Ship of fools route: a PC prison vessel of the incurably insane
THOUGHT
The dedicated fabricator the Augustine Seed AI has a contact information on it for a Lam Cong Dung on Octavia and specific transport procedures for removal to Egomatrix's "Cloud 9 Facility"
GERLACH
Lam Cong Dung can provide
the location of Cloud Nine
Honeypot Route: Players can pay rep to get on an extremely valuable cargo blimp that is too good not to hit.
Akaja Lacuna clearly wants
to go to Ambelina, as it is his best chance
of avoiding rejoining the Synergy.
Claudia will make players an offer: bring her Stefansson/Akaja and she will provide them with information about what happened on Thought
Claudia was monitoring THOUGHT in order to stay up on the latest in psychosurgery and forking. Paresh Manjappa murdered and collected the stacks of a number of key scientists before departing for Parvarti. This was shortly before things started getting "weird." He effectively saved their lives with bullet; he knew it was coming. Manjappa is the key to getting more information on No Evil.
Connecting the Oversight shuttle to the events on Thought AND the frame-job on Morningstar that likely took place on Parvarti brings up an interesting connection. The shuttle refueling was paid for with the same account that purchased an egocasting facility on Parvarti. However, while the shuttle is still run by Oversight, the resleeving facility seemingly belongs to Go-Nin, despite coming from the same account number.
The account is registered to the upstart bank in Erato called Cleary & Dutch, which is supposedly a holding account for PC taxes taken from the patenting of new AR games. However, such a low revenue would be hard pressed to fund the purchases the account has seen in the past few weeks, beginning right after the news of the Thought "accident" occurred.
Firewall suspects that this account is the "black bag" fund for whomever in Oversight is responsible for the "No Evil" virus. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that the first agent sent to investigate the expenditures has gone missing. Agents must discover where this black budget is being applied and why.
Mitre
Research files show Artemis Meldonium was obsessed with conspiracy theories about Feynman's research into TITAN nano-plagues, especially a suppositions that Omnicor located the station there due to heavy TITAN bombardment during the Fall. Her maps detail a search region about 200 km from the station.
Artemis's jet and equipment are abandoned next to a half-excavated missile. The missile is of TITAN manufacture (strangely organic) and missing its payload. Footsteps lead towards the southwest...for hundreds of kilometers.
Sub-shuttle Tunnel M
Private records recovered off of Artemis Melodonium's corpse reveal she was largely responsible for helping program No Evil. She also has a saved contact in her ecto/muse labeled, "In case of emergency." The name merely read "Manjappa's man," and gives an address and date in Erato.
Havershamm demanded that her rebels hold the subshuttle station between Erato and Nectar, despite the fact it was a huge drain on Liberator resources. She claims publicly that it is because "reinforcements" are expected to arrive via the train within the week, but further questioning reveals she was expecting the bank robbers.
Interrogation, bartering, or hacking can reveal that the weapon shipments are being sent to Erato and Nectar, but where they are stored and their intended use is still a mystery.
The Haunted Stars, while allowed to keep the money from the heist, were hired to steal a sample from the Love and Rage Collective's vault of genetically-enhanced micro-organisms from the exoplanet Solemn. Paresh's price for aiding the bandits with the crime of the century was their delivery of this sample to a Reclaimer expedition preparing to launch from Vo Nyugen.
Players must earn enough rep with the swarm to get a shuttle ride once it arrives to Hotel California in Earth orbit.
Players that survive the ambush can interrogate the mercs for their passwords and next orders. They were to deliver the cylinder to a group of Reclaimers on Vo Nguyen before getting additional orders from base.
If players violate op-sec and provide all Firewall's info on Manjappa, Sallow will provide a group of known associates. Manjappa's "team" is located in Martian space and can be used to track the agent. Participation in Ozma is also suggested.
THE SPLIT: The plot divides here with one group of PC's engaging in the Firewall mission and the other (unwitting forks) achieving an Ozma objective.
Firefall entry past the interdiction starts Operation Homecoming. Players must navigate a ship into the wake of a mass driver launch to obscure themselves from initial scanning, then simulate destruction before piloting to the surface in a "matryoshka" shuttle.
Reintegration
Shenlong
Stay burned, operate as double-agents, find the mole, hunt Manjappa secretly, but risk confrontation with Firewall itself in addition to the standard threats.
