Badges of Epic Quest Bio
In Epic Quest Bio, the role-playing game that Molecular Reality Corporation uses as its management system, a badge is a label attached to a member's account that records how the member came to the game. Each badge has a name and a sentence or two of text addressed to its holder, and a member can hold several. The game's help text gives the definition in one line: "Your 'cohort' is how you came to be a part of this."[1]
Badges carry no experience points and are separate from the game's character classes.[1]
Name
The badges began as "cohorts", and the game's database still uses the old word: their definitions are stored in a table called cohort_description. When the software's code renamed them, it kept the old name working, with a comment explaining why: "Alias: CohortDescription is BadgeDefinition for backwards compatibility".[2] On the members' older dashboard each badge appeared as a small blue pill beside the member's details, and clicking it opened the badge's text. In EQBio-OS, a message from the company can award badges along with experience points and provisions, through a field labeled "Badges (add one or more)".[2]
Badges
Early players
| Badge | Text |
|---|---|
| EQBio-original | "You signed up to play Epic Quest Bio™ when it was still Epic Quest Biotechnology™ and way too early as an experiment to really take off." |
| Epic Quest mailing list | "You saw a promo in 2021 that said 'join our epic quest', and you did!" |
| CoronaPore project | "You tried to help us build the molecular aquarium early on in the pandemic." |
The first badge belongs to players who joined under the game's earlier name. Kemmish later wrote that he had "always wondered" why he called it Epic Quest Biotechnology, "when it's kind of generic, first-idea sounding", and the name was shortened to Epic Quest Bio in April 2025.[2]
The mailing-list badge refers to an online promotion of 2021. Its sign-up form asked each applicant for a favorite science fiction book or film, the early molecular game they would most like to play, and what excited them about the demonpore 64, the company's console-shaped instrument of the time. In one sample of 135 answers, "Dragon Tyrant Must Die!" narrowly beat "Raindrop Planet" as the game people wanted, 26 to 25. When the list was later imported into the game's database, its members received the badge in bulk.[2]
A third early badge marks the CoronaPore project of January 2020, when the company turned to the Molecular Aquarium, a chip on which a sliding aperture selects one pore at a time from an array, because of COVID-19.[3]
Membership and scholarships
| Badge | Text |
|---|---|
| PIONEER-ALPHA | "You purchased a lifetime membership in the club and will be comp'd for anything we build in coming years." |
| SCHOLARSHIP APPLICANT | "You've applied for a scholarship to get all your provisions comp'd." |
| SCHOLARSHIP WINNER | "You won a scholarship to have all provisions fully comp'd." |
The company's About page invites visitors to "Join Kemmishtree in our Club to Cure All Diseases".[4] Lifetime membership sold for $300, and the scholarships paid for the provisions of members who could not afford it.[2] In August 2026 the company's guide for visitors reported that it was "not currently recruiting new players".[5]
Team, advisers and friends
| Badge | Text |
|---|---|
| SAB member | "You are or have been a formal member of our Scientific Advisory Board." |
| early advisor/contractor | "Very early on, you did work for us or helped us out in other ways." |
| ex-Halcyon, honorary member | (no text) |
| Friend of Kent/Honorary Member | (no text) |
The geneticist George Church was the first formal member of the scientific advisory board, and a second scientific advisor joined later.[6] The founding team has a badge of its own, whose text is the longest of the set: "You're either a full time employee, a former full time employee, or someone so wrapped up in all of this one way or another that it's fair to call you a member of the founding team!"[1]
Two honorary badges have names but no text. One is for veterans of Halcyon Molecular, the DNA sequencing company where Kent Kemmish worked from 2009 to 2012; the other is for friends of Kemmish.[1][7]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d "Badges". EQBio-OS. Molecular Reality Corporation. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b c d e "Company records". Molecular Reality Corporation. October 2026.
- ^ Kemmishtree (March 29, 2026). "(no subject)". EQBio-OS.
- ^ "Join Kemmishtree in our Club to Cure All Diseases". Molecular Reality Corporation. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality". Molecular Reality Corporation. August 2026.
- ^ Kemmishtree (March 29, 2026). "(no subject)". EQBio-OS.
- ^ "Stanley Kent Kemmish, Jr." Molecular Reality Corporation. May 2026.