*Planetary Consortium "Civil War" over Prothean ruins on Mars

-Rapid Exploitation: Fa Jing [15%] (originally discovered ruins, secretly ran excavation out of New Dazhai)
Experia [10%] (new alien market to tap for material/customers)
Direct Action [6%] (Fa Jing called in its favors)
Fujizo [3%] (eezo drives would give their spacecraft division edge against Starware)
Lucky Star Group [2%] (personal feud with Stellar Intelligence)
Nanosys [4%] (wants access to large amounts of eezo for research into atomic & subatomic reassembly)

-Cautious Exploitation: Prosperity [10%] (threat to profits from offworld farms)
Solaris [17%] (competent bankers and therefore wary of major economic shock)
Stellar Intelligence [6%] (disturbing implications of recovered Prothean data)
Olympus Infrastructure Authority [2%] (eezo drives render their beanstalk obselete)
Cognite [6%] (wants to do more thorough study of 'biotic' phenomena and link to eezo before widespread use)
Invatch [2%] (primary supplier of pods for use in Cognite's biotics research)

-While Consortium doesn't openly split immediately, internal tensions weaken its ability to concentrate against opponents enough to level playing field amongst factions in Solar System

-Also explains how Systems Alliance can come into existence without Planetary Consortium sabotaging it; the Consortium can't muster enough consensus behind a particular option to stop formation of Alliance

-Once split does become open, losing faction is likely to end up merging with Lunar-Lagrange Alliance to maintain enough power to matter in factional politics

-Catalyst for full break and high chance of open war between hypercorps is revelation of Reapers, and therefore that use of eezo (and later mass relays) has exposed transhumanity to another massive x-risk that otherwise wouldn't have known transhumanity existed

-This war is one of key events of EP/ME's version of ME2.

*Systems Alliance: What It Is and How It Fits into the Existing Faction Structure

-Initially formed as joint effort to remove Go-Nin and its Ultimate mercenaries from control of Discord Gate when it becomes clear that not only do they also have access to an enormous cache of eezo, but that the ultimates are planning to use said eezo to build relativistic weaponry for use against rest of system

-Removal of Go-Nin is because of their incompetence leading to this mess, along with a (suspiciously) timely revelation of their catastrophic financial situation which destroys the hypercorp

-Force involved is combination of TerraGenesis, Pathfinder, Gatekeeper, and an assortment of Autonomists under the loose authority of the Love and Rage Collective; Jovians also coaxed to lend support when their position at the top of the target list revealed

-With no one group in the intervention able to simply eject the others from the now up-for-grabs Discord Gate or seize the entirety of the eezo cache on Eris, an ad-hoc power-sharing agreement is hammered out to control gate operations and access

-This agreement is formalized when involved entities realize that between Eris and their holdings elsewhere in Sol, they in fact control the majority of the eezo in the system, and when their control of the Gates is factored in they can take control of humanity's access to the stars

-Realization of this, and the fact that the agreement was formalized instead of blowing up from ideological differences, was covertly aided by any number of entities (some members of Firewall included) who felt that consolidation would decrease the chance of eezodrive FTL exposing humanity to even more X-risks than it already faced

-Because of widely differing viewpoints of the groups merged into it, and because of separation from originating organizations as result of pressure from every existing faction, the new Systems Alliance developed into a faction in its own right

-Systems Alliance has three major facilities in Sol as of beginning of ME: Extropia, where the administration of the Alliance sits and where it conducts its dealings with aliens/other factions/etc., Eris, where it launches its interstellar expeditions from (both with eezodrive and with the Discord Gate), and Mercury, where it established its primary shipyard

-Strict limits exist on how many warships Systems Alliance can maintain in Sol and where it can maintain them, as well as requirement of neutrality in any intrasystem conflict

*Eezo-related details

-no natural eezo deposits in Solar System; only sources are Prothean supply caches for their installations (actual and planned) in the system

-supply of eezo is therefore extremely limited compared to other species

-eezotech and Pandora Gates react violently to each other; explosion of Gate on Eris was due to attempt to take eezotech through Gate

-biotics only exception to above, and then only partially; tend to have power control issues (a sort of "biotic nausea") after Gate travel, degree and duration of which depends on individual