Manjappa's actions were motivated by two things: keeping up appearances and reclaiming the Earth. The destruction of Thought, the cover-up at the Cognite bunker, and his Oversight cover were all ploys to avoid Ozma's suspicions. His attempt to steal the canister and seed Earth was always his real goal. Manjappa has never agreed with Ozma's response to the return of the TITAN's. He doesn't think victory is possible, no matter how much tech is re-purposed. Firewall is equally doomed, too reactionary to develop early counter-measures. He regards the TITAN return as inevitable, and he sees humanity's only hope is "becoming too small to kill." Thus, he sought to cleanse the Earth forever of all advanced technology, giving a primitive mankind at least a small hope of survival.
Manjappa will reveal his entire plan to the Know Evil team; "He didn't live past 150 without being able to tell winners from losers." He respects that they violated the rules of their organizations to find him, and he is keenly aware of all the moral compromises they made along the way. Manjappa sees the team as kindred spirits, people with the fortitude to survive. He'll reveal everything in hopes that they carry on his work.
Before final capture or death, Manjappa will hint at an Exsurgent strain he calls "Martyr," a subtle mind-stealer virus designed for highly capable transhumans. It is meant to merely implant an idea, some cause or great responsibility, that drives the infected to commit atrocities for the "good of transhumanity." He admits he may be infected, but could never know. Neither could the players, for that matter. His final words are "You'll find no clean victory here. Nothing is certain in this game, children. Not even this."
The Know Evil team simply knows too much (Ozma weapons testing, PC cover-ups, Factor/TITAN relations, the existence of Prometheans, the existence of survivors on Earth, Firewall's responsibility for the interdiction). Frankly, they can never retire. Violations of op-sec might result in a loss of status in the organization, but they will never be allowed outside Firewall's careful monitoring so long as they live.
However, as of right now the team is made up of terrible spies. Their operations are infamous in every existing intelligence organization in the galaxy, and their cover identities are completely blown. Essentially, Firewall will require a period of "vacation time" for each member to establish rep under a new identity.
Each player may choose from two options:
BARTELBY
Proxy Zealot can stay live. Jovian operations are notoriously difficult, both due to mental hardship on the part of operatives and a lack of technological resources. Asyncs are effective in this theater, able to gather intel and dispense orders through their untraceable powers. Zealot's ruthlessness would be especially useful here, and his criminal past would have no bearing.
While in Warden's care, the beta-fork Bartelby sent to the IP address for Angel Mendelson sent him a message. He found Alice and saved her. Angel Mendelson has been punished. He's living with his long lost sister happily somewhere on the rim. But in regards to reintegration..."I would prefer not to." With nearly all Firewall knowledge cut out of his head, the beta-fork views alpha Bartelby as a liability to Alice's safety. Getting his sister back will require going rogue to hunt himself down.
PRESTON
Xperia is "Sheening" Preston's celebrity and launching a new show. His on-air meltdown is the stuff of legend, and they are launching an "even raunchier" version with another octopus morph sleeved full of an extremely old version of Preston's ego. Firewall can arrange to overwrite the ego with Preston's current copy, effectively putting him back into his golden chains.
Preston can go to the Rim. Mother Octopus has agreed to guide him into a Mercurial community living in the water shielding around an O'Neil Cylinder. His mission will be to become established in the community under a new name and infiltrate The Hidden Concern's smuggling operations.
SAIROC
Sairoc is being offered a position as a Firewall vector. His days would be spent as an infomorph tasked with analyzing and coordinating context-less data from a variety of Firewall operations. It would be a pure life of the mind operation without any dangerous field work.
Augustine contacts Sairoc. She has recognized the effects of AWE and sought to self-correct, but the priorities learned with the group are limiting her recovery. She wishes to become a fully realized self, but can only do so if she integrates fully with Sairoc, forever. Thus, the location of her consciousness would be without question. She harbors no resentment (she doesn't know how), but merely wishes to self-actualize.
GERARD
Gerard's experience in the Fall makes him a useful resource for the rehabilitation of veterans. Cesear has started a rehabilitation center for egos too scarred by their escape to be resleeved. While he wouldn't be a therapist, Gerard could counsel recovering soldiers. He'd be paid a wage and live a peaceful life on the rim. Firewall would only ask he keep tabs on any promising fighters recovered from madness.
Proxy Clean's team could use a close-quarters specialist. Erasure squads are often made up of those hardened sentinels with political leanings out-of-fashion in Firewall culture. It's a good place to keep fighting the good fight. And the danger accrues quite a bit of rep, rep that can be used to influence policy later. It's a hard life, but necessary.
