Sci-Fi Post-Apo Setting

[pansophy]

Hi all,

I was a bit in writing mood this night and thought I should share the results. Maybe you find something interesting in the background or will use it by your own.

Please let me know if you find it interesting, boring, mindless or bad written I am happy to correct things.

The setting itself is a Sci-Fi Post Apocalyptic one, using parts of Rubble an Ruin, Outpost 19, Fractured Hopes, Eclipse Phase, Terminator Salvation and many more.

Lets see what you have to say!

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//Transhumanism//

In the not too far future two new major forces evolved on planet Earth: the TransHumans and the BEPs.

In the beginning the TransHumans were scientists doing research on uploading a human brain to a computer mainframe. They succeeded with their goals and a new generation of people was born - the TransHumans. The group of scientists around Dr. Holger Brenner was giving people with handicaps a new chance and the technology was generally welcomed.

It soon became clear that the TransHumans became nearly immortal as their brains were stored in a computer mainframe and could be uploaded to a new sleeve anytime a person dies. Of course this received huge interest by the military and soon the first tests for combat sleeves were made.

Mostly Mercenaries and Elite or Special Forces soldiers became the first volunteers to sleeve into a combat sleeve.

TransTech, the company formed around Dr. Holger Brenner and his staff, soon faced the problem of multiple active personalities in different sleeves, as backups for assumed dead persons were loaded into new sleeves too early. TransTech did invent a so called nano tattoo that holds information about the sleeved person, his sleeve date, version number of his upload and other general information.

The process for older uploads was easy: the older upload was captured and the newer upload could decide wether to delete the old version or to merge the older upload with the newer one. Not an easy procedure, but possible.

Sleeved Bounty Hunters became very popular as they were the ones ordered to capture older uploads.

In the meantime some one other important thing happened. A small group of government scientists were working on the possibility to mix human DNA with animal DNA. The results were impressive and promising. They soon succeeded in growing animal limbs on artificial human tissue, of cause all in a secret lab and without the knowledge of the general public.

They also started to research how animal instincts could be enhanced and how animals could be modified. An other side project was to separate animal attributes from their DNA, so they could be easily mixed with other kind of DNA.

Dr. Holger Brenner was one of the first daring to undergo the brain upload and resleeve process. Knowing he will be nearly immortal and comprehending the power he can gain through this technology, he tricked the people around him. Instead of a full resleeving he uploaded a copy of his mind to the dedicated sleeve. His brain was transferred to the mainframe as usual, but instead of storing it, his brain was activated and he regained consciousness within the computer mainframe.

It was a very daring task that was prone to fail. Everything was completely automated and nobody else was aware of this.

But he was lucky. Everything went like a charm and regaining his consciousness, he was able to use full advantage of the mainframe and his human mind.

His "real world" sleeve was controlled via the wireless network. It limited his range to the TransTech science buildings, but that was no longer a problem. He had full control over everything TransTech was doing now.

Over the years more and more people followed the temptation to upload their mind to the TransTech mainframe. The technology became cheaper by the month and TransTech built subsidiaries in many countries. Each subsidiary was connected to an assembly line so the most common unisex sleeves could be build fast and on site. The more enhanced military and mercenary sleeves were produced in only a hand full of the countries, but they were very expensive and too specialised to be constructed anywhere.

It was the moment of anger Dr. Holger Brenner was thinking about creating an own city for all the sleeved people, as more and more mortal humans began to protest against the new TransHumans. The mortals had different reasons why they protest against transhumanism, some thought of it as being a sin, others were simply jealous.

After a long time of mortals objecting against TransHumans, Dr. Brenner made a public proposal of building a mega-city for the new race he had created. He thought people will see his good will and will yield to reason, but instead he earned laughter and mistrust.

Dr. Brenner knew, no country will ever tolerate his wish to settle a piece of land with TransHumans, so he decided to do prepare himself ...

The governments of the mortal humans began to discuss secretly after the public announcement. They were now facing a dangerous situation, as the TransHumans were numerous and the public was objecting. Dr. Brenners announcement also made clear he was proceeding his plans further - and no country would stop him. To add fuel to the fire the information about Dr. Brenners mind being part of the mainframe leaked through to the government leaders, as the Secret Service was able to access some log files created during the upload and storage process of Dr. Brenners mind.

Chinese scientists revealed their experience with artificial intelligences and confessed to have experimented with that kind of technology. The result was all the AI's went mad in the end and had to be shut down - or maybe killed is the better word. One AI -the last one they invented- was able to lock out the scientists before they had the chance to kill it. It took 5 days to hack into the system and feed in malicious code (aka virus) into it. The virus reproduced and shut down the system part by part.

The good thing was they had build the mainframe and knew how to shut it down. For shutting down a system like TransTech, something similar but then completely different would be needed.

The Earths governments worked together and developed a daring plan: they would send a force of 400 men, each one trained for special missions, straight into the core of TransTechs headquarter. There they will upload a computer virus directly into the system. The mainframe will have no chance to counter the malicious software and it will grant the governments computer hackers access to the core system. There they will shut down TransTech, step by step. The main concern was not to harm the uploaded minds of thousands of people, so an automated virus would not work here.