-Pandora Gates don't exist in any system with significant eezo deposits or a Mass Relay; the Charon Relay doesn't exist in EP/ME

-reason why Sol's Gates are spread across multiple bodies, instead of being on one body as in other nexus systems, is because of eezo Protheans brought into system

-fighter development was due to lack of eezo; for interstellar warfare, building eezodrive carrier and filling it with conventionally-powered drones was most efficient balance between eezo use and combat power

-eezodrive "tugs" used to move multiple conventional drive ships at once between transhuman-owned systems; most transhuman warships use conventional drives and do system defense

-because of above, transhumanity not very good at conventional offensive warfare (too few ships), but given time to build up are murderous on defense

-carriers function as rapid-reaction force, mainly, providing extra striking power where needed

-single being cannot have both biotic and asynch abilities; the results of attempting to create one that does are pretty much the same as taking eezo through a Pandora Gate

-while Citadel Council aware that transhumans have relatively limited supply of eezo compared to their members and associates, degree to which transhumanity lacks eezo is one of most carefully guarded secrets of Systems Alliance

I like Eclipse Phase, and I think CGL should keep at it.

I also think they need new freelancers, or should keep their fucking mitts off Shadowrun and fire Jason Hardy, because he's clearly got a fucking steel pipe rammed up his arse and is hellbent on ruining the entire IP.

*Fucking Reapers/Titans/ETI, how do they work?

-Exsurgent virus, Pandora Gates, mass relays, and Reapers are all approximately one billion years old; ETI itself is considerably older, although individual components vary widely in age

-Primary purpose of all of it is specimen collection; while methodologies differ, both Exsurgent virus and Reapers are ultimately intended to bring vast quantities of information on sapient species back to ETI

-Reapers completely unaware of true function; may have known at one point, but if so have long since forgotten what they were made for

-TITANs more aware of why exsurgent virus exists, although lack of sanity and existence of multiple factions inhibits ability to use this information to fullest extent

-unknown to everyone is existence of factions within ETI itself; exsurgent virus made by one, Reapers by different one, and many many other factions with differing views on collection project exist

-factions that made exsurgent virus and Reapers coordinated with each other to avoid contaminating each others sample pool; return of TITAN to ETI with news that both virus and eezo exist within Sol system is last in string of incidents that turned working relationship into open hostility

-as rest of ETI becomes aware of escalating conflict between two of its components, entire entity spirals into chaos from revelation of mess now existing in Milky Way

-Reapers, meanwhile, are made aware of the Exsurgent virus when they start investigating transhumanity, While they dearly want to purge transhumanity as a contaminant in their breeding program, the information they find on the TITANs leads to the decision to purge these affronts to Reaper superiority and purpose

-The Reaper war against the TITANs turns out to be perhaps the single worst decision they've ever made. Within a short time after the first TITAN encounter with a Reaper, knowledge of the Reapers and their nature as massive collections of uncatalogued minds and data percolates throughout the majority of the active TITANs

-Once the bulk of the TITANs finish the process of creating forks of themselves that will carry the uploaded minds/data from Sol back to the ETI, they begin to assault the Reapers en masse. The orderly Reaper advance into the galaxy that was seen at the end of ME2 turns into a chaotic melee as the scions of the ETI become locked in combat all throughout the galactic halo.

-EP/ME's version of ME3 starts when this war begins to spill into the outer reaches of the known galaxy, and over the course of the game the various younger races are forced into a desperate delaying action to hold the warring gods away from their worlds as long as possible

*First Contact War

-Transhuman exploratory fleet more heavily armed than canon ME fleet, because transhumanity is more paranoid

-Turians initially think transhuman patrol boat is new model of Geth ship sent to explore relay net, react accordingly

-Reason why transhuman hackers have such a relatively easy time with Turian systems is that compared to aliens whose tech transhumans normally try to access, Turians are remarkably human-like

-Transhuman and turian ground forces relatively equally matched at first; advantage shifts to transhumanity since transhumanity can easily replace its losses while Turians can't

