Module 2: Gatecrashing This Module May Be Taken at Any Point When the Jumper Prepares to Travel Through a Pandora Gate

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Module 2: Gatecrashing This module may be taken at any point when the Jumper prepares to travel through a Pandora Gate. It may be taken along with the Firewall module.

Whether you won it in the Gate Lottery, bought precious minutes of Gate time from Pathfinder, was gifted the Gate access by a sponsor, or seized it by force, you've done it - a Pandora Gate stands before you, beckoning you, something few transhumans experience except in documentary XPs.

The absolute black of the sphere seems to have an almost magnetic force, compelling you onwards, while the baroque metal arms that surround the wormhole itself seem almost to hum with power.

I'm sure you'll be fine, but all the same, it might be worth considering sending a fork through while you stay safe and sound at home. Not every gatecrasher comes back, and of those who return, very few are the same.

Your Gatecrashing adventure may consist of being based at a Gate in the solar system and embarking on short missions through and back, or you might go for the full-on gate-hopping experience and wave goodbye to Sol, travelling deeper and deeper into the Pandora Gate network and living a nomadic lifestyle on undiscovered planets, perhaps never to return to Sol at all.

You get +0.00 credit points, but can take Gatecrashing Encounters for more cp.

Creating your Gatecrashing Team

While travelling through the Pandora Gates, it’s sometimes best to have an experienced team of “crashers” with you. You may recruit up to four Gatecrashers for free and purchase additional crashers for 50cp each up to a max of eight, but you don’t have to recruit a full four, or even any at all. Importing an existing companion to gain their background and skills costs an extra 50cp.

Being Gatecrashers, they are already predisposed to exploring new worlds and moving on, so once this jump is over, any surviving Gatecrashers may become companions and they will each take up their own companion slot.

It is entirely to your fanwanking how you recruit or meet them during your jump and how you got them to tag along – some might be up for crashing new exoplanets on a lark, others might be strictly mercenary. Others may have required more…emphatic persuasion.

Gatecrasher Dossiers

Each Gatecrasher has a profile listing their name, gender, faction, morph, speciality and motivations, as well as a blurb about them. They all have, at minimum, “Cutting Edge [Skill Package] Mods” as well as the free gear for any skill packages listed, as well as a lot of experience working in their speciality and at least minimal training in all the general skills required by Gatecrashers: • Standard Gate exploration protocols and procedures, • Standard survey protocols and procedures, • Basic exo-planet survival skills, • Basic combat training, • Basic emergency rescue and first aid training.

Please note that this is mostly writefagging fodder: You can have someone with a “–Hypercorps” (they hate hypercorps) motivation in the same team as a Hypercorp crasher, it just means you’ll get to manage their clashing personalities in your story. Some of these characters probably even know each other or have a history – the gatecrasher community is relatively small. For example Hawking has probably heard of Craig (and vice versa) by reputation. Any absent details, such as their exact augmentations and equipment, I largely leave to your fanwanking and your Jumper’s wallet and rep.

Name Faction Morph Role 1 Cain Anderson M Brinker Bouncer (biomorph) Scout/Security 2 Pati Nyamuraya F Argonaut Futura (biomorph) Ecologist 3 Hua Chang O Hypercorp Mod, Specialist Pod Astrophysicist (Pod) 4 Quinton Daal M Titanian Faust (Biomorph) Computronics, 2IC 5 Janet Hawking F Autonomist Reaper (Synthmorph) Security 6 Bruce Wallace M Sifter Daitya (Synthmorph) Excavation/Mining 7 Craig O’Connell M Barsoomian Novacrab (Pod) Security 8 KK F Scum Hot Shot (infomorph) eWar/Biochem 9 P+1 O Hypercorp Sage (Informorph) Xenotechnology 10 Malcolm Zimmermann M Extropian Flexbot (synthmorph) Nanotech/Science 11 Rhianna Kadtz F Preservationists Observer (biomorph) Xenoarcheologist 12 Alto Coda O Argonauts Neo-Beluga (biomorph) Oceanographer/Medic 13 Cha Ling O Ultimates Remade (Biomorph) Security 14 Tanaka Umi S M Singularity Seeker Agent Infomorph Sysadmin 15 Violet F Mercurial Chickcharnie (Pod) Psychosurgeon/scientist 16 Diamondmind O Exhuman Mod. Arachnid (synth) Security/Medic 17 Rippling Surface M Criminal Octomorph (biomorph) Security/Pilot (Hidden Concern) 18 Camilla Tannerson F Jovian Flat (biomorph) Engneering/2IC 19 Lim F Extropian Vacuum Pod (Pod) Vacuum ops/mechanic 20 Caliban O Criminal Mimic (Synthmorph) Scout/Security (Night Cartel)

1. Name: Cain Anderson Gender: M Faction: Brinker Role: Scout/Prospector Morph: Bouncer (Biomorph) Motivations: +Exploration, +Self Improvement, -Collectivism Cain was recruited by TerraGenesis early in the history of Gate exploration. The high casualty rate of early exploration means that he hasn’t made too many friends as an emotional defence against losing them. He is a bit of a lone wolf, but an excellent recon scout. You can point him in a direction and trust him to find anything worthwhile that way. He's had a fair bit of online science training through Argonaut educational programs, and gives very precise reports on whatever he finds. He doesn't like to speak, preferring to file reports via mesh text or have his muse deliver them. Cain uses his prehensile feet to move through trees or dense obstacles like a native, and he’s done his fair share of zero-g ops, including infiltrating sealed habitats and spacecraft. Cain gets anxious in crowds, but alone on an alien planet he never feels more at home. He has the Acrobatics, Infiltrator, Investigator and Prospector skill packages.

2. Name: Pati Chawla Gender: F Faction: Argonaut Role: Ecologist/Exoplanetary Science Morph: Futura (Biomorph) Motivations: +Personal Freedom +Environment –Jovian Republic Pati is one of the Lost: a failed attempt to speed-grow humans in accelerated virtual reality to maturity and then implant the egos in adult morphs. Somehow, they all got infected with the Watts- McLeod exurgent strain and now have a reputation for being crazy asyncs (which is mostly true). Despite her ethnicity, Pati is a pale, tall young woman with a shock of neon hair and a bad case of paranoia after the Jovians tried to kidnap her for their Freak squads. She managed to get away to the Love and Rage Collective, and hates the Jovians with a passion. She has done her best to conceal her origins and history online, but is still “wanted for questioning” in the Republic. Aside from her desire not to be interfered with, she is a passionate preservationist and a well-schooled environmental scientist – though she is fairly new to field work. Her main issues at the moment are dreams of alien forms and nightmares about her own body. Something inside her is repulsed by the human form, but she lacks the conviction and resources to act on the xenophillic urge so far. Pati has the Xeno-Empathy & Grok psi-chi sleights and the Mindlink psi-gamma sleight. She also has the Psi Sense, Psi Control, and Academics (Ecology, Biology, Geophysics) skill packages.

