharper to better accommodate
his cannibalistic diet.
COG
20
COO
15
INT
20
REF
15
SAV
25
SOM
WIL
10
30
MOX
5
INIT
70
SPD
1
LUC
30
TT
6
IR
60
DUR
40
WT
8
DR
60
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 60, Blades 30, Deception 80, Fray 80, Free Fall 70, Impersonation 80, Infiltration 40, Infosec 70, Intimidation 70, Investigation 70
(Logical Deduction), Kinesics 80, Kinetic Weapons 70,
Networking: Guanxi 50, Perception 70, Persuasion 80,
Pilot: Spacecraft 65, Protocol 60, Research 40,
Unarmed Combat 60
Knowledge Skills: Language: Cantonese 50, Language: Thai 60, Language: Vietnamese 80
Traits: Eidetic Memory, Mental Disorder (Cannibalism), Uncanny Valley
Implants: Basic BioMods, Basic Mesh Inserts,
Bioweave Armor (Light), Cortical Stack, Medichines,
Oxygen Reserve
Gear: Armor Clothing (6/7), Light Vac Suit, Plasma
Gun (AP -10, DV 3d10 + 12, Mode SS), Specs
Roleplaying: Vo is ruthless, bloodthirsty, and psychopathic. He will use any means at his disposal to
eliminate the characters, even sacrificing drones.
credits:
Glory Writing: Jack Graham
Editing: Rob Boyle, Michelle Lyons
Development: Rob Boyle
Art Direction: Brent Evans
Layout and Maps: Matt Heerdt
Glory Interior Artwork: Bruno Werneck, Mark Winters
GM Screen Art: Stephen Martiniere
Playtesters and Proofreaders: Laura Bienz, Phil Bordelon, Echo
Boyle, Berianne Bramman, C. Byrne, Davidson Cole, Nathaniel Dean, Jason Freese, Aaron Grossman, Matthew Hare, Earl
Hollar, Paul Jensen, Kendall Jung, Joanna Keseberg, Tony Lee,
Melissa Rapp, Richard Riessen, Zak Strassberg, Kevin Tyska,
Leland Zavadil
Musical Inspiration: Aphorism, Marching Dynamics, Tonikom
Resources:
http://eclipsephase.com
—Eclipse Phase website, blog, and forums
http://del.icio.us/infomorph
—Eclipse Phase-related news and links
http://posthumanstudios.com
—Posthuman Studios website
http://eclipsephase.com/store
—Online Ordering and PDFs
24
Phuong Lê (“Mother”)
Lê was the ship’s primary tech. Now she’s a bloated
mass of uteruses and mouths, the incubator in which
the other female White Khanhs implant fertilized
zygotes. Lê’s body now covers most of the inside of
the Ops Center (Area 7), except in spots where it has
been trimmed back to expose display terminals or
other equipment.
Lê is no longer lucid, nor is she able to communicate in any normal fashion. If attacked, she will
lash out with a Psychic Stab against any character
touching her, bludgeon or grapple characters with
tentacles, or deliver a nasty bite to grappled characters or anyone foolish enough to come within 30
centimeters of her mouth.
Lê’s exsurgent form is able to survive for decades in
hibernation if life support is lost—even in vacuum.
Characters who encounter Lê must make a Willpower Stress Test (p. 214, EP) or suffer 1d10 + 5 SV.
COG
5
COO
5
INT
5
REF
5
SAV
5
SOM
WIL
30
30
MOX
1
INIT
20
SPD
1
LUC
—
TT
—
IR
—
DUR
100
WT
20
DR
150
Active Skills: Psi Assault 60, Sense 40, Unarmed
Combat 70
Traits: Psi Defense 2
Psi Sleights: Ego Sense, Psi Shield, Psychic Stab
Implants: Medichines
Attacks: Bite (DV 2d10+3, AP -1), Tentacles
(1d10+3, AP 0)
Outside Resources:
http://www.humanityplus.org
—Humanity Plus
First Printing, by Posthuman Studios
contact us at [email protected]
or via http://eclipsephase.com
or search your favorite social network for:
“Eclipse Phase” or “Posthuman Studios”
Creative Commons License; Some Rights Reserved.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
To view a copy of this license, visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
What this means is that you are free to copy, share, and remix the text
and artwork within this book under the following conditions:
1) you do so only for noncommercial purposes;
2) you attribute Posthuman Studios;
3) you license any derivatives under the same license.
For specific details, appropriate credits, and updates/changes to this
license, please see: http://eclipsephase.com/cclicense
ORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORYnGLORY
GLORY
1
Glory is a starter scenario for Eclipse Phase. It sets
the player characters on the path of a missing person
and leads them into a twisted den of horrors. It includes numerous tips for gamemasters new to running
Eclipse Phase.
Mission Hook
Professor Magnus Qiao-sen Ming needs a team to
investigate the fate of Tara Yu, who is both a colleague
of Ming’s at Titan Autonomous University (TAU) and a
Firewall proxy. Yu was a crow (an investigator into potential x-risks; see p. 358, EP). She was last heard from
while on the trail of a set of hardware memory modules
thought to contain a partial archive of Myrmidon, a
pre-Fall military AGI that became one of the TITANs.
Studying its code might provide important clues as to
the origin of the TITANs—and possibly their fate.
In the course of their investigation, the characters
will be able to accomplish most of their research via
the mesh. Their leads will eventually steer them to raid
the ship of a criminal group that has been infected by
a rogue strain of the Exsurgent virus.
Not Yet Firewall?
This scenario assumes that the characters are already
agents of Firewall. If the characters are not yet sentinels,
this adventure may be used to introduce them to the
organization. In this case, Prof. Ming will approach the
characters about a clandestine job, saying only that they
came recommended for their unique skill sets. He will
not initially reveal the nature of Firewall or its mission.
As the characters learn more about the TITANs and the
Exsurgent virus, however, Ming will feed them tidbits
about some of the secret history. Once the mission is
concluded, Ming will debrief the characters and invite
them to join Firewall (see Stage 5: Debriefing, p. 20).
Starting Setting
Locus (p. 100, EP) is a good location to start in, as
many key NPCs either have ties to the anarchist habitat or reside in or near it. Titan (p. 105, EP) is also a
good starting point, as it allows the initial meeting with
Professor Ming (p. 21) to occur face to face. The player
characters may start from anywhere in the solar system,
however, as the initial meeting and much of the early
research can be conducted via the mesh. In this case, the
gamemaster may wish to relocate some of the NPCs to
make meeting the player characters easier.
Background
Myrmidon was an AGI component of the US military’s
Total Information Tactical Awareness Network. Like
the other AGIs in this network, Myrmidon achieved
2
seed AI capability and was later infected by the Exsurgent virus. It is of particular interest to Firewall
because some of the hardware from its primary locus,
a military satellite in an Earth-Moon Lagrange orbit,
was known to have survived the Battle of L4.
Myrmidon was recovered by the Yokyai Kong, a
Thai-led southeast Asian evac fleet. The Kong hoped
to gain an edge in the desperate war against the
TITANs by studying it. The hardware, including the
storage modules, was taken to the Thai governmentin-exile onboard Vishnukam, the Yokyai Kong’s main
habitat, under control of Air Marshal Viprakasit.
Before the hardware could be studied, however, it
was lost during an infamous incident known as the
Oxygen Deck Riots.
The Oxygen Deck Riots were a minor but tragic
incident sparked by the Thai government’s controversial decision to forcibly upload a significant number of
refugees in order to relieve the resource pressures that
were threatening the habitat’s functioning and existence.
Due to massive overcrowding, the station’s life support
systems were in danger of failure and thousands faced
starvation and lack of basic amenities.
For people who had only just escaped Earth with
bodies intact, this was too much. They gladly heeded
the call made by a group of hardline Lao Buddhist
monks to band together and take action. A flash mob
of refugees detained in docked ships cut through the
airlocks of the axial docking facility, boarded Vishnukam, and stormed through to occupy the habitat
life support facilities. They barricaded themselves
in and and demanded the fleet officers abandon
the plan. The government responded by sending in
troops who slaughtered the protesters. This sparked
days of riots and conflict aboard the habitat and
refugee ships, fueled by rumors and fears among
the refugees that the Air Marshal had ordered them
liquidated. Thousands died.
Enter the Wolves
One of the many nationality-based criminal gangs
that muscled their way into evacuee status during the
Fall, the White Khanhs started out as a Hanoi triad.
They had a controlling interest in several of the larger
scum barges and refugee ships that accreted from
the flotsam of the nascent Vietnamese, Laotian, and
Cambodian orbital colonization efforts. During the
chaos of the riots, the White Khanhs pillaged a dozen
separate caches of military and government hardware
and supplies—Myrmidon’s recovered hardware fragments among them—before melting back into the
populace when order was restored. The White Khanhs
quickly sold off the most valuable items and tech and,
Glory Reborn
Nearly a decade later, Phuong Lê, a tech aboard the
Flower, discovered the cache containing the Myrmidon
hardware. They had never been inventoried, so the
tech had no idea what she was unleashing. Lê became
infected by Glory (p. 19), a variant of the Exsurgent
virus (p. 362, EP), and quickly spread the infection to
the other gang members who were in transit or temporary storage on the ship. The Song Cai Flower was
still a year out from the Jovian-Sun L4 point when
things went weird, but it had already been in use as a
safehouse for years. There were dozens of egos aboard
including Dexter Vo, a prominent White Khanhs boss
who’d narrowly avoided several recent attempts on
his life by Vasquez & Associates, a freelance Extropian
judicial cadre.
The Flower’s egocasting facilities allowed infected
White Khanhs to leave the ship, though the nesting
instinct instilled by the infection has now spurred all
of them to return. Luckily, due to the way this particular exsurgent strain works, they did not spread the
infection outside of the Song Cai Flower. According to
the virus’s programming, however, many of them acquired or abducted “mates,” which they uploaded and
brought back to the Flower for infection. Similarly, as
other White Khanhs members egocasted to the ship,
they too became infected. Over the past year, the majority of the White Khanhs in the system succumbed
to the virus, with only a few (unwittingly) escaping.
Until quite recently, the exsurgent White Khanhs
were in regular contact with other White Khanhs cells
scattered around the system. As the infected egos entered the terminal phase of the Glory virus’s life cycle,
however, they suffered a slow mental degradation and
finally ceased communication with other members of
the gang about a month prior to this scenario.
Firewall Attention
The White Khanhs became the subject of numerous
rumors as their infected members began exhibiting
strange behaviors and acting in a bizarre, cult-like
fashion. Slightly over a year ago, Dexter Vo engineered a
coup within the gang and took over leadership with the
help of other exsurgent members. Infected gang members
also grew increasingly interested in committing violent
atrocities rather than tending to their traditional rackets.
This opened the door for other gangs to move in on their
territory and so their influence waned.
Programmer-archeologist Tara Yu, a TAU faculty
member and operative of Firewall, got wind of the
White Khanhs and their transformation from violent
gang to weird cult about a year ago. Her interest
stemmed from a lead provided by one of the Air
Marshal’s former staffers, pointing toward the White
Khanhs as a possible culprit for the theft of the Myrmidon hardware.
In an unfortunate show of overconfidence, Yu tried
to recover the Myrmidon hardware herself. Though
she had assistance from a hacker named Morteza Bey
and specialized recovery hardware built by Mason
Wang, a Martian AI hardware wünderkind, Yu infiltrated the Song Cai Flower with only a bot and two
custom AIs as backup.
Yu discovered the Myrmidon memory modules and
attempted to copy the data from them, exposing herself
to the Glory virus in the process. Thanks to her precautions, she resisted the full effects of the hack but was
rendered unconscious. The exsurgent White Khanhs
discovered and captured her. Lacking the lucidity to
effectively interrogate her, however, they instead forcibly resleeved her to another morph and cannibalized
her new body, which lacked a cortical stack.
The Current Situation
About a month ago, the exsurgent White Khanhs
entered the terminal phase of their lifecycle (see the
Glory sidebar, p. 4). In this case, however, given her
situation aboard a spacecraft, the Mother exsurgent
(Phuong Lê) has developed a novel plan for immolating herself and dispersing her seeds.
The exsurgents have cannibalized the engines and
power plants from two other spacecraft, adding them
to the Song Cai Flower. These rockets are set to initiate a burn about two weeks from the start of the
scenario that will take them once around Saturn for a
gravity assist, then spiraling sunward at a steep angle
to the plane of the ecliptic, far from any planets or
ships. Without interference, the exsurgent colony will
dive into the sun, burning up but leaving their seeds
to be spread to other worlds on the solar winds via
directed panspermia.
Prior to this time, the White Khanhs were still somewhat active, to the point of directing one of their other
cells to launch a retributive strike against Morteza Bey
(p. 21), the hacker who assisted Yu. Of late, though,
the exsurgents have lost most of their faculty for transhuman reason, devoting themselves completely to
preparing for their dive into the sun. This gives the PCs
a much better chance than they might otherwise have
of successfully boarding the Flower.
glory
now heavily armed, made a protection pact with the
Yokyai Kong officers. They would act as informants
to head off future riots if allowed to continue their
activities. The Myrmidon hardware was not initially
identified as having any use and was stored in a series
of crates on a small freighter, the Song Cai Flower.
