Your mind is software. Program it.
Your body is a shell. Upgrade it.
Death is a disease. Cure it.
Extinction is coming. Fight it.
In scientific terminology, the eclipse phase is the time between a virus entering a cell and the cell showing signs of infection. In this period the cell does not appear infected to an outside observer - but it is infected.
Eclipse Phase is also the name of a transhumanist hard sci-fi game by Posthuman Studios. The game will be using this setting and I'll be talking about some of the big ideas of it in this post. If you'd like to learn more about it on your own, you can find all the books free to download as PDFs thanks to the Creative Commons licensing they are released under. You can find them for free, reliable download here: http://learntabletoprpgs.com/eclipse-phase.html and more information can be found of Posthuman's own site, www.eclipsephase.com.
Ten years ago, Earth fell to rampant AI's known as the TITANs. They killed the majority of humanity and left the Earth an inhospitable wasteland, surrounded by a quarantine of deadly satellites, in an event now referred to as The Fall. Humanity survived, though in severely diminished numbers, thanks to two factors. First, we had begun interplanetary colonization prior to the Fall, with major colonies on Luna and Mars. Second, the technology of cortical stacks allowed us to digitize human consciousness and extract, copy and upload minds like computer data; combined with advanced robotics and biotechnology, bodies have become replaceable objects, status symbols and equipment. Many who were unable to bodily escaped Earth broadcast their minds into space to be saved in spirit, if not in the flesh. Thanks to cortical stacks, we have a kind of semi-immortality; as long as you have your mind backed up somewhere, death is a temporary inconvenience.
We have colonized almost all of the solar system. Mars is the new cradle of humanity, home to about 200 million people (roughly 2/5ths the total remaining population), under the government of the hypercorporations of the Planetary Consortium. Other major inner-system polities are the Morningstar Constellation, defectors from the Consortium who living in floating cities on Venus and the Luna-Lagrange Alliance, who live in high Earth orbit and under the lunar surface. Out beyond the inner system, the largest population groups the Jovian Junta is a faction of extreme bioconservatives and isolationists with extensive military might, living in Jupiter's orbit and the Titanian Commonwealth, a cybersocialist democracy on one of the moons of Saturn. The outer system is also the home of many anarchists, brinkers, isolationists, Scum, exhumans and other "none-of-the-above" groups. Eclipse Phase has a staggering wealth of social groups and political blocs in its fleshed out setting, with a lot of thought given to politics and economics.
The default assumption for the game is that you will be playing agents of Firewall. Firewall is what you might call a benevolent conspiracy. Drawing agents from all factions and social groups, their agenda is simple; keep humanity from going extinct. This involves identifying and handling 'x-threat's, or existential risks, which are basically anything which could push humanity over the brink and into oblivion. This can cover a lot of stuff, so Firewall has to be a quite diverse organization. Defusing TITAN relics on the lunar surface or doing behind the scenes politics to keep the cold war between the Jovians and the Titanians cold both count as preventing potential extinction events. Of course, this broad base means Firewall is pretty much illegal everywhere as well - so it's good to keep your Firewall status under your hat. (If you don't like the idea of being Firewall agents, let me know of course!)
You are all sentinels, agents of Firewall. Through one avenue or another, you have been instructed to meet in Extropia, a hollowed out asteroid in the Main Belt. A Firewall sentinel named Bundok Callao has gone missing on a job in Extropia and his last report has made your bosses concerned...