3. Name: Hua Chang Gender: Other Faction: Hypercorp Role: Astrophysicist Morph: Heavily upgraded Specialist Pod (Pod) Motivations: +Science +Hypercapitalism -Non-human Rights Hua is one of the foremost astrophysicists in the gatecrashing community. On top of his professional qualifications, he’s got decades of experience – he’d be 94 and frail if he hadn’t resleeved into his current morph, but is still enthusiastic and driven: the new skies observable through the Pandora Gates have been a breath of fresh air to him – he would probably be languishing in the Immortality Blues if they hadn’t been discovered. While he usually works for hypercorp interests, it’s more accurate to say that he just follows the money – even if the money is in the hands of autonomists or Jovians. Unfortunately, like many of his generation, he’s not too accepting of anyone who has “discarded their humanity”, by which he means anyone who isn’t in a human-like body. Hua has the Academics (Astronomy, Astrophysics, Physics), Megaengineering, Hard Hat and Social Skill Packages

4. Name: Quinton Dallas Gender: Male Faction: Titanian Role: Computronics, 2IC, Async Morph: Faust (Biomorph) Motivations: +Wealth +Exploration +Science Like Pati, Quinton is an async. Unlike Pati, he was infected with Watts-McLeod in its natural environment during a research stint on Iapetus. Also unlike Pati, he uses his async status as a weapon, playing up the mystique and even getting a small pair of cosmetic devil horns grown on his temples. His aptitude for computronics landed him the role on Iapetus, and he has significant experience being isolated in small teams from the rest of transhumanity. Large and in-charge, he’ll do his best to prove himself as a leader. This could cause some friction with the expedition’s current leader (ie: you), but if you can curb his ambitions, he would actually make a very competent second- in-command. Quinton’s passions are high drama XPs and vids, especially historical dramas from the pre-industrial age. Quinton’s async status gives him auditory hallucinations whenever he passes through a Pandora Gate – whispered voices that seem to indicate whether things will go good or bad, but he’d never admit such a thing to others, and isn’t sure whether he’s imagining it or not. He has the Pattern Recognition, Savant Calculation and Hyperthymesia Psi-chi sleights, as well as the Academics (Computer sciences, Microengineering, Quantum Physics), Leadership, & Psi Control Skill Packages.

5. Name: Janet Hawking Gender: F Faction: Autonomist/Locus Role: Security Morph: Reaper (Synthmorph) Motivations: +Helping Others, -TITANs, +Gun Rights Janet - though she usually goes by 'Hawking' or just ‘Sarge’ - has old soldier syndrome, not even thirty but tired of war. Unfortunately it's something she's good at. Really good; some of her combat XPs from Sydney during the Fall are still hot stuff even now. She's customised her Reaper morph to house a 30mm autocannon in a tank-like turret, and the active camo shell conceals a mix of high powered weaponry that would make a Direct Action armorer blush. She seems almost overcautious to her teammates, but the truth is she's just tired of seeing people die. There aren't many places a small walker tank is welcome to live peacefully in the solar system, so she signed up for a gatecrashing security gig last year and has been babysitting crashers and exoplanet colonies ever since. She doesn’t know neutronium from a neutrino, but she knows her military hardware, tactics, and most of all the TITANs and their nasty tricks. She has the Melee Combat, Marksman, Support Weapons and Security Operations skill packages.

6. Name: Bruce Wallace Gender: M Faction: Sifter Role: Excavation & Mining Morph: Daitya (Synthmorph) Motivations: +Legacy, +Collectivism, -Conflict In a hulking yellow-and-black Daitya construction morph, Bruce stands much taller than any of the other crashers. While Bruce’s expertise is mostly aimed at the practicalities of prospecting and extracting mineral resources, they are fully-qualified in the fields of geophysics and structural engineering. Bruce rarely speaks, possibly giving others the impression they’re an AI in a humanoid synth instead of a fully-sapient transhuman, but when he does it’s usually after careful consideration of all the facts on hand. He prefers not to make snap judgements or decisions, but when he does rush in it’s always on the side of ‘least harm’ rather than ‘most benefit’. Bruce is trustworthy and loyal to anyone who treats others fairly, no matter their background or faction, and for this reason he’s often seen as the glue that can hold a diverse group of people together.

7. Name: Craig O’Connell Gender: M Faction: Barsoomian Role: Security Morph: Novacrab (Pod) Motivations: +Big Explosions, -World Peace -Indentured Servitude Craig is what you'd call a 'war tourist'. He'll go anywhere and sign up for any gung-ho cause, so long as it's where the action is. He has completely given up counting the number of times he's been killed and resleeved (even his muse has lost track between digital attacks, several total bodylosses, EMP effects, and multiple resleeves). Only the Direct Action PMC will ever give him backup insurance. He's made quite a sum of money off his war XPs, so is never short of funds to get a new morph. He is a metaphorical phoenix – someone who gets a thrill out of dying, knowing they can resleeve at any time. That’s probably why he favours pods over synth morphs: he can cut the pain input via his cyberbrain but still has blood and flesh. So far, he's been disappointed with the lack of action as a part of crasher team security. Maybe that's going to change? He has the Melee Combat, Marksman, Social and Expression (XP clip productions) Skill Packages.

8. Name: Katerine Koch (aka KK) Gender: F Faction: Scum Role: Electronic Warfare & Biochemistry Morph: Hot Shot (Infomorph Eidolon) Motivations: +Hedonism, +Anonymous +Anarchy An expert intruder into all kinds of digital systems, KK is a known former member of the Anonymous hacker collective, and in her earlier years was involved in attacks on Hypercorp, Jovian and Consortium digital assets. One of her forks was also involved in the infowar aspect of the Battle of Locus. Like many Scum, she has a keen understanding of biochemistry; she hung out at the Carnivalle exoplanet for some time, developing narcoalgorithms based on the local plants. Her approach to life is highly enthusiastic, and being deeply into Scum culture, she has a tendency to fork and test experimental narcoalgorithms on herself maybe a little bit prematurely in the QA cycle. Her digital avatar is an over-endowed succubus with red skin. She has the White Hat, Black Hat, Hard Hat, Biohacker and Academics (Neuroscience, Medicine, Pharmaceuticals) Skill Packages.

9. Name: P+.1 Gender: None Faction: Hypercorp Role: Xenotechnology, Xenoecology Morph: Sage (Informorph Eidolon) Motivations: +Self Discovery, +Alien Contact, +Open Source P+ (P-Plus) is an AGI who spontaneously generated consciousness from an exceptionally complex piece of Pandora Gate control software. Unfortunately for the programmers, the software failed to do its designed task, but P+1 obviously holds a different opinion on the matter. P+ is still at the Vulcanoid gate, but has created this alpha fork P+.1 (P-Plus-One) to send along on gatecrashing missions to try to understand the gates and how it attained sentience. P+.1 is particularly cheerful, and has incorporated many databases of gate data, exoplanet ecological information, and scientific journals, but is a bit scatterbrained for an AGI - probably a result of his source program's unintended sentience. P+.1’s digital avatar is a roughly masculine “face” made of math equations, though it only assumes this avatar when dealing with other transhumans. He has the White Hat, Hard Hat, Device Engineering, Academics (Astrobiology, Xenoarchaeology, Computer Engineering) and Gate Operations skill packages

10. Name: Malcolm Zimmermann Gender: Male Faction: Extropian Role: Scientist/Nanotech Morph: Flexbot (6 modules) Motivations: +Open Source +Exploration +Alien Contact Barely into his 20’s, Mal won a Gate ticket in the lotteries and has only made one previous exoplanet trip to Bluetree. Like many aspiring gatecrashers, he hopes to be a part of the first gatecrashing team to discover a new, technological alien race. Mal’s personality is somewhat blunt, but honest and well-meaning, and he hasn’t lost his idealism to the weight of experience and the jaded attitude of other experienced Gatecrashers. Mal has a wide spread of science-related skills, most handy of which is a background as a nanotechnician – should you come up against an unusual type of nanoswarm or need to urgently conduct field repairs on a CM, you might be glad to have him (and his nanoscope/fractal digit- equipped morph) along. In non-science fields, his upbringing has suffered somewhat; you could say he’s not exactly the life of a party. He has the Nanotechnician, Academics (Nanotechnology, Chemistry, Physics), Device Engineering, & Hard Hat skill packages.

