History TabletopGame / EclipsePhase

** In the Second Edition, the development team announced they were removing the Ultimates - who are commonly stereotyped as elitist {{Social Darwinist}} mercenaries - from the primary list of suggested player factions. Between publishing the first and second edition core rulebooks, the devs came to see them as a proto-fascist faction. As a consequence, playing as Ultimates is likely to require some homebrew. [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment This is controversial within the fan community, so let's leave it at that.]]

** One of the co-founders of Extropia is venture capitalist Petra Thiel, who is clearly some sort of relative of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel Peter Thiel]].

** Sidestepped by the Titanians. While the Commonwealth is part of the Autonomist Alliance, they do have a government, including a strong and well organized military, and one of the better developed intelligence appataruses in the setting. They have a Direct Democratic government, with the largest and most powerful governing body being the Plurality, a voting body comprised of every adult citizen of the age of majority. The day to day affairs of the Commonwealth are run by more traditionally-structured government institutions, the leadership of which have relatively short terms and are regularly voted on by the Plurality.

* OneFederationLimit: Jovian Republic, Morningstar Constellation, Planetary Consortium... played straight with one exception-- the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance and the Autonomist Alliance.

* SufficientlyAdvancedAlien: The [[spoiler:ETI]]. Their main weapon of the Exsurgent virus is basically magic. Hatefully horrible magic.

* OurElvesAreDifferent[=/=]SpaceElves: "Ultimates", a strange philosophy/military/government faction, who all are sleeved in 'Remade' - bodies genemodded to be as genetically perfect as possible, while still human. This includes slender, pale forms, smaller teeth, bigger eyes, and, yes, pointed ears. Their philosophy - eternal self-improvement through hardship (which, given their military origins, often means warfare) and rising above the rest through superiority in all things, physical and mental - is otherworldly enough, and factions within the Ultimates run the usual elf gamut - from benevolent and helpful, if a bit haughty in wishing to elevate the rest of transhumanity, to belligerent, elitist {{Social Darwinist}}s who look upon all other non-Ultimates as 'genetrash' not worth acknowledging in any way, to [[FairFolk otherworldly]] soldiers who have moved AboveGoodAndEvil.

* SlidingScaleOfLibertarianismAndAuthoritarianism: Extropia and anarchists on one end of the spectrum, and the Jovian Junta on the other. The Titan Commonwealth is strongly libertarian, while the Planetary Consortium is more-or-less moderate (personal freedoms and privacy rights are very strong, but democracy is virtually nonexistent and economic restrictions are somewhat stringent). The ultimates are hard to place; on the one hand, they have a nearly-Objectivist belief in the supremacy of the individual and their journey toward self-perfection, but their social mores emphasize extreme group identification and neo-fascism.

** The Ultimates have a reputation of this thanks to their similarities to both Exhuman and fascist philosophies. They aren't quite considered over the line by Firewall, but they're watching.

* {{Ubermensch}}: Manu Bhattacharya, founder of the ultimates, who developed a philosophy of [[SocialDarwinist survival of the fittest]], [[ToBeAMaster a continual search for physical and mental perfection]], [[RenaissanceMan capability in all areas]], and [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke radical genetic reconstruction of humanity]].

* FinalDeath: Slim but real possibility. This happens when somebody has their stack destroyed and their backups deleted or otherwise destroyed, a fate that happens by accident on a rare occasion, or dealt out by terrorists, assassins compensated for the extra effort, or courts handing down a sentence to the very worst of felons.

** Apparent alien contact has been made on the world of Giza, where alien artifacts, the strange "black box" communication devices, have instant communications to other terminals across the galaxy, or even the universe. People aren't entirely sure if it's an AI driven device used in some sort of con, or if the aliens who are willing to use them to trade technology and information are trading in safe technologies, marking Giza as a potential risk. [[spoiler: The black boxes, if they are indeed connecting to other aliens, apparently function as a galactic chat service, rife with aliens who are quite nasty about [[{{Squick}} wanting to cyber]] or just engaging in {{GIFT}}. The one tryout of the xenotech they gave the human gatecrashers gave the skeptics very good justification to be wary of any designs that came out of those boxes.]]