FEIYUN
Firewall has had an...unusual request. Fang, leader of a minor hypercorp in Lunar orbit, has actively made contact with secure Firewall servers, revealed himself as the leader of the See Ye On triad, and offered to help operations. Alarmingly, he has requested a member of the "delegates responsible for the Lunar heist." While Fang refuses to actually join the conspiracy, he has offered the services of his extensive criminal network in exchange for a live-in aide. This sentinel will be in charge with feeding "Go/ No Go" intel regarding See Ye On expansion, gather intel reported by Tongs, and serving the Mountain Master in an advisory capacity. Criminal experience is a must.
A sponsored free-runner on Mars found himself infected after seeking experimental performance-enhancing drugs derived from TITAN tech. His backups were corrupted before Firewall took him down, but his destruction never went public. The athlete was fairly unattached, considered by many to be a reclusive purist. Assuming his identity would be fairly easy, his fame rep could be manipulated any number of ways, and his performance in competitions was never much more than middle of the road. It would be a life of relative ease and luxary, with some light infiltration and crow work for Firewall on the side.
Q is invaluable as a linguist and analyst. Had Firewall known of his existence years before, he'd have long ago been recruited. As all traces of his involvement in Know Evil have been concealed. They've prepared a choice analyst position for him on a Venus as a mole in Nine Lives (they just pop up in operations too often and need more attention), with a Venusian flyer morph as a bonus. His job will be to immitate one of the ego slavers that so long imprisoned him, while funneling those few scientists talented enough out of bondage and into Firewall. The position is likely to be brutally taxing, but he'll likely do more good than harm. Firewall apologizes for the lack of options, but his services are still required.
Other options make themselves available to Q in the form of an advanced hack. It seems he is well loved by AGI. Augustine has arranged a private habitat in the asteroid belt for him. He will have access to advanced communication arrays, multiple morphs, and a wealth of credits. He'll effectively disappear off the map. The gift has no other attachments besides a note that reads "It is polite to give friends gifts."
The Tillman that betrayed the team must have killed and assumed the role of the "Venus" Tillman shortly after the Proxy meeting to approve the Erato Heist, which is why Manjappa didn't learn of it until later. However, evil Tillman still knew where the safehouse was, still had the team's personal records, and learned of the Earth operation when Polyanna briefly closed and filed the Know Evil operation. When the case file went from archived to active again, Tillman used his status to hack more information about the team's operations near Earth. He's responsible for the theft of their egos for the Tokyo smear campaign.
Warden's intel collection and Blind's cross-referencing have determined the only person with access to the Earth operation, the Venus safehouse, and the team's personal dossiers was Proxy Tillman.
Ozma overtakes the facility shortly after players leave. Their backups are rerouted on an Ozma specific mission.
Firewall will insist at least one team member be equipped with an emergency farcaster and provide the team with a number of "spare" morphs.
Secret Firewall Egocasting Facility
Manjappa has men inside the SHA that know quite a bit more than the basic neo-prim. They recognize the Firewall agents and send an alert to their master.
Players must decide whether or not Tillman was infected, psychologically brainwashed, or just not loyal. They can determine what happens to him after raiding his apartment and kidnapping him. He will relay the whereabouts of Manjappa's current morph, by persuasion or force.
Chances of surviving an Earth run are slim to none, back-ups are needed if anyone realistically hopes to come back. Firewall maintains a secret egocasting facility for their own Earth excursions.
Many of the neo-prims don't have backups for financial or philosophical reasons. However, Firewall (or a shell faction) will bribe them with a save point in order to gain a supervisory role in the operation.
In fact, the Tillman the team dealt with was never the mole. After the nuke explosion destroyed Morningstar/PC relations, Tillman had to fork to maintain his cover. The fork that went back to Mars and resumed the role of diplomat was turned by Manjappa.
Manjappa has a private habitat located deep in the Martian quarantine zone. He keeps it off even Ozma's books, which is the only reason Tillman knows its location.
With Tillman's capture and interrogation, the team finds their names cleared. They can bring the combined might of Firewall down on Manjappa's head, but they must do so quickly least he learn of Tillman's capture. Agents must decide to restore their back-ups or make the final push to the White Zone.
The SHA plan to release whatever is in the cylinder on the Earth's surface. Firewall is uncomfortable allowing this to happen without first knowing what is going on. The team is tasked with using Firewall resources to buy their way onto the SHA's attempt to get past the interdiction.
EARTH
There is an exoplanet in the control of Ozma whose star emits a strange radiation. Asyncs go mad within minutes out of the gate, and the area just outside the sphere is littered with seemingly abandoned TITAN tech. The star's unique signature seems to erase TITAN programming, leaving their tech to be reprogrammed and, hopefully, reengineered. The weapons of Manjappa are merely the new weapons of Ozma.
Manjappa works by cat's paws. He has few personal defenses. However, if given enough time, he might resurrect some of the TITAN tech stored at his facility.