In an act of astonishing foresight, and as an aid to
expanding their operations, the White Khanhs decided
to set up a safe haven and darkcasting relay for egos
on the lam. They wanted a location well off the beaten
path, but they did not have the resources to construct
a habitat of their own in the outer system. Instead
they outfitted the Song Cai Flower with reactors, food
vats, and a healthy supply of volatiles and reactor
mass, then launched it toward the outer system using
a stolen nuclear electric booster.
3
glory
Glory is a unique strain of the Exsurgent virus carried
by the TITAN Myrmidon. Glory works as an “Apple
of Knowledge” (AOK) hack—a type of long-acting
mind hack, not unlike a basilisk hack, that mentally
rewrites its host. Glory requires that its victims both
perceive and comprehend the vector message, however, which is a monkey puzzle—a schematic for an
incredibly advanced exotech nanohive. The hack creates a deep-seated obsession with fabricating a copy
of the hive.
To absorb Glory fully, one must have sufficient
technical background to understand the message.
Phuong Lê became infected because she was skilled
in programming and nanofabrication; someone else
might have been unaffected. Once Glory finds a carrier—someone with enough technical skill to create a
Glory nanobot hive—then the virus may be spread via
nanobots, and so direct physical infection becomes
possible.
The first person to become infected by Glory nanobots becomes the “Mother” and immediately seeks
to infect a mate. The initial carrier’s infection is transmitted via blood, saliva, or other bodily fluids. Once
these nanobots enter another person’s bloodstream,
they also become infected.
Glory nanobot infection induces numerous psychological and physiological changes in the subject,
eventually transforming them into a specific type of
exsurgent life form known as immolators. Immolators are further divided into two sub-types: breeders and drones. Immolator exsurgents are based on
a parasitic alien life form with a distinct life cycle.
This parasite infects a target population, establishes
a nest within this host population, and then slowly
consumes its host both by infection (creating other
exsurgents) and anthropophagy (cannibalism). When
the host population has been converted or devoured,
the breeder immolators enter the breeding phase
of their life cycle. In this stage, the male exsurgents
inseminate their female partners. These females then
incubate their developing zygotes in the immolator
colony’s many-wombed Mother (using a retractable
ovipositor). The Mother typically swells and bloats
during this period, consuming the other immolators
and filling herself with billions of embryos in the
form of nanocrystalline spores.
Once a critical mass of embryos reach maturity,
the Mother and her colony sacrifice themselves and
distribute these alien seeds within a new target host
population. This is typically accomplished when the
Mother self-immolates within a targeted area; the
nanocrystal seeds are hardy enough to survive the
fire and small and light enough to be distributed by
winds over a wide area, where they will then hatch
into nanobot swarms to infect new subjects. If necessary, more manual measures can be taken, such as
physically blowing up the Mother or even cutting the
Mother into little pieces (each containing nanocrystal
seeds) that are hand-delivered by suicidal immolators
across a targeted area (such as a habitat).
Before the physical exsurgent transformation takes
place, however, the infection first modifies the victim’s
behavior, turning them into a cunning and aggressive
sociopath with a yen for cannibalism. It also instills
infected hosts with a nesting instinct and a strong
desire to infect a potential mate, either by seduction
or force. The subject’s personality and lucidity are
slowly eroded over time, pushing them down a slow
descent into madness. Glory-infected exsurgents will
cooperate with other immolators, but everyone else
in the universe is prey.
For rules on exposure to the Glory virus, see p. 19.
upping the ante
Gamemasters who wish to make this scenario more
challenging may adapt it in one of the following
ways:
n The nesting instinct of the exsurgent immolators can be eliminated, making the infected
White Khanhs more likely—perhaps even actively
attempting—to spread the infection to new habitats. The scenario could in fact start with one such
outbreak, which investigators could then trace back
to the source.
n Rather than suffering mental degradation, the
exsurgent White Khanhs may be given a greater
4
capacity for rational action. This should spur the
group to be more pro-active, such as siccing White
Khanhs hackers to actively track and investigate
characters who make inquiries about them. This
could result in the White Khanhs attacking the
player characters while they are still in the investigatory phase of the scenario.
n Dexter Vo can be treated as a more capable and
dangerous leader. This version of Dexter may have
backed up an (infected) version of himself elsewhere in the system, giving the gamemaster the
option of making him a recurring villain, as well as
seeding the possibility of a new Glory outbreak.
important characters
Here’s a brief synopsis of the main characters that
appear in this scenario:
Allies
Magnus Ming: Professor at Titan Autonomous
University, Firewall router (p. 21)
Tara Yu (deceased): Programmer-archeologist,
TAU professor, Firewall crow
Morteza Bey: Anarchist hacker and reclaimer,
former associate of Yu (pp. 8 and 21)
Nia Zheng (aka Sammy Li): Former White Khanhs
enforcer (pp. 10 and 22)
Achilles & Tortoise (disabled): A custom robot AI
and paired AI used by Yu (pp. 7 and 21)
Firewall needs you to find a missing agent, Tara Yu.
To the best of our knowledge, Yu was most recently
investigating the current whereabouts of military
computer hardware recovered from a station in
Earth orbit that was destroyed during the Fall, in
the Battle of L4.
Yu has been missing for over a month now. Long
silences are not unusual during some of her undercover research missions, but she missed her
last scheduled check-in. Last we knew, she was on
Locus. We need you to track her down, ascertain
her status if alive, recover her cortical stack if dead,
and if necessary continue or assist her search for
the missing hardware.
READ ALOUD
Mason Wang: Anarchist hacker, former associate
of Yu (pp. 7 and 21)
out to be a clearing in a shielded garden dome on the
shore of Titan’s methane seas.
If this adventure is used to bring the PCs together,
Ming will start the meeting by having the sentinels
introduce themselves to each other. He will then
explain the mission (gamemasters are encouraged to
read this aloud):
Antagonists
Dexter Vo: White Khanhs boss (pp. 3 and 24)
Phuong Lê (“Mother”): White Khanhs technician
cum exsurgent colony queen (pp. 16 and 24)
Ji: Dexter Vo’s protege (p. 23)
Sit: White Khanhs technician, formerly Phuong
Lê’s lover (p. 23)
others
Patrona Vasquez: Agent of Nomic (pp. 10 and 22)
Stage 1: Meeting Ming
Professor Ming is a respected researcher among the
Argonauts, an influential faculty member at TAU, and
a router for Firewall. As a fairly public figure, he is
cautious in his role as a Firewall proxy and will not
initially reveal the nature of Firewall or its mission.
Ming will contact the characters through encrypted
and secure Firewall channels, calling them to a meeting within the next 24 hours. Unless some or all of the
PCs are on Titan, the initial meeting will take place in
a private virtual space on the mesh. The simulspace
environment is an abstract attempt to replicate an
unknown alien species’ virtual reality sensorium, and
should come across as strange and unsettling. Characters who are not in Titan’s neighborhood will most
likely need to attend the meeting by sending a fork
(see Forking and Merging, p. 273, EP). If they are on
Titan, Ming will invite them to his office at TAU’s Department of Computational Archeology, which turns
If the characters are experienced sentinels, Ming
further explains that Yu was looking for hardware
fragments from a TITAN known as Myrmidon for
study. Otherwise, he will only share this information
with the PCs if they come close to recovering the
modules. Ming knows nothing else about Yu’s findings, other than that she believed the Myrmidon hardware was no longer in the inner system and so she
was following leads further out. He does not know
about her work with Mason Wang or Morteza Bey
(see below), nor does he know the White Khanhs are
involved or anything about their Exsurgent infection.
Ming has no wish to send investigators ignorant of
the Exsurgent threat to their deaths and will instruct
them on some necessary precautions when recovering
the Myrmidon hardware.
Yu’s backup cannot be reached because her insurance policy specifies her life timeout at six months;
she must be missing for at least that long before she’s
reinstanced. This is longer than customary but not
unheard of for someone doing dangerous long-haul
exploratory work. If proof of her death is provided
to her insurer, they’ll reinstance her, and the PCs can
interview her—when she gets out of psych.
Ming is, and should come across as, a generally
benevolent figure. If investigators prove their skill and
good intentions on this mission, he can be a source of
further work and a useful contact. Ming’s game stats
can be found on p. 21.
The PCs can do most of their initial investigation by chasing down leads via the mesh, but Ming
will make it clear at the outset that recovering the
memory modules will likely require physical travel or
egocasting. In case of travel, Firewall will attempt to
provision the group with morphs roughly equivalent
glory
Myrmidon: Archived TITAN
5
to those the PCs have now and appropriate insurance policies (see Morph Brokerage, p. 276, EP).
Ming won’t cover costs for egocasting or supplying
morphs if he believes the PCs are on a wild good
chase. He will ask to review the leads and evidence
they’ve gathered and discuss their reasons for egocasting beforehand.
Other than this support, the PCs will largely be on
their own. Firewall will not cover other costs unless
the characters make a particularly good case for it,
and the assignment isn’t important enough for Firewall to prioritize any further resources on it (though if
the PCs supply evidence of an active Exsurgent infection, this will rapidly change).
Stage 2: Pursuing Leads
The sentinels have several options for investigating Yu’s disappearance. These involve researching
Yu online (using the Research skill) and via social
networks (using Reputation). These methods
should turn up several leads, including two of Yu’s
contacts, Mason Wang and Morteza Bey. Once the
characters discover that Yu was looking into the
White Khanhs, further efforts should lead them to
Nia Zheng. All of this digging may bring the PCs
to the attention of Patrona Vasquez. Each of these
options is covered below.
How direct to be in providing the characters with
leads is left to the discretion of the GM. Some GMs
may wish to make the PCs work harder in the legwork phase of the adventure, in which case throwing
in some misdirection is appropriate. GMs who wish
to minimize this phase and get to the infiltration of
the ship may opt to provide positive modifiers on
the Research/Networking rolls, or simply have Ming
provide more information up front.
ResearchIng Tara Yu
Yu’s activities as a Firewall agent made her uncommonly cautious. She has no publicly accessible lifelog
and maintains a fairly low mesh profile. Likewise,
inquiries into Yu’s activities and associates largely
draw blanks—she’s put a wall between her normal
life and the things she does for Firewall. With the
exception of Ming, her associates from TAU believe
she was on sabbatical. Nevertheless, successful Research Tests (see p. 249, EP) will turn up the following information:
n A list of Yu’s associates. Networking Tests can
reveal which ones are actually important (see
below).
n Yu’s recent travels. In the past several months, Yu
has sent several forks to the Vishnukam station in
Earth orbit, to interview people and research the
missing Myrmidon hardware. Slightly over a month
ago, she egocast to Locus.
6
Checking Social Networks
Characters who successfully use their Networking
skill and social networks (see pp. 287-291, EP) to dig
into Yu can find out more:
n @-rep and r-rep (Moderate favor): Yu received big
favors from both Mason Wang (p. 7) and Morteza
Bey (p. 8) in the past two months (using Yu’s list
of associates will provide a +10 modifier on these
tests). Specifically inquiring about Yu’s departure
from Locus will reveal that she egocast to Casa
Arturo a month ago (see p. 11; this is a separate
Moderate favor). Likewise, successful social networking on Casa Arturo (another Moderate favor)
will uncover that Yu pulled a major favor to borrow
a small spacecraft called the Kesyrah, which is now
several weeks overdue. Where she took this shuttle
is unknown, but its limited fuel capacity and range
indicate it is likely she traveled somewhere in the
Jovian Greeks.
n C-rep (Low favor): Investigating Yu’s activities
on the Vishnukam station will discover that she interviewed the Air Marshall and several government
officials and researched the White Khanhs crime
gang there (inquiries not focused on Vishnukam
suffer a -30 modifier, however).
n G-rep (Moderate favor): Checking criminal connections will uncover that Yu used her networking
connections to track down and talk to someone
named Nia Zheng (p. 10) and was investigating
White Khanhs activities in the outer system. An
Excellent Success here will reveal that Yu took a
special interest in the gang’s Song Cai Flower craft.
n I-rep (Low favor): As with @-rep, above.
Researching the White Khanhs
Mesh research into the White Khanhs will uncover a
decent amount of information, reports, and rumors
on this gang and their activities and history. To isolate
the key facts, a second Research Test to analyze the
data is necessary (see p. 249, EP); an appropriate skill
(such as Interest: Triads) can serve as a complementary skill to this test (p. 173, EP). The gamemaster can
adapt and supply any information provided in this
scenario’s background (p. 2) that would be known
outside the gang. For example, the characters may
learn about the group’s recent switch to violent and
cult-like behavior, Dexter Vo’s coup, their decline and
the fact that they’ve lost ground to other gangs, etc. As
a rule of thumb, every 10 points of MoS on the second
Research Test will reveal a new insight.
If any character successfully exercises their g-rep
and Guanxi socnet connections, they can determine
that the White Khanhs has a secret hideout with a
Moderate (Level 3) favor. Finding out any details
about the Song Cai Flower, such as where to find it,
counts as a High (Level 4) favor.
If the characters attempt to track down any still
active White Khanhs members, they will have a difficult time. All of the infected gang members have
returned to the nest. The few who remain are laying
Outside Help
The GM should take note of any efforts the characters
make to keep their inquiries into the gang quiet (see
Keeping Quiet, p. 289, EP). If they don’t, Patrona
Vasquez (p. 10) may hear about their interest and contact them. The gamemaster can leave this to chance,
making a Networking: Criminal Test for Vasquez to
see if she finds out, or simply introduce her if the characters are in need of more information and/or allies.
