Core Concepts

Eclipse Phase is a hostile world to the unwary and a paradise to the cunning. Threats lurk invisible, factions hang on the edge of war, and transhuman nature itself is molded to purpose. Below are the core concepts any denizen of Eclipse Phase must master in order to survive.

Transhumanism

Humanity is outdated. People are no longer defined by their limitations. Transhumans adapt to the scorching corona of the sun, where ships turn to plasma. They thrive in the dark frozen wastes of the Kuiper Belt in absolute isolation. Where humans suffer from aging and disease and are confined to limited environments, transhumans pursue longevity and adaptation.

In the 21st century, transhumanism was a movement focused on human enhancement. In Eclipse Phase, transhumanity is how people rebuild the galaxy. You can play an augmented vid star or a robotic insect, and neither would stand out on a public boulevard. You can also choose no body at all and exist as a purely digital entity. Many denizens of Eclipse Phase have absolute body autonomy, within the limits of their creativity and resources. Because of the ease of radical body enhancement, the average Eclipse Phase character has a strength and intelligence comparable to the most exceptional humans from history.

Transhumanity also incorporates those who were not decanted as homo sapiens. AIs and uplifted animals with human-equivalent capabilities and intelligence are part of transhumanity. Like humans, uplifts and infolife select and alter their bodies, engage in commerce across the Solar System, take VR vacations, and expand the transhuman experience.

AIs and Uplifts

The genetics hypercorp Somatek famously ran batches of ten thousand semi-sapient octopus fingerlings through a gauntlet of rigorous intelligence tests. Failures were immediately destroyed. The remaining were churned into genetic stock for the next generation. A decade later, their final “product” was released — an octopus as cognizant as any transhuman; an uplift. Somatek and companies like it raised and killed millions. This is the story of almost all uplifted species. They are fully sapient, but their DNA is trademarked, copy-protected, and hypercorp branded. Their history is one of calculated eugenics.

Artificial general intelligences (AGIs) are fully self-aware, creative digital intelligences. Unlike artificial limited intelligences (ALIs), which have a human-like interface in front of a limited, task-specific program, AGIs are sapient and equivalent to other transhuman minds. AGIs, like uplifts, are the products of human research and development teams. Some are offshoots of academic research, a few are from military think tanks, while the majority were developed by private studios for their own purposes.

Uplifts and AGIs are collectively called mercurials. Many hypercorps and political bodies see them as property. Some governments view them as abominations, abuse of technology manifest, and a threat to human survival. The fight for mercurials is the fight for transhumanity and blood is spilled on both sides to define their place in society.

Defeating Death

In Eclipse Phase, your mind can be digitally copied, stored, and altered like software. Almost everyone uploads their mind to a secure storage service, as well as to a tiny device implanted at the base of the skull called a cortical stack. If you are killed, you can be restored from these backups. Only if all copies of yourself are destroyed will you be dead forever.

Backing up brings its own set of challenges. When your mind is recovered, it includes your memories up to the last moment of backing up. If you died horribly, that final experience is recorded in your cortical stack. Characters surviving traumatic experiences may opt to destroy their most recent backup and instead restore an older copy, losing weeks or months of experiences and memories (called lack), rather than deal with the psychological harm they’d suffered. Copies can also be stolen. You may live your life not knowing a copy of yourself has been resleeved on the far side of the Solar System to be tortured for information or sold into slavery. Fork-nappers and “soul traders” are the lowest of the low, profiting off of transhuman suffering.

Resleeving

Digitized minds can also be downloaded. If your current body becomes damaged, obsolete, or inconvenient, you can sleeve into a new one. You can transfer consciousness with the right equipment and less than an hour’s time. Your new form could be an Olympic runner, a robotic shell, a digital presence, or even an orbiting shuttle. Members of high-risk professions, such as criminals or Firewall sentinels, can be killed multiple times on a mission only to be brought back and sent into the field again and again. Your body is called a sleeve or a morph, and the process of changing morphs is resleeving. Morphs can be biological with organic brains (biomorphs), biological with synthetic brains (pods), robotic (synthmorphs), or purely digital (infomorph).

Ego Manipulation

Morphs are temporary; your mind is what defines who you are. Your ego is your skills, memories, and personality.

