We humans have a special way of pulling ourselves up and kicking ourselves down at the same time. We’d achieved more progress than ever before, at the cost of wrecking our planet and destabilizing our own governments. But things were starting to look up.
With exponentially accelerating technologies, we reached out into the solar system, terraforming worlds and seeding new life. We reforged our bodies and minds, casting off sickness and death. We achieved immortality through the digitization of our minds, resleeving from one biological or synthetic body to the next at will. We uplifted animals and AIs to be our equals. We acquired the means to build anything we desired from the molecular level up, so that no one need want again.
Yet our race toward extinction was not slowed and in fact received a machine-assist over the precipice. Billions died as our technologies rapidly bloomed into something beyond control … further transforming humanity into something else, scattering us throughout the solar system, and re-igniting vicious conflicts. Nuclear strikes, biowarfare plagues, nanoswarms, mass uploads … a thousand horrors nearly wiped humanity from existence.
We still survive, divided into a patchwork of restrictive inner system hypercorp-backed oligarchies and outer system collectivist habitats, tribal networks, and new experimental societal models. We have spread to the outer reaches of the solar system and even gained footholds in the galaxy beyond. But we are no longer solely “human” … we have evolved into something simultaneously more and different—something transhuman.
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Eclipse Phase is a post-apocalyptic setting of transhuman survival and horror. Humans are enhanced and improved, but humanity is battered and bitterly divided. Technology allows the reshaping of bodies and minds and liberates us from material needs, but also creates opportunities for oppression and puts the capability for mass destruction in the hands of everyone. Many threats lurk in the devastated habitats of the Fall, dangers both familiar and alien.
What is Transhumanism?
Transhumanism is a term used synonymously to mean “human enhancement.” It is an international cultural and intellectual movement that endorses the use of science and technology to enhance the human condition, both mentally and physically. In support of this, transhumanism also embraces using emerging technologies to eliminate the undesirable elements of the human condition such as aging, disabilities, diseases, and involuntary death. Many transhumanists believe these technologies will be arriving in our near future at an exponentially accelerated pace and work to promote universal access and democratic control. In the long scheme of things, transhumanism can also be considered the transitional period between the current human condition and an entity so far advanced in capabilities (both physical and mental faculties) as to merit the label “posthuman.”
As a theme, transhumanism embraces heady questions. What defines human? What does it mean to defeat death? If minds are software, where do you draw the line with programming them? If machines and animals can also be raised to sapience, what are our responsibilities to them? If you can copy yourself, where does “you” end and someone new begin? What are the potentials of these technologies in terms of both oppressive control and liberation? How will these technologies change our societies, our cultures, and our lives?
Firewall
Firewall is a shadowy network dedicated to counteracting “existential risks”—threats to the existence of transhumanity. These risks include biowar plagues, nanotech swarm outbreaks, nuclear proliferation, terrorists with WMDs, net-breaking computer attacks, rogue AIs, alien encounters, and so on. Firewall isn’t content to simply counteract these threats as they arise, of course, so sentinels—agents-on-call—may also be sent on information-gathering missions or to put in place pre-emptive or failsafe measures. Those sentinels may be tasked to investigate seemingly innocuous people and places (who turn out not to be), make deals with shady criminal networks (who turn out not to be trustworthy), or travel through a Pandora gate wormhole to analyze the relics of some alien ruin (and see if the threat that killed them is still real). Sentinels are recruited from every faction of transhumanity; those who aren’t ideologically loyal to the cause are hired as mercenaries.
Transhumanity’s Habitats
While Eclipse Phase is set in the not-too-distant future, the changes that have taken place due to the advancements of technology have transformed the Earth and its inhabitants almost beyond recognition.
The Earth has been left an ecologically devastated ruin, but transhumanity has taken to the stars. When Earth was abandoned, so too were the last of the great nation-states; transhumanity lacks a single unifying governing body and is instead subject to the laws and regulations of whomever controls a given habitat or the collective will of its inhabitants.
The majority of transhumanity is confined to orbital habitats or satellite stations scattered throughout the solar system. Some of these were constructed from scratch in the orbit or Lagrange points of planetary bodies, others have been hewn out of solid satellites and large asteroids. These stations have myriad purposes from trade to warfare, espionage to research.
Mars continues to be one of transhumanity’s largest settlements, though it too suffered heavily during the Fall. Numerous dome cities and settlements remain, and more are established each year, though the planet is only partially terraformed. Venus, Luna, and Titan are also home to significant populations. Additionally, there are a small number of colonies that have been established on exoplanets (on the other side of the Pandora gates) with environments that are not too hostile towards transhumanity.
Some transhumans prefer to live on large colony ships or linked swarms of smaller spacecraft, moving nomadically. These travelling habitats occupy different niches in the social and economic worlds: some of them intentionally exile themselves to the far limits of the solar system, far from everyone else, while others actively trade from station to station, serving as mobile black markets.
The Great Unknown
The areas of the galaxy that have felt the touch of transhumanity are few and far between. Lying betwixt these occasional outposts of questionable civilization are mysteries both dangerous and wonderful. Ever since the discovery of the Pandora gates, there has been no shortage of adventurers brave or foolhardy enough to strike out on their own into the unknown regions of space in hopes of finding more alien artifacts, or even establishing contact with one of the other sentient races in the universe.
The Mesh
The computer networks known as the “mesh” are all-pervasive. This ubiquitous computing environment is made possible thanks to advanced computer and nanofabrication technologies that allow unlimited data storage and near-instantaneous transmission capacities. With micro-scale, cheap-to-produce wireless transceivers so abundant, literally everything is wirelessly connected and online. Via implants or small personal computers, almost everyone has access to archives of information that dwarf the entire 21st-century internet and sensor systems that pervade every public place. People’s entire lives are recorded and lifelogged, shared with others on one of numerous social networks that link everyone together in a web of contacts, favors, and reputation systems.
Ego vs. Morph
The distinction between ego (mind and personality, including memories, knowledge, and skills) and morph (physical body and its capabilities) is one of the defining characteristics of Eclipse Phase.
A body is disposable. If it gets old, sick, or too heavily damaged, a character’s conscious can be digitized and downloaded into a new body. The process isn’t cheap or easy, but it does guarantee effective immortality—as long as you remember to back yourself up and don’t go insane. The term morph is used to describe any type of form a mind inhabits, whether a vat-grown clone sleeve, a synthetic robotic shell, a part-bio/part-synthetic “pod,” or even the purely electronic software state of an infomorph.
Morphs are expendable, but an ego represents the ongoing, continuous life path of mind and personality. This continuity may be interrupted by an unexpected death (depending on how recently the backup was made), but it represents the totality of a transhuman’s mental state and experiences.