11. Name: Rhianna Kadtz Gender: Female Faction: Preservationists Role: Xenoarcheologist Morph: Observer (Biomorph) Motivations: Graduate of the Titan Autonomous University with honors in Astrobiology, Rhianna has waited four years to be a part of a gatecrashing expedition. While there is no doubt about her academic ability, she only passed the bare minimum criteria for Gatecrashers in other areas (such as the required survival training). She has an incredible enthusiasm for her line of work which is tempered by patience – you’ll have to hold her down to stop her investigating xenoarchaeological ruins while the security guys do their thing, but she doesn’t leap to unfounded conclusions before all the results come in either. Titan was a good place for her, and she has many links to Autonomist Gate researchers who have operated at the Saturnian Pandora Gate. She might be very helpful to have in your crew if you plan on visiting any of the Autonomist exoplanet colonies. Rhianna has the Academics (Ecology, Nanoecology, Astrobiology, Archaeology, Xenoarchaeology, Sociology), Social and Investigation skill packages.

12. Name: Alto Coda (aka Subject 113/A) Gender: M/N Faction: Argonauts Role: Oceanographer/Medical Morph: Neo-Beluga Motivations: +uplift rights, +morphological freedom, -hypercorps Coda was originally a neo-beluga from a hypercorp uplift test batch, and as such is genetically sterile. Rescued by Mercurials and rehabilitated to Europa, Coda has an insatiable curiosity. They wear a quadrupedal exo-frame (and a sealed, custom wetsuit/vacsuit) to allow them to operate on land and manipulate objects, but would relish the opportunity to swim in alien seas; especially if they were the first neo-cetacean to do so. Coda is a specialist in trauma medicine but has a great knowledge of oceanography and marine ecology on the side. They will not get along well with anyone who openly supports the hypercorp line on uplift experimentation. Coda has the Medtech, Biohacker, Academics (Medicine, Oceanography, Marine Ecology) and Expression (singing) skill packages.

13. Name: Cha Ling Gender: Other Faction: Ultimates Role: Security Morph: Remade (Biomorph) Motivations: +Self-Improvement, +Ultimate Philosophy, -Exhumans A compact, streamline and androgynous human with a clean-shaven head, to the naked eye they seem to have no obvious augmentations, but a t-ray or x-ray scan reveals a body tightly packed with combat bioware and internal structures no natural human was ever born with. Cha espouses the Ultimates philosophy - of perfection of the human form and ability - and is a devoted follower of the Demiurge's teachings. They (they don't ascribe themselves to a fixed gender and use the pronoun of whichever gender their morph's sex switch is set to) are an experienced mercenary, more than capable with their railgun/seeker launcher, grenades, bare hands and knife. They are very knowledgeable on philosophy, politics and the arts, less so on hard physics and chemistry. Cha has the Melee, Marksman, Academics (Religion, Philosophy, Art) and Acrobatics skill packages

14. Name: Tanaka S Umi Gender: Male Faction: Singularity Seeker Role: Sysadmin/Cybersecurity Morph: Agent (Infomorph Eidolon) Motivations: +Singularity, +Scientific Progress, +Reclaiming Earth Formerly of the Europan icicle habitats, Tanaka is another winner of the Gate Lottery. Despite his excellent skills as an infosecurity specialist, sysadmin and programmer, he may become something of a liability due to his naivety towards the idea of the Singularity: uniting with artificial super-intelligences in some transcendental experience. You may need to take steps to dismantle this naïve attitude before you stumble onto a TITAN base. Pseudo-religious neo-pagan babble aside, Tanaka is no less capable in their job because of it. Tanaka’s avatar looks like an old druid or wizard with a full beard, even though he could barely be called middle-aged himself. Tanaka has the White Hat, Black Hat, Hard Hat and Device Engineering skill packages.

15. Name: Violet Gender: F Faction: Mercurials Role: Scientist/psychosurgeon Morph: Chickcharnie Motivations: +Morphological Freedom +Uplift Rights, +Dinosaur Identity Clade Violet considers herself a jack of all trades, but is a professionally qualified psychosurgeon. She excels at getting into alien mindsets and analysing them – if your group contains non-humans like uplifts or exhumans, you might be thankful if you include Violet in your roster. Personally, she is a member of the dinosaur-identity clade among neo-avians, and while she currently uses a small, Owlbear-like Chickcharnie pod, she hopes to one day afford an Opteryx synthmorph, or even better, a theropod dinosaur pod created by the Fortean colony. Violet has the Social, Psychosurgery, Investigation and Acrobatics skill packages.

16. Name: Diamondmind Gender: N/A Faction: Exhuman Role: Security, Medical Morph: Heavily modded Arachnid (synthmorph) Motivations: +Self-improvement, -Transhumanity, +Morphological freedom Diamondmind is a "predator"-niche exhuman who has been redesigning their body with the use of evolutionary algorithms. Their morph is almost unrecognisable as the Arachnid it once was – it’s a black, carbon-plated nightmare, a robotic trilobite-centaur with four arms and six legs. Diamondmind prefers the up-close kill, which it excels at, and is more than happy to apply its knowledge of (experimental) exhuman augmentation procedures to anyone that asks, though is certainly capable of “merely” treating injuries or repairing synthmorphs. Diamondmind applied for gatecrashing missions in order to test itself, ego and morph, against new environments and new dangers. It will quickly decide to ignore orders from anyone it considers too backwards-thinking or conservative. Diamondmind has the Melee Combat, Psychosurgeon, Medtech and Device Engineering skill packages.

17. Name: Rippling Surface Gender: Male/Asexual Faction: Hidden Concern (Triad) Role: Security/Pilot Morph: Octomorph Motivations: +Wealth, +Hidden Concern, +Survival Rippling doesn't mess around. Exoplanets are dangerous, and only dangerous people have any right being on them. He claims he used to roll with the Hidden Concern, but anyone that knows the octomorph triad in any detail will know there are no "former" members. So either he's lying, and is just trying to sound scary, or he still has ties with them and they're happy to let him do his own thing until they need him to come back into the fold. To back up his claims, Rippling is a crack shot with a sniper rifle, and knows just how to slip a neurotoxin-coated knife in through a hardsuit’s joints. He's also a surprisingly talented spacecraft and submersible pilot. Rippling has the Pilot (SLOTV), Melee, Marksman and Deception skill packages.