Mason Wang
Characters who learn of Wang’s favor for Yu (see
above) can easily track the anarchist hacker down on
Locus. Game stats for Wang can be found on p. 21.
Researching Wang
There is a lot of information on Wang publicly available,
no Research Test required. Wang is a Martian who did
graduate work as a programmer-archeologist at TAU,
where he was briefly a student of both Ming and Yu. If
asked about him, Ming remembers little except to say
that he was “talented but not terribly serious.”
After taking a doctorate, Wang returned to Mars,
where he founded a software company and spent five
years on typical corp AI projects. Later he felt the
pull of the outer system again and sold his business
to finance construction of a private habitat in the
neighborhood of Locus. He’s been living there for the
last two years, participating in projects with a number
of Locus research pods, which has netted him a fair
amount of positive reputation. His major motives are
profit, self-promotion, and sex. Though only a handful of people know, Wang was Yu’s lover for a time
during his studies at TAU and they remained in contact afterward (discoverable with @-rep, High favor).
Wang is part of Blue Pod, a Locus-based affinity
group interested in the intersection of art and AI/AGI
research. The group has a large module on Locus
in which they regularly throw @-list parties and art
events. Their true (secret) interest, however, lies in
studying the TITANs and the Exsurgent virus (which
they call “the Vector”). They have correctly guessed
that the TITANs ran afoul of alien technology, though
they believe that it had to do with the Pandora Gates
and have no idea about the Bracewell probe.
Unlike Firewall, Wang and his associates are much
less cautious and more interested in finding evidence
of alien technology and taking advantage of it than in
protecting humanity—and their methods reflect this.
Yu was interested in recruiting Wang into Firewall, not
knowing Blue Pod’s true nature, and confided some
of her suspicions about Myrmidon to him. (At the
gamemaster’s discretion, Blue Pod’s real agenda can
be ascertained with an @-rep High favor).
The player characters can also learn that right
around the time Yu disappeared, Wang uncharacteristically dropped out of sight for a month, only recently
emerging again. Publicly, he cited a problem with a
programming project: “Deep issues with the code
base that required utmost concentration.” Digging any
deeper is difficult, but a Moderate favor using @-rep
reveals that Wang spent an entire month sequestered
on his private hab near Locus, apparently seeing no
one and not responding to any outside communications—a lifetime for someone like him.
Wang Industries—his private hab—is a few days’
travel from Locus by rocket. The habitat is a conspicuously novel design—a “matrioshka hab,” designed as
a series of nested spheres, such that the outer layers
are able to reuse some of the waste energy from the
inner ones. How well this design actually works is a
matter of debate; old sundogs generally deem it too
clever by half.
Contacting Wang
Wang will cooperate to a limited extent with anyone
who approaches him about Yu, as long as they have an
@-rep of at least 20 or prove that they work for Ming.
Wang is guilt-wracked about Yu’s disappearance but
won’t willingly come clean with the full story. He will
simply say that Yu asked him to build a custom robot
and AI package, providing details on both Tortoise
and Achilles, without saying what they were to be
used for. The last he heard from her, she was on the
Casa Arturo habitat (see Stage 3: Investigating the
Song Cai Flower, p. 11).
If the characters bribe, threaten, or kidnap/torture Wang—a risky proposition given his many new
friends on Locus—he will provide the full story. Yu
approached Wang to program and design a custom
robot and two pre-sapient AIs, dubbed Tortoise &
Achilles, for the task of infiltrating the White Khanhs’s
station and retrieving data from the Myrmidon
hardware. The robotic shell, dubbed Achilles, was
a zero-G anthroform of roughly human shape and
height but with an incredibly thin, whip-like build. It
was considerably less advanced than a typical synth,
with limited interfaces and a simple covert ops expert
system AI designed to follow a human infiltrator, ape
their movements, and keep itself concealed.
The bot was also equipped with a rider module to
carry Tortoise, a considerably more sophisticated AI
designed to scan exotic hardware and data structures,
copy the resulting output, perform rudimentary threat
assessments (such as detecting telltale signs of known
software-based strains of the Exsurgent virus), and
quarantine itself with an air gap in emergencies. Basically, Tortoise was a programmer-archeologist expert
system in a box, intended to help Yu avoid any direct
encounters with nasty Exsurgent software.
Unbeknownst to Yu, Tortoise and Achilles were
also designed to transmit (via QE comm; p. 315, EP)
glory
low in confusion at their outfit’s effective collapse, in
fear of what their strangely-behaving compatriots are
up to, or wary of attacks by other gangs who sense
an opportunity. A Minor (Level 2) favor acquired with
g-rep will put the characters on Sammy Li’s trail (p. 10),
as someone who used to be involved with the gang but
recently disappeared and is assumed to have defected.
7
whatever data they captured back to a storage facility Wang had set up. Unfortunately, Wang wasn’t very
cautious and overestimated his skills relative to the
dangers of the Exsurgent virus. Tortoise managed to
send off the data retrieved in Yu’s recovery attempt—as
well as a copy of the Glory virus. This infected the fork
of himself Wang had set up to analyze the data. Luckily, his pre-merge diagnostics sniffed out the problem
before he reintegrated the fork. He sequestered the
corrupt fork for later analysis, interested in the possible applications of such an aggressive virus. The close
call left Wang shaken, however, so he spent the past
month carefully scanning his systems and personal data
for signs of infection. He found nothing, but remains
worried that he might have missed something. (He did
not, but this fear strongly affects his actions).
Wang knows nothing significant about the White
Khanhs or Myrmidon beyond what was required to
design Tortoise and Achilles and doesn’t know anything about Zheng, Vasquez, or Bey.
Wang’s Watchfulness
Contacting Bey
Wang is curious to know Yu’s fate, but more curious
about Myrmidon and the virus he has quarantined.
He will also try to gather information from the investigators. Yu hinted at an organization behind her
efforts and Wang wants to know more about it. He
will attempt to track the sentinels from the point of
contact onward, both to cover up anything they learn
that might incriminate him and to learn more about
the prize Yu was searching for. He will use both his
own considerable hacking skills and his social networks to do this, and he will attempt to cover his own
tracks in the process (applying a –20 modifier to keep
it quiet; see p. 288, EP).
Bey is difficult to get a hold of and will refuse to
meet the investigators in person. He fears provoking
another attack from the White Khanhs if he renders
aid or provides information and is wracked with guilt
about bringing the gangsters down on his roommates.
Someone with substantial @-rep or e-rep (40+) can
talk him into a simulspace meeting, however, provided
they succeed in a Persuasion Test or otherwise convince/coerce him.
If questioned, Bey will reveal that he met Yu
through Saul, and that she recruited him to pursue
infosec and infiltration research prior to and during
her run on the White Khanhs hideout, the Song Cai
Flower. In fact, Bey sent a beta level fork of himself,
sleeved in a synthmorph, along on her mission, overseeing her progress from the Kesyrah, the shuttle Yu
was using. Beyond this, he knows nothing, having
been restored from an earlier backup (the White
Khanhs raiders stole and consumed his head, spacing
his cortical stack). He assumes the gang found the Kesyrah and his fork, traced it back to him, and raided
Xiu’s Greenhouse as retribution. He knows nothing
about Wang or Vasquez.
Bey is very polite but firm in wanting to avoid any
further involvement. His interest in the mission was
based in his Variegationist Reclaimer interests. Yu told
him nothing about Firewall, pitching it as a Reclaimer
op. While he knew it could be dangerous, he feels used
and misled. He will therefore pose a number of direct
questions to the sentinels that they probably can’t—
or shouldn’t—answer (e.g., who are they working for,
what really happened to the White Khanhs, what’s the
real story with Myrmidon, and so on).
The player characters’ responses and their general
trustworthiness will impact how much helpful info
Bey will hand over. If they succeed in a Persuasion
Test (modified by -10 to -30 depending on the
sentinels’ responses), he will reveal the location
Morteza Bey
Characters who learn of Yu’s link to Morteza Bey can
find the hacker on Xiu’s Greenhouse (“Home of Famous
Trojans Bok Choy!”), an anarchist hydroponics outfit
near Locus. Bey’s game stats can be found on p. 21.
Researching Bey and Xiu’s Greenhouse
8
Any cursory lookup of Xiu’s Greenhouse, however,
will note some startling recent news (if the characters
fail to notice this, have a muse make the correlation).
Just a few weeks ago, the garden hab was assaulted
by a small group of unknown assailants who slaughtered most of the inhabitants, apparently as some sort
of warning. The local autonomist defense council is
still looking into the matter and will share what info
they have with any PCs who have @-rep of 20+. This
data includes footage of immolator exsurgents (both
breeders and drones), whom the anarchists assume
are exhumans. If the sentinels circulate this footage,
inquiring about exotic morphs, Patrona Vasquez (p.
10) will hear of it and contact them.
Xiu’s inhabitants lack the will to pursue vengeance
at present. Most are too shell-shocked from the experience and recovering via psychosurgery. A successful
Research Test will note that Bey is listed among those
killed—in fact, his decapitated and mutilated body
was left impaled in the greenhouse.
Bey is young (22) and his main public presence is
a gardening blog dealing largely with his work on
various cultivars of broccoli. Anyone using their
@-rep or e-rep to investigate Bey can find out, as a
Level 2 favor, that Bey is a brilliant hacker and until
recently was in a romantic liaison with Antoin Saul,
a resident of Locus. If they research Saul, he is identifiable as a noteworthy technician, Reclaimer activist, and associate of Tara Yu. An additional Level 3
favor with @-rep or e-rep can ascertain that Saul is a
Variegationist—a group of outer system Reclaimers
who study TITAN relics, such as the dead matrioshka
brain at Iapetus, hoping to learn defenses against the
TITAN technologies still active on Earth. (Antoin
Saul isn’t a useful lead in this scenario, though GMs
may find him useful him as a lead into Reclaimeroriented plotlines of their own.)
Bey’s Video Clips
No matter the outcome, Bey will also share two
surveillance clips with the sentinels. These were captured by Tara Yu’s speck bot and smart dust spies
aboard the Flower, relayed back to Bey’s fork on the
Kesyrah, and transmitted back to Xiu’s Greenhouse
for safekeeping.
Clip 1: The smart dust camera cuts in on a close
two-dimensional shot of a mass of wet noodles being
messily slurped into an immense mouth. The scraggly
mustache framing it drips with broth. Red, curvilinear graphics in a translucent AR frame swirl around
a protuberant mole partially obscured by a dangling
noodle. At last the noodle is sucked into the mouth,
and the graphics blink twice. A positive ID. There is
a flicker of recalibration as more nanobot spies come
online, and the scene dissolves into a better three-D
visual showing the owner of the giant mouth and his
surroundings. The dimly lit, cramped quarters of a
freighter are immediately apparent. The person in the
scene is Dexter Vo.
Clip 2: This is actually a collection of speck bot
footage from Yu’s actual infiltration attempt. The
bots spread out and assemble an interior view of some
parts of the ship, including the utility bay (Area 2),
machine shop (Area 8), and a few parts of the crew
torus, including the medical bay (Area 9a). The specks
also catch shots of Yu emerging from the service airlock accompanied by a thin bot (Achilles). Both are
cloaked in chameleon material, but an AR overlay on
the feed silhouettes their positions. Yu cases the room,
then flattens against a wall as the door from another
room hisses open. The bot eerily mirrors her movements. A male breeder exsurgent (Quang) enters the
room, stops and looks around as if smelling the air,
but never spots Yu. He then passes through the room
into another module.
glory
of the Song Cai Flower. With a MoS of 20+, he’ll
also reveal that he and Yu tried to make contact
with a former White Khanhs member, Nia Zheng
(p. 10), last seen on Locus, but were rebuffed. With
an MoS of 30+, he’ll share all of his Infosec work
on the Song Cai Flower, which gives the PCs a +20
bonus on all Infosec and Infiltration rolls on the
station. What he lacks is a schematic of the station
(many of the modules are so old that they aren’t
self-documenting) and knowledge of the gang’s
daily routine and physical security procedures. He
lost touch with Yu too early in the mission to amass
any information other than external photos and
nanobug footage. After that he maintained radio
silence, waiting to hear from her.
Nia Zheng/Sammy Li
Nia Zheng (formerly known as Sammy Li) is a very
useful source for inside intel on the White Khanhs, but
he is unfortunately hard to track down.
9
Researching Zheng/Li
Sammy Li was a former White Khanhs enforcer and
the gang’s man on Locus. When he realized something
was seriously wrong with the White Khanhs, he cut
ties with the gang and resleeved to avoid reprisals.
As Nia Zheng (a female morph and identity), he is
a minor red market operator in the Barrows, the
beehive Guanxi neighborhood dug into one of the
Patroclus asteroids rotating around Locus. Given the
lack of laws, crime isn’t terribly profitable on Locus,
so Zheng stacks cred by sourcing red tech and selling the designs to inner system triads. He is fearful of
discovery but lacks the funds to egocast off Locus and
resleeve in the inner system—his eventual goal.