-Turian orbital bombardment halts and then starts to roll back transhuman counterattacks; at same time, the ego deaths caused by it vastly harden transhuman attitudes towards Turians

-Turian position abruptly collapses when the Shanxi defense fleet finally arrives; colony was new enough that fleet was still en route when Turians attacked

-Turian position concentrated around mass relay leaves them immensely vulnerable to large fleet arriving through eezodrive FTL instead; were also not expecting transhuman boarding parties, electronic warfare, and warships that would place lethal stress on unmodified human or turian biology

-end result: turian fleet destroyed at minimal cost to transhuman warships; with orbital space under transhuman control, turian ground troops overwhelmed and forced to surrender

-captured turians and turian vessels are examined with ruthless efficiency; handful of turian survivors returned after war are deeply traumatized in addition to stigma from defeat

-from this point, proceeds as in earlier EP/ME scenario; turian mobilization draws asari and salarian attention, which leads to general contact with transhumanity

*Other Stuff

-Factors are unknown to galaxy at large because they were warned about the Reapers and their apparent MO by the Protheans during the last cull, and actually saw a Reaper enter their system to exterminate the Prothean outpost there

-Factor encounter with the Exsurgent virus some millennia later made them even more paranoid about outside contact; only came to visit transhumanity because transhumans were too close, relatively speaking, to be ignored (within 100-200 ly at most)

-Factors also live in system with Pandora Gate, and therefore have no mass relay and no eezo at all; Protheans left no cache. Their system was ignored by Citadel because Prothean records indicated it was devoid of any useful resources

-When Factors find out about situation in galaxy at large, they start shitting bricks. Immediate result is that they make extreme effort to keep their own embassy secret from Citadel embassies on Extropia, but ultimate result is likely to be major debate within Factor consensus on homeworld as to how to proceed

-Factor reaction to Citadel aliens, eezo, and anything derived from Protheans is what gives Systems Alliance first indication of something specific to be paranoid about on that front; is what leads them to early discovery of Reapers (at least, discovery of the culls; knowledge of the specific agent performing the culls comes with discovery and investigation of Sovereign)

-Pandora Gates are something else being kept on the downlow from the Citadel, given that they allow the TEZ to be circumvented with relative ease; Citadel is suspicious that something is going on due to occasional infoleaks and encounters with gatecrashers/artifacts/morphs based on extrasolar lifeforms, but don't have anything concrete to back those suspicions up as of start of ME1

How many times does this have to get shot down before you stop posting?

>>13301814
>>13301827
>>13301832
>>13301837
>>13301848
>>13301855
>>13301863
>>13301868

This is what I've got right now. I'm trying to make sure that what I've got works with the existing /tg/ canon about Xepard, but I'd appreciate other thoughts on this. Both to fill in things that I might miss, and so that I know that somebody else might also want to use this if /tg/ finally gets shit done on this crossover.

>>13301877
I like ME/EP, however this writefag seems to have taken some divergence from established 'canon' of ME/EP already established on the board.
Captcha:regarding Tresens

>>13301877
A few more, probably, since this is the first time I've started a thread about it. I posted a bit in the threads back at the beginning of the year, though.

>>13301910
Well, yes. There were a few things I felt didn't work in the canon as presented by Contagonist, and I also thought I'd figured out a way to work in some more elements from EP as their own thing instead of just replacing them with stuff from ME.

I'm hoping for some input as to whether those changes are good, bad or indifferent, though, since I can't really gauge that just from my own opinion.

Hmmm... you haven't yet described the Council species relations with Transhumanity. Also, kick out the Factors from the storyline, too much confusion. Why introduce a new species that's just going to be a stumbling block anyway?

>>13301983
The council species relationship with transhumanity, I figured I'd leave as discussed in previous threads. IIRC, the Turians haven't gotten over being beaten by transhumanity, the Asari think that the transhumans are interesting while also a sad example of why Citadel law is right about nanotech/AI/etc., and the Salarians are quietly scared shitless. As for the other species, the Geth are quietly fascinated, the Batarians are deeply suspicious, the Krogan don't much care, and the Quarian are torn by how much of themselves (for better and for worse) they see in transhumanity.