18. Camilla Tannerson Gender: F Faction: Jovian Role: Engineering/2IC Morph: Flat Motivations: +Technological Advancement +Travel +BioCon A blonde bombshell from Jovian territory, Camilla is a take-charge kind of gal. Most non-Jovians will assume she’s some kind of intelligence agent, but the truth is she is was simply determined and well- connected enough to pursue a love of science out of Jupiter’s gravity well. Leadership positions among science teams have given her valuable experience in getting a diverse team to work together. Nonetheless, her upbringing poses some challenges: The only concessions to the realities of gatecrashing Camilla has made are standard mesh inserts, a cortical stack and basic biomods. Any non-Jovian gatecrashers who learn this will quickly start betting pools as to how long she will survive, and how long it will take her to gain other augmentations. Camilla has the Leadership, Mega-Engineering, Device Engineering and Hard Hat skill packages.

19. Name: Lim Gender: F Faction: Extropian Role: Vacuum Specialist, Mechanic Morph: Vacuum pod Motivations: +Fame +Sex +Wealth Originally a Neo-bonobo uplift from Promise (the Martian moon once known as Diemos), Lim gained freedom from Cognite after a long series of crowd-funded legal battles. Her line of uplifts were originally bred to perform vacuum maintenance on habs, but that project stalled after they all won their legal freedom. She has chosen the high-risk/high-reward gatecrasher lifestyle to try and build off the rep she made during the court battles. As a Neo-Bonobo uplift, she has a very casual attitude towards sex. Lim has the Mega-Engineering, Device Engineering, Social and Acrobatics skill packages.

20. Name: Smith (Caliban) Gender: N/A Faction: Criminal (Night Cartel) Role: Scout Morph: Mimic (No Small Size trait) Motivations: +Escape +AnCap +Survival Smith is an odd being; a Night Cartel hitman once known as “Caliban” who has successfully retired and now lives a quiet life under a stolen identity. Unfortunately not even life as a gatecrasher keeps them completely away from the Night Cartel. As an asset, Smith is highly adept at urban infiltration, parkour, and, thanks to the shape-altering Mimic morph, camouflage. They are less at home in natural settings, but if anyone was going to get you out of any city, including a long-ruined and alien one, it would be them. Smith has the Stealth, Marksman, Investigation and Melee Combat skill packages.

Gatecrashing Perks

Gate Operations Skill Package – 100cp You have roughly the same knowledge as an experienced Operations Manager at Solar system Pandora Gate…which is to say, just enough to make a gate work, with no understanding of the principles behind it. With a Blue Box or fixed control system, you can isolate possible gate addresses from a gate's library, dial and open a wormhole to the destination, attempt to stall or prevent incoming gate connections, and monitor the connection's status – determining whether it will close early or if the destination is trying to stop the incoming connection. Gear: A Gate Probe, essentially a small module that inserts some hardened sensors on the end of a stick through a Gate that scans for atmosphere, pressure, gravity, takes some pictures and checks for bad guys before the people step through.

Prospector Skill Package – 100cp You know how to assess planetary bodies, moons, asteroids and comets for mineral resources and locate them buried in the ground - minerals, ores, fossils, ices, hydrocarbons andmore. This also comes in handy for finding artificial structures that might be sunken, buried or overgrown, like hidden facilities or ruins, and recognise when a planet has been terraformed from its natural state or a landscape artificially altered. Gear: A Thumper seismic survey robot (a large weight on tracks that hits the ground to build up a seismic map of underground structures with seizmophones).

Resource Extraction Skill Package – 100cp Mining is the name of the game. Even a lifeless rock with no redeeming qualities can hold vast quantities of raw, unclaimed resources. From heavy metals, to volatile hydrocarbons, to water ice, and especially radioactive elements, you have the know-how to mine and refine them of impurities. You can also deal with extracting and transporting even rarer and more unusual resources, like buried xenoartifacts, or natural pools of Bose-Einstein condensate. Gear: A Plasma Cutter tool, known for doubling as a poor-man’s plasma rifle in an emergency.

Exoplanet Firewall Agents - 200cp (requires Module 1: Firewall to be taken as well) If you’re a Firewall agent, this perk will ensure that any transhuman colonies or groups you come across in your gatecrashing adventures will have at least one Firewall agent planted among them. The larger the colony, the more agents there might be, up to five or six of them for the largest colonies, but their resources might be limited depending on how the local colonists/researchers view Firewall. For facilities belonging to groups hostile to Firewall – like the dreaded Nirvana facility operated by OZMA - the undercover agents might have very limited access to anything (there to keep an eye on things rather than carry out ops), but on a more liberal colony like Portal or Carnivale they might have widespread access to materials, gear, and favours. Outside of this setting, you will frequently find that people associated with your organisations (such as a business you own or cult that worships you) are operating within other groups you have an interest in. Maybe one of your cult members works in the group as their day job, or one of your business subsidiaries works with the group on a contract. Regardless, they can act as a way ‘in’ to the target group.

Blue Box Datamining – 100cp Using a blue box or other gate system, you can extract more addresses from a Gate’s library than others, and make better guesses from the address metadata as to what might be on the far side, going so far as to determine the type of the nearest star, the gravity the destination gate is in, and the type of atmosphere (if any). In future jumps, you can analyse a portal/wormhole to get a rough idea of where the other end leads, should you be unable to see through it, as well as any qualities of the portal/wormhole, such as whether it is unstable or operating on a timer. Technological portals need scientific tools or sensors to determine this information, while magical portals might require enchanted tools or analytical spells.

Smooth Sailing – 200cp The Pandora Gate system simply never malfunctions when you’re involved. It always obeys sensible inputs, and simply ignores non-sensible ones, and completes all connections properly without any anomalies – barring deliberate interference. In future jumps, teleportation and portal technology (including teleportation or portals through time) seems to have a much lower chance of malfunctioning when you’re around. Even if it does malfunction, the severity is greatly decreased – you might be teleported into the wrong room, but never halfway through a wall, or might get “spat out” of a portal rather than cut in half if it closes too early. On the other hand, this does nothing against deliberate misuse or sabotage (ie: sabotage or against someone trying to use hostile teleportation or portals as a weapon).

Observe, Assess, Act – 200cp Professional gatecrashers are trained to observe their surroundings carefully, assess the potential risks and danger they pose, and then act. By studying your surroundings, you get a solid idea of what the most dangerous features of the environment around you are and why, even when the danger isn’t visibly apparent. A plant might be toxic to eat, a floor might be unstable, a room might be a carbon dioxide trap, the deep loose sand might have a predator burrowed beneath it. Nonetheless, by taking the time to observe and assess, you’ll know that it is dangerous.

The Wheat From The Chaff – 200cp Amid the ruins of alien civilisations, it can be hard to tell what's good and what's junk. You can always seem to tell what items or parts of structures are still functional (doors, elevators etc.), even if inert or without power, and also pick out the most valuable stuff while leaving behind the worthless. Note ‘valuable’ doesn’t mean ‘useful’ or ‘safe to handle’; you might be surprised what fetches the highest prices on the market.

Gatecrashing Items

Open-Source Model Blue Box – 0cp The means of operating a Pandora Gate: a portable unit the size of a briefcase which attaches to a gate and allows transhuman computers to interpret its data and controls. Without a blue box, you can’t dial home, and are at the mercy of the check-in schedule and anyone else dialling in. This box comes with enough tutorial software to allow pretty much any transhuman to hook it up to a gate and attempt to dial addresses in its memory.