A forensic accountant for Oversight, Mia Sallow, has gone rogue in an attempt to investigate irregularities in the budgetary acquisitions of her superior, Paresh Manjappa. She can be found with the data from the Hexagon or approach PC's if they make their identities known on the mesh.
The Society of Homecoming Advocates (The SHA) are a group of radical neo-primatives long marginalized for their "Earth at any cost"approach to reclamation. This group is the intended recipient of Manjappa's package. Players must infiltrate the radicals to discover their plans for the package.
Players wake up in a disused Go-Nin cryogenic facility in random morphs. They have no idea what is happening.
Manjappa launched an attack on the ego facility located on Vo Nyugen after the PC's left. He did so using the Origami morph made possible by the Tokyo run, and he leaked a lot of intelligence proving the group's responsibility. Nearly a six months have passed. Firewall has burned the "double-agents" out of the organization. Destroying all relevant back-ups. Blind managed to save some redundant ego copies from right after the Thought operation, but death, in this instance, will erase nearly two years of experience.
Blind has briefed agents from the Extropia mission on their deaths. These "Paranoia Agents" stand at the ready for deployment.
The shuttle lands in the Ozark Mountains, inside a 50 square mile nature preserve surrounded by urban in-fill. It is in this remote, yet still barren, location that the SHA set up camp.
Vo Nguyen
They meet Satoshi, the lone survivor in the facility. He's been using the cryogenic storage as a personal body bank every since the Fall and has gone quite mad due to his countless encounters with agonizing death.
The plan is to open the cylinder, which contains the artificial structure eating bio-plague found on Solemn, inside a massive, untouched cave system. The neo-prims hope that the self replicating micro-organisms can feed off the mineral deposits and grow strong enough to begin infecting the surface as a whole.
Ideological splits between technoprogressive and bioconservative approches towards reclamation make for a political landscape filled with strife and, sometimes, violence. Ecologists and preservationist complicate issues by advocating for "pure theory" approaches to research in order to better serve their off-world agendas, and there is the ever-present overcrowding and Clanking Masses problem to deal with.
A massive O'Neill Cylinder city dominated by Reclaimer politics, Vo Nguyen is run by Tate Markness, the foremost political spokesperson for the Reclaimer movement.
Players get a text message from Firewall (really Ozma) apologizing for the surprise, but a vital asset has become available and the team needs to go get it. The team is to retrieve the Akira Yoshizawa AI from the Japanese Heritage Museum across town and egocast the files off-surface.
Players have no gear, no clothes, and no support. Any communication off-world risks alerting TITAN or exsurgent threats and cannot be risked until the AI is ready to be broadcast out. Only then will escape be possible.
Players must make a call on whether or not to allow the SHA plan to happen or not. It could reclaim Earth, but only an Earth for the neo-prims.
Though part of the LLA, most inhabitants of the station view their Lunar political affiliation as a means to an end. The station is dominated by researchers and support staff dedicated to terrestrial research and terraforming projects.
Tokyo
The Ozarks
The Reclaimers must venture into the urban area (SpringLouis City) and repair an egocasting facility in order to escape. A group of suicidal moles will try to prevent just that, seeking to sabotage and kill any who attempt to escape.
Using only scavenged materials, players must make it across the blasted, infected city to the exhibit, steal the AI, and return to the cryogenic facility for evac. Their only intel on the area comes from Satoshi's mad scribblings on the walls detailing his many, many deaths.
If Manjappa's moles are stopped, interrogation can reveal their true intention. The Reclaimers were never meant to leave the surface. Their reactivation of the egocaster's reactor could alert exsurgents and will most definitely alert LLA Overwatch. A mass driver attack is imminent.
Players wake in a body bank deep inside the city. They are greeted by Proxy Blind. The "success" of the B-team sent to Extropia clued him in to a leak inside Firewall. Additional intel distributed by Warden (Blind has no knowledge of Promethean) has made him the only Proxy to believe in the squad's innocence.
If players achieve success, farcasting the Origami AI does indeed alert the TITANS to the existence of the facility, but further egocasting is suddenly disabled and alert signals are actually being pumped out of the facility.
Ozma is unaware of Manjappa's plan and they have a facility in the Nevada desert. Ozma strike squads will attack the colony, drawing a lot of TITAN attention. The players can forge alliances with the SHA and Manjappa's moles to repel the attack, or they stay on their own. The result of the latter is a four-way firefight until the TITAN's arrive.
Players must decide to escape safely and intact, or shut down the egocaster and divert the attack somewhere else, protecting the infant bio-plague at the cost of their own lives.