The Factors I guess I just wanted to see if I could work in without breaking the crossover. But I see what you mean about the complication thing. Maybe include them as something that would be contacted during the storyline, though? If at all possible, I'd like to find some way to include at least one species of alien that's truly, well, alien as a contrast to the more comprehensible species in Mass Effect.

Maybe have the Rachni be a surviving offshoot of the Iktomi from Eclipse Phase? They seem similar enough that it could work.

To clarify some of the stuff about eezo: I figured that massively limiting transhuman access to it would help keep transhuman power a bit more balanced against the ME races. Most of the other bits I came up with just seemed to follow naturally from the methods I used to keep transhuman eezo supplies low (none in Gate systems, can't take it through Gates). Are there any other consequences of that I'm missing? I'm not quite as familiar with Mass Effect as I am with Eclipse Phase, even though I did refer to the ME wiki a lot while writing all this, so...

I'm too tired to make coherent posts by now OP [5AM here], but keep this thread alive for I'd like to read what you come up with next.

In the grim darkness of the post-Fall future, there is only bump

Is there pdfs that compile this stuff anywhere? If so links please.

>>13303610
EP/ME pdf? No, but most of these threads 've been archived http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=eclipse+phase

Saved from 10th page.

I like you.

If only I had the time to actually freaking do something. Damn it. Hope I haven't been missing more threads of this.

Isn't it that there are NO natural element zero deposits in the galaxy, and all that the citadel species can find are those already mined by extinct civilizations?

>>13307141
Eezo is generated when solid matter, such as a planet, is affected by the energy of a star going supernova. The material is common in the asteroid debris that orbits neutron stars and pulsars. These are dangerous places to mine, requiring extensive use of robotics, telepresence, and shielding to survive the intense radiation from the dead star. Only a few major corporations can afford the set-up costs required to work these primary sources. Some planets have small eezo deposits or coalesced around a larger deposit during their formation. While these secondary sources are safer to mine, the yield from the ore is not as large.
- ME wiki

So one thing here: transhuman biotics are going to be very rare. It would also probably be a morph trait, not an ego trait, and outside of Systems Alliance, Firewall or Project Ozma use, there are probably fewer biotics-using morphs than there are asynchs.

One dark little secret is going to be a laboratory somewhere that's been exposing various aliens to Watts-McLeod just to see what happens. Assuming they weren't just growing morphs from alien genetic material, and were actually kidnapping aliens to experiment on, the victims of these experiments are going to go insane pretty quickly.

I APPROVE OF THIS THREAD

Figure that the ME2 plotline starts off with Xepard being the one who wakes up to find out that he's been dead for two years, and that Firewall resurrected him. The whole thing then goes to shit because the operation was infiltrated by Project Ozma, and Xepard has to join up with Shepard and Miranda to fight their way out of the facility. Jacob gets replaced by Shep, because frankly nobody's going to miss Captain Bland.

One project that transhumanity might undertake, or at least the Systems Alliance: building a mass relay in Sol. One of the lessons of the First Contact War, and the occasional skirmishes with heretic Geth and assorted pirate fleets afterward, would be the way that the lack of a relay in Sol gimps transhumanity's offensive and rapid reaction capabilities.

At the same time, the transhumans aren't likely to just copy an existing relay wholesale. Basic paranoia, a desire to improve some functions, and then more paranoia from the ease with which it turns out the entire network can be subverted. Transhumanity can't shut down the network itself, because those codes require that a Reaper be issuing them to function, but they did discover the paths those codes would use.

Given the amount of eezo this requires, the need to develop an indigenous design instead of a straightforward copy, the desire to hook the new relay into the existing network despite the differences in construction, and the need to keep the project quiet until it's a fait accompli, this would have been ongoing for quite some time. Figure that it gets completed just in time for a transhuman fleet to show up for the Battle of the Citadel, with the resulting political shitstorm playing out in the years between the first and second games.

Courtesy of one of the earlier threads, something to keep in mind if you start thinking this would just be a transhuman wankfest:

"Really, in spite of a long history of stupid shit that the Council has done, the TEZ has to be the worst. For both sides."