Promethean Blue Box – 300cp This particular Blue Box is heavily upgraded over the open-source model, and will prevent any control of a Pandora Gate or similar portal device by the far end of the connection. This means you can keep a gate structure “locked” from incoming connections, keep the far end from shutting down an active connection, prevent the far end from redirecting the wormhole, or anything along those lines.

Gatecrashing XPs – 50cp To prepare you for your travels, these are a collection of XP movies from many of the most well- travelled exoplanets. Some of these XP movies are popular and well-known even among the general population, but many of them are obscure outside of crasher circles. Close encounters with TITAN warbots, discoveries of new xenofauna, moments of panic when things go wrong, and even events that led to the deaths of the crashers making the memcordings. We’re not pulling any punches here, but they are categorised and rated for content.

Crasher Suit Upgrade – 100cp Upgrades all your team’s vacsuits – yours, plus all your companions, as well as those of your firewall cell & crasher team if you have them – to heavily-upgraded Crasher suits. Crasher suits have better armor, comms, life support systems, high-quality cyclers/fabbers for extended use, and a wider range of environmental tolerances than standard vacsuits. A vacsuit will get you by, but a Crasher suit you can rely on under the harshest conditions; anything short of intense solar radiation, crushing or corrosive atmosphere, or actual weapons fire.

Spares – 100cp A set of nine Spare morphs – little collapsible morphs that store the size of a dinner plate, and expand to the size of a head. They’re essentially a port for a cortical stack with legs and some sensors, so they don’t exactly conform to the transhuman body plan, and they have virtually no built-in augmentations. Still, being in one of these is arguably better than in dead storage in a cortical stack.

Satnet-In-A-Can – 200cp This is a low, tread-equipped bot that carries a rocket two meters long and 40 centimeters in diameter on its back, similar to a vastly downsized SCUD missile launcher. Launching the rocket is as simple as sending a mesh command – the drone raises the rocket into launch position and fires it upwards if the area around and above it is clear. On achieving low orbit, the rocket deploys thirty- two micro-satellites equipped with radio comms gear and standard spime sensors that manoeuvre themselves into a gobal satnet. The Satnet-In-A-Can is an effective way to give any world a Planetary Navigation System and global radio/wifi communications within a couple of days (barring any unusual circumstances like a heavily ionised atmosphere, dense ring of debris, strange planet geometry, or an automated meteor defence system). The drone launcher can fabricate new rockets as required, if provided with the raw materials.

Crasher truck – 300cp An all-terrain vehicle. The size of a small bus, it’s fully equipped with life support to last three months without replenishment, a built-in cornucopia machine and healing vat, has smart locomotion that works as both wheels and legs, is streamlined for aquatic travel, and has moderately functional radiation shielding. A Crasher Truck is one of the most desired vehicles for exoplanet exploration.

GEV – 400cp A Gate Exploration Vehicle. Okay, we said the Crasher Truck was “all-terrain” but this time we mean it. It’s got all the features of the Crasher Truck, plus a rocket engine to allow it to reach orbit from the surface. Some crashers affectionately christen their GEV “the Magic School Bus”.

Xenoartifacts Xenoartifacts are special items, in that they are not given to you at the start of your adventure; they are instead placed throughout the gate network for you to stumble across. Purchasing these items ensures that you will encounter them ripe for the taking.

Giza Tetrahedron – 200cp This black tetrahedron is a miniature version of a Giza object, less than 30cm tall. The full-sized objects allow someone who touches it to contact random “aliens” scattered across the universe, presumably others also in contact with other Giza devices. This miniature version has the same functionality. When you use this device, it makes a random “chat room”-style connection using your mesh inserts to a non-human intelligence, to whom you are free to converse within certain limitations – both parties must remain anonymous to each other, and no transfer of genetic, AI or ego code is permitted. The Giza Tetrahedron itself handles any translation, and can allow a text, audio/video, or even a full VR simulspace conversation. These alien intelligences may offer you an exchange of data or information or may simply be looking for conversation or company. While they might be happy to run calculations or check your math, any schematics or technology they send through may or may not work as advertised – there are a lot of trolls and pranksters among them. Any given “chat” may be broken off at any time, by either party – highly likely if one party is getting frustrated or bored. Each time you break and re-establish connection, you are paired to a new, random contact.

Scour Ring – 300cp A Scour Ring is a small, flat hoop, a bit more than a foot across. Activated by shaking, when a solid object passes through the ring, the object is atomised: all atomic bonds are broken and the object is dispersed into its component atoms. In theory this would both require and create a ton of energy, but only a trivial amount of Cherenkov radiation is emitted instead, and the scour ring itself seems to absorb the remainder of the energy in order to fuel the mysterious atomisation process.

Iktomi Drone – 300cp A remnant of the long-extinct Iktomi race, this drone is a black, spider-like robot, with a ball-like body from which its arms and legs extend – except for one foreleg, which is missing. It has a powerful multi-purpose laser, strong manipulator claws and tough, self-repairing armor…as well as a predisposition for pulling the legs off dead bodies or disabled synths and trying to fit them on its stump in place of its own missing leg. Good news: it seems to have imprinted itself on you, registering you and your fellow gatecrashers as “Allies: Follow and Aid”. It kind of does whatever it likes, following you around like a dog, repairing damaged equipment and synths. Items or synths repaired by the Iktomi Drone will often incorporate some kind of upgrade over the damaged part – damaged armor will be reinforced tougher than before, a sensor might have its range slightly increased. Through repeated damage and upgrading, items may become roughly twice as good in some aspect. The Drone communicates with mournful whistling noises in the Iktomi language, but will eventually learn to understand whatever languages you speak around it, though not speak them. The Iktomi Drone is not self-aware with only a basic Iktomi AI, and lacks a true consciousness. Hypothetically, you could replace its mind with another AI or digitized Ego, or reprogram it if you knew Iktomi programming languages, but it’s likely to resist such intrusive measures.

Gatecrashing Encounters It’s up to you to fanwank most of your gatehopping adventure, travelling from exoplanet to exoplanet and encountering distant, empty worlds deep in space, alien ruins and transhuman colonies (or TITAN colonies). However, you may come across some of the following gate destinations. You may take as many encounters as you like, earning up to +600.00cp in cp to spend on the perks, items and companions above.

Revolt +100cp Rocky Planet, 1.2G, Mars-like Atmosphere. This world has a small hypercorp mining facility; one that uses about a hundred indentured infugees as labor. As soon as your gatecrashing team comes through, the hypercorp security teams will go on alert and a response team will be sent to the gate.

Unfortunately this is exactly what a number of the indentured workers at the main facility are waiting for - a couple of them are just good enough hackers to compromise the security team's armory, and since the response team is away at the gate, the workers will use this opportunity to grab some guns and take over the hypercorp mining facility, overwhelming the few guards that remain.

The response team will probably get a message from the base that everything's gone to shit just after they arrive at the gate and try to bully you away from the hypercorp's claim. Their response might be to try and offer you a job - help the response team put down the uprising and they can give you supplies and the best hospitality the base's bar can offer. Or you might choose to take on the Reaction team and aid the uprising, or ignore it altogether.

