Reference

Adapted from the Eclipse Phase: Second Edition Core Rulebook, shared legally under its Creative Commons license.

See the first edition Transhuman Guide for more information on the setting beyond the core rulebook. Mechanics in this book are not used, but most of the lore and worldbuilding will be. See the collection of free Eclipse Phase PDFs here for all of your other lore desires (though keep in mind most of these are first edition, and so only relevant for their lore).

Introduction
"In Eclipse Phase, you are transhuman. You are genetically modifed, physically and mentally augmented, and functionally immortal. Your mind can be digitally backed up, like a save point. If you die, you can be brought back, your ego — both consciousness and memories — physically restored. You may also copy your mind and download into a body of your choice. This new body — your morph — can be biological, a synthetic robotic shell, or a digital infomorph. Your body is essentially gear that you customize according to your mission and requirements.

Eclipse Phase takes place in a future of exponentially accelerating technological progress. Developments in the key felds of artifcial intelligence, neuroscience, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and information science have converged into an impressive feedback loop. Bodies and minds are shaped and augmented. AIs and animals are uplifted to human levels of sapience. Everything and everyone is laden with sensors, networked, and online. Your mind can communicate with every electronic device around it. Almost anything can be 3D-printed from constituent atoms with a nanofabber and blueprints. Technology allows people to live happier, healthier lives, emancipated from need.

Such advances also have their downsides. The wonders of the future are not yet evenly distributed — the immortal rich continue to concentrate their wealth and power while others struggle to survive. Surveillance is omnipresent, and the means exist to hack people’s minds and memories, copy them entirely, and/or commit them to virtual slavery. Many technological advances are super-empowering, putting the means for mass devastation in everyone’s hands. Efforts to restrict such tools are doomed to fail; only our own maturity as a species can save us.

Exemplifying these dangers, Eclipse Phase takes place ten years after transhumanity has lost a war with a group of super-intelligent, self-improving AIs. 95% of the population was lost during this apocalyptic conflict, many of them forcibly uploaded by the TITAN machine gods before they disappeared. Thousands more were corrupted and transformed by an alien exsurgent virus. The Earth is ruined and off-limits, overrun by machines and monsters. The survivors evacuated the planet and spread throughout the Solar System, expanding our off-world colonies out of desperation and necessity. Many escaped only as infugees, with nothing but their bodiless minds.

The nations and super-powers of the old world are gone, decapitated and dismantled. New political blocs and factions have formed, loosely divided between the inner and outer systems. The capitalist economies of the inner system — Luna, Mars, and Venus — continue to enforce scarcity and intellectual property. They are dominated by the Planetary Consortium, a hypercorp-led entity that prioritizes business interests and that has declared Mars the new homeworld of transhumanity. Their habitats are identifed by the influence of media and memetic conflict on civil discourse, the legalities and security restrictions that keep their populations safe, a lingering distrust of AIs and uplifts, and sharp class divisions. While socialites and hyper-elites play and prosper, many infugees have resorted to selling their labor as indentured servants to afford cheap, mass-produced synthetic bodies — the clanking masses.

The outer system is the stronghold of the Autonomist Alliance, a mutual-aid network of anarchists and techno-socialists. In these communalist territories, currency is obsolete and unrestricted nanofabrication means that everyone has the necessities and tools they need. People create rather than consume. Reputation, not wealth, mediates the exchange of information and services. Many habitats operate without government, laws, or police, relying instead on voluntary and cooperative structures, real-time online referendums, and collective militias. The outer system is a patchwork of political, economic, and social experimentation. Intersticed among these major factions, other transhuman clades build their own societies. Criminal cartels feed black markets, radical scientists work to democratize science, aesthete mercenaries offer their services, pirates prey on the unwary, and isolationists filter their communities from outside influences. Even bioconservatives — distrustful of transhuman technologies — thrive on, fearing for our species’ future.

The war with the TITAN AIs scarred more than Earth. Zones on Luna, Mars, and Saturn’s moon Iapetus remain under machine influence. Of greater impact, however, are the mysterious Pandora Gates discovered around the system. These wormhole gates open to extrasolar systems — thousands of exoplanets and alien mysteries. Intrepid gatecrashers explore these new horizons, colonizing worlds and uncovering the remnants of extinct civilizations. While no living sapient species has been found beyond the gates, transhumanity has had its frst encounters with alien life within our own Solar System. A star-faring species known as the Factors visit regularly, though the true nature and intentions of these laconic ameboid merchants remains unknown.

Ultimately, Eclipse Phase is a game of transhuman survival. Aside from the threat that the TITANs will return, we face existential risks — x-risks — that endanger our future as a species. These include weapons of mass destruction, artifacts from beyond the Pandora gates, salvaged TITAN technology, exsurgent infection breakouts, alien threats, stellar phenomena, and the dangers we pose to ourselves. Our species is in a deteriorating orbit around the black hole of extinction. Will our conflicts steer us into the event horizon, or will we evolve and cooperate to escape the gravity well and reach new frontiers? Will we be recognizable when we get there?

Eclipse Phase is an exploration of uncertain futures. This is more than a tabletop roleplaying game, it’s a detailed science fiction setting that thoroughly investigates issues that affect our future as a species. The crux of Eclipse Phase emphasizes the nature of transhumanity as it transforms itself, mentally and physically, on the edge of becoming something posthuman. This is a setting that speaks to the immense dangers that technology offers us — but that balances this outlook by considering how science can be used to improve ourselves, enhance cooperation, counteract these risks, and prosper.

There is danger — but also hope."

Adapted from the Eclipse Phase: Second Edition Core Rulebook, shared legally under its Creative Commons license.

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 fnal "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.

Artifcial general intelligences (AGIs) are fully self-aware, creative digital intelligences. Unlike artifcial 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 fght for mercurials is the fght 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 fnal 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, profting 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 feld 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 fulfll 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.

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. This means that out of character conversation and table talk may be incorporated into gameplay.

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 inefcient 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 fght 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 proft, 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.