Ego Hunter is a one-shot scenario for the Eclipse Phase roleplaying game.

Eclipse Phase is a roleplaying game set on just the other side of the singularity: Earth has fallen to apocalyptic AI and most of the “survivors” only escaped by uploading their minds into machines and beaming them to our extraplanetary colonies. Many of these uploaded egos remain stored in stasis: The few who are pulled from storage and sleeved into new bodies are selected because someone on the outside has a use for them… and when they wake up, they have a debt to pay.

The scenario concept for Ego Hunter is immediately captivating:  You’re all beta forks of a single individual. In other words, you’re partial mind-clones with incomplete memories that have been “forked” from your original alpha personality in order to carry out some specific task. You return home expecting to be reintegrated with your primary personality… but instead you wake up, surprised to find that you’ve been re-sleeved into a new body. Your alpha is nowhere to be found, nothing makes any sense… and then people start getting murdered.

(click for PDF)

The scenario is great, but I found its rambling presentation and lack of organization to be significantly debilitating. So I’ve put together a rather extensive set of prep notes that I think other people interested in running the scenario will find useful. It includes stuff like:

• An easy-to-reference timeline of past events so that the GM can easily grasp the mystery being solved.
• Pulling together all of the disparate information on the “big problem” so that it can be easily referenced on a single page.
• A comprehensive revelations list to make managing the mystery on-the-fly as easy as possible (as discussed in the Three Clue Rule).
• Pulling all the stat blocks referenced from the core rulebook so that they’ll be available at your fingertips.

There are also several chunks of new material: I’ve clarified the node-structure and beefed up the investigation in a few places where it seemed a little threadbare. I’ve also fleshed out other material.

SPOILER WARNING

These prep notes also feature two major revisions to the original scenario.

First, I’ve tweaked the player characters in order to tighten the scenario’s focus on the interesting premise of “you’re all playing the same character”. Most notably, this includes redesigning Nkeka’s role in the adventure so that he pretends to be one of the beta forks in order to infiltrate the operation. Study the character briefings at the end of the prep notes to make sure you understand the dynamics of the group.

These character briefings are also designed to be given to each player. The scenario requires Nkeka Adesoji (posing as B6) and Roque Vera. Park Soon-Ok is an optional character who can be played as an NPC. (I recommend using up all five of the Achjima beta forks before assigning Park Soon-Ok to a player.)

MAPS

The other major revision to the original scenario is Air Processing Unit 13. I found very little utility in the published version of the map, so I redesigned it:

(large version / no key)

And there are also versions isolating each level. You can click each image below to get a larger version:

WHAT YOU NEED

In order to fully understand the concept and background of the scenario, you will probably need a copy of the original adventure. The original adventure also includes the pregenerated character sheets for the PCs (which can be paired to the customized character briefings found in the prep notes PDF).

You may be asking yourself: “If you had to go to all this trouble, why should I pick up the original adventure? It’s clearly horrible!” If so, I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me. The original scenario is really great. I’ve just organized the material and added a couple of tweaks.

The Ego Hunter: Prep Notes PDF and associated maps are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I’ve collected The Egyptian Incursion into a convenient PDF. You can download it here.

The Egyptian Incursion is a quick scenario I threw together in a couple of hours for Gamma World. It was designed to serve as an introductory adventure for four 1st level characters. You can read it online here.

Go to Part 1

BACKGROUND: Two Osiran Swarmhounds (each containing eight Buzzswarms) appeared far enough away from the rest of the Osirans that they’ve escaped control and have been wandering free.

ENCOUNTER: There’s a 1 in 6 chance of this encounter occurring while traveling between each location after the Roadside Ambush (Encounter 1).

The Osiran Swarmhounds wear battle armor which has been pitted and scarred. On the left shoulder of each is an acid-engraved Eye of Osiris.

CREDIT: Swarmhounds are from Earth Delta, designed by Lizard with art by Joshua Diffey. Check it out.

Go to Part 1

BACKGROUND: The Lesser Emperor brought six Osiran sarcophagi to this abandoned building and had them installed. As nano-mummies are processed from the Nano-Embalming Compound (Encounter 4), they will need to come here and rest in a torpor for a week in order to stabilize their neural-physical interfaces.

Nano-mummies who go through the full period of torpor will be more powerful than the ones seen in this adventure.