The Rock +100cp Tiny Asteroid. Microgravity, 0.1G, No Atmosphere. This Pandora Gate is situated on a lone asteroid, approximately a hundred kilometers in diameter. This tiny rock floats millions of kilometers from its star, in an orbit with thousands of other similar rocks - a solar system with nothing but a single, massive belt of asteroids, none of which are closer than a hundred kilometers.

On arriving at this address, the Pandora Gate will shut down for just under a week, refusing all connections or attempts to operate it. How will the Gatecrashers react when they seem trapped on an empty asteroid? How do they react to the sudden imposed isolation? What if the asteroid’s orbit passes through a cloud of micrometeors that rains down on them? Can they survive for a week with no resources (air, water, hydrocarbons) except what they brought, and the silica of the asteroid itself?

Cosmonomads +0cp Rocky planet, 0.72G, Methane atmosphere. On this planet lies a bivouac of Cosmonomads: a religious cult that believes the gates are actually leading to destinations in different universes entirely. It seems that pure chance has led your gatecrashing team to the same destination that about twenty Cosmonomads are encamped on.

Gatecrashers with high ExploreNet rep ratings will be able to restock a lot of supplies and even come up with a few luxury items (like new food flavour programs for your vacsuit Makers). The Cosmonomads, for all their semi-religious trappings, are also a good source of information on the

exoplants they've visited previously in their pilgrimage, even though it's unlikely that you'll visit a destination they've been to. They place no value in credits or other currency, however: anything bartered to them must have its own value to the Cosmonomad’s continued pilgrimage. Oxygen, water, data, raw fabber feedstock and especially power supplies like batteries or radioisotopes are the most valuable barter goods.

Insulting their beliefs will result in a curt request to leave; one which is backed up by the threat of violence. They have been more than capable so far of defending themselves when necessary.

Beacon +200cp MXO-45038 – Rocky Planet, 1.21G, Nitrogen/CO2 atmosphere Assuming you haven't got your radio turned off or something, it'll be mere seconds before you and your gatecrashers receive a signal from an automated distress beacon several hundred meters from the gate, seeming to originate from the top of a small hill. Once you (or whatever recon you send) arrive at the hill, two things will quickly be apparent. Firstly, you'll notice in the valley beyond is an apparently transhuman colony that seems to have been in some sort of battle: walls are burst open, burn marks and bullet holes cover the walls, and even some suited bodies appear to be lying in the open. Secondly, the top of the hill does have a small antenna connected up to a radio beacon, but also a mission recorder and a neutrino retreat: A backup data server just big enough to store logs from the colony as well as the stored ego backups of everyone on the base. Presumably from these, you can figure out what happened?

The mission logs and stored egos can reveal that a TITAN warbot emerged from the Gate and hit the colony, destroying it in the process of forcibly uploading the egos of all the colonists before retreating back through the Pandora Gate, destination unknown. However, before it went through the Gate, it left some things behind.

Somewhere around the beacon and the colony (likely in the very area you and your gatecrashers are now) are a scattering of a dozen or so Smart Mines. These devious devices are TITAN-manufactured, and at least as smart as regular device AIs, possibly even as creative as AGIs.

The usual tactic smart mines employ is to let a prospective victim walk unharmed into the centre of the mined area (ie: where the beacon is and where the jumper or their team is probably standing now), and then when they detect them leaving the area, a single mine will detonate their charge just powerfully enough to cripple a nearby victim, then a second mine will unbury, apply first aid to the victim by spraying them with medichines - just enough to keep them alive - and then re-bury themselves and wait for a second and/or third victim to arrive and help the first one before detonating. If the injured victim(s) start crawling away, the smart mine follows or latches onto them. There are at least five mines somewhere between the Beacon and the Gate, and several more scattered about the devastated colony.

Detecting the mines is possible with chemical sensors, thermal sensors, and magnetic sensors, but you have to be looking – they’ll do their best to conceal themselves and have planted dummy positions. Disabling the mines from afar shouldn’t be too much trouble if you have a railgun or explosives.

Disarming a mines attached to someone who has been disabled is a hellishly tricky process. It's better to think of them as suicide bombers with a hostage - they'll recognise obvious attempts to

disarm them and blow. The simplest method of disabling smart mines is simply to blow them up and re-sleeve the unfortunate victim. However, these mines do use an encrypted radio link to coordinate between themselves, so if you can crack it, you might be able to hack them.

If you can locate and disarm the smart mines, you could loot a lot of materials and supplies from the destroyed colonies – fabber feedstock, preserved supplies, O2 and water, plenty of bots, spare vacsuits, even a fair amount of personal weaponry and all sorts of research gear an exoplanet outpost would have lying around, more than most small expeditions could reasonably carry.

Finding Crasher Ryan +100cp Wormwood –Massive asteroid, microgravity, CO2/Nitrogen/Methan Atmosphere. Word has filtered through ExploreNet that a client is offering a vast amount of credits for a very a special contract: to locate the Gatecrasher known as Isabelle Ryan and bring her back to Mars...as a cortical stack, if need be. The instructions are very clear on that.

Crasher Ryan set out from the Pathfinder gate last year with all the best augmentations, gear and team her vast fortune could get her: turns out she's the favourite great-great-great granddaughter of someone very, very high up in the Planetary Consortium. After she arrived on Portal, she ditched her professional team and hooked up with a group of anarchist crashers who immediately set off on their own gatehopping adventure, only rarely stumbling across a transhuman colony for resupply. Your client says she recently stopped at Wormwood, so if you want to pick up a fresh trail, I suggest you start there.

Complications: Ryan knows exactly why people are looking for her, and she doesn't want anything to do with her great-great-great-grandfather, who originally posted the contract. She believes he wants her to take over one of his hypercorps as a puppet-CEO, which will mean becoming involved in his schemes and power-plays, as well as those of the Consortium’s upper oligarchy.

Difficulty: Moderate+. Crasher Ryan does not want to be found, or to come back to Mars, and Jumpers looking for further challenge may find she has already departed Wormwood for another Gate, potentially disappearing into the Gate network once more until she pops up again at another transhuman colony. Attempts to bring her back forcibly will have to deal with her and her team – aside from Ryan herself, they are all seasoned, well-equipped crashers, and know how to defend themselves.

Reward: If you can successfully locate Crasher Ryan and convince her to return (or bring her stack back), you will gain one level of CivicNet rep and 100,000 credits. If you can find a way for Ryan to keep gatehopping and make the client withdraw the contract, you will gain one level of ExploreNet rep and half the reward, 50,000c. Failure to bring back Ryan or have the contract withdrawn earns nothing, except maybe Ryan’s gratitude if you found her and let her go.

The Rortians +100cp to +300cp Varies. As a militaristic and expansionistic faction, the Rortian Exhumans are going to be stumbled upon by errant gatecrashers sooner or later. The Rortians are a pro-synth exhuman faction, one that abhors the weaknesses of flesh, and idolises the creation of synergetic group minds. Each gestalt ‘individual’ is a single smart-tank-like synth that actually houses a collection of merged egos – somewhat like the Synergists, which freely share memories and experience between one another, but with no neural boundaries – not so much of a hive mind, more like a consciousness

with multiple-merged memories. These gestalts value the continued survival of their clade above all else, and any deviations from this are met swiftly with ego-editing or destruction.