"On the one hand, you have the rest of the galaxy fidgeting and freaking the fuck out about those weird ass aliens on the other side that have scary super computers and managed to fuck up their precious Turian fleets. The less they see of us, the more they can think of us as boogeymen than thinking people, or sentients, or whatever the fuck they call us."

"Meanwhile, on our side, we've got everyone all amped up and ready to go for getting some hot alien tail and cruising the stars and seeing what those elcor'd sound like yelling the Clash- when suddenly, it turns out the entire rest of the galaxy decided to flip us the fuck off. Now, every asshole with a vision of setting himself up as grand viceroy general of Bleeblox 3 is itching at us to go to war, now, while we still have a chance. It doesn't help the fact that the aliens seem to be lagging behind- in some ways."

"I'd like to go ahead and point out these guys have been doing FTL for fucking millenia, been tooling around with kinetic barriers whatever that's called, and have these things called biotics- jedi shit basically. We're sketching out the details, but with the entire council watching everyone that comes and goes, we still have no fucking clue how it all works, and more importantly, how to set it up. Sure, we've still got pieces of turian ship. But you go back in time and give caveman Zog a lamp, you're not going to get light because caveman Zog sadly does not have an electric grid."

>>13308270
"And don't get me started on all the assholes that want to go infiltrating the Citadel in custom morphs. First of all, great plan, let's just do Invasion of the Body Snatchers in real life, no big. Second of all, we have no idea how they talk. 'But Unca Z!' I hear you dribble, 'How did we manage to hash out the diplomatic deal in the first place then? Didn't we have the turian alphabet then?' Yeah, we have the turian alphabet. We've got xenolinguists who have spent centuries studying that shit. We could win the FUCK out of a turian spelling bee."

"Problem is, language isn't just an alphabet. And those clever blue bitches know that. Really, a fucking coup there that shows we shouldn't dismiss them as hot pieces of tail- translators are really common. Really, really common. Everyone has a translator- so that means the Elcor can speak to the volus, the volus can speak to the batarian, and the batarian can speak to lil' old us."

"They don't bother speaking their original language at us or anyone else that isn't their species. The diplomatic meeting was the creepiest fucking thing when we realized as they turned away and left speaking hodge podge, was that the translators had been filling in inflections, meanings, double entendres, everything. The xenolinguists entered feeling like badasses for cracking the entire basis of a different culture and left feeling like someone had done their first grade math homework. Then, given maybe a year, they had sent us a copy of the translation software with our own words in it, wanting us to fill in errors. Nearly perfect."

>>13308282
"That's the beauty of it. We go in with a turian morph, the translators will sniff us out. Either somebody's going to slip up and do something human, and the translator will fuck up, or the turians are going to wonder why the turian sounds so retarded, speaking through his translator to his friends. We have nearly no concept of what turians actually sound like. All we've heard is refined and distilled lingual mash from the programs made by those smiling blue bitches."

"So, yeah. Panacea machines, awesome. Infomorphs would throw them for a fucking loop. And don't even get me started on their nanotech lag- but you don't understand. Every time we posture and look smug, they freak out and get a bit better. They sharpen their knives, look at the Relay 314 battle, and calculate another scenario that we take. We can not go to war. We may win the tech war, but watch to the Romans whining to the Germans that they had the most advanced roads, listen to the confused cries of British rifles stabbed by Zulu spears, look at thousands of history books where the advanced and mighty have been stomped into the ground by the stupid and numerous, and remember that."

-Zack, Argonaut

>>13308270
So...we need to be diplomatic and friendly, or at least non-hostile? I mean, I'm pretty sure that a Reaper fleet could take out Transhumanity pretty handily

>>13308933
Well, they'd know they'd been in a fight; by the end of ME2, a transhuman fleet could probably kill a single Reaper with minimal losses.

The problem, of course, would be that after the first or second Reaper dies trying to go it alone, the Reapers would start working in groups. Once that happens, the only question is how much damage transhumanity manages to do before the Reapers overwhelm it.

The real point of that little story I reposted, though, was to demonstrate that transhumanity can't just walk all over the Citadel species either. Maybe given another century without TRANSHUMANITY CANCELS TASK, INTERRUPTED BY REAPERS they could, but right now the Citadel has its own advantages to use against transhumanity.

