X-Risks

Danger Ahead

This chapter is a toolbox for GMs, providing a roster of dangers, monsters, and machines with which you can challenge your players.

If you’re a player and not a GM, we strongly recommend you skip this chapter — the material here may be more enjoyable to learn about as a character during gameplay. You may decide to read it anyway, but be warned that this makes you a candidate for running the game in the future!

Many Eclipse Phase campaigns focus around x-risks: dangers to transhumanity’s very existence. Firewall in particular is concerned with the potential extinction of transhumanity — as well as smaller-scale threats to a planet or habitat’s entire population. Gatecrashers are also prone to stumbling into unexpectedly hostile situations or unleashing monstrous dangers, perhaps driving them to resolve it if not just survive it. Even criminal groups may find themselves dealing with WMDs or incalculably dangerous TITAN relics — not to mention the consequences when things go wrong. Whether the team is struggling to end a threat or make a buck off it, x-risks can define a campaign.

Some of the x-risks that characters are liable to encounter (or cause).

Alien Conflict

Conflict with the Factors has been a fear since first contact. The Factors possess advanced technology, keep their full tactical capabilities secret, have at least one hidden facility in the Solar System — and they know where transhumanity lives. Open hostilities may be one diplomatic incident away. PCs may be tasked with intercepting Factor technology, tracking Factor assets, defusing attacks against the Factors, or even infiltrating Factor spacecraft.

Given the number of extinct species found via the pandora gates, it may be just a matter of time before transhumanity makes first contact again. It’s open conjecture whether extraterrestrials will be friendly — or how well our weapons will stack up in comparison. An encounter with a significantly advanced species could be a fatal paradigm shift for transhumanity. Encountering them on an exoplanet would be challenging enough, but what if they come through the gates?

Nevertheless, gatecrashers push on, banging on every door they can find in hopes of being first to secure some bauble for their sponsors. The team who makes first contact will set transhumanity on the road towards war or uneasy peace.

Astronomical Events

Most astronomical x-risks are so massive and powerful, the only survival strategy is to flee or hide. Gamma-ray bursts can cook habitats. Solar flares can destroy conductors and overwhelm communications. Accidental asteroid strikes are rare due to collision-detection systems, but one intentionally steered off course could be devastating. Some moons are small enough that significant explosions could de-orbit them. Gravitational disruptions can fling hundreds of massive comets towards the inner system, overwhelming planetary defenses. Teams may be tasked with getting citizens to safety, exploring new refuges, or possibly investigating the cause of the unexpected activity, to shut it off at its source.

Economic Disruptions

Even with the capabilities of nanotech, supply-and-demand logistics make hypercapitalism and similar economic systems vulnerable. Inability to access certain critical resources, whether that be water or rare elements, can be devastating to some habitats. A disruption of distribution channels could lead to mass starvation or political upheavals. Coordinated labor strikes on multiple habitats could unbalance the entire framework. New technology could create a paradigm shift, leaving those reliant on outdated systems and methods at significant disadvantages. Autonomists might go so far as to say that hypercapitalism itself is an x-risk, with its reliance on endless growth, its concentration of wealth in the hands of a few elites, and incentives for exploitation.

Infectious Agents

The exsurgent virus and similar bio- and nano-plagues can consume a habitat within hours. Many of them have intricate reproduction strategies that might permit them to contaminate the entire Solar System. With a volatile strain in the right circumstances, millions might be exposed and transformed into exsurgents. The result would be a pitched battle between isolated survivors and the twisted remains of civilization. Firewall dedicates significant effort to tracking, quarantining, and cataloging exsurgent threats and deadly biological agents to avoid such a dire outcome. Meanwhile, buyers have spent fortunes on collecting the same, for their own research, weapons, or idle curiosity. Adventures frequently focus on containing outbreaks, by eliminating patient zero in time or even destroying the habitat if necessary. Past a certain threshold, the efforts will shift from containing the outbreak to escaping it.