In order to maintain cognitive diversity, the Rortians are raiding exoplanet settlements for transhuman egos – acting much the same as the ‘headhunter’ bots that the TITANs used so devastatingly, by gunning tranhumans down and extracting their cortical stacks, editing the minds within, and then incorporating their knowledge, skills and personality trains into a new gestalt.

The shells of their morphs bristle with weaponry and cybernetic sensors, all at least the cutting edge transhumanity can offer, capable of spitting anything from plasma beams to inert railgun slugs and seeker mini-missiles of every flavour. There may even be a couple of weapons in their arsenal beyond the cutting edge of transhumanity, like powerful anti-vehicle masers.

Fortunately, there are only a few Rortians out there – but a mere few is enough to trash a colony and even hold a Pandora Gate against Ultimate-faction mercenaries.

Encounters with the Rortians might happen on any type of exoplanet, from the totally barren and deserted, to ones with established transhuman colonies.

This encounter can be purchased more than once – each extra time increasing the number of encounters as well as escalating their threat. The first encounter (+100cp) might be a single Rortian, the second encounter (+200cp) 3-5 of them who are forewarned of your team’s capabilities, and the last encounter (+300cp) ten Rortians specifically geared and prepared to ambush your team shortly after they emerge from the gate.

Spiderweb +200cp Rocky planet, oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, 0.8g An Iktomi megacity - a massive expanse of thin, conical towers, criss-crossed by bridges and interlinking cables. The air, breathable for transhumans with enhanced respiration augs, is quite still and clear. There’s no telling just how far the city extends without a proper survey, and the Pandora Gate seems to be right in the middle of it.

Many of the towers are structurally unsound, and identifying which towers are safe to explore is tricky – some of the thinnest, most precarious-looking towers are made of the strongest Iktomi materials, while some of the thicker, sturdier-looking ones are made of older, weaker materials.

One day after arriving, the winds will pick up, possibly causing some towers to collapse and cut some levels off, or

make them lean against each other to create new access paths. It will quickly become apparent that many of the towers are Windharps – massive musical structures that use blown wind to produce haunting whistles and deep resonating wood-wind like sounds. What you may not be aware of is that Windharps’ music has an effect on any asyncs in the group.

Any Asyncs in your party may, with only a short period of warning headaches, suddenly lapse into visions of life experienced by the ancient Iktomi, glimpses of their experiences and memories. The sounds of the windharps are causing them to tap into some kind of async archive; a database of thoughts the Iktomi used instead of the internet or the mesh.

These winds will keep up for 2d6 hours on end, before subsiding once more for 1d6 hours, then repeating.

If exposed to the music for 8 consecutive hours, any asyncs may have their present egos temporarily overwritten by Iktomi egos loaded in from the psionic archive. Their normal egos are stored but dormant. What happens then is anyone’s guess – but there’s bound to be extreme confusion on both sides. The Iktomi egos fade away after 1d3 hours, leaving the original ego confused but intact.

Beside their effect on asyncs, the winds also power various systems in the Iktomi buildings – lights and transport cable systems will start up, and many Iktomi drones (see the Iktomi Drone item) will come to life, carrying out maintenance on some parts of the city in a haphazard fashion. The drones are unpredictable, usually ignoring any gatecrashers, but sometimes reacting in different and potentially dangerous ways. Your attempts to hotwire an elevator or get an aquifer siphon working may be viewed as sabotage and treated with hostility, or any four-limbed humanoid gatecrashers may be assessed as “Other drones requiring maintenance – install missing parts to standard (8 limbs) and remove redundant control node (head)”.

The Submerged Gate +100cp Rocky/ice planet. Water vapour/CO2 atmosphere. 0.4g The primary obstacle here is the Pandora Gate’s location: maintaining a fixed position 1500m (4500ft) under the surface of this world’s (H2O) ocean, situated several kilometres from the nearest island. Those who manage to pass through the submerged gate and reach the surface will find this world almost covered in water – the only landmasses are a few chains of volcanic islands created from tectonic plates passing over hotspots from the mantle. Cellular life hasn’t developed on this world, but its ocean holds a greater discovery.

Spreading for kilometres just below the surface of the ocean are massive floating mats of hydrocarbon membranes. Closer investigation will reveal some interesting facts: Firstly, that these huge mats are actually single molecules, connected patchworks of long-chain polymers and enzymes which break down molecules in the ocean at the edge, and then transport and assemble those atoms to make more of the mat. Different enzymes work on different target molecules, so local differences in chemical abundance creates “patchworks” in the mats of varying chemical composition.

These organic mats are not strictly by themselves “alive”, having no metabolic processes and “growing” only in a similar same way that a salt crystal grows as saline water around it evaporates. By following the chemical rules of polymerization, 'cells' of differently-composed carbohydrate substrate are added to the outside edge of the chemical mat.

Crashers who know their computing history may remember a 19th century mathematician named Hao Wang. Wang proposed that tessellating tiles or cells could be used as a Turing machine if they followed a set of logical rules, and in this ocean the 'Wang carpets' are precisely that - an accidental Turing machine, a hydrocarbon computer precipitating out of the ocean.

Due to the thousands of chemical ‘tiles’ in each kilometre-wide mat, these natural computing systems are large enough and complex enough that the chemical mat is actually simulating digital life of its own - wholly alien to any concept of the physical universe and animated with cellular automata principles in the leading growth edge. Each mat contains, in simulation, entire digital ecosystems, and maybe - just maybe - even sentient data-forms. Of course it will take an extremely thorough investigation of the mats to determine this – and it’s likely you’ll choose to move on if you can make the dive back down to the gate.

Homler +0cp Rocky planet, 80% oceanic. 1.1g A world explored by Gatekeeper Corporation out of Mars two years ago, but the funding for the research here was pulled. All that remains of the human expedition is a claim beacon near the gate, some buried waste, and some empty fabricated shelters.

This world has widespread xenoarcheological ruins across its surface: cities and small towns, isolated homes, long-eroded highways and power distribution networks. There is nothing like useable technology here – in fact, this species was less technologically developed than transhumanity is now. Nonetheless, a great deal was discovered from sealed ruins.

While anatomically they were more like salamanders than humanoids, the local’s culture developed recognisable social units, holding many of the same values as transhumanity does now. Perhaps if they had survived whatever disaster struck them, they and humanity might have found each other agreeable trading or diplomatic partners in a lonely galaxy.

Lost In The Woods +200cp Any, 0.65g On some desolate and barren planet, you will emerge from the gate only to find other transhumans camped around the gate. A group of six other gatehoppers out of the Vulcanoid gate have been stranded here for the last week after their Blue Box was damaged and were unable to dial out.

They are reluctant to go into how it was damaged but quick to blame each other for dropping or mishandling it and just as quick to protest their innocence. In truth, it was sabotaged. In their gatehopping, they stole some TITAN gear – power cells, data storage devices and parts of weaponry - from a TITAN outpost hoping to sell it to some R&D outfit, but one of them was infected with the mindstealer strain of the Exurgent virus, and has been trying to stop them from reaching a transhuman settlement with the TITAN gear and return it to the outpost where it was found ever since. The Exurgent is no longer infectious, but will do its level best to kill everyone else without raising suspicions.