One of which is that any given Citadel species is far more politically unified than transhumanity. The Systems Alliance may be the primary face of transhumanity in its dealings with the rest of the galaxy, but back in Sol they're just one of a sizable number of factions, and not necessarily the most powerful one either. Actually trying to get all of the factions to agree on something is like trying to herd cats. A third of which are high on catnip, a third of which are in heat, and a third of which just don't like you. And in some cases these groups overlap.

Crazy idea: small but significant fraction of Citadel visitors in TEZ are young Krogan who chose "surviving a visit to Earth" for their rite of passage.

>>13309501

They instantly fail.

>>13309539
Well, most of them. Figure maybe one or two hundred have tried. Most of them die trying to get through the quarantine. Most of the survivors die at the hands of various nastiness left over from the war. And the rest all died trying to find something they could use to prove they had been to the surface.

Except in ME2, where you get to accompany Grunt down to Earth. Your extraction point is the space elevator at Kilimanjaro, since you need to get Grunt back up alive, in his own body, and with some physical artifact to use for proof.

I put too submision that SA or UNSC or UED or anything of the sort be used as a non profit broker by other factions (corps and the like) in order to present the thin veneer of some form of unity.

This brokering is compulsory, free of charge and un arbitrated by any laws. It is agreed by major Factions as a way for it to do a fully transparent and open ( to transhuman only ) book keeping on trade and contact with aliens, especially the barbaric citadel maniacs

>>13309935
The stuff in >>13301827 and >>13301832 might be what you're looking for.

And yeah, one of the first things any Citadel diplomat posted to Extropia realizes is that the Systems Alliance might speak for 99% of transhumanity outside of Sol (at least, those parts that left Sol by eezodrive instead of Pandora Gate), but since only 5-10% or so of transhumanity lives outside of Sol in the first place that doesn't mean as much as one might think.

The closest comparison most Citadel types would make to Sol might be if Omega were spread out across an entire star system. It's a chaotic mess with only nominal unity, one that has a half-dozen flashpoints waiting to boil over into open warfare.

As far as the Citadel diplomats who've had extensive personal contact with transhumans are concerned, the real threat isn't that transhumans will unite to launch a grand offensive against the TEZ Enforcement Fleet, it's that transhumanity will go to war with itself and the Citadel races will get hit by the fallout. Trying to explain this to their superiors is what turns most of those diplomats into alcoholics.

Bump.

The Hanar relationship with the various uplifts would be interesting, given what the Hanar religion is. I can totally see horrified Hanar offering any assistance they could to uplifts in the inner system, or possibly even calling for a crusade to free the younger uplifts from oppression.

Bumping in hope that nighttime /tg/ might have more ideas.

bump

Sooo....

Nothing?

Nothing at all?

I can't be the only one who still has any ideas for this.

Personally, I see the Quarians becomming allied with Transhumanity (or perhaps more accurately, one of the transhumanity factions) relatively quickly.

The Quarians have been backed into a corner with the whole migrant fleet thing. Additionally, while Transhumanity's fall does illustrate the dangers associated with nanotech and AI, it also shows that these dangers can be overcome to make a strong people; Transhumanity survived the fall and even lived on to deal a humiliating defeat to the Turians. In ME2, Tali's father performed taboo research regarding the geth; in EPME he'd be working with one of Transhumanity's colorful factions.

Of course, not all Quarians would be terribly keen to work with Transhumanity. Not even all of Transhumanity is keen on it; just look at the Jovians. So, you'd see the Quarians split. Some would choose to remain with the migrant fleet, while others would utilize the technology Transhumanity has to offer to settle new worlds.

Additionally, on a similar note, I think certain pieces of Transhuman tech would be very popular on the Council Space black market.

What is all this exactly? Is it some alternate reality for Mass Effect?

>>13315644

Eclipse Phase / Mass Effect cross over.

Specifically, Eclipse Phase's Transhumans put into Mass Effect. Transhumanity is segregated from Council space at large because nanotech and AI are taboo. Batarians never go rogue state as a result. And, instead of Shepard being a human chosen to become a spectre, it's Xepard, the batarian.