LAY OF THE LAND: This encounter was designed for a battlemap from Into the Shadowhaunt, which was given out at the 2008 D&D Worldwide Gameday. (If anyone knows an alternative source where people can find it, lemme know in the comments.)

ENCOUNTER – OUTER GUARD: Two Eyes of Osiris, two Osiran Rocket Bots (see Gamma World, pg. 155), and eight Osiran Zombies guard the entrance to the complex.

ENCOUNTER – INNER GUARD: Two of the sarcophagi are currently occupied by nano-mummies. Once the outer guard raises the alarm (or sounds of combat are heard), the Lesser Emperor will activate the sarcophagi. On a 5+ recharge, the sarcophagi will open. Once both sarcophagi are open, the Lesser Emperor and both nano-mummies will move out to assist the outer guard.

REWARDS:

• 1 Omega Tech card per PC.

Next: The Random Encounter

Go to Part 1

BACKGROUND: Among the material pulled to this world from the Lesser Emperor’s funerary chambers were two nano-embalming vats. The vats and accompanying materials have been brought here, jury-rigged to some generators, and activated.

A nano-embalming vat can transform a recently dead corpse into an Osiran Zombie. It can also take a still-living subject and transform them into an Osiran Nano-Mummy. The vats are currently programmed to slave any zombies or mummies created, subjugating them to the will of the Lesser Emperor and his Battlepriests.

These vats are the key to a rapid expansion of the Neo-Osiran Empire: They can take in prisoners, slave them as zombies and mummies, and quickly raise an army from the farmsteads around Hogtown. If these vats are destroyed, the Lesser Emperor’s plans will be significantly delayed (although he does have the know-how to construct new vats given the necessary time and resources).

Bodies from the bandits (Encounter 1) and living prisoners from the Ford Bunker (Encounter 3) have been brought here to be transformed in the nano-embalming vats.

LAY OF THE LAND: This encounter was designed for a battlemap from the Gamma World boxed set.

The compound is inside a berm bunker similar to the Ford Family’s, but much older. The entrance appears to have been recently dug out and the sealing bolts on the vault door cut with a powerful acetylne torch (actually one of the battlepriests’ firestaves).

ENCOUNTER — OUTSIDE: The compound is guarded by two Eyes of Osiris (floating, mechanical eyes of clockwork silver and gold surrounded by energy auras to create the swirling shapes of the ancient symbol) and eight Osiris Monitor Bots.

ENCOUNTER — LASER ROOM: The first chamber of the compound has been rigged with a laser mesh (see Gamma World, pg. 136). On the far side of the laser mesh are two Osiran Rocket Bots (see Gamma World, pg. 155).

ENCOUNTER — NANO-CHAMBER: The inner chamber of the compound contains an Osiran Battlepriest and eight Osiran Zombies. Once the chamber is breached by the PCs, one of the zombies will pull a lever on the far wall, sending cascades of electricity into the nano-embalming vats and activating the nano-mummies in the vats (who will emerge on the next round).

(The nano-mummies are Peter and Bruce from the Ford Family Bunker (Encounter 3)).

NANO-VATS: These have no effect on Osiran Zombies or Nano-Mummies. If living creatures are thrown into the vats, the vats make a +7 vs. Fortitude attack. On a hit, the creature is immobilized (save ends) and must make a death save each round (even if they have positive hit points).

The vats can be used to turn living humanoids in Nano-Mummies and dead humanoids into Osiran Zombies, but this requires a hard Mechanics check. (Any creatures so created will still be slaved to the Lesser Emperor and his battlepriests. It would require the the Lesser Emperor’s slave key and a hard Mechanics check to re-key the system.)

REWARDS:

• 1 Omega Tech card per PC.

CLUES:

• Margerie and Timmy are shackled to the wall of the inner compound. They can tell them about the assault on the Ford Family Bunker (Encounter 3).
• Radio Communique on one of the computer banks (which scrolls only Egyptian heiroglyphics). If the heiroglyphs can somehow be translated, it an give a lot of details about their goals and origins. Even without a translation, however, the system has automatically triangulated the origin of the signal — the Tomb (Encounter 5) — and a hard Nature check will pinpoint the coordinates.
• Holographic Map, carried by the battlepriest. If activated, it will show the location of the Crater (Encounter 2). An inventory of the equipment taken from the crater is included (showing that several sarcophagi are not accounted for at this facility) and a warning about the scarab beetle left to guard the crater.

Next: The Tomb