** X-Risks include stats for a ''resurrected TyrannosaurusRex,'' courtesy of Sky Ark.

* TeleportersAndTransporters: The Pandora Gates.

* [[spoiler:UltimateEvil: The ETI are being portrayed as this right now, though their seemingly-sinister actions may be caused by their BlueAndOrangeMorality.]]

* UpliftedAnimal: Uplifts, duh.

** In the inner system, people sleeved into synthetic morphs or infomorphs are looked down upon due to the financial implications that come with both, as well as a strong current of "biochauvinism" being in vogue and certain issues with the UncannyValley being persistent in synthmotphs. Even when somebody is sleeved into holds a high-end synthmorph or pod, they're likely to be viewed as an uncouth eccentric rather than somebody making a social statement.

* WalkingTheEarth: The Gatehopper groups who continuously travel through the Pandora Gates, sightseeing the wonders of the universe and sometimes return to transhuman space by random chance. Unless they ended up in a supernova by said random chance.

* GenderIsNoObject[=/=]PurelyAestheticGender: Since you can switch into a new body that has a gender more to your choose, or can have an implant that point-blank lets you switch genders, issues of gender politics have somewhat fallen by the way side. Where they do exist, it's a result of a hab's particular aesthetic and usually comes across as pretty damn weird, if not ultraconservative.

* LossOfIdentity: A quite possible occurrence, one of the most common being the situations where someone dies, gets restored from backup, and after some time passes the original is found to be alive after all, and now depending on local laws either the original or the backup is treated as an illegal Alpha-fork. This is how exsurgency manifests-the gradual replacing of a victim's mind with that of a hostile StarfishAlien. Phantom limbs for mandibles and antennae aren't infrequent.

** One of the files shown in X-Risks is the argument from a Firewall agent that capitalism lead to the Fall, and that its continued existence and strategies (unchecked resource use, laws, copyright, etc.) should be considered as big an X-Risk as the TITANs themselves.

** The Factors are the only aliens to be seen face to face. They're essentially highly evolved slime mold, having technology just years in advance of transhumanity--if the rumors of them having FTL travel turn out to be false--and just handful of ships doing trading and diplomatic missions throughout the solar system. However, their given name comes from the that they claim to be the self-appointed representatives of other species out there, though they are not giving out any details, and the fact they can be very deceptive when they choose to be, just opens up more questions than putting this fully into doubt. That said, they're still quite enigmatic and made first contact just a few years after the Fall. Surely just a coincedince...

* ScienceFictionKitchenSink: AI! ''Super''-AI! Holograms! Psychic powers! Killer robots! Post-apocalyptic scavenger wastelands! TheGreys (albeit human made, but still)! Uplifted animals (complete with a [[Film/PlanetOfTheApes group of uplifted primates whose city has a half-buried Statue of Liberty!]])! MiniMecha! {{Eldritch Abomination}}s! Bioware, cybenetics, and augmentations of every level! Hacking! Virtual reality and cyberpunk hacking! Clones! Spaceships of every sort! Ancient alien conspiracies! Psychic powers! Pseudo-zombie apocalypses! Robot apocalypses! And so on and so forth.

** Utterly sidestepped by the Titanians. While the Commonwealth is part of the Autonomist Alliance, they do have a government, including a strong and well organized military, and one of the better developed intelligence appataruses in the setting. They have a Direct Democratic government, with the largest and most powerful governing body being the Plurality, a voting body comprised of every adult citizen of the age of majority. The day to day affairs of the Commonwealth are run by more traditionally-structured government institutions, the leadership of which have relatively short terms and are regularly voted on by the Plurality.

* LawEnforcementInc: Security Firms in Extropia, acting as a Private Police force. [[PrivateMilitaryContractors Direct Action]] is the de facto main branch of the PC's military, and sometimes gets contracted for this kind of work.