As these gatecrashers will probably express a desire to come with you in the hopes of returning to the Sol system, your group may be harbouring this murderer for some time before they can act.

Spore +100cp A hypercorp outpost consumed by mycelical life. No survivors. Possible contamination via spores latched onto your crashers’ clothing or shell.

Jaws +100cp Gas Giant Moon This is a small, icy moon orbiting a Saturn-type gas giant. The moon has long cleared out a gap in the cold rings of debris around it. The gate is situated half-buried in ice mountains overlooking a vast white plain, deeply fissured by cracks. This plain is actually the surface of a frozen ocean, and below the thin ice in the fissures gatecrashers can access the oceans below, warmed by geological activity caused by gravitational stresses from the gas giant and other moons.

The cracks into which gatecrashers must descend in order to travel or extract liquid water are filled with icy mists of vaporising water ice particles, and the unstable ice flows jostle and grind into each other over time, making any permanent camps in the fissures hazardous. The deep fissures are, however, likely to provide some shielding from any radiation or electromagentic interference caused by the gas giant's magnetosphere.

There is one final hazard: there is life in the frozen ocean, in a wide range of bioluminescent forms from chemotrophic coral to fish-like animals. The largest predators are similar to Cambrian fish - huge eels with armor-plated heads which fill the shark ecological niche, which may be drawn to the lights of explorers on the surface shining through the ice. Gatecrashers on the floor of the ice fissures may discover the shark-eels ramming their heads up through the ice to attack illuminated equipment and transhumans, dragging them into the frozen depths.

5-TAN.F-0 R&D +300cp A TITAN has conducted an unusual experiment - it has staged a horrific version of the Stanford prison experiment by sleeving about sixty abducted transhuman egos into the more basic TITAN morphs (like Headhunters, warbots, Ny’knikiin etc.), while another hundred and fifty or so are sleeved into transhuman flats.

Curiously, the TITAN has gone to the effort of providing morphs biosculpted to appear smiliar to the morphs these poor victims originally had, even though they are genetically identical.

The TITAN commanded the TITAN-sleeved transhumans as though they were its own forces, making them carry out terrible experiments on the flats for some time. Then the TITAN itself left the facility, taking with it much of the highly-advanced tech it used (including minions like its fractals and femtoswarms) but placed the TITAN-sleeved transhumans in charge.

Various groups of the TITAN-sleeves now run the facility according to their views on how things 'should' be run in their overlord’s absence - none of them know how to use the Gate to leave even if they had a blue box, so they have been terrified that the TITAN will return, and have been carrying on the TITAN's experiments in the interim.

Some riots and escape attempts by the flats in the meantime have been ruthlessly suppressed and punished. Psychology being what it is, many of the TITAN-sleeves have been abusing their positions of power over the flats with the lack of oversight or instructions.

Gatecrashers stumbling out of the gate are unlikely to be able to tell what's been going on at first, as to all outward appearances the facility seems like it is still fully TITAN-controlled. The addition of the gatecrashers may throw the prison into riot and various factions within the TITAN-sleeves into conflict as some will want to keep the experiments running out of fear, some have grown used to their positions of power over the flats, and others just want to go home.

Given the huge exurgent infection risk, it seems unlikely at best that any will be permitted to return to the Sol system.

Gatecrashing Notes

By taking this module, your Jumper is fiat immune to “the Gate just kills you/a TITAN bodyjacks you/The ETI Noms Your Brain for no fucking reason when you try to go through it”. By all means, things can (and are likely to) happen when you use it, but it’s not going to end your chain. On the other hand, if you fuck around with a Gate’s wormhole instead of using it to travel, all bets are off, hope you have extra lives.

*Other ”similar portal devices” being technology-based wormholes/portals.

What’s a Pandora Gate? A method of travelling between worlds; a wormhole. A Pandora Gate looks like a perfectly black sphere, believed to be a stable singularity (wormhole). Around it is a frame or cage of ‘arms’ made of an unknown metallic meta-material. Covering the arms is a semi-organic growth which might be some form of nanotech, which appears to control the gate. This is what a Blue Box connects to.

Pandora Gates are the epitome of “unknown technology” in the EP universe. Their role is a plot device to facilitate adventure into the unknown and provide dramatic tension, like Stargates. This jump assumes they do work as advertised, sending you through a wormhole to other planets in the galaxy. Other interpretations – entering a Pandora gate destroys your and creates a new copy at the destination, entering a Pandora gate is destructive scanning and the destination is a simulation with the gate rebuilding you when you come out, Pandora gates ARE the ETI or the TITANs whose brains hit singularity-density, etc. – are entirely fanwank.

Gates cannot be moved, and appear anchored stationary relative to local gravity wells. A Gate’s size (the radius of the spherical wormhole opening, as well as the size of the openings in the “cage” surrounding it) can vary, but are usually about three meters across.

Pandora Gate Behaviour Gates operate a bit like a cell phone. They have a contact list (aka a Library) that is unique to each phone, they can make connections to other phones, you can put connections on hold, or hang up on them, or refuse to accept an incoming call, and you can even set up autodial sequences. This analogy falls down because you can’t make a ‘conference call’ with a Pandora Gate; at least not that transhumanity has discovered.

Each Gate’s Library lists the other Pandora gates which that specific gate can make a connection to. A Gate’s Library is known to change seemingly at random, removing existing addresses and inserting new ones. Many transhuman colonies on exoplanets get cut off for short periods of time, and some, like Synergy (home to the neo-synergists), have even been cut off for years before contact was re- established. Each destination listing in the Library is huge chunk of data – yottabytes of data for each address – that has no literal translation and seem to include a lot of junk data. It takes datamining efforts to correlate data from the Library with a possible exoplanet address. The Library can be mined for data about the address it connects to, but this is by no means a precise science for transhumans – it may be possible to tell what is at the destination if you dig deep enough (eg: “planet the gate is on probably orbits a G2 class star”, “the far gate might be in an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere” etc.).

Without Smooth Sailing, the Pandora Gates are somewhat unpredictable, even to experienced crashers and Gate Operators. This unpredictability is usually fairly low-scale: most of the time, things go as planned. Every so often, there’s a small problem, and rarely, larger problems appear.

Gates have been known to: • Cause strange but harmless hallucinations in people with Async powers. (almost always) • Interfere with, enhance or trigger Async abilities (sometimes) • Cause hallucinations of time passing or sensations like voices when travellers step into the wormhole’s horizon, even when the travel time should be instantaneous. (sometimes) • Suddenly close the connection with very little warning, possibly while something is transiting. (uncommon) • Simply refuse to establish a specific connection (sometimes) or any connections at all (very rare), either temporarily (common) or for the foreseeable future (very rare). • Cause new travellers to appear when a group uses the gate – a group of three people might pass through the gate, only to emerge with a fourth member who has no idea how they got there. These extra people are sometimes gatecrashers lost on prior missions, or turn out to be people killed during the Fall and ‘forcibly uploaded’ by the TITANs. (rare) • Cause travellers to simply vanish when they step into it – out of three people walking into a gate, the middle one might vanish while the other two go through okay. (very rare) • Send travellers to the wrong destination. (very rare – it’s more likely the operator didn’t interpret the Library address correctly)

The Submerged Gate scenario is inspired/shamelessly ripped off of a short story called Wang's Carpets, by Greg Egan.