Operation: Mephisto

Official Egocrasher Document

Operation Mephisto

Consent to Secrecy
By opening the rest of this document, your ego – and any forks of said ego created after this point – are consenting to never mention the Egocrashers in relation to your activities to any not already aware of our involvement, especially to anyone who would make our involvement public. Should you, or any forks, fail to adhere to this agreement, you will be located and removed from consideration.

Mission Summary

Both assembled taskforces are to arrive on Mu-Xian Investments Mining Colony MXI-12A, colloquially named "Satan's Ass," on the Mephisto asteroid in the Jovian Trojans on a Mu-Xian transport ship from Europa, with false documents presenting them as new employees. The colony is a corporate mining town owned by Mu-Xian Investments, an inner system company registered out of Venus that is actually a shell company for a secretive protectionist inner system inter-governmental organization that calls itself "Firewall." The Egocrashers will supply the team with adequate gear and false identities at no cost to the operatives.

Taskforce ROVER (Retrieval Of Valuable Ego for Research) is to locate Dr. Antonia Severance, a scientist formerly associated with Kronos Keep, who has been relocated to MXI-12A under a new unknown identity, and bring her back to the Egocrasher cache on Europa. Ideally, she is to come willingly, but if that fails, her cortical stack will suffice. The ROVER team members are Mei, Red Queen, Valkyrie, and Linda.

Meanwhile, Taskforce TOPHAT (Theft Of Potentially Hazardous ArtifacT) is to locate the blue prints and source code for the Titanbreaker Project that Dr. Severance and her colleagues are developing or, if possible, any physical artifacts associated with that project. The TOPHAT members are Alexi, Six, Null, and T.Z.

Mission Background

A previous Egocrasher team, at great cost, retrieved a highly valuable datafile (named ENDYMION) from Kronos Keep in the Martian TITAN Quarantine Zone. This file contains highly sensitive information related to the semi-effective measures implemented by a mercenary group, the Razorskin Brigade, to resist and actually contain exsurgent entities in a fortress. This data may shed insights on both the TITAN's self-evolving source code and the exsurgent virus, including a possible method for subverting and controlling the virus using nanotechnology to forever change the development of humanity.

Unfortunately, further details are locked behind a powerful encryption. Our cyberspecialists have determined that the encryption is keyed to the person of the head nanotechnologist of the Keep, Dr. Antonia Severance. She had been working on distributed consciousness to improve adaptions to swarms, and in particular, ways to use swarm morphs to enhance intellectual and computational abilities. During the Fall, she held out with the Razorskin Brigade for several months, and learned more about how TITAN exsurgents function from her first-hand observations and her unprecedented vivisection of a fully-functional captured exsurgent; she may even have been able to successfully create an exsurgent-human hybrid. The resulting data are priceless, and all are contained in the ENDYMION file, along with information on how the brigade was able to capture and manipulate exsurgents to survive TITAN assaults for months on Mars.

Unfortunately, Dr. Severance perished with the Keep. However, a previous fork of her ego was resurrected later by the inner system intelligence organization called "Firewall," which purchased the backup egos of millions of prominent transhumans to exploit them and their knowledge for their own ends. This fork has been placed under a new identity and is being put to work developing nanotechnology for Firewall on a small asteroid named Mephisto. We need her to unlock the ENDYMION file and all of the data it contains.

Dr. Severance and her colleagues have been busy in the meantime, however, and have developed a project codenamed Titanbreaker. Current intelligence indicates that the project is a prototype super-processing self-replicating nanoswarm. Ideally, this team will retrieve and return with the prototype (safely contained, of course), but returning with the blueprints and source code, which should be accessible from a terminal in either the research center or experimental mining operations, will be sufficient.

Taskforce ROVER's mission is to retrieve Dr. Severance, ideally willingly, but by force if necessary. Taskforce TOPHAT's mission is to retrieve data related to the Titanbreaker project.

Theater of Operation

Dr. Severance is living under an unknown assumed identity at Mu-Xian Investments Mining Colony MXI-12A, colloquially named "Satan's Ass," on the Mephisto asteroid in the Jovian Trojans. This colony mines various heavy metals and rare substances from the asteroid, and is notable for its use of nanotechnology to mine, process, and synthesize the raw materials. Dr. Severance is one of the scientists ostensibly working on improving the use of nanotechnology for mining, but this is a front for her real work: developing nanotechnological advances for Firewall, including Project Titanbreaker.

MXI-12A itself is, aside from its small shuttleport, located within the asteroid itself, built into early mining tunnels. It is a complex labyrinth that can roughly be divided into six clusters:

• Primary Mining Operations: This part of the colony is the largest, and consists of the actual metal and resource-mining operations on the asteroid. This is where the tried-and-true tested equipment is stored.
• Experimental Mining Operations: This is the deepest part of the colony, and is where the nanotechnology and equipment being developed is tested. The Titanbreaker prototype is likely located here.
• Residential Cluster: This is where the people on the colony live when they aren't working.
• Research Center: This is where the scientists have labs where they develop the new technologies they use. The Titanbreaker source code and blueprints can likely be accessed from here.
• Hives: A mostly automated area of the colony complex from which nanobots are controlled, as well as where they are built, maintained, and recycled.
• Processing Center: The uppermost part of the colony, this is where the raw mined materials are processed and prepared for shipping; the shuttleport crowns this cluster.