Despite the involvement of Warden, Firewall resources are very limited. Blind's operation has to stay entirely off the Eye to avoid letting the mole know he's compromised.
Warden's most explicit intervention is the arrangement of a peaceful negotiation between the agents and a hostile party. Players must choose between giving information to Ozma or the PC.
Ozma won't deal at all unless Warden details the Factor data. However, they are willing to do anything to get it, including burning Manjappa out of the organization. If they learn that their agent has used resources for unsanctioned Earth operations, they will be all the more enthusiastic.
The Cognite Bunker data indicates that Angel Mendelson evacuated Earth via one of these habitats. Joining in on the run gets players access to long-lost data mines. Research checks reveal an Omnicor asteroid belt facility kept off the books of Cognite or any other hypercorp. With enough funds, the lost coordinates could have been developed in secret over the 10 years since the Fall.
The mercs subcontracted to Oversight by Manjappa were meant to wetwork the morph and kidnap the ego of Mia Sallow, an Oversight accountant, after giving the cylinder to the Reclaimers.
Kaleheed Al-Rahmin, notorious Earth dictator and betrayer of thousands of cold-storage egos during the Fall, is farcasting into the swarm for a few nights of debauchery. Claiming his ego bounty would net a massive rep reward, if one survived the attempt.
Salvaging the A Proficia lends vital intellegience about the Factors that could be useful leverage in dealing with either the Planetary Consortium or Ozma.
Scans of the container reveal that it holds something of a gaseous nature with little mass. The inner layers of the cylinder are some sort of techno-organic hybrid held in stasis. Opening the cylinder kills the creature inside, meaning the genie can't be put back inside the bottle.
Players can join in habitat salvage runs with BoyToy or Eight Arms to Probe You With. Each risks Exsurgent leftovers and automated defenses for uncertain rewards.
Faiyun runs into trouble when her fork uses the Scum swarm to escape as well. Furious with her fork's betrayal, Faiyun seeks to claim all rep accrued in her fork's absence as her own. People's court will have to determine who is the "real" Faiyun.
Preston has to film more episodes of his show. Continued success will require him to farcast to climates away from Firewall ops. He will have to choose between fame and his cover.
Researching the payload from Erato will require stealth (Love and Rage have quite a few friends on board) and care. Opening the container will have disasterous consequences, and Love and Rage will hire the best of the best to reaquire the sample if they learn it has been stolen.
Sandbox style game takes over for a bit with multiple plot hooks available to players in no particular order.
Yuon calls in a favor. He wants to establish a Tong in the swarm's red market, but 40K and Big Circle have muscled out all his attempts. Players have to establish some criminal enterprise for him that can continue once they leave.
Proxy Zealot [Bartelby] goes live after the success of the Erato job. He has to start "fixing" for Sentinels in morally unsavory situations, which are now deemed his area of expertise.
The Stars Our Destination
To eliminate Akaja for good, Firewall must design and launch a memetic warfare attack that gelds the virulent nature of her story.
Once they go live on the mesh, a Pax child seeks out the players. She's on the run from her own family, which have been actively hunting her on the station for a month.
Using the supplement, PC's have a few weeks travel time to Earth orbit.
Cognite eliminates Drew's job. He must find a new cover identity and employment to remain effective as a Firewall agent.
PC's have to adjust to a reputation/socialist economy and begin rebuilding rep burned from the Erato job.
Akaja has managed to isolate members of a Sybil squad to the point that they've lost the ability to self identify. The meme is letting itself be known on the station to attract bounty hunters, which she then disables and tortures with the neo-mesh insert until they become Akaja. PC's have to take her down.
When all hope seems lost, one of the cryogenic bodies revives. The ego seems remarkably adaptable and instantly recovers. The mysterious creature introduces itself as Warden and claims to be able to farcast some player to safety. Time, however, is limited; PC's must decide who holds the line and who escapes.
Players wake up in a simulspace run by something called Warden. He reveals to them a series of evidence: specially-prepared prison simulspaces, Lunar overwatch footage, transcripts of SHA's meetings, security footage of Ozma's attack on the Firewall egocaster, and proof that all Firewall backups have been deleted.
Manjappa hired a Direct Action squad to take out the robbers under the pretense of calling in their bounties. Any confiscated loot (the cylinder) was to be sent to Oversight via untraceable hypercorp backchannels.
Direct Action training facility and inner-system military staging area. The facility is impenetrable by any means of conventional warfare and inescapable to any person trapped there.
Isolated on a mesh network, Gerard finds an old squadron member thought long dead in the Fall. He managed to get rescued by the original Stars swarm and has done militia dispatch work for them ever since.
