Hi!
It happened so (week ago) I finished the THS campaign, with vicky_molokh as player. I'd like to eventually contain the experience to small manual book, as that thing was set to be pretty much canon.
But for now (and with hope it'll be interesting too)... this is the some kind of intro for Eggshell.
(letters incoming)
The first thing I want to tell to the people GMing the Eggshell campaign after me is: do not be afraid to experiment, to change the established facts. There is a very small number of immutable facts in this campaign; the rest depends on who’s in the party, and what do they want.
One of the immutable ones is the epigraph found on page 85 of the Transhuman Space core book.
“Here is our dream: a shell of thousands of space
habitats, orbiting in the sunspace, drinking Sol’s energy
like flowers. Our civilization is not resource-limited. Our
societies are constantly evolving and diverging. Our goal
is knowledge and creation, not wealth or personal power.
We are each and every one of us kings of infinite space,
growing outward into the cosmos.”
– Pierre-Joseph Fox,
Gypsy Angel comet herder and poet
(probably the first known notice of the Expansion Wraith)
It is known that Duncanites are not inclined to forego the use of new technological capabilities, and they are pantropians by nature.
It is known that the world does contain emergent net-based entities (FW32).
It is known that the world contains Cabals that provide ways to harness the subconscious processes of multiple people through the use of networking (TM134, TM136).
The main plot of the game, thus, springs naturally from these facts, being an integral part of the way the world of
Transhuman Space works.
Wraiths. Emergent entities spawning under very specific circumstances, based on the wishes, motivations, and fears of people, enabled by the technological frameworks of cabals.
The GM is supposed to play them as fully sapient, but focused on a single motivation, yet capable of making compromises in the pursuit of said motivation.
All Wraiths, no matter whichever ones will be chosen by the GM for the campaign, share the following traits:
- They partially understand their own nature, and understand that their existence is made possible by the ‘carriers’ - the people connected to the Cabal.
- They believe that they are immortal and eternal. “You may interdict my presence, but not my existence. I was there well before all of you were even born.”
- It is optional, but highly recommended, to consider it a fact that certain human personality types are indeed the required for the emergence of certain types of Wraiths, and that such personalities act as components, much like fractals of AIs do (TM100). While this might have some spooky implications for the world, it seems worth the risk.
- They perform all reasonable actions imaginable aimed at maintaining the continued existence of their Cabal, and of keeping their presence secret. The GM should not play giveaway. If the PCs have not discovered the existence of Wraiths, this is not considered a GM’s failing.
- Wraiths are inherently neither good nor evil. They are motivations, wishes, meanings of life, some achievable, some not. They’re not gods and devils, but rather digital ‘deities’ of modest domains.
- They can be quite persuasive. Someone connecting to an appropriate type of Cabal with an active Wraith runs the risk of being ‘infected’ by the Wraith’s memeplex. If the person has some sort of spiritual kinship to the obsession in question, the GM should check for infection. Just how hard it is to resist is a subject of controversy, and the GMs will need to adjust the numbers to the levels they consider plausible and/or interesting. Should the infection occur, the memeplex will mutate, transformed in accordance to the individual’s personal beliefs and interests. If the person really is inclined to see those obsessions as one’s own, the chance of infection should be near-unavoidable, unless countermeasures were taken in advance.
- As a result, all NPCs who are permanent participants of such a Cabal will definitely share the Wraith’s objectives and motivations, but may have differing interpretations of them. This is further enforced by the fact that a well-developed Wraith will try to filter out candidates that cannot or will not fully accept its memeplex.
- Wraiths generally accept forking, xoxing and other similar processes, should the need arise. but all resulting entities belonging to the same motivational class will be inclined to fuse again if they have the chance. If destroying another fork becomes necessary, it will be deemed regrettable but acceptable.
For the proper atmosphere of the campaign, the following point is necessary: Wraiths are not magical, unknowable or otherwise supernatural by their nature, but they possess ability to modify people’s consciousness, perception and behaviour in spooky ways. These are not spells or procedures, but rather gradual and persistent effects.
These abilities should be sufficiently stronger and more unusual (compared to the usual memetic manipulations) to evoke the feeling of being touch by something ancient, great and powerful, like Kami or other minor deities. At least during the first encounter, before being analysed and studied.
And remember: a Wraith cannot be reproduced or created in an AI-core. A Cabal of Ghosts will work just fine, and SAIs of sufficient power will be able to communicate with/perceive the Wraith. But you can’t make a Wraith with AIs alone.
---
The first Wraith, as well as the only one actually required for the Eggshell campaign, is Expansion. Pantropy at its finest. The core of the problem and the spark of controversy is that there are
many interpretations of this memeplex.
First there’s the scientific curiosity. The main instance of the Wraith, retaining its main name, and providing the ability to perform research and development with the aid of a gestalt, grabbing the idea as it is already represented in the known civilisation, helping find the right questions for already-existing answers. Game-mechanically, it is represented thus: the player asks for a new invention, and the character gains the information regarding how it can be done (if it can be). Just like people tend to read not individual lines and letters, but whole words, sentences, sometimes even paragraphs, so does the gestalt provide a unified image of the invention - within the Wraith, all technical questions are eventually answered.
Second, the usual sort of curiosity. The Overspace cabal, one that allows members to unify their perception of space, and process massive amounts of sensory data. To hear with a hundred ears, and see with a hundred eyes, and to easily weather this data overload; to focus on the important bits without missing the secondary ones either.
Third, the longing for a huge personal space; for a great distance between oneself and everybody else. Solitude, but also a childish Safety. Deals a lot with optical and other illusions, hiding behind smoke and mirrors, and teaches ‘adepts’ to do the same thing. An adept of the ways of Solitude tends to employ safety measures that make it hard to be noticed by human-derived minds (conversely, LAIs tend to be unaffected). This Wraith promises immortality, and, in a way, provides something like that. This is the only fork of the first Wraith that actively kills its components, using psychosurgery to turn poorly compatible candidates into wetware storage, or ‘molding’ them into vague replicas of the ‘acceptable’ members.
Fourth, Alienness. The feeling of imminent uselessness of humanity, and of one’s separation from it; unlike Solitude, with a hint of pride and superiority. Throughout the campaign, it’s inclined to mutate into an even more harmful form, up to the point bordering on the stereotypical ‘Destroy All Humans’. Helps its adepts in discovering ways of eliminating humans; the early strain(s) also offer ways of dominating and leading too. Considers itself a Higher Form of Existence.
All of them represent facets of pantropy.