Player characters who learn both Li’s and Zheng’s
names may not initially realize they are the same
person. Mesh research into Sammy Li easily reveals
that he was a White Khanhs operative on Locus (no
test required), originally from Vishnukam, who went
missing about four months ago. This is right around
the time that Nia Zheng seems to have appeared on
Locus (no Research Test required). Characters who
put the clues together and ask the right people on
Locus (a High g-rep favor) can verify that Zheng is
Li’s new identity.
a note on npc
gender identity
For generic pronouns, Eclipse Phase uses the
Singular They rule (p. 114, EP). In the case
of specific characters, however, we use the
gender pronoun (he or she—or it for neuters) that is “preferred” by the character, no
matter the sex of the morph they are in. This
can sometimes be confusing, such as when
they are in a morph of the opposite sex, but
unfortunately the English language isn’t wellequipped to handle this in any better way.
Contacting Zheng
10
If contacted, Zheng won’t talk without an exorbitant
trade of cred or rep favors—enough for a one-way
egocast to Mars and a ruster morph. Short of hitting Zheng over the head with a shovel and forcibly
uploading him to an interrogation simulspace, there
is one way the PCs can get him to drop his facade
and talk about the White Khanhs. Hardened gangster
he may be, but like many people, he suffers from the
longing for Earth. Among the effects he left on the
Song Cai Flower were his father’s cufflinks, which he
can and will describe down to the tiniest scratch. If
the PCs reveal that their investigation will take them
to the Flower, Li will share everything he knows, provided the PCs attempt to retrieve the cufflinks. He will
want to seal the deal by having the PCs agree to a
fairly standard salvage and retrieval contract administered by Nomic, the Mutualist contract law AI on
Extropia. If PCs won’t agree to this and won’t give
him some other convincing assurance, he’ll refuse to
speak with them any further.
If the sentinels get Zheng talking, though, their efforts will be rewarded. Sammy Li actually spent time
aboard the Song Cai Flower a few months prior to
the outbreak of Glory. He can describe the security
procedures on board and give the PCs a rough idea
of how many gang members were present when he
was there (8). His description of the station personnel includes Dexter Vo, Phuong Lê, and six other
White Khanhs members, four of whom are dangerous in a fight. Best of all, he can provide a schematic
of the station, including the likely location of the
cufflinks, which he left in a duffel bag in the crew
quarters with a few other personal effects. Unlike
most of the White Khanhs aboard, he arrived by ship,
rendezvousing with the Flower while it was still en
route. He assures the PCs that the station itself is
not armed, though the inhabitants definitely are. He
doesn’t know about the engines the White Khanhs
are adding to the station.
Patrona Vasquez
Vasquez is a freelance magistrate who takes contract
work from Nomic, the pre-sapient contract law AI
based on Extropia (p. 97, EP). Vasquez became involved with the White Khanhs during a routine collections operation. The gang had failed to deliver on a
promised lot of kidnapped personality forks. Vasquez
and her team went to Olympus on Mars to enforce
the contract and found themselves in a fight to the
death with a group of (Glory-infected) gang members.
Of her team, three were captured and eaten. She now
has a special grudge against the gang and has made a
hobby of monitoring their activity.
Vasquez has an open request within her social networking to be informed of anyone asking about the
White Khanhs. She will contact the sentinels if she finds
out about their inquiries (see p. 7). She has no interest
in meeting them in person but offers to exchange information. She is currently located on Extropia and will
either exchange text messages or agree to a simulspace
meet-up via beta fork. Vasquez is a tad theatrical; her
simulspace avatar looks like a dominatrix kitted out
for house-to-house urban warfare.
Use Vasquez to narrow the characters’ search if
they seem lost or have cast too wide a net. She knows
about the Song Cai Flower, and while she’s unsure
of its exact location—somewhere in the Greeks, she
believes—she’s sure it is their center of operations.
She hasn’t gone after it herself because she has more
profitable work, but helping other people out will
help settle her score with the White Khanhs. She
warns the agents that the White Khanhs are savage
and dangerous combatants, but she doesn’t know
about Glory. Rather, she believes that White Khanhs
have turned into a narcoalgorithm cult or are possibly taking part in some form of singularity-seeking
Stage 3: Investigating
the Song Cai Flower
Yu’s trail should eventually point the sentinels to the
Song Cai Flower. The Flower is not in the habit of accepting farcast links from anyone any more, not even
White Khanhs members, and no longer establishes
mesh connections with other habitats. The characters’
only real choice is to investigate it physically, and the
best launching point for that is Casa Arturo—the same
station from which Yu initiated her operation.
Casa Arturo
The Casa Arturo cluster hab is the most likely jumping off point for an expedition to the Song Cai
Flower, which trails it by about 100,000 km in the
sparsely-inhabited Paloma Negra neighborhood of
the Jovian Greeks. Casa Arturo is anchored to the
asteroid from which the neighborhood takes its
name, a rare, dark, metal-rich body. The hab has a
similar plan to Lot 49 (p. 102, EP) but is somewhat
larger, with a population of about 1200, most of
whom are fanatical rocket geeks. Most Arturistas
speak Spanish, English, and Mandarin. The mining,
foundry, and shipbuilding facilities here are very
well-developed for a population of this size. Full
egocasting and resleeving facilities are available—
many visitors come to see rocket designs firsthand
and participate in races—and bouncer morphs are
very common here (+20 on Networking Tests; see
Morph Acquisition, p. 277, EP).
Getting to the Flower
Characters with solid @-rep should be able to
borrow or hire a small spacecraft at Casa Arturo
(requiring a successful Networking Test and a Level
4 favor). If the characters fail here and call upon
Firewall for help, Ming will pull some strings to
find them transportation out to the Flower. The
characters are most likely to acquire a SLOTV (p.
349, EP). This is also a good opportunity for the
gamemaster to introduce other NPCs here who can
serve as potential backup, under the guise of ship
crew the PCs have hired.
The Kesyrah
On the approach to the Flower, the characters may
discover the Kesyrah, the SLOTV Yu and Bey hired
from the Arturistas for their mission. The ship is anchored to a small, dust-blackened ice asteroid, where
it blends in so well that it would never be visible from
more than a kilometer away, and its power systems
are still active. The gamemaster may make this discovery automatic or may instead allow any PC watching
the ship’s sensors to make an Interfacing or Perception
Test to detect power emissions from the shuttle.
On the outside, the Kesyrah is a sleek, stealthy ship
with larger than normal engines for its class. The fuselage is matte black, with some strange angles thrown
in to foil radar. Ship geeks notice unusually powerful
cold gas maneuvering jets on a successful Hardware:
Aerospace Test. The only markings are double Xs in
dark gray on the port and starboard engine pods. The
starboard airlock has been blown, probably cut open
from the outside with a plasma torch.
Inside, the ship is cramped, interior space having
been sacrificed for larger engines, powerful cold gas
thrusters, and more fuel. Yu and Bey’s gear floats everywhere; the ship has been ransacked. In the cockpit
is the wreckage of Morteza Bey’s flexbot morph. It’s
been shot, and the synthmorph equivalent of the cortical stack has been popped.
The ship is otherwise functional. PCs may return it
to the Arturistas for a reward of @-rep (+5). They may
also claim/keep it, but if the Arturistas ever find out,
they will most certainly lose @-rep (-5 or more). The
engines are standard hydrogen-oxygen rockets, but
the innovative nozzle design gives them a higher specific impulse, generating about 0.2 g more acceleration
than a standard SLOTV. The ship is also difficult to
detect when maneuvering on cold thrusters only (-20
on Interfacing or Perception Tests to spot).
The Kesyrah is a nice prize. That the White Khanhs
simply left it out here should tell the PCs something
about their state of mind.
The Song Cai Flower
Except for its rotating toroid habitation ring, the Flower
is typical of pre-Fall-era freighters. At the rotating section’s axis is a chain of long, cylindrical modules, from
a windowed greenhouse on one end to the ops center
on the other. In the center is a big, blocky utility module,
from which extend a long docking spar, solar panels,
and a reactor. The torus is painted red and the modules
forming the axle green, both colors dulled by vacuum
ablation, and scarred here and there by microasteroid
impacts. The overall effect is gaudy gone sinister. The
entire station except for the torus is in microgravity.
Anyone who succeeds in an appropriate Knowledge
or Technical skill can tell that several additional fusion
rockets have been attached to the ship’s frame. Close
examination will reveal that these additions are recent
and are not yet complete (though they will be soon).
There are three sizes of airlocks in the hab, rated
by how many people they can hold while the lock is
glory
experiment gone bad—perhaps an attempt to form
a group mind. She can drop a few names, including
Dexter Vo and Sammy Li.
In return, Vasquez will want to know how the PCs’
mission goes down, which might not sit well with
Firewall’s information containment protocols. She
will want to know which gang members they encounter, whether the White Khanhs is still functional as a
group, what kind of fighting strength they still have,
and in particular what happened to turn them from
a successful underworld organization to a wacko
cult. She will expect an update from the PCs within
a reasonable period of time after they complete their
mission (see Debriefing, p. 20).
11
cycling: small (one person), standard (four people),
and service (up to ten people or a small vehicle).
Airlocks take four Action Turns to open, close, cycle,
and open again on the other side. (A character may
move into the airlock on the first turn and out on the
last.) Airlocks leading to and from pressurized areas
on the ship work as normal doors unless a module is
depressurized, in which case they kick in as airlocks.
All have safety features to prevent them closing on
people or objects passing through, though these can
be disabled with a Hardware: Industrial Test at -10.
Ship Security
Luckily for the sentinels, the Flower’s various security
measures are operating below standard efficiency due
to the effects of the Glory virus on the crew. Some
systems—including most of the ship’s exterior hull
sensor systems—have simply fallen into disrepair or
are not monitored because the exsurgents are preoccupied with reproduction and uniformly deranged. Any
characters who exercise stealth in approaching the Song
Cai Flower from a distance are certain to succeed—the
exsurgents simply aren’t watching. Exterior airlocks
are electronically locked, but may be opened using any
of the methods described under Electronic Locks, pp.
291-293, EP. They may also be cut through with appropriate tools (DUR 100, Armor 50, WT 25).
The ship’s local wireless mesh network may be infiltrated by anyone who comes within close proximity
12
(using the rules for hacking and subversion given on
pp. 254-261, EP). The mesh is actively monitored by
Wei, Dexter Vo’s muse.
Wei was a fairly expensive custom security muse
who doubled as a simulspace lovedoll, but Vo’s exposure to Glory warped her as well. Her heuristics
for dealing with security threats are seriously out
of whack, overestimating the dangers of some situations while occasionally ignoring clear threats. Her
personal interaction agents also react inappropriately.
When making threats, delivering warnings, or reacting
to crises, she behaves as if she’s on an exceptionally
large dose of hither (p. 321, EP). Use the stats for a
security AI (p. 332, EP), but apply a -10 penalty on
all attempts to detect intruders and ignore critical successes. Her avatar in AR or simulspace is a tall, sultry
Chinese woman.
Electronic infiltration of the ship is a risky endeavor
as the hacker risks exposure to the Glory virus. Any
intruder who obtains Locked status immediate is exposed to the AOK hack (see Glory Infection, p. 19).
Wei’s job is also to monitor the ship’s internal
surveillance and spime sensor feeds, alerting Vo to
anything unusual, but the AI is distracted and careless
and many of the feeds are disabled. The gamemaster
should roll Perception Tests for the AI (with the -10
modifier noted above) whenever the characters act
without subtlety inside the ship or if they enter the ops
center (Area 7), which Wei watches closely. Alternately
Song Cai Flower Map Key
Area descriptions use the side of the ship from which
the solar panel extends as the arbitrary “up” direction.
“Left” and “right” directions are relative to a character
looking into the area from a given entrance.
1. Docking Spar
The spar is an open truss with a standard docking ring
on one end attached to a heavy plastic umbilicus two
meters wide. It’s a cheap solution that hasn’t stood up
well to extended exposure to space. The docking ring
itself is functional, but the umbilicus has been holed
by micro-asteroids in many places along its length and
won’t pressurize. Characters trying to enter this way
will need to stay in their suits. A standard airlock leads
from here to the utility bay (Area 2).
Two LLOTVs are docked along the length of the
spar. Both have been recently gutted, with engines and
power supplies hastily (and sloppily) removed.
2. Utility Bay
This section houses a well-equipped but poorly-kept
utility shop. On the “up” wall above, where the
solar panel connects, are banks of power storage
and monitoring gear. A small airlock on this wall
gives easy access to the solar panel spar (Area 5).
Characters with Profession skills relating to spaceship or station administration or maintenance who
check the power readings realize on an Easy Test
(+10) that the trickle of power from the solar array
is totally insufficient to operate a ship this size this
far out from the sun; therefore, one or more reactors must still be online.
Two standard airlocks on opposite sides of the bay
lead to the docking spar (Area 1) and reactor module
(Area 3). Left and right of the docking airlock are service airlocks to the greenhouse (Area 6) and machine
shop (Area 8). The wall below has a deeply recessed
service airlock (about 3 meters) that opens to space
and a service crawlway leading to the life support
pods (Area 4).
Just inside the bottom service lock are three large
fuel tanks. Fuel lines run from these to attitudinal
thrusters on the outside of the utility bay and Area
4. These are linked to the thrusters in the ops center
(Area 7), but the ops center has its own fuel supply,
as well as the manual controls for all of the station’s
thrusters. The attitudinal thrusters are sufficient for
station keeping and spinning or stopping the torus,
but not to move the ship any significant distance.