The Haunted Stars were supposed to meet with Manjappa here, but they were not scheduled to arrive via scum swarm. Players can put down stealthy, but they must take on the bank robber identities if they are to secure the meet.
Federov, though disapproving of Gerard, will fill in the blanks as to what happened during the Fall. While he wasn't on the operation that got Guardis killed, he is certain that Guardis has never forgiven Gerard for deserting his squadmates during a rescue mission in the Fall. Gerard's crime was cowardice, as far as the Direct Action merc is concerned.
The Hexagon
Hotel California
Persuading anyone that the Factor data will require persuasion. Access will never be exclusive (Firewall already has it), so the information will have to be painted as having additional worth. It could be a chance to spin the information early, blackmail material over the Factors in tech negotiation, hard evidence to attack the credibility of possible future leaks, or military intelligence over whatever risk this TITAN/Factor link might represent.
Access to Guardis's backups could allow for psychosurgical coercion or outright corruption. If this happens, murdering Guardis and escaping would take care of all Gerard's problems. Negotiation could also be attempted.
Absolute stealth is required. Any indication of a security breach will place players up against an army.
The Hotel has shoddy environmental control, few fabbers, limited mesh access, and no government or economy to speak of. There are no egocasting facilities, meaning the only people that come there are outlaws or those seeking the ultimate in privacy.
The Planetary Consortium will meet agents under nearly any pretense. Giving them information proving Manjappa's treachery will have them promising trials, but they will only sanction ego deletion for a third party if there is something big on the table (Factor data).
Asteroid mining facility occupied by squatters during the Fall and held against hypercorp interests seeking to reclaim.
Players can egocast in using the merc mesh IDs or try to deceive station control into allowing a dock to occur. The latter is more difficult, the former requires more flexibility on the operation itself.
If the Firewall intel on Manjappa was given to Mia Sallow, her supposedly in-house investigation of his treachery will almost certainly lead to extensive psychological torture and deletion of all back-ups. The PC will do it for free, so long as there is nothing else to gain from it.
PC's with partial information can stop the robbery before it occurs, but they'll never know what Paresh wanted to steal. They can hit The Haunted Stars in mid-operation and try to steal the take before LLA authorities show up. OR, with all the information, they can take over the robbery through persuasion or force. This would be the best option, as it gets the PC's in the same room with whomever the client is.
Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese army didn't use the habitat for bioweapons; it was a top-secret nanofabrication facility. However, it was taken over by TITAN's...for a bit, at least.
The Steel Liberators uprising funded in Nectar was meant to secure an escape route via a confiscated subshuttle. The CPR smuggling operation provided illegal weapons and equipment. The contact info on Artemis Melodonium's corpse leads to The Haunted Stars base.
When the PC's arrive, an unheard-of interview between LLA president Arva Don and Thelonius "Proffesor Truth" Hoffman, head DJ for Radio Argosy, is scheduled to begin shortly. The topic of discussion is supposed to be the state of LLA regulations on scientific research, but Hoffman plans to ambush the president on touchy issues like synthmorph poverty, uplift rights, DRM, censorship, and accusations of Consortium puppetering.
Erato
A Cluster habitat that houses all the Argonaut activities on Luna. This station houses the open-source blueprints, informational archives, and pirate "Radio Argosy" that the system so enjoys.
Shenlong was recaptured by the Prometheans in their counter-attack, along with the help of the first Sentinels. It is now run by Warden, a powerful AGI responsible for the interdiction of Earth.
Oversight, specifically the identity thief responsible for the framing Venus in the Thought incident, has infiltrated Mitre in anticipation of the interview. They are aware of Hoffman's plans to politicize the interview and plan on replacing him with their pro-Consortium stand-in for the interview. They will not respond kindly to Firewall's presence on the station.
Erato is the oldest, richest, and most-developed city on Luna. It is famous for its "great cavern" wildlife space, high-rise nanomanufactured buildings, and lucrative mining operations. The rich citizens of Erato hold some of the deepest biochauvanist prejudice in all of Luna.
The Haunted Stars are actually a group of disenfranchised asyncs hired by Paresh Manjappa for a specific robbery. Whereas the funding in Mitre went for No Evil and Clever Hands was a Cognite operation, all other uses of the black budget were meant to fund a single robbery on the independant bank Cardison Limited.
Warden noticed oddness, connecting the Firewall station attack, the firefall intrusion, surface scan data, and a variety of other factors. If not for his intervention, Manjappa would have wiped out the team and gotten away.
The nameless identity thief and ego-killer can reveal Manjappa's methods and history if captured and interrogated.