Intelligence Amplification

Transhumanity has already struggled with the godlike capabilities of ASIs. New ASI research has been curtailed, but it cannot be completely prevented, nor is the next machine god likely to mirror the ones prior. Every AI has its own motivations and considerations for transhumans. It’s possible the next threat won’t have interest in transhumanity at all, except as stock for some unknowable project, or may seek to evolve transhuman culture, regardless as to the feelings of the lesser creatures subject to that evolution. Nor is intelligence amplification limited to code; exhumans toy with improving their biological mental capabilities, just as other groups experiment with various types of group minds.

An exponentially increasing intelligence will rapidly become god-like. Once intelligence has reached that plateau, there is very little transhumanity can do to protect itself.

Mega-Engineering

Transhumanity has encountered two mega-scale engineering projects that it is aware of: the TITAN-formed Jupiter brain of Iapetus and the alien-formed artificial world of Olaf. It’s certain that more exist. The activation or deployment of a megastructure — particularly within the Solar System — would radically change the political calculus. It could lead to vast devastation (what if a major planet was disassembled for raw materials) or intense faction fighting (if groups vie to access or control a new discovery). PCs could be tasked with exploring or sabotaging mega-scale projects, pitting them against the inner workings of an intelligently-designed alien ecosystem.

Memetics

Destructive philosophies based around racial superiority, egoism, and xenophobia have brought transhumanity close to extinction many times before the Fall. Transhumans like to consider themselves evolved beyond barbarity, yet they are still fearful herd animals, bad at calculating risk, and vulnerable to ideological manipulation. The careful wielding of data mining, targeted advertising, and psychological warfare techniques is used to undermine existing institutions and drive groups to conflict. Groups like Firewall have difficulties coping with memetic attacks, as they resist quarantine and defy definition.

Mental Subversion

One of the most terrifying aspects of the Fall was the infiltration of transhuman society by exsurgents and TITAN puppets. The mass capability to hack digital or even biological minds means that populations can be turned against themselves. Even now it is likely that sleeper agents continue to operate, living normals lives among friends, family, and co-workers who are unaware that person is under the control of an alien influence. The subversion of key personnel or important leaders bring an entire habitat or society to its knees. Mass vetting is impossible, so transhumanity must constantly be on its guard.

Nanotechnology & Swarms

TITAN nanoswarms dissolved entire cities into their base particles to be rebuilt into alien structures — and are almost impossible to defend against. Once a self-replicating swarm is unleashed, it is capable of geometric growth; the only hope is to contain and eradicate before it gets out of control. Smaller nanoplague outbreaks can still deliver massive harm as nanobots outcompete biology, destroy machines, disrupt ecosystems, consume life support, or cause morphs to wither and die. These nanoplagues may be the focus of a mission or another hindrance to cope with while operating on a failing habitat.

Political Threats

Jovian battleships prowl around sovereign borders. Autonomists smuggle weapons to foreign insurgents. Oligarchs use blackmail and assassinations to seize political power. Go-nin spreads propaganda in hopes of selling military technology to both sides. As the memory of the Fall fades away, factional rivalries and grievances once again bloom. Each of the major polities has enough firepower to kill the remainder of transhumanity, if they had the motivation and delivery method. Transhumanity’s biggest threat continues to be itself.

As the team chases TITAN weapons, make exoplanet discoveries, or navigate underworld conflicts, their actions too shift the political landscape. PCs will be considered targets and tools by those looking to fortify themselves or weaken their enemies. Political missions may be as overt as intercepting an antimatter missile before it strikes its target, or a subtle unraveling of three or four layers of conspiracy.

Unforeseen Threats

There are some dangers that might be so beyond our understanding that we don’t even recognize the peril. Advanced technology/beings, physics experiment mistakes, rifts between our universe and the next, a shift in the underlying physics of the universe — how can we plan for something so beyond our frame of reference? Such black swans and outside-context problems cannot be predicted or discounted, but we can at least make some limited contingencies. Unfortunately, such situations are likely going to resort to a hard scrabble for survival.