Mission Targets

Dr. Antonia Severance is a scientist specializing in nanotechnology, and particularly in distributed consciousness. Before the Fall, her work focused on the unique neural network structures that nanoswarms could achieve, and in particular ways in which these structured could be used to enhance intellect and computational power. She was assigned to Kronos Keep as a scientist for a branch of the Martian military, and was there during the Fall.

During the Fall, she was dragooned into the private mercenary group stationed there, the Razorskin Brigade, and refocused her attention on the exsurgent virus and its consciousness. Based on the ENDYMION file's contents, it seems that she made some breakthroughs into understanding how it thought, and was able to engineer a nanotech countervirus to somewhat contain and control it, culminating in the creation of a transhuman-exsurgent hybrid: the Shrike.

Her research notes are in the ENDYMION file, but her primary ego was killed when the Keep was ultimately overrun. However, a backup of her ego, stored before the fall, was retrieved and activated by Firewall, who have put her to work developing nanotechnological weapons for them. It is unknown if this fork knows about her other life at Kronos Keep.

Dr. Severance's personality files reveal that she is motivated by a deep, burning curiosity and a peculiar narcissism: she desires to become, or else create, God, and has decided that the best way to achieve that is through nanotechnology. As a result, she has a kind of odd solipsistic spiritualism that drives her behavior and research, and seems to literally view her work as, in her own words, "unlocking the little God found in the details" at the nanoscale.

Despite, or perhaps because of, her arrogance, she also deeply cares about what others think about her, and a desire for fame and recognition drove her career. She was once considered the top nanotechnologist at Titan Autonomous University, but after a scandal in which it was discovered she had faked data to win a prestigious award, she lost nearly everything and was reduced to working on weapons for Mars, and thus she ended up at Kronos Keep. Our analyst suspects that she will be willing to come with us in exchange for access to her notes from Kronos Keep, but it is possible that Firewall has poisoned her mind.

Less is known about Project Titanbreaker. It is a collaborative project, and Dr. Severance is only one member of the team working on it. Our limited intelligence suggests that this project is a highly unstable self-replicating nanoswarm that has superprocessing capabilities; in essence, a supercomputer, or emergent AGI, in the form of a nanoswarm. Suffice to say, this makes it highly dangerous, and also unlikely that Dr. Severance will be able to easily escape with the source code and blueprints on her own. The prototype is likely in the experimental mining operations area, while the blueprints and source code will likely be accessible via a secured terminal in the same area, or else in the research center. A fail-safe data storage device will be provided for sensitive downloads.

Firewall and Pirates

There are two main obstacles to your mission to retrieve Dr. Severance: the organization controlling her (Firewall, through its shell corporation Mu-Xian Investments) and the pirates of the Jovian Trojans, particularly the Thrice-Dead Pirates led by Captain James "Ironwing" Castor, who have been active nearby.

Firewall is an intergovernmental intelligence organization that protects inner system (and hypercorp) interests by doing the dirty work that no respectable entity wants to be associated with. They run a variety of shell corporations, including Mu-Xian Investments, to hide their activity. Most members of the shell company are unaware that it is associated with Firewall, but there will be several individuals with full knowledge, including at least four highly competent guardians meant to keep their pet scientists in line and their secrets safe. Their identities are not known. Firewall is the largest threat you will be facing, as they will not want to let their asset or data go.

The Thrice-Dead Pirates are a large confederation of smugglers and pirates that target shipping lanes between the Jovian Trojans, targeting raw materials, egos, and, occasionally, intellectual property. Their captain, James Castor, has a curious obsession with birds (hence his epithet), and rules with an iron fist. He also has a vendetta against the fascist Jovian government, and requires all recruits into his organization to have been experienced being killed at least three times as a form of initiation. The pirates typically track their targets from transportation hubs, following and then boarding shuttles between Trojans. Occasionally, they will launch larger assaults on isolated mining or industrial operations, like MXI-12A. While there is no indication that such an attack is planned, the possibility is always there.

Mission Logistics

The Mu-Xian Jovian Shuttle Charon (MXI-272) is transporting a load of new employees from a recruitment center on Europa to Mephisto, and you will all be on it. The shuttle will be docked at the colony for three days while a cargo of raw materials is loaded onto it, bound back for Europa; if you complete your mission in time, you can catch a ride back on it. Otherwise, you will need to find your own exit strategy, but shuttles do land and depart from the surface once every three or four weeks.

While at the colony, you are to blend in as employees, carrying out your assigned jobs, while locating Dr. Severance and Project Titanbreaker in your downtime periods. You have wide discretion as to your investigative methods. In the process of locating her, you should acquire copies of any data relating to the research being done by Mu-Xian Investments/Firewall; bonuses will be awarded to the team depending on what else you can acquire.

Your team will be supplied with a document containing proof that you have access to the Kronos Keep research notes and data, as well as a fail-safe data storage device to store sensitive data outside of the mesh.

Dr. Severance should be made to come willingly, if possible, but if she is unwilling, bringing back her cortical stack will suffice. The Titanbreaker research data will be sufficient, but bonuses will be paid out if a prototype is successfully brought back.

The doctor is the primary target, and if a choice must be made, both teams should prioritize her retrieval over that of the research project. Both taskforces will operate simultaneously, but mostly independently, only coordinating when absolutely necessary so that should one team fail, the other can carry on.