Index | Penumbral Shadows | Background | Changes from baseline Eclipse Phase

Introduction

To a large degree, Penumbral Shadows and Thus Spoke Zarathustra use the history and setting of Eclipse Phase, but there are some very major deviations from what is presented in the material. What follows is a summary of the largest differences between the background in Eclipse Phase and the background in this campaign. Each entry will have a summary of the change, followed by the details and reasoning behind the change.

Changes

The game takes place 20 years after the fall (AF20)

The events after the fall are compressed and happen on a very quick timeline for 10 years- 20 years gives the setting room to breathe and the characters room to develop in background what they've been doing since the fall.

Cortical Stacks are not indestructible. They are rugged and can withstand a lot, but they can be destroyed- killing the Ego within.

In baseline Eclipse Phase, real death is not a very present threat. Because of the nature of the campaigns, more threat was deemed to be a good thing to create the desired atmosphere and keep people on their toes. It also gives more of a reason why some threats might not be recurring. As this is a narrative game, real death will be at the dictates of the story that the players craft. But losing a character is a possibility.

A Pandora Gate was discovered before the Fall, and the system beyond colonized.

Similar to the above statement about the years after the fall, this change was made to give the setting room to breathe- specifically, it gives room for the two campaigns to co-exist without continual crossover. It also is a function of the nature of the Pandora Gates in this setting.

Pandora Gates are found in space rather than planet side, and link to one location rather than being programmable.

Pandora Gates are located in space, though all known ones are in a system rather than deep space, and orbit the star at the center of the system rather than a given planetary body. They are large, nearing 2km in size, but have low levels of emission of any energy, making detecting them without knowing the location difficult. With studies of the gates, they have become a bit more detectable (leading to the discovery of others in the system), but not by much. Each gate links to one location, that might or might have more gates in system, creating a network of gates, rather than any singular gate being able to access more than one location. This substantially changes the feel of gatecrashing, and makes it not as regulated as in baseline Eclipse Phase. The danger then becomes in calculating resources and how far a particular gate crashing expedition can go, rather than in the environment on the other side of the gate. They also become interdiction points, as sizeable fleets can be sent through the gates.

Egos are not tagged in the Mesh, making finding a specific Ego harder.

One can put up a public face, akin to a public profile, and these can be verified by third parties (and indeed, networks require it to track reputation)- think PGP or other signing mechanisms. However, this is not done by default, making body hopping more difficult to detect for unknown quanitites that have left little to no digital traces of their Ego. It's a trade off between rep and networks and anonymity.

Alien Races have not been encountered.

This does not mean that they do not exist, or first contact will not happen. It just has not happened yet.

Asyncs are not well known, if they exist at all.

This does not mean that they do not exist, just that they are in lower numbers if they exist at all, and are not a well known quantity.

Political Factions have been altered.

They include the Planetary Consortium, the Jovian Republic, Autonomists (The Titanians, The Belters, and the Fringers), The Lunars, the Orbitals, the Morningstar Constellation, and the Eridani Protectorate.

Eclipse Phase is created by Posthuman Studios, LLC, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License