181: The Lonely Dome

ENTRY 181: The Lonely Dome

The Shaheed Dome is a small, autonomous “waypoint” habitat on Mars on one of the southern roads leading out from Ashoka to the outlying dirt and moisture farms. With no permanent residents, Shaheed is little more than a shelter for passing traffic to wait out the sandstorms or catch a breath of fresh air and clean water, maintained by automated systems and the social contract of visitors, who help keep the place clean and change the filters so that the next travelers can benefit. A few regulars also know it as one of the few hardcopy public libraries on Mars, again operating on the trust system: a modest collection of a few hundred books printed on plastic pages and kept in ring-binders awaits travelers, along with a double handful of “donations” that have accumulated throughout the years.

Or so goes common knowledge. In truth, the Shaheed Dome is neither abandoned or autonomous—they are an autistic macromorph, resleeved into the control system of the dome as part of an experimental therapy unit, and subsequently forgotten after the Fall. Shaheed is desperately lonely, but finds great difficulty in communicating and expressing themselves to other transhumans, and takes particularly obsessive care of any “guests” who come to visit. Most of the books in the library were written by Shaheed, and represent their dreams and memories as much as anything. Like many authors, Shaheed usually inserts itself somewhere in the narrative.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
12	14	15	15	14	18	13	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	1	26	4	52	200	50	300

Morph: Macromorph

Skills: Art: Writing 45, Hardware: Environmental Systems 50, Hardware: Robotics 34, Interests: Hospitality 33, Kinesics 25, Investigation: 25, Language: Native English 75, Language: Swahili 63, Profession: Lodging 60, Protocol 25

Implants: 360-Degree Vision, Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Eidetic Memory, Lidar, Radar, T-Ray Emitter

Armor: 10

Notes: Immobile, Mental Disorder (Autism), Social Stigma (Macromorph)

Using The Lonely Dome

Living, sentient structures have a solid place in science fiction, and the Lonely Dome provides one way for gamemasters to introduce them into their Eclipse Phase games. Finding it difficult to communicate but obsessively lonely, the gamemaster should play up how a building that desperately craves human attention and interaction but cannot outright ask for it may act—from obsequious but surreptitious assistance of visitors to subtly trying to keep them there for longer periods, or at least to draw them back when they leave. However, Shaheed is not overly villainous in its intentions, and would likely not resort to murder or life-threatening situations to keep their “guests” from leaving, and would be protective of them if any violence did threaten. The major question is how long it will take the PCs to realize that perhaps there is a guiding intelligence behind the Lonely Dome.

Seed

• Rumors have reached back to Ashoka of a “haunted” habitat, and a group of travelers in that region that have gone missing, with their friends and loved ones posting a reward. Investigations lead to the Lonely Dome…and Shaheed works to keep the PCs there as it tries to provide clues to what happened to the missing travelers, perhaps leaving clues in one of the books in its library.