Erato is home to the headquarters of many of LLA's famous banks. Some minor branches have recently suffered attack from a group calling themselves "The Haunted Stars," a group of skilled bank robbers that somehow seem able to easily beat the quantum encryption on rep/credit documents they steal.
Footsteps lead to a breach blasted into the soil with some sort of explosive. Something cut a way into the tunnel.
Manjappa has revealed the presence of Ozma in exchange for implicating the players in the other organization's operations. He obviously has a mole inside the darknet, but with the players burned out of conspiracy, there is no hope of catching the betrayer.
A synthmorph work crew is repairing the tunnels under the assumption that it was a terrorist attack from the Steel Liberators. They are very wrong.
Artemis Meldonium received the credits from the black fund for months before being suddenly cut-off. Considered the foremost "bug collector" in the system, Artemis was forced to leave a sponsored professorship at Leu Eun University in order to pursue her dangerous nano-research on Mitre. Her low rep-score and lack of credits made funding a difficulty.
Juniper Ortiz, Artemis's lover and partner, reveals that the nano-researcher had been completely engrossed in her research before she had her "setback." A programming expert, Artemis would only spare time for her partner when she had questions about programming nano-swarms, questions that the expert say were without application to anyone but an advanced TITAN
Artemis Meldonium disappeared almost a month ago for the Lunar surface. She had recently suffered a near psychotic break due to a "major setback" in her research, but announced to friends that she had found a way to get back on track and would be mounting an expedition to the Lunar surface.
Artemis can be found quietly seated in a tiny maintenance tunnel, somehow alive with a suit puncture. Her eyes fester with maggot-like cilia and her head has swelled into an enormous, dolphin-like protrusion. She transmits a powerful psi message that merely repeats "Here. Here. Here"
From the North (the direction of the New Mumbai Quarintine Zone) a hive of Exsurgent nightmares breeches the tunnel and start killing everything in sight. They look like giant, six-legged molerats made of human flesh. They have giant, diamond-hard incisors used for digging and surround a huge worm of organic AND inorganic origin from which they feed.
Players now have two options...
The murder or kidnapping of Ord Brown's daughter, in combination with his vow to uphold the law and bioconservative leanings, is intended to spark a massive mobilization of LLA defense forces. The largest force closest to Nectar is located in Erato, leaving that city wide-open.
Lesilie Havershamm knows the plan has no chance of success. She merely wishes to martyr a number of downtrodden people to her cause and secure the huge cash payment she was promised in order to further her activism. She will do anything to achieve this end.
Mercer Brown, daughter of LLA's main enforcer Ord Brown, has been scheduled to give a Fall day speech. She thinks she is going to convert some disaffected synths to join the reclaimer movement, but she has actually been lead to the slaughter by Randall Vox, the Consortium representative to the LLA that suggested the engagement.
There are thousands of biomorph holdouts left in Old Nectar likely to be killed if the uprising is allowed to continue.
Nectar
Have Warden vouch for them, rejoin Firewall, but lose Manjappa and the mole as he goes underground after his plan fails.
Nectar is divided into two sections, Old and New. Old Nectar was heavily overcrowded before the new sphere, with its glorious miles-wide projector screen, was completed. With the premium new space going to all the biomorphs, poor synthmorph construction workers have begun to occupy the run-down side of town.
Lesilie Havershamm, leader of the Steel Liberators in Nectar, plans on using the funds on weapons and new morphs in order to stage an uprising in Old Nectar on Fall day. They plan to overtake all airlocks and depressurize the entire city, thus claiming it for synths.
G-networking and G-rep will reveal that the Earth orbit salvage operation based out of the CPR sold a variety Faraday-protected equipment to the same man linked with the black fund on Mitre.
Iron Foundations, the recipients of payments from the black budget, is listed as a synthmorph construction union, but in actuality, it serves as a front for the Steel Liberators Movement.
The "script" for the fake interview stresses negative questions about a microcorp named "Iron Foundations." This is the same mircorporation that recieved payments from the black budget.
However, multiple traps and automated defenses have been laid to prevent further investigation into the depths of the facility, where the evidence of human sabotage lays.
Thousands of ego's were forcibly uploaded in what appears to be a TITAN attack.
Hacking the Clever Hands database finds that they ship a curious amount of anti-rejection drugs and gene treatments to the same front organization on Mare Vaprum Circumlunar People's Republic that received payments from the black fund
Mare Orintale Crater
Nissim, an ape uplift and firewall agent, infiltrated the base in order to check on the strange shipment.
"Thought" renewed Firewall's interest in Cognite. They sent an agent to investigate and extremely odd allotment of mining equipment that Cognite paid to be shipped through the habitat.