** The Ultimates are notorious for this stance, but unlike most examples of the trope, they have levels of nuance to their philosophy and some sympathetic elements. Ultimates have a philosophy that's a strange hybrid of UsefulNotes/{{Objectivism}}, UsefulNotes/{{Confucianism}}, and shades of DivineRightOfKings, and heavily militarized. Broadly speaking, they believe that most are not utilizing transhumanism to it's full potential; mental and physical modifications are fairly straightforward and can make somebody a stronger and more capable individual. Most transhumans are content to be hedonistic and fearful after the Fall, whereas Ultimates train and mod themselves to become {{Warrior Monk}}s and {{Super Soldier}}s trying to fulfill transhumanity's full potential. While they have reasonable motivations and a mentality optimized for them, their culture [[FantasticRacism encourages them to look down on]] people who don't join them or who disagree with their philosophy (which is to say most of transhuman society), though individual Ultimates [[NobleBigot can be sympathetic]].

** In-Universe, Autonomists tend to compose the majority of Firewall agents, partially because the group formed from a bunch of Argonauts, rogue intelligence agents who no longer trusted their superiors, and proto-Barsoomians; and partially because every government in the solar system (except for Titan[[note]]in Titan's democratic society, labeling Firewall as terrorists would require admitting that they exist, which Fleet Intelligence is not going to do[[/note]]) has labeled them as terrorists.

* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods:
** The Octomorph is exactly what it sounds like, albeit now amphibious and capable of human speech.
** Humanity uplifted a number of the more intelligent species on Earth, giving them human-level intelligence while retaining most of their physiological traits. Both biological and cybernetic morphs exist for uplifted octopi, although they are capable of sleeving into humanoid morphs if they want to.

** Also there are Neotenics, who are engineered to be children, and while it is disapproved of for people in those morphs to work in the sex industry the fact that the rule book specifically mentions that does rather imply that it does happen. Ethical problems abound!

** Among a full suite of [[PowerPerversionPotential (probably) unintended uses of technology]], one noted example is [[TransferableMemory Experiential Playback]], which is a form of media all by itself, though often restricted or outright illegal due to its addictive properties, especially as editing can induce emotional extremes as part of a piece. Naturally, XP porn [[TheRuleOfFirstAdopters is a very real thing]].

* FutureSlang: Many examples.
* [[WalkingTheEarth Gatehopping The Universe]]: The Gatehopper groups who continuously travel through the Pandora Gates, sightseeing the wonders of the universe and sometimes return to transhuman space by random chance. Unless they ended up in a supernova by said random chance.

* HellHolePrison: The Jovian Junta's Maui Patera Rehabilitation Center on Io (Jupiter's moon covered with volcanoes).

** It's mentioned that playable [=AIs=] are engineered without the limitless potential of the early designs, to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

** The ''Gatecrashing'' sourcebook also includes a conversation involving a human born in late 1983 who never resleeved who was alive during The Fall

* AncientConspiracy: Millions (possibly billions) of years old, in regards to who or what created the Exsurgent virus and if the [=TITANs=] really went berserk all by themselves.

** the Ultimates are rumored to download indentured infomorphs into deaf, visually limited flats with no AR implants.[[note]]That may not seem bad, but remember this is a society where all but the poorest people have full mesh access essentially from birth, and where most genetic defects have been eliminated -- these deficiencies are considered ''crippling'' by the standards of transhumanity.[[/note]]

* LawEnforcementInc: Security Firms in Extropia, acting as a Private Police force.

* MegaCorp: The hypercorps are explicitly named as the modern descendants of the old "megacorps," most of which died in the Fall or were unable to adapt to post-scarcity economic models. Hypercorps tend to ''act'' a lot like megacorps in their operations, but the economics of the setting generally mean that they don't scale up to massive sizes, and the majority of their "employees" are usually contractors instead of wage labor.

* MercurialBase: [[MagneticWeapons Cannon]] which fires ingots into space.

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: Generally tends toward the "hard" end, with most scientific advances being logical extrapolations of modern, in-development, or currently-proposed technology. The primary exceptions are the [[CoolGate Pandora Gates]] and anything created by the [[AIIsACrapshoot TITANs]], largely due to their creations being [[ClarkesThirdLaw sufficiently advanced]].

* MotherOfAThousandYoung: The fate of the first in a group to be infected by the Glory strain of the exsurgent virus. All who follow become "her" attenders and mate endlessly to provide zygotes for incubation, implanted by ovipositor.