(This was originally done with boosters that have long
since been broken down for parts).
The drone Sit is often working here.
3. Reactor Module
From outside, the reactor module looks like a wide,
flattened donut with no hole in the middle. For characters who have spent a lot of time on or around
spaceships, it’s easily recognizable. A standard airlock
connects it to the utility bay (Area 2). The door to the
reactor is locked, but can be overcome with any of
the methods described on pp. 291-292, EP, with a -10
difficulty modifier.
Inside, the donut contains the toroidal magnetic
containment chamber common to most fusion reactor designs, monitoring equipment, a fuel processor,
and conduits for venting spent fuel and waste heat
into space. The space inside is cramped, with lots
of handholds, and the air is hot. This is one of the
better maintained modules on the Flower, but even
it looks seriously overdue for a visit from maintenance personnel. Two small airlocks on the flat sides
(above and below from the viewpoint of the door
to Area 2) would give access to space but have been
welded shut.
Damage to the reactor walls can temporarily disrupt the magnetic containment field, with dangerous
results. If a character discharges any kind of firearm
or seeker in this area and misses their target with
a Severe Failure (MoF 30+), their attack has struck
and possibly damaged the reactor wall (see stats
below). The containment torus is self-healing (p. 292,
EP). If the donut takes enough damage to exceed its
Durability or suffers a wound, a superheated jet of
plasma escapes the magnetic containment and burns
anyone within 10 meters who fails a Fray Test (3d10
+ 12 [28] DV, AP -10, resisted with Energy armor).
The entire module is also flooded with heavy radiation (exact effects to be determined by gamemaster;
see p. 201, EP).
reactor stats
containment wall
Armor
durability
50
200
wound
threshold
50
4. Life Support Pod
From outside, the life support pod is a blocky, heavily
shielded box. Some of the planes along its surface are
recessed, while along the top side there is a row of
four outward-curving surfaces that suggest cylindrical
shapes continuing inside the module, possibly storage
tanks of some sort. The part-cylindrical surfaces run
the width of the module and are capped at its edge
by four heavy, circular service hatches. Inside, it’s an
orderly but tightly packed maze of condensers, filtration equipment, and algal oxygen vats. The lights in
the room are purple UV tubes (to characters who can
only see in the visible spectrum) for the algae.
glory
the gamemaster can simply have the AI roll to discover
the sentinels whenever it is most advantageous for the
plot. Note that Wei is unlikely to alert the intruders to
their discovery, giving Vo enough time to coordinate a
response—most likely an ambush in either the greenhouse (Area 6) or machine shop (Area 8).
13
66 101 108 111 119 32 116 104
101 32 116 104 117 110 100
101 114 115 32 111 102 32 116
104 101 32 117 112 112 101
114 32 100 101 101 112 59 13
10 70 97 114 44 32 102 97 114
32 98 101 110 101 97 116 104
32 105 110 32 116 104 101 32
97 98 121 115 109 97 108 32
115 101 97 44 13 10 72 105
115 32 97 110 99 105 101 110
116 44 32 100 114 101 97 109
108 101 115 115 44 32 117 110
105 110 118 97 100 101 100 32
115 108 101 101 112 13 10 84
104 101 32 75 114 97 107 101
110 32 115 108 101 101 112
101 116 104 58 32 102 97 105
110 116 101 115 116 32 115
117 110 108 105 103 104 116
115 32 102 108 101 101 13 10
65 98 111 117 116 32 104 105
115 32 115 104 97 100 111 119
121 32 115 105 100 101 115 58
32 97 98 111 118 101 32 104
105 109 32 115 119 101 108
108 13 10 72 117 103 101 32
115 112 111 110 103 101 115
32 111 102 32 109 105 108 108
101 110 110 105 97 108 32 103
114 111 119 116 104 32 97 110
100 32 104 101 105 103 104
116 59 13 10 65 110 100 32
102 97 114 32 97 119 97 121
32 105 110 116 111 32 116 104
101 32 115 105 99 107 108 121
32 108 105 103 104 116 44 13
10 70 114 111 109 32 109 97
110 121 32 97 32 119 111 110
100 114 111 117 115 32 103
114 111 116 32 97 110 100 32
115 101 99 114 101 116 32 99
101 108 108 13 10 85 110 110
117 109 98 101 114 101 100 32
97 110 100 32 101 110 111 114
109 111 117 115 32 112 111
108 121 112 105 13 10 87 105
110 110 111 119 32 119 105
116 104 32 103 105 97 110 116
32 97 114 109 115 32 116 104
101 32 115 108 117 109 98 101
114 105 110 103 32 103 114
101 101 110 46 13 10 84 104
101 114 101 32 104 97 116 104
32 104 101 32 108 97 105 110
32 102 111 114 32 97 103 101
115 32 97 110 100 32 119 105
108 108 32 108 105 101 13 10
66 97 116 116 101 110 105 110
103 32 117 112 111 110 32 104
117 103 101 32 115 101 97 45
119 111 114 109 115 32 105
110 32 104 105 115 32 115 108
101 101 112 44 13 10 85 110
116 105 108 32 116 104 101 32
108 97 116 116 101 114 32 102
105 114 101 32 115 104 97 108
108 32 104 101 97 116 32 116
104 101 32 100 101 101 112 59
13 10 84 104 101 110 32 111
110 99 101 32 98 121 32 109
97 110 32 97 110 100 32 97
110 103 101 108 115 32 116
111 32 98 101 32 115 101 101
110 44 13 10 73 110 32 114
111 97 114 105 110 103 32 104
101 32 115 104 97 108 108 32
114 105 115 101 32 97 110 100
32 111 110 32 116 104 101 32
115 117 114 102 97 99 101 32
100 105 101 46
7
9
8
4
5
2
3
1
6a
6c
1 Docking Spar
2 Utility Bay
3 Reactor Module
4 Life Support Pod
5 Solar Panel
6 Greenhouse/Recycling
a Recycling Vats
b Plant Beds
c Carniculture Vats
d Engine Room
7 Ops Center
8 Machine Shop/Drone Bay
9 Crew Torus
6b
6d
14
5. Solar Panel
6b. Plant Beds
The Flower’s solar panel is a single array about 80
meters long and 7.5 meters wide, projecting from the
top of the utility bay (Area 2). Adjacent to it is a small
airlock. Though the solar panel provides a nearly negligible amount of power to the station, close examination reveals that it has been put to another purpose.
Conductive materials in the panel have been wired to
the station’s communication systems, transforming it
into a massive antenna array with enough bandwidth
for egocasting.
Anyone entering or checking the airlock between
the solar panel and the utility bay will find the broken
(but not destroyed) remains of Achilles, the custom
bot that accompanied Tara Yu. The exsurgents
dumped it here for spacing, but never got around to
cycling the airlock. Though heavily damaged, the bot
may be repaired. It is still carrying the Tortoise AI in
a ghostrider module, which is also carrying a copy
of the Myrmidon data—and the Glory virus. Careless
techs may find themselves exposed to the AOK hack
if they fail to take precautions.
The plant beds occupy the next 50 meters of the
module, moving outward from the hatch to the utility
bay (Area 2). They end in a translucent wall of heavy
plastic, separating them from the carniculture vats
(Area 6c). This wall has two hatches giving access to
the vats on opposite sides of the axial utility conduit.
Originally designed for use in stronger sunlight,
the outer walls of this module are mostly window,
though the windows are dingy and in many places
completely dirt-caked, letting in only faint starlight
from outside. Most of the illumination comes from
stacks of hydroponic plant trays radiating out in
three or four tiers from the axial utility conduit. Each
tier of plants has its own lighting, and the vegetation averages three meters “deep,” moving from the
windows toward the utility conduit. The plants grow
in tangles, with only a fleet of five or six small flying
drones maintaining them. PCs familiar with growing
food on space stations will notice that almost the
entire crop here is high-yield cereal grains and soy,
with virtually no fruits or vegetables. Most of the
crop is being auto-harvested and fed into a processor
connected to the utility conduit. The processor feeds
a thick nutrient line that runs beyond the hatch at
the far end of the plant beds, into the next section
of the module.
The tangles of vegetation afford good concealment;
treat targets hiding among them as having moderate
cover (-20). The exsurgents may choose this as an
ambush spot due to the ample cover.
Diên, one of the exsurgent drones, is usually here
tending to the plants.
6a. Recycling Vats
The first 20 meters of the module are walled off from
the rest and have a foul, septic reek (apply a -10
modifier to all physical and social tests for characters
who spend more than a minute in this room without
breathing equipment). PCs with any ship or habitat
operations-related Knowledge skill immediately realize that the recycling system here, while still functional,
is working below capacity and suffers from a lack of
basic maintenance.
The walls here are crammed with a maze of pipes
and conduits connecting recycling equipment (large
vats, catalyzer units, and the like) to the life support
system, utility bay, machine shop, station plumbing,
and the rest of the greenhouse. This system converts
biological waste, condensation, and meat growth
byproducts from a foul slurry into drinkable water,
fertilizer, and trace elements for the fabricators.
6c. Carniculture Vats
The equipment here is the best maintained that the
PCs have encountered so far. The walls are lined with
massive, green-lit vats designed to grow cultured
meat and extrude it in an edible form. Examining the
contents confirms what the PCs may already have
realized; all of the vats are growing cultured human
flesh—mostly thigh muscle tissue, with a few organ
meats thrown in for variety.
6d. Engine Room
Separated from the vats (Area 6c) by a hastily-constructed metal bulkhead with a single large hatch in
it, the engine room occupies the last 10 meters of the
module—what will be the rear of the ship should the
White Khanhs manage to get it under acceleration.
The builders didn’t put much effort into radiation
shielding. Any character sleeved in an unprotected
biomorph who spends more than five minutes in this
room loses 5 SOM and other radiation effects the
gamemaster desires (p. 201, EP) until they receive
medical attention in a healing vat.
Unlike the attitudinal drives elsewhere on the ship,
the rockets cannibalized from the other spacecraft and
attached outside here are nuclear, so there are no fuel
tanks. Instead, thrust mass comes from two large water
glory
6. Greenhouse/Recycling
This is a huge, cylindrical module nearly 100 meters
long and 20 meters in diameter, separated into four
separate areas (see below). Close inspection reveals
that it was once the passenger module on one of the
immense, heavy-lift rockets used for evacuations
during the Fall. Fittings for acceleration couches and
the like are still present, as well as the pre-Fall equivalent of airplane safety equipment. At some point, great
windows were cut into the module walls, transforming it into a greenhouse. Running along the center of
the module from the hatch to the utility bay (Area
2) back to the new engineering section (Area 6d) is
a one-meter diameter utility conduit with recycling,
water, and nutrient feeds. This conduit connects the
recycling vats (Area 6a) to the plant beds (Area 6b)
and meat vats (Area 6c).
15
pipes running from the utility conduit in 6c. Apparently
the designer’s plan was to pull thruster mass directly
from the station’s water supply—a suicidal plan, on the
face of it, as it would exhaust all of the station’s water,
as a Hardware: Aerospace or appropriate Knowledge
skill will discern. The dormant Mother, however, would
survive long enough to be immolated by the sun.
7. Ops Center
From the outside, ops resembles the bridge module
found on any bulk freighter, implying that it probably
contains sensor systems, emergency thrusters and life
support, and a lot of computing power. The inside,
however, is far different than expected. The walls,
windows, and equipment here are all covered in a 40
centimeter-thick layer of pinkish-gray human flesh—
the transmogrified form of Phuong Lê, the exsurgent
Mother (discovering this fact inflicts mental stress; see
p. 24). The flesh is thicker in some places where Phuong
Lê’s many wombs swell with embryos. Every surface
moves gently to the slow rhythm of respiration and the
flesh occasionally shifts from the pre-natal stirrings of
exsurgent brood. Here and there, manual instrument
banks, designed to operate the station in case the ship’s
mesh fails, protrude from the flesh. The room is lit only
by instrument panels. Lê’s bloated face peers up from a
hump of flesh, surrounded by six spiky maws opening
on what used to be her throat. When not chomping on
raw meat fed to them by Sit, all seven mouths incessantly sing a soft lullaby. Drifting slightly above and
behind Lê’s face are her arms, which have metamorphosed into a pair of 3 meter-long prehensile tentacles
with stubby grasping digits at their tips.
Wei, Dexter Vo’s muse, pays close attention to
surveillance feeds coming from this module, and any
detected intruders will be attacked soon after. Characters exposed to Lê’s body fluids (which could easily
happen in a firefight) have the standard chance of
contracting Glory (p. 19). Lê will initially ignore PCs,
but if they try to damage her, she will lash out with
her tentacles and psi sleights.
Lê’s breeder mate, Bian, is usually found here, inseminating the Mother. One of the drones, Wu, is typically here as well, feeding and caring for Phuong Lê.
8. Machine Shop/Drone Bay
The station’s fleet of harvester drones are still operational, and PCs may occasionally see them entering
or leaving the station alone or in small groups. There
are ten drones in all, and at any time half of them
will be away from the ship harvesting water and other
materials from nearby rocks.
The machine shop contains a large-format cornucopia machine, a number of smaller makers, materials
storage, tools, and a pair of repair tender rocket sleds
designed to move heavy equipment out to docked
shuttles. Two flexbots (p. 144, EP) are racked on
one wall; neither is occupied, but they’re in working
condition. There are two large service airlocks, one
of which is occupied by a rocket sled, and a bank of
16
9. Crew Torus
The rotating crew torus is 250 meters in diameter, with
over 750 meters of floor space. Gravity at floor level
is Mars standard (0.36 g). Large portions of the torus
are unused space, filled with junk or simply empty.
Access is obtained via spokes leading to the machine
shop (Area 8), or by two small airlocks on opposite
ends of the torus.
9a. Med Bay/Resleeving Center
This area includes four healing vats (p. 326, EP), ten
morph storage tanks (half of which are occupied by
morphs transformed into immolator exsurgents), an
ego bridge (p. 328, EP), a fabber (p. 327, EP) for
making and disposing of medical supplies, and a fully
operational examination and surgical setup.
9b. Rec Area/Kitchen
The rec area is a maze of couches and padded chairs,
most of which face a huge holovid screen. Also present are the smashed wreckage of a three-dimensional
foosball table, a board game table, a sound-proofed
chamber containing a well-equipped S&M dungeon,
and a racquetball court. The kitchen has two huge
walk-in refrigeration units, food makers, traditional
cooking equipment, and a huge, gleaming meat
grinder designed to combine flesh with a glutinous
rice-derived paste to extrude udon noodles. Almost all
of the food in the refrigeration unit is meat, some of it
recognizably human. In contrast to many of the other
rooms on the station, the kitchen is curiously—almost
clinically—clean and tidy.
Four of the breeders—Bui, Quang, Sang, and
Thanh—are usually here, along with Dexter Vo and Ji.
9c. Crew Quarters
The crew quarters contain twenty rooms of various
sizes. The drones share small rooms with a bunk beds,
except for Dexter Vo and Ji, who sleep in a sumptuous
but rather tacky crime lord pimp den with an immense
circular bed, mirrored ceiling, and lots of bad erotic
art. The breeders don’t sleep anymore, but anyone
searching these rooms will find personal effects of
theirs from before their transformations. The remaining rooms are either unoccupied or belong to people
who were long ago eaten. Sammy Li’s personal effects,
including the cufflinks, can be found in a duffel bag in
an otherwise empty room here, just as he described.
The remaining 3 drones—Quy, Smith, and Nong—
are here when not attending to various tasks.
The Exsurgents
The remaining crew of the Song Cai Flower are the
primary threat aboard the ship. As a group, they’re
extremely dangerous, but the sentinels should have
numerous opportunities to divide and conquer. Aside
from the Mother, Phuong Lê, the exsurgents come in
two forms: breeders and drones. All are mutated from
standard transhuman morphs with southeast Asian
ethnic characteristics (when they look human enough
to tell). See p. 22 for exsurgent stats and descriptions.
Breeders (5)
Breeders have undergone the most extensive somatic
transformations, essentially turning alien, but fortunately for the agents there are only five aboard the
ship (two mated pairs and Phuong Lê’s mate), as the
population was not large enough to sustain more.
When not on alert, the breeders spend most of their
time in the rec area (Area 9b), watching Taiwanese
romantic comedies from the 2020s and copulating
frantically. If called into action to confront intruders
by Dexter Vo, they will attempt to flank the opposition (using airlocks and rocket packs if necessary)
while the drones mount a frontal assault.
glory
vacsuits. In the center of the room is the immense joint
around which the station’s crew torus rotates. Two of
the torus’s four spokes contain lift shafts, while the
other two have dimly lit open floatways with ladder
rungs running along their sides.
The Myrmidon hardware fragments are here, haphazardly stacked in a series of bins shoved under a
workbench. They are relatively easy to find, as they
look like large chunks of slightly-charred military
satellite. The smallest piece is about 20 centimeters
long, while the largest is over 2 meters. The very size
of them should make PCs nervous, as the amount of
computing power in a 2 meter-long processing block is
almost sufficient to birth a seed AI—like the TITANs.
Such systems are illegal in most places. The pieces are
self-documenting, and connecting a power supply to
them is a simple matter for any character with Hardware skill. If any character powers the fragments up
and examines their documentation, they are subject to
the AOK hack effect of the Glory virus (p. 19).
Sitting innocuously on the workbench above the
Myrmidon fragments is the Glory nanobot hive built
by Phuong Lê. From the outside, it doesn’t look like
exsurgent tech; Lê built the alien-looking part inside
of an old perimeter defense drone fuselage. If powered
up, it releases a mist of Glory nanobots that expands
in a sphere at a rate of 1 meter per Action Turn to
a maximum volume of 5 meters across. Characters
standing in the area of effect as the swarm expands
must make a Fray Test to get out of the way. Failure
means the character has the standard chance of contracting Glory from physical exposure (p. 19).
Because the machinery in this room provides a lot of
hard cover (-10 to -30 modifiers), this is another likely
location for the exsurgents to set up an ambush.
Drones (8)
There are 8 drones on board the ship, the rest
having been eaten. One of those still present is
Dexter Vo, who remains the de facto leader. Another is Ji, who is sleeved in Tara Yu’s old morph
(a fact which may cause confusion among the sentinels). These drones can be found around the ship,
tending to various tasks.
17
The drones’ primary purpose is to serve and
protect the breeders, meaning that they do all the
work to maintain and prepare the ship. They will
generally avoid confrontation and only fight if cornered, but they will throw themselves into action to
protect the breeders or Mother, or if ordered by Vo.
Sit will never be sent into a confrontation, however,
as his expertise is needed to ready the ship for its
journey to the sun.
Stage 4: Resolution
How the characters choose to resolve the scenario is
entirely up to them. Several possible courses of action
are outlined below. Additionally, information on the
Glory virus is provided here should the characters
risk infection.
Possible Approaches
The sentinels have a choice in how to approach the
White Khanhs and the Song Cai Flower. A few of the
more likely options are detailed below, but the gamemaster will need to improvise any other courses of
action given the information provided.
Assault
An all-out attack against the White Khanhs is a dangerous proposition, as the gang is heavily armed, ruthless,
and will probably smash the agents’ cortical stacks with
a pneumatic hammer before cooking their morphs for
supper should they go down in a fight. However, for a
combat-oriented group, success is possible with careful
planning and preparation. PCs who simply pick a fight
upon contact with the gang should probably end up in
new morphs for their trouble. Charitable gamemasters
will make this evident from the start.
Bargaining
18
Socially-oriented groups may simply try to open
negotiations with the White Khanhs to buy the
Myrmidon hardware and Tara Yu’s cortical stack.
If consulted, Ming will caution against this, but it
might actually work. Having already been infected,
the White Khanhs no longer care about the TITAN
fragments, and would actually see selling it as a way
to spread the virus. While Dexter Vo is still lucid
enough to carry on negotiations, the gang as a whole
will be very erratic when dealing with outsiders. Vo
will make a good show of driving a hard bargain
for the memory modules, demanding nanofabricator
plans to improve the ship’s fusion rockets or cold,
hard credits, depending upon what he thinks he can
get out of the PCs. They will seek to conceal the
Glory virus and its effects, and will keep all physically transformed exsurgents out of sight. If the PCs
can be lured aboard or into some sort of physical
meeting, the White Khanhs will attempt to infect
them by triggering the Glory nanobot hive in their
presence. Where negotiations may fail, however, is
over Yu’s stack. The White Khanhs simply no longer
have it, and they will offer no explanation for this.
The best they can do acknowledge her death, though
they will offer no proof or confirmation.
Infiltration
A combination of electronic and physical infiltration
might allow the characters to locate the hardware
and information they need. Details for both are listed
under Ship Security, p. 12. Characters who successfully hack the ship’s network can locate the Myrmidon
fragments through internal surveillance/spime feeds,
uncover the Flower’s future trajectory (into the sun),
spy on the exsurgents, and discover the video clip
that details Tara Yu’s final moments (p. 19). A quiet
and focused physical intrusion offers the best chance
for retrieving the Myrmidon modules with minimal
confrontations with the exsurgents.
Sabotage
The team may decide that the best way of dealing with the White Khanhs is to sabotage critical
systems on the ship and then either let them die or
force them to negotiate. A determined group with a
good plan should be able to succeed at this, but the
GM should not make it easy. The obvious targets
are the life support system and the reactor, both of
which are adjacent to the utility bay (Area 2) and
the fuel storage tanks, which are on the outside of
the machine shop (Area 8). Characters who make
appropriate Knowledge skill tests can determine
that all three of these weak points are milspec
hardware, heavily shielded against kinetic attacks
and radiation. All three were acquired during the
Oxygen Deck Riots and bolted on to the ship when
the White Khanhs assembled it.
Getting the reactor to melt down is almost impossible, but determined hackers can take it offline,
leaving the station with about eight hours of reserve
power (the trickle coming in from the solar panel is
negligible). Doing so requires an Infosec Test with a
difficulty of -30. Once initiated, the shutdown process takes 10 minutes. During this time, Wei receives
an Infosec Test every two minutes to notice the process, unless the hacker intentionally seeks to disable
the alerts (requiring a separate Infosec Test at -30).
If she succeeds, Wei will first attempt to reverse the
process. This will succeed automatically unless the
hacker is actively guiding the shutdown; in this case
make an Opposed Infosec Test between the hacker
and Wei. If the hacker succeeds, Wei cannot stop the
reactor going offline, but the intruder is immediately
upgraded to Spotted status.
Even if Wei successfully keeps the reactor from
going offline, she will suspect an infiltration attempt,
inform Dexter Vo (who will initiate a physical search
of the ship), and trigger a Passive Alert (p. 257, EP).
Upgrade the hacker to Spotted status and make an
Opposed Infosec Test as Wei attempts to zero in on
the intruder (see Zeroing In, p. 256, EP). If she succeeds, the hacker is elevated to Locked status (p. 256,
Footage of Tara Yu
Should a hacker infiltrate the ship’s mesh and perform
an image recognition search using Tara Yu’s last
known morph, in addition to locating Ji (in Tara Yu’s
old morph), they will find only a single video clip with
a successful Research Test. The clip presents the following scene:
Three White Khanhs thugs—two breeders and a
drone (Diên)—hold a naked, hairless man wrapped
from neck to toe in sheets of a translucent, organic
material that looks like a cross between a sausage
casing and cling film over the mouth of a gleaming,
bladed apparatus on a stainless steel kitchen counter.
Dexter Vo sits on a kitchen stool just out of splatter distance. Tara Yu’s morph (actually Ji) stands
behind him, hands on his shoulders and leaning
slightly against him. Anyone who makes a successful
Kinesics Test can guess from the woman’s carriage
and accent that she is not actually Yu, and that Yu is
likely sleeved in the naked man’s body, judging from
the look on the prisoner’s face.
Without further ado, the thugs begin feeding Yu
into the grinder. Yu screams herself raw as droplets
of blood spatter the counter. At the other end of the
grinder, the machine extrudes perfect, smooth noodles.
Anyone who has seen the surveillance clip of Dexter
Vo (p. 9) can make a COG x 3 Test to recognize these
as the same type of noodles he was eating (characters
with eidetic memory or mnemonic augmentation automatically make the connection). There is a pause in the
carnage while Vo flash fries some of the noodles in oil,
then seasons them with fish sauce and passes a bowl
to his moll, who begins eating them with chopsticks
while the thugs force Yu, who has been temporarily
anesthetized, to watch. The footage fades out as the
grinding and screams begin anew.
Watching this clip of torture and cannibalism inflicts 1d10 SV on the viewer if they fail a Willpower
Stress Test (p. 214, EP).
Glory Infection
Characters may be exposed to the Glory virus via two
vectors: an AOK hack or physical infection.
AOK Hack
Any character who meshes with the Myrmidon modules (or the copies held by Tortoise and Wang), an
exsurgent’s cortical stack, or any other infected system
risks exposure to this variant basilisk hack. Wei may
also deploy this hack on any Locked intruders.
This hack is experienced as a prolonged burst of
AR, VR, or other sensory data feeds. If the exposed
character possesses Hardware: Electronics or Programming skill at 60 or more, they must immediately
make a COG + INT + SAV Test. Apply a –10 modifier for every 10 full points their skill(s) exceeds 60.
If this test fails, they become catatonic and paralyzed
for a period of 5 minutes, minus 1 minute per 10
full points of MoF. At the end of this period, they
are mentally reprogrammed and “infected” with the
virus, which in this phase manifests as an overpowering obsession to build a Glory nanobot hive and start
a new immolator colony. Constructing such a hive
requires a Hardware: Electronics (with access to materials) or Programming Test (and access to a fabber);
this is a Task Action with a 1 week timeframe. The
infected character will literally ignore everything else,
including basic hygiene and anything beyond basic
sustenance, until the hive is built.
If an exposed character is broken off from the AOK
hack sensory feed before its duration completes, the
victim still suffers 1d10 mental stress +1 per minute
they were exposed, and they remain mentally shaken,
suffering a –30 modifier to all actions. This modifier
reduces at the rate of 10 per minute. Similarly, an
infected character who is treated with successful psychosurgery within 3 days can be cured of the compulsion to build a hive, at the cost of 1d10 SV.
Physical Infection
Characters exposed to bodily fluids (for example, via
sexual contact or swapping spit) from an infected
character/exsurgent or exposed to nanobots from a
Glory hive are considered infected. If the gamemaster
permits, a Fray Test may be made to avoid infection,
but this should only be allowed in cases where exposure is not certain (for example, the character is
spattered in blood or briefly caught within a cloud
of nanobots). Once a character is physically infected,
there is very little that can be done for them. Merciful
friends will put them out of their misery so they can
resleeve from a backup.
Glory transforms the victim in stages, just like the
xenomorph virus (p. 368, EP) in terms of mental
stress, acquiring psi, and undergoing physical and
mental alterations. There is a 50/50 chance of
glory
EP), the system goes on Active Alert (p. 257, EP), and
Wei will attempt first to infect them with the Glory
virus AOK hack and then, failing that, to lock them
out (see Lockout, p. 257, EP).
Sabotaging the life support (Area 4) demands
physical infiltration and is slower but otherwise
simpler. If the sentinels can do enough damage to
punch through the station’s hull at one spot along
each of the algae tanks, the medium inside vents into
space, freeze drying the algae. Within eight hours
of a breach, the atmosphere in the station will be
unbreathable and remain so for 48 hours, until the
system recovers with intake of recycled material
from the greenhouse. Phuong and the breeders are
the only White Khanhs who can survive this long
without breathable air, though Dexter Vo and the
drones can buy some time by donning vacsuits.
Attacking the fuel tanks is a mistake, as it will serve
primarily to enrage the ship’s occupants without doing
any real damage. The tanks have the same stats as
the reactor containment wall (p. 13). If pierced, they
explode, but the explosion is directed outward, doing
only superficial damage to the station.
19
becoming a breeder or drone, unless the colony has
already reached its capacity on breeders (if no colony
yet exists, the victim will become the Mother and
start one). Breeders eventually transform into full immolator exsurgents, whereas drones do not physically
transform beyond stage 2, and never acquire the Psi
trait. At stage 1, both types acquire sociopathic, callous, and nesting tendencies and become devoted to
the colony; at stage 2, the urge to engage in cannibalism is overwhelming (WIL Test to resist).
Resleeving and Backups
Resleeving does nothing to reverse the psychological
changes inflicted by Glory, but it does stop the character from physically infecting anyone else (unless the
new morph also becomes nanobot-infested). Resleeved
Glory carriers seek to fabricate a Glory hive and reinfect themselves physically as soon as possible.
If a character is allowed to back up after being infected, their backups become compromised as well.
Stage 5: Debriefing
the Flower), Firewall’s response will be more effective.
In this case, another Firewall team will succeed where
the characters failed, destroying the White Khanhs
and capturing the Myrmidon fragments. If the gamemaster is feeling generous, the players may be given a
second shot to finish the mission as the characters in
this new Firewall team.
Dealing with Vasquez
If the characters made a deal with Vasquez (p. 10),
she will expect an update within a reasonable period
of time after they complete the mission. Vasquez will
send a beta fork in a bot shell for the exchange of
information. Allow her Kinesics Tests on each PC to
whom she speaks. If she thinks any of them are lying
or holding out on her, she will not award them @-rep
as noted below (but the characters will still lose –1
i-rep if they divulge too much).
Rez and Rep Awards
Depending on how well the characters did, they will walk
away with some Rez Points and Reputation awards:
This section deals with various matters that arise when
the mission is completed (or failed).
Aftermath
If the characters successfully complete the mission
(that is, they retrieve the Myrmidon modules), they
will be complimented by Ming and Firewall for neutralizing a dangerous threat. Ming is likely to seek out
the characters for future Firewall ops. Firewall is likely
to give the characters’ egos a thorough scanning and
psychosurgery check to ensure none of them were
infected by Glory before egocasting them to wherever they like for resleeving. Any characters who were
killed will be restored from their stack (if retrieved
and uninfected) or backup storage.
Tara Yu will also be revived from storage, though
she will remember nothing of her fate, having been revived from storage. Ming will fill her in on the basics,
and she will thank the sentinels for investigating what
happened to her and finishing the mission.
If the Mission Fails
If the Firewall agents fail the mission (presumably
captured/killed by the White Khanhs), all is not lost.
After 6 months of being missing with no check-in, they
will be declared dead and resleeved according to their
backup insurance policy. Firewall will have attempted
to pick up their trail, but by the time they go looking for the Song Cai Flower, the ship is already on its
way toward the sun. In five years it will dive into the
corona and be consumed, leaving the Mother’s nanocrystal seeds to be dispersed by the solar winds across
the solar system, perhaps leading to new outbreaks in
years to come.
If the sentinels left important information with Firewall before their disappearance, however (such as the
involvement of the White Khanhs and the location of
20
rez & rep
outcome
Character participated in mission
award
1 RP, + 2 i-rep
Tara Yu’s fate was uncovered
1 RP,
+ 5 @-rep or i-rep
The Myrmidon hardware was
retrieved or destroyed
1 RP, +10 i-rep
Team failed but Firewall was alerted to
Song Cai Flower and/or Glory virus
1 RP, +2 i-rep
Team failed without finding Glory virus
1 RP, –2 i-rep
Xiu’s Greenhouse alerted that their
attackers were found and eliminated
+5 @-rep
Kesyrah returned to Casa Arturo
+5 @-rep
Kesyrah kept and Casa Arturo finds out
–5 @-rep
Team shares info on White Khanhs with
Patrona Vasquez
+2 @-rep, –1 i-rep
Character contributed to achieving
success in a significant way
1 RP
The character achieved a
motivational goal (p. 121, EP)
1 RP
The player engaged in good roleplaying
1RP
The player significantly contributed
to the session’s drama, humor
or fun with roleplaying
1 RP
Follow-Up
There are several follow-up plots that the characters
may become entangled in:
Wang’s Virus
As noted on p. 8, Wang has a quarantined copy of the
Myrmidon data—and the Glory virus. Eventually he
Interest in Myrmidon
The investigations made by Yu and the sentinels may
bring Myrmidon to the attention of other interested
parties—hypercorps or singularity seekers who want
the tech, reclaimers who are looking for TITAN
weaknesses, or the mysterious and dangerous Project
Ozma. These groups may pursue the player characters
to find out what they know and what their interest
was. Alternately, one of these groups may acquire the
Myrmidon data from Firewall, prompting Ming to
send the sentinels to retrieve it.
Characters
This section lists game stats and short details on
major NPCs.
Achilles & Tortoise
Infiltration Bot and AI Team
This bot AI and rider AI pair was created by Mason
Wang to assist Tara Yu on her mission (see Contacting
Wang, p. 7).
Achilles is a synth (p. 143, EP) variant with Durability 30 and Wound Threshold of 7. It is equipped with a
chameleon coating and ghostrider module and piloted
by a standard muse (p. 332, EP) that also possesses
Infiltration skill at 40. When found in the Flower, it has
suffered 2 wounds and 40 points of damage.
Tortoise uses the stats for security AIs (p. 332, EP),
and also carries a set of customized software tools
(exploit, sniffer, spoof) that apply a +10 bonus to
appropriate tests. Tortoise also receives a +20 modifier for filtering the effects of AOK or basilisk hacks,
though these defenses are imperfect and do not always
work effectively (GM discretion).
Morteza Bey
Anarchist Hacker and Horticulturist
Morph: Bouncer
Motivation: +Horticulture +Reclaiming Earth
+Hacking
COG
20
COO
15
INT
20
REF
20
SAV
15
SOM
WIL
10
15
MOX
3
INIT
80
SPD
1
LUC
30
TT
6
IR
60
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 30, Fray 25, Freefall 70,
Hardware: Electronics 70, Infiltration 30, Infosec 90,
Interfacing 80, Investigation 40, Kinesics 20, Navigation: 60, Networking: Autonomist 60, Networking:
Ecologist 40, Perception 30, Pilot: Spacecraft 60, Programming 80, Research 60, Scrounging 30
Knowledge Skills: Language: Arabic 60, Language: Farsi 80, Language: Mandarin 70, Profession:
Horticulture (Broccoli) 80, Profession: Profession:
Security Ops 70
Reputation: @-rep 40, e-rep 20
Traits: Expert (Infosec), Limber, Oblivious, Timid
Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh
Inserts, Cortical Stack, Grip Pads, Multitasking, Oxygen
Reserve, Prehensile Feet, Skinlink, Vacuum Sealing
Gear: Light Vacsuit, Quantum Computer (Software:
Exploit, Sniffer, Spoof, Tracking), Utilitool
Roleplaying: Bey speaks with an Arab accent, favors
earth tones, and comes off as a gentle, earthy-crunchy
type—not your typical elite infosec hacker persona.
Professor Magnus Qiao-Sen Ming
Argonaut; Chair of Computational Archeology,
Titan Autonomous University; Firewall Router
Morph: Menton
Motivation: +Firewall +TITANs Research +TechnoProgressivism
COG
30
COO
15
INT
25
REF
15
SAV
20
SOM
WIL
10
25
MOX
5
INIT
80
SPD
1
LUC
50
TT
10
IR
100
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Deception 60, Infosec 80, Interfacing
80, Investigation 70, Kinesics 70, Networking: Autonomists 80, Networking: Ecologists 60, Networking:
Firewall 80, Networking: Scientists 80, Perception 60,
Persuasion 70, Profession: Educator 70, Programming
90, Protocol: Firewall 70, Research 80
Knowledge Skills: Academics: Computational Archeology 80, Academics: Computer Science 80, Interest:
TITAN Rumors 60, Interest: Firewall Scuttlebutt 70,
Interest: Titanian Wilderness 70, Language: English 60,
Language: French 60, Language: Mandarin 80, Language: Norwegian 80
Reputation: @-rep 50, e-rep 30, i-rep 70, r-rep 80
Traits: Allies (Titanian Founders), Expert (Programming), Hyper-Linguist, Math Wiz, Psi Defense 1
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Math Boost, Mnemonic
Augmentation, Multitasking
Gear: Quantum Computer
Roleplaying: Ming is a respected older figure in the
Titanian Commonwealth and has a fatherly figure
demeanor. He frequently tosses out bad puns.
Mason Wang
Anarchist Hacker
Morph: Hibernoid
Motivation: +Horticulture +Reclaiming Earth
+Hacking
COG
25
COO
15
INT
20
REF
15
SAV
20
SOM
WIL
10
10
MOX
1
INIT
70
SPD
1
LUC
20
TT
4
IR
40
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
glory
will either investigate it and become infected, starting
a new outbreak on Locus, or he will sell it the highest
bidder. The characters may be sent to check Wang
out (on suspicion that he has these copies), to stop
the deal, or contain a new outbreak before it gets
out of hand.
Active Skills: Deception 70, Fray 60, Freefall 60,
Gunnery 30, Hardware: Robotics 70, Infosec 70, Interfacing 70, Kinesics 40, Networking: Autonomists 60,
21
Networking: Hypercorps 50, Networking: Scientists
80, Perception 50, Pilot: Groundcraft 25, Programming 80, Unarmed Combat 40
Knowledge Skills: Academics: Computer Science
70, Interest: Locus Society 60, Language: English 70,
Language: Mandarin 80, Profession: Engineering 70,
Profession: Viral Marketing 40
Reputation: @-rep 50, c-rep 30, r-rep 60
Traits: Addiction (Sex, Minor), First Impression,
Math Wiz, Striking Looks
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Circadian Regulation, Cortical Stack, Electrical Sense, Emergency Farcaster, Enhanced Pheromones, Hibernation,
Mnemonic Augmentation, Multitasking, Skinlink
Gear: Nanodetectors, Quantum Computer (Software: AR Illusions, Exploit, Facial/Image Recognition, Tracking), Smart Vac Clothing, Specs, Wristmounted Tools
Roleplaying: Wang is doing the outer system anarchist lifestyle like he just invented it, which can make
him come off as an insufferable douchebag to real
anarchists, scumborn, and others born outsystem.
Nonetheless, he’s a hot commodity in Locus at present, with substantial rep; his prodigious programming
skills and apparent sincerity are sufficient to redeem
him in some quarters. He is an extremely sharp and
ambitious businessman, but will often ask disarmingly naive and seemingly irrelevant questions. Some
of his naiveté is calculated, and some is genuine, born
of deep immaturity and insecurity. Wang is essentially selfish, ruthless, and calculating, but desperately
wants to believe otherwise of himself.
Patrona Vasquez
Freelance Magistrate, Agent of Nomic
Morph: Exalt
Motivation: -Crime +Justice +Libertarianism
COG
25
COO
15
INT
20
REF
15
SAV
30
SOM
WIL
15
25
MOX
4
INIT
70
SPD
1
LUC
50
TT
10
IR
100
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 80, Clubs 60, Fray 80,
Freerunning 60, Gunnery 60, Infiltration 70, Infosec
80, Intimidation 70, Investigation 80, Kinesics 90,
Kinetic Weapons 60, Navigation 30, Networking: Autonomists 80, Networking: Guanxi 80, Networking:
Hypercorps 60, Perception 60, Persuasion 40, Pilot:
Groundcraft 40, Pilot: Spacecraft 60, Programming
35, Protocol 60, Research 80, Unarmed Combat 70
Knowledge Skills: Academics: Jurisprudence 80, Interest: Criminal Syndicates 80, Language: Arabic 60,
Language: English: 60, Language: French 60, Language: Italian 95, Language: German 40, Language:
Mandarin 70, Language: Portuguese: 40, Language:
Spanish 80, Language: Thai 40, Profession: Lawyer 80,
Profession: Police Procedures 80, Profession: Squad
Tactics 60
Reputation: @-rep 90, c-rep 60, g-rep 40
Traits: Expert (Kinesics)
22
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts (Software:
Facial Recognition, Security AI, Tactical Network), Cortical Stack, Endocrine Control, Hyper-Linguist, Mnemonic
Augmentation, Multitasking, Oracles
Roleplaying: Patrona is all business, with a stark lack
of any sense of humor. She is very, very sharp at reading
people, and will not hesitate to point out anything she
discerns about a person’s actions or personality.
Nia Zheng/Sammy Li
Former White Khanhs Criminal
Morph: Pleasure Pod
Motivation: +Hedonism +Technology +Wealth
COG
15
COO
15
INT
20
REF
20
SAV
30
SOM
WIL
20
20
MOX
2
INIT
80
SPD
1
LUC
40
TT
8
IR
80
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 70, Blades 80, Clubs 60,
Deception 60, Fray 70, Free Fall 60, Impersonation 70,
Infiltration 60, Infosec 30, Intimidation 35, Investigation 40, Kinesics 60, Kinetic Weapons 60, Networking: Guanxi 65, Perception 60, Persuasion 60, Pilot:
Groundcraft 30, Research 50, Unarmed Combat 80
Knowledge Skills: Interest: Locus Syndicates 60,
Interest: Martian Triads 40, Language: English 50,
Language: Cantonese 85, Language Russian: 65, Language: Vietnamese 70, Profession: Cool Hunter 60,
Profession: Tech Trader 60
Reputation: @-rep 20, g-rep 40
Traits: Social Stigma (Pleasure Pod) trait
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Clean
Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Cyber Brain, Enhanced
Pheromones, Mnemonic Augmentation, Puppet Sock,
Sex Switch
Roleplaying: Sammy is quite fearful that the Khanhs
will track him down. He’s a tough guy, though, and an
experienced thug, so he’ll face any threats head on. In
the meantime, however, he’s quite enjoying his new
sex and lifestyle and won’t be afraid to flaunt it.
The White Khanhs
These are the exsurgent gang members and crew of
the Song Cai Flower. Many of them wear disturbingly
incongruous knit items that Lê made for them before
she went completely mad and transformed into a
many-wombed growth of wall meat.
Breeders
The five immolator exsurgent breeders (Bian, Bui,
Quang, Sang, and Thanh) are obviously alien and
only barely resemble their original human forms.
Though bipedal and roughly anthropomorphic, their
skin is dull gray in color and obviously thicker and
more leathery. Their jaws and teeth are enlarged
and extended, with jagged protruding canines, and
powerful muscles to allow for dangerous bites. They
have lost all hair but possess patches of short, conical
spines that protrude through the skin (often ripping
their clothing, if they’re bothering to wear any). Their
COG
15
COO
25
INT
15
REF
25
SAV
10
SOM
WIL
25
20
MOX
—
INIT
80
SPD
2
LUC
—
TT
—
IR
—
DUR
40
WT
8
DR
60
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 80, Blades 70, Control 50,
Deception 20, Demolitions 45, Fray 80, Free Fall 80,
Infiltration 80, Infosec 35 (Security 45), Interfacing 45
(Jamming 55), Intimidation 20, Kinetic Weapons 35,
Navigation 35 (Astrogation 45), Perception 60, Pilot:
Spacecraft 60, Psi Assault 60, Research 50, Sense 50,
Unarmed Combat 55
Knowledge Skills: Language: Cantonese 40, Language: Vietnamese 70
Traits: Limber (Level 1), Mental Disorder (Cannibalism, OCD: breeding, nesting), Psi (Level 2), Psi Defense
Psi Sleights: Deep Scan, Ego Sense, Psi Shield, Psychic Stab, Sense Block
Implants: Basic BioMods, Basic Mesh Inserts,
Bioweave Armor (Light), Chameleon Skin (+20 Infilitration), Claws (1d10 + 3 DV, AP -1), Endocrine
Control, Grip Pads, Medichines, Neurachem (Rating
1), Oxygen Reserve, Prehensile Feet, Vacuum Sealing
Gear: Armor Clothing (6/7, with Chameleon Coating), Light Vac Suit (Chameleon Coating), Liquid
Thermite, Plasma Gun (AP -10, DV 3d10 + 12, Mode
SS), Rocket Pack, Utilitool
Roleplaying: Breeders are primarily concerned with
breeding, though they will attack and eat any nonexsurgents on sight.
Drones
Six of the drones (Diên, Nong, Quy, Sit, Smith, and
Wu) are sleeved in standard bouncer morphs (the other
two being Dexter and Ji; see below). Though exsurgents, the Glory virus has only modified their physical
appearances in slight but unnerving ways. They have
given up to tending to their personal hygiene, however,
having descended into madness and focusing their efforts on the immolator breeding regime.
COG
15
COO
15
INT
15
REF
25
SAV
15
SOM
WIL
15
10
MOX
—
INIT
60
SPD
1
LUC
—
TT
—
IR
—
DUR
35
WT
7
DR
53
Active Skills: Fray 60, Free Fall 60, Infosec 30, Kinetic Weapons 50, Perception 40
Knowledge Skills: Language: Cantonese 40, Language: Vietnamese 70
Sit’s Additional Skills: Academics: Engineering 40,
Academics: Nanotechnology 60, Hardware: Aerospace
60, Hardware: Electronics 60, Hardware: Industrial 70,
Language: Thai 80, Navigation 50 (Astrogation 60),
Profession: Station Ops 70, Programming 50 (Nanofabrication 60), Research 60
Wu’s Additional Skills: Deception 70, Language:
Cantonese 70, Medicine: General Medicine 35, Pilot:
Spacecraft 45, Profession: Station Ops 30, Programming 60 (Nanofabrication 70)
Traits: Limber (1), Mental Disorder (Cannibalism,
OCD), Uncanny Valley
Implants: Basic BioMods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Prehensile Feet
Gear: Armor Clothing (6/7), Light Vac Suit, Specs,
Utilitool
Sit’s Additional Gear: Guardian Nanoswarm,
Quantum Computer (Software: Exploit, Facial/Image
Recognition, Tracking), Repair Spray, Skinlink, Tools
Roleplaying: Drones are for the most part no longer
capable of functional interaction or socializing with
transhumans, and will follow any instructions coming
from Dexter, Mother, or the breeders.
Ji
The drone formerly known as Ji has been resleeved
in the striking ghost morph Tara Yu used to infiltrate
the station.
COG
15
COO
25
INT
20
REF
20
SAV
15
SOM
WIL
20
15
MOX
—
INIT
80
SPD
1
LUC
15
TT
5
IR
30
DUR
45
WT
9
DR
68
Active Skills: Deception 60, Fray 60, Free Fall 60,
Impersonation 70, Infosec 30, Investigation 60 (Logical Deduction 70), Kinesics 70, Kinetic Weapons 50,
Networking: Guanxi 70, Perception 40, Persuasion 50
(Seduction 60), Protocol 50
Knowledge Skills: Language: Cantonese 40, Language: Mandarin 60, Language: Vietnamese 70
Traits: Striking Looks (Level 2), Uncanny Valley
Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic BioMods, Basic
Mesh Inserts, Chameleon Skin, Clean Metabolism,
Cortical Stack, Enhanced Vision, Grip Pads
Gear: Armor Clothing (6/7), Light Vac Suit, Specs,
Spray Armor (Armor 2/2), Utilitool
Roleplaying: Ji generally plays the role of Vo’s moll,
accompanying him everywhere.
glory
eyes are wider apart and cat-like, with a horizontal
rather than vertical slit. Their fingers and toes have
fused together into hands/feet with three digits. Their
nails have hardened and elongated so that they possess dangerous claws on both hands and feet. They
are limber like bouncers, able to use their prehensile
feet much like hands. Females exhibit an ovipositor,
growing from their stomach, that is used to deposit
embryos within the immolator Mother. Gamemasters
are encouraged to give them any other alien characteristics they desire and to add more psi sleights to
make them more challenging if necessary.
Characters who encounter these exsurgents must
make a Willpower Stress Test (p. 214, EP) or suffer
1d10 + 3 SV.
Dexter Vo
Though the Glory virus transformed Vo into a drone,
he remains the functional boss of the gang and is the
only one who still retains a semblance of sanity and
lucidity. Vo is 114 years old, an Earth survivor who
brought his syndicate to space through clever dealmaking and ruthless brutality.
23
Vo was the second-ranked boss in the White
Khanhs before he became infected with Glory and orchestrated a series of bloody betrayals that eliminated
all of the other significant bosses. Vo is one of the
few exsurgent Khanhs retaining a cortical stack and
maintaining regular backups. Gamemasters who wish
to use him as a recurring villain can equip him with
an emergency farcaster system (p. 306, EP). Dexter’s
teeth have been filed sharper to better accommodate
his cannibalistic diet.
COG
20
COO
15
INT
20
REF
15
SAV
25
SOM
WIL
10
30
MOX
5
INIT
70
SPD
1
LUC
30
TT
6
IR
60
DUR
40
WT
8
DR
60
Active Skills: Beam Weapons 60, Blades 30, Deception 80, Fray 80, Free Fall 70, Impersonation 80, Infiltration 40, Infosec 70, Intimidation 70, Investigation 70
(Logical Deduction), Kinesics 80, Kinetic Weapons 70,
Networking: Guanxi 50, Perception 70, Persuasion 80,
Pilot: Spacecraft 65, Protocol 60, Research 40,
Unarmed Combat 60
Knowledge Skills: Language: Cantonese 50, Language: Thai 60, Language: Vietnamese 80
Traits: Eidetic Memory, Mental Disorder (Cannibalism), Uncanny Valley
Implants: Basic BioMods, Basic Mesh Inserts,
Bioweave Armor (Light), Cortical Stack, Medichines,
Oxygen Reserve
Gear: Armor Clothing (6/7), Light Vac Suit, Plasma
Gun (AP -10, DV 3d10 + 12, Mode SS), Specs
Roleplaying: Vo is ruthless, bloodthirsty, and psychopathic. He will use any means at his disposal to
eliminate the characters, even sacrificing drones.
credits:
Glory Writing: Jack Graham
Editing: Rob Boyle, Michelle Lyons
Development: Rob Boyle
Art Direction: Brent Evans
Layout and Maps: Matt Heerdt
Glory Interior Artwork: Bruno Werneck, Mark Winters
GM Screen Art: Stephen Martiniere
Playtesters and Proofreaders: Laura Bienz, Phil Bordelon, Echo
Boyle, Berianne Bramman, C. Byrne, Davidson Cole, Nathaniel Dean, Jason Freese, Aaron Grossman, Matthew Hare, Earl
Hollar, Paul Jensen, Kendall Jung, Joanna Keseberg, Tony Lee,
Melissa Rapp, Richard Riessen, Zak Strassberg, Kevin Tyska,
Leland Zavadil
Musical Inspiration: Aphorism, Marching Dynamics, Tonikom
Resources:
http://eclipsephase.com
—Eclipse Phase website, blog, and forums
http://del.icio.us/infomorph
—Eclipse Phase-related news and links
http://posthumanstudios.com
—Posthuman Studios website
http://eclipsephase.com/store
—Online Ordering and PDFs
24
Phuong Lê (“Mother”)
Lê was the ship’s primary tech. Now she’s a bloated
mass of uteruses and mouths, the incubator in which
the other female White Khanhs implant fertilized
zygotes. Lê’s body now covers most of the inside of
the Ops Center (Area 7), except in spots where it has
been trimmed back to expose display terminals or
other equipment.
Lê is no longer lucid, nor is she able to communicate in any normal fashion. If attacked, she will
lash out with a Psychic Stab against any character
touching her, bludgeon or grapple characters with
tentacles, or deliver a nasty bite to grappled characters or anyone foolish enough to come within 30
centimeters of her mouth.
Lê’s exsurgent form is able to survive for decades in
hibernation if life support is lost—even in vacuum.
Characters who encounter Lê must make a Willpower Stress Test (p. 214, EP) or suffer 1d10 + 5 SV.
COG
5
COO
5
INT
5
REF
5
SAV
5
SOM
WIL
30
30
MOX
1
INIT
20
SPD
1
LUC
—
TT
—
IR
—
DUR
100
WT
20
DR
150
Active Skills: Psi Assault 60, Sense 40, Unarmed
Combat 70
Traits: Psi Defense 2
Psi Sleights: Ego Sense, Psi Shield, Psychic Stab
Implants: Medichines
Attacks: Bite (DV 2d10+3, AP -1), Tentacles
(1d10+3, AP 0)
Outside Resources:
http://www.humanityplus.org
—Humanity Plus
First Printing, by Posthuman Studios
contact us at [email protected]
or via http://eclipsephase.com
or search your favorite social network for:
“Eclipse Phase” or “Posthuman Studios”
Creative Commons License; Some Rights Reserved.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
To view a copy of this license, visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
What this means is that you are free to copy, share, and remix the text
and artwork within this book under the following conditions:
1) you do so only for noncommercial purposes;
2) you attribute Posthuman Studios;
3) you license any derivatives under the same license.
For specific details, appropriate credits, and updates/changes to this
license, please see: http://eclipsephase.com/cclicense