Multiple copies of your ego (called forks) can operate simultaneously and independently, each fork effectively its own person. Forks can be electronically transferred across the Solar System at the speed of light; uploading at a facility on Mars to be resleeved on Ceres and back again by dinner. Forks can also be passively stored for later use, brought online only if certain criteria are met.

You also have the opportunity to directly manipulate your ego. With psychosurgery, you can alter your behavioral traits, remove memories to ease previous traumas, prune forks to fulfill specialized roles, and merge forks back into your primary persona.

The Mesh

Nearly every object is wireless and computerized. Each of these devices links to its neighbors to join the local network, sharing processing capabilities and functionality. This is the mesh; a hyper-connected, distributed, everyware network. The mesh offers free and unlimited digital processing power to its citizens. Digital agents crawl the mesh running errands for their masters. You wear or are implanted with mesh inserts that reveal a dazzling augmented reality overlay. Via entoptic displays, the world blossoms in an elaborate display that can only exist in a virtual world. Wild animals roam electronic storefronts, new fashions include moving dioramas. Every language is seamlessly translated, every moment is perfectly recorded, every question taps into the wealth of transhuman knowledge to produce an expert response. But the mesh's omnipresence has its downsides. Everything is hackable, and everything is watching; surveillance is everywhere and accessible to all.

Table Talk

All characters are assumed to be mesh-connected. This permits them to talk to one another, share first-person video, sensor data, and other information even when separated. But use caution! Infosec-savvy enemies can monitor these discussions or even alter messages between characters.

Nanotech

With nanotechnology, you can fabricate almost any good on demand. Nanotech has resulted in novel materials and goods, from stain-proof clothes to molecule-sized robots. Isolated habitats mine minerals and other raw-material feedstocks to convert to luxury consumer goods and complex electronics. Scarcity does exist, but as a result of copyright-holders and governments using armed force to defend the old economic order. Habitats accepting of post-scarcity economics are more likely to see capitalism as inefficient and abusive.

Nanotech is not without its risks. It shrinks the realm of warfare to the microscopic. Invisible clouds of robots can bug rooms, sabotage machines, or disassemble people. Meanwhile, habitats that permit a freedom from scarcity grapple with their citizens manufacturing weapons or conducting deadly experiments. Entire habitats have been destroyed by putting too much trust in creative people.

X-Risks

Existential risks are threats and vulnerabilities with the potential to exterminate or permanently cripple transhumanity. Firewall works to identify and eliminate x-risks at any cost, and many polities have their own organizations to fight them — or attempt to harness them. The most dangerous x-risks are the TITAN AIs that tormented Earth and the exsurgent viruses that continue to infect transhumanity. Despite the horrors it has faced, transhumanity continues the frenetic chase for knowledge and profit, blind to the risks that could be lurking at the bleeding edges of art, science, and space.

Alien Exploration

Explorers have discovered enigmatic gates capable of teleporting gatecrashers across the galaxy. These are pandora gates, full of excitement and dread for the gatecrashers who use them. As transhumanity charts the borders of the Milky Way, it has discovered remains of alien civilizations. The littered graveyards show reaching the space age is easy but surviving it is rare. The exception to extinction is a mercantile race called the Factors, whose ships visit the Solar System to sell xenoartifacts at exorbitant prices. The Factors have refused to share the secret of their own survival, leaving transhumanity to stumble through it alone.

Factions

Societies are as diverse as transhumans themselves; technosocialist utopias and fascist citadels, frontier outposts and roving carnival ships. As people fled Earth, anyone with a ship or a claim on an asteroid could build a habitat, and with it, a new way of doing things. Old governments learned to incorporate refugees to reinforce the existing power structures. To survive, societies learned to provide mutual support and formed factions with like-minded habitats. The dominant factions are the Autonomist Alliance, composed of varied polities bound by their desire for individual empowerment, and the Planetary Consortium, a corporate state that arose from the ashes of Earth and still controls most of the inner system. The Jovian Republic, a biochauvinist police state, holds most of the old world’s military hardware and acts to return to pre-Fall ways of life. Meanwhile, ultra-competitive, specialized, and super-networked hypercorporations release untested technologies and pull down governments as long as it keeps the cycle of profits spinning.