#ToProsperIsToFall #Part3

#ToProsperIsToFall #Part3

Happy turkey day!

Welcome to Part 3 of my play report for my on-going Colony game of Uncharted Worlds! This time, gameplay was smooth but slow-moving; this was a bit of a talking heads session, but no real problem there. Assessment got a real workout this time, as did the Educator Skill, and now everybody is sitting on some delicious, delicious Data Points.

Generally, I divide my PbP games into sessions on a weekly basis: Monday through Friday is game time, with weekends belonging to the players to do whatever things need their attention as adults. In real life, game length can vary widely between 2 hours all the way out to wild weekend long game-a-thons; online, the equivalent is more about user activity than time invested. But: one week, one session, that’s how I roll.

Now let’s get to it first with a character recap. If you want better details about what happened last time, or want to know more details about our Factions or more in-depth character details, use the To Prosper Is To Fall Hashtag above to find Parts 1 and 2, or browse the community for the rest of my To Prosper Is To Fall posts.

Our Cast of Protagonists are:

• Dr. Merit Pantaleimon is an Academy Missionary (Productive/Academic/Explorer) with Loyalty to The Academy on Alexandria and indebted to them for her life, education, and status among them

• Zeph Athena Parthenon is an Ambassador (Galactic/Starfarer/Personality) with Loyalty to Hermes Corporation and indebted to them for his Class-2 starship “The New Horizon”

• Jiro “Marat” Kankkunen is a Turncoat Spy (Rigid/Clandestine/Outlaw) indebted to Acheron Securities for their gear/training/knowledge he stole when he went AWOL; Hermes Corp for smuggling him out of Acheron space; and the Void Confederation for pushing through his paperwork to get a new identity and colonist status somewhere on the frontier

—

And now:

“Last time… on To Prosper is to Fall…”

• Imagine seeing a horrible sandstorm filled with red lightning sweep over the colony

• Imagine seeing crops get destroyed while we hear Harmony and Merit talk about how vital they are

• Imagine seeing Merit and Cosmos talking about the planet Fatima and the lost Agri-Box and SmartSeeds

• Imagine seeing a starship get blasted by lightning while hearing Liv and Zeph shout back and forth about landing the damn thing, intercut with scenes of its repair

• Imagine seeing Liv throwing some debris to the side while audio tells us the new machining parts are ruined, intercut with the Confederation Overseer reminding Zeph he has until the end of the month not to default on his contract

• Imagine seeing Reason say he thinks he knows where the damn storm came from, intercut with Ilyana standing over Crux’s bloodied body

• Imagine seeing Jiro kick Ilyana’s ass, with Jiro’s audio demanding answers, intercut with him snapping her fingers and her cries while saying Acheron circumvented Confederation law to use Prosper’s satellite

—

We advanced time by two days, from October 5 5660 to October 7 5660, giving time for the Severe breakage that the New Horizon suffered to be repaired in full.

• In that time we establish that Ilyana is brigged by the Confederation, and they refuse to extradite her into Prosper’s control.

• The Confederation would consider exchanging Ilyana for her sabotage device — however, the Colony heads claim no knowledge of its whereabouts.

• Turns out, that’s because Vandikar is holding onto it and is lying to the Colony heads about it.

• The Colony’s administration is locking horns with their Confederation sponsors about Ilyana, and it’s not going to end well.

• Word of the growing tensions, and the saboteur, has spread throughout Prosper.

Breakdown of the action this session:

• Zeph went to meet with Merit and they dug into Miane‘s work contract with Fountains.

• After a lot of work, they sussed out that the contract was strongly in Miane’s favor — good wages, clauses covering advancement. This suggested that Fountain was a little desperate, probably to stay competitive with other trade barges.

• Having done this favor for Zeph, and on the heels of the Ambassador saying “if there’s every anything you need…” as thanks, Merit made an appeal to get his help salvaging the lost Agri-Box.

• Zeph is unsure: he has 3 weeks and 3 days to complete his delivery of the drill parts for the Confederation and he still needs to secure merchandise to replace what was lost; it’s a 3 week trip to and from as it is, without a Wild Jump.

• Meanwhile, Jiro talks his criminal bosses Vandikar and The Gerant into letting him get his hands on the weird device that Ilyana used to sabotage Prosper’s NavCon tower in order to learn more about it.

• They accept that he’s a truly skilled criminal with all manner of connections, so they think he’s the right man — but they want to keep the lid on what they’ve got ahold of. They want to know who he’s sharing it with.

• Jiro is cagey, because he wants to get