Scientist (Epic Quest Bio)
| Scientist | |
|---|---|
 The Scientist poster, one of nine class posters in the header of the company's member software | |
| First appearance | "How to Play Epic Quest Bio" (2025), as Sciencer |
| Created by | Molecular Reality Corporation |
| In-universe information | |
| Occupation | "hard sciences" |
| Affiliation | Molecular Streaming Corps |
| Former name | Sciencer |
| Color | Green (RGB 85, 221, 81) |
Scientist is one of the nine character classes of Epic Quest Bio, the role-playing game through which Molecular Reality Corporation organizes its work. Until the class posters of June 2026 it was called Sciencer, and the help file of the company's member software still gives it under that name, as "'Sciencer' (hard sciences)".[1] Every member of the game holds the title Player Scientist, so a member who chooses this class becomes a Player Scientist of the Scientist class.
Name
The founder's essay "How to Play Epic Quest Bio", the landing text of epicquest.bio in 2025, explains the first name. It cites "an obscure rhetorical term called 'anthimeria'", the use of one part of speech as another, and the stranded astronaut of the 2015 film The Martian, who resolves to science his way out of trouble. "The character class name 'Sciencer' anthimeriates 'science' full circle, from noun to verb and back to noun. In Epic Quest Bio™, Sciencers science."[2] The company also used the word as an ordinary noun: a 4,000-point quest titled "Patent prosecution" asked members to "Work with a sciencer to put together patents (provisional and/or full)".[3]
The posters replaced the coinage of 2025 with one from 1834. "Scientist" first appeared in print that March, in an anonymous review of Mary Somerville's On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences in the Quarterly Review. The reviewer, William Whewell, reported it as a suggestion for a single word to cover the students of the material world, formed by analogy with "artist".[4]
Origins
The essay lists the class's territory as "molecular and cellular biology and genetics, nanopore science, physics, materials science, chemistry, bioinformatics, zoology, botany, virology, microbiology, astrobiology", and tells anyone with professional expertise or "a passionate interest" in them to take the class as a major. It ends on a ranking: "Everyone who plays Epic Quest Bio™ is a Player Scientist™, and everyone will science, but Sciencers will science the most sciencely."[2]
In the company's database Sciencer is the first of the eight original classes, with the color 85, 221, 81 in RGB, a green, and the placeholder description "The Sciencer class is vital to the mission. [Edit this description in the Command Deck]". Its flat icon shows a green funnel above a blue line with a ring in it.[3]
Poster
The poster, 3,748 by 3,752 pixels, shows a round teal field darkening toward its rim, like a dish under a microscope. A chain of beads in red, blue, purple and orange lies across it inside a yellow halo, and large teal letters outlined in black spell "Scientist" along the bottom.[3] A member who clicks the poster opens the company's chat, LabChat, with "Scientist question:" already typed.
Work of the class
The largest quest the company has offered is a science quest. "Sequence DNA with an ss-nanopore", worth 9,900,000 experience points, read: "This is a holy grail, and the XP represents a pool (unless, somehow, a single player does it!)." Other quests asked for a five-to-ten-minute video "about a peer-reviewed paper related in some way to our long-term mission" (500 points), for help with "a major peer-reviewed journal article about our early work with mechanical nanopores" (a pool of 200,000), and for a discussion of an "analytical universal single device" (1,000). All of these have been switched off. Among the quests still open, for 1,000 points, members may start collecting samples for the World Particle Project, under the question "Got freezer space?"[3]
The Disclosure Crawl, the company's quiz dungeon, has two classes of its own for the sciences: the Genomic Ranger, a "DNA/RNA specialist", and the Protein Whisperer, the "Master of molecular interactions".[5]
See also
References
- ^ "EQBio-OS help: Gamification & Epic Quest Bio". Molecular Reality Corporation. 2026.
- ^ a b Kemmishtree (2025). "How to Play Epic Quest Bio". epicquest.bio.
- ^ a b c d "Company records". Molecular Reality Corporation. October 2026.
- ^ Whewell, William (1834). "On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. By Mrs. Somerville". Quarterly Review 51: 54-68.
- ^ "Dungeons & Diligence: The Disclosure Crawl, The Entrance Hall". Molecular Reality Corporation. April 2026.