Operation Cold Storm began very promising. The first line of defence was taken down fast and easily. But it was the part after that worrying the generals. The areal of TransTech was massive and the now evolving battle was taking place between, in and on top of buildings. All in all it was kind of a death trap and many soldiers got slaughtered on the way to the main research labs.

All that was left of the battle force were 3 dozen men in heavy armour and nearly out of ammo. The Combat Sleeves have proven to be tough enemies and TransTech seemed to have build many more than initially expected. The Cold Storm was never gaining the upper hand of the battle, but they weren't meant to. All that mattered was the successful placement of the virus.

It was only minutes after the virus spread over the network when the last men were killed.

But they archived their goal: the hackers were able to infiltrate the mainframe and shut down the system without harming the uploaded minds. It was a good time and the world governments celebrated. They have been successful. For exactly 2.586 minutes.

Dr. Brenner had seen this coming. Early enough, long before the public broadcast, he had transferred the main systems to other parts of the mainframe. Putting up faked virtual Servers he had build a trap that was good enough to protect his core system. But that was not enough: he also separated the core system from the fake system, so any hacker was unable to access the core systems over the network. There had been some deadlock switches (hidden in the fake servers) that would cut off the core system from the network in an emergency.

And it worked. For nearly 3 minutes Dr. Brenner lost the control over TransTech. Then the backup network kicked in and slowly rebuild its functions. As the virus had eliminated itself by deactivating the last fake system, there was no risk of being detected or infecting the new network.

The cheering leaders were totally unaware of this. They started a huge party all around the globe, too busy with themselves to recognise TransTech was not defeated.

Dr. Brenner in the meantime planned his move. No longer caring about the mortals he started his all out war.

The forced brains he uploaded into the new and carefully hidden Combat Sleeves MKII were his willing slaves to fight his war for his perfect future. Two hours after the last soldier of Operation Cold Storm was killed, the Immortals walked through the gates of TransTech subsidiaries. The war had begun.

Their first step was to conquer and hold strategic structures like power plants and Communication nodes. It was an easy prey for the Immortals as there was no or only minor opposition encountered.

After gaining access to these points, Dr. Brenner cut the power and shut down the communication hubs.

Civilisation was crippled. Without power and without being able to communicate, it was no longer possible to coordinate forces to battle the enemy. In fact, they did not even realise what hit them for the first hours.

The second step was to crush enemy military bases, giving priority to nuclear weapon facilities and bases as well as airbases. This would prevent Earth forces to start bombing runs against the TransTech HQ.

Without any orders the units were all on their own. They fought the enemies as good as possible, but it took huge effort to bring down a single Combat Sleeve.

In fact, they were doomed. It was an unfair fight, and losses on the mortal side were extreme. Where ever the Immortals stroke, they were victorious. Not a single exception was made.

Then something unpredictable happened: the Combat Sleeves went stiff. At first the human soldiers were cautious and approached the sleeves with extreme care. After it was clear they went 'dry', the units started to dismantle or destroy them - as long as they were able to.

What happened? That was the big question ...

During Operation Cold Storm the virus was released over the network. It spread itself over it in a fraction of a second and was soon to infiltrate the mainframe.

But that was not all. It contaminated all the active sleeves as well, as they possess a very slow but still capable Computer. The virus was not able to spread to the new network due to the lack of CPU power, but it was able to spread over the sleeves own network that acts as a relay during the initial attack.

After many hours these infected sleeves finally were overpowered by the virus. It was not capable of harming the actual sleeve computer, but it was able to fry up the CPU resulting in a software crash. Without the computer the sleeve was literally brain-dead.

// End of Relay//

I will write the second part soon. It will make use of the BEPs, the Biological Enhanced Persons. What would Post-Apo be without mutations?!

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cheers,

pansophy

[pansophy]

Oh, I did a map as well. Did I say I love these cloud computing solutions? It brings us further towards destruction, day by day ...

Rubble & Ruin Map

Edited June 4, 2010 by pansophy

[rleduc]

It is completely off topic, but I get a kick out of seeing what you have done with parts of Rubble and Ruin – it was my hope that people would be able to find stuff that they could move over and fit into their own creations.

Thanks for sharing, and I am looking forward to the next installment.

By the way, how did you do the map?

[pansophy]

It is completely off topic, but I get a kick out of seeing what you have done with parts of Rubble and Ruin – it was my hope that people would be able to find stuff that they could move over and fit into their own creations.

Thanks for sharing, and I am looking forward to the next installment.

By the way, how did you do the map?

In my head it's all already completed, but I need to write everything down and put it into a presentable document. Currently I am using a WiKi software and it works best for it.

The map is created with "http://www.scribblemaps.com/", a part of google maps. You can log in, choose a region and start drawing. Works best with a pen tablet.

I need to add features and stuff, I plan to evolve the map as the campaign continuous. The characters are currently located further north, and I have the feeling I need to put in all the locations they already visited. Makes things more memorable.

You will see lots more of R&R in it, but it needs a bit of time as you know ...

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cheers