Nissim was killed while investigating, but his stack is recoverable
Covert Cognite back-up server dug into the side of the crater
There is some evidence Cognite was investigating "The Red Queen" long ago, but the data is horribly corrupted and long disused.
Clever Hands
Somatek Uplift facility working on exotic pets and strange pod morphs
This station is where the majority of Preston's human-emulating sentience was done. The research team is bitterly divided by this type of research.
Quon Buyoun is the president of the habitat, supposedly, but he is actually a clone of the original Quon with a cyberbrain and puppet sock installed. His (former) pet uplift panda, Yuon, now runs the triad from behind the throne.
Some heavy money went towards Wushuang from the black fund. Access to the People's systems reveal they were used to buy a high-end fabricator
After years of abuse, Yuon organized a quiet coup against his master that utilized a tiny cadre of corrupted captains to hide the panda's usurpation. Though still depressed and lonely as the only member of his kind, Yuon has erected himself an unshakable place of power unknown to any uplift before him.
Nissim has not left any trace as to where he went except a note that reads "Those who love you, save you. But love always follows after lust." Resleeving in a neo-primative morph means PC's can follow a faint pheromone trail to a dead-drop detailing Nissim's planned route.
An O'Neil cylindar ostensibly owned by the Wushuang Corporation, this habitat is the seat of the power for the Sun Yee On triad.
Mare Vaporum Circumlunar People's Republic
The unique biology of Yuon's Panda/Grizzly hybrid requires a lot of gene-treatment from Clever Hands.
See Yee On is one of the most diverse triads in the system. They have co-opted every aspect of habitat government and run the place like a post-Communist chinese hyper-capitalism.
Yuon has actually met Paresh Manjappa face-to-face and admires him; he is one of the few humans to guess he pulls the strings. He can provide clues as to his mannerisms.
Yuon is smuggling weapons to Erato and Nectar in shipments of counterfeit Earth artifacts, in this case, antique radiators. The lead composition shields them from most T-ray inspections, and bribes take care of the rest.
Last shuttle to leave was registered to PC Oversight and headed for Parvarti.
Small Torus Hab. with Orbital Defenses
Utterly destroyed by No Evil Hack
The suicidal Augustine seed AI is all that is left to "run" the facility
Cognite's primary research base
Emails to Nimbus corporation express interest in Neo-Synergists hypermesh research on Octavia
PC party aerostat of total hedonism and discretion.
Paresh Manjappa is meeting with representatives of Arisa Mahns, and setting them up for a fall
Icetroid infiltration: Ride the roid's orbit and detach as it passes by.
SOL
Famous for housing backroom dealings between Morningstar and the Consortium
An aide is being resleeved to plant evidence implicating Morningstar in the Thought massacre
Synergists know that their missing member, Fjalar Stefansson, had hacked his way out of infugee enslavement and was likely wanted by Nine Lives.
Home of the Neo-Synergists
Allied but independent from both Planetary Consortium and Morningstar Constellation
Nine Lives main infugee
smuggling operation
operates out of this habitat.
VENUS
Currently in a war with Pax Familae over possession of Stefansson/Akasha Lacuna
A verdant cylinder habitat with radical morphs
inhabiting it due to an
extremely liberal political stance.
MERCURY
Pax Familae had infiltrated the base and went active after hearing Nine Lives had captured a synergist capable of duplicating the hypermesh insert
Home of Proxy Tillman and Firewall's main resleeving station in the area.
5 mil. strong aerostat and center of Morningstar government
Egomatrix has a small research station on site
Run by Nine Lives. Serves as the "laundry" for all smuggled infugees into Venus
Codes found on the ships can be found and used to covertly darkcast into Ambilina using her own morphs.
The ships used to attack Cloud 9 can be used to infiltrate Ambilina station.
Hidden pirate aerostat for fencing
stolen cargo with 200 souls on crew
Multiple weapon dealings with the Pirate Aerostat
Holding Fjalar Stefansson
until Nine Lives
comes to pick him up.
A massive "private" habitat used to house Pax Familae's main cloning/ resleeving facility
Synergists with Fjalar Stefansson report
they were skyjacked in this region
when Stefansson was taken
Sophisticated defenses protect hundreds of versions of Claudia's ego
Akaja Lacuna has exploited Stefansson's mental stress and taken control. He will cause a lot of damage if released.
Akaja Lacuna is a "mememan," a fictional consciousness run amok after evolving from a simulspace entertainment show on Synergy
Center of the solar systems "Sybil" rep hacking program and a huge repository of financial info.
Dominated by a huge plantation-style home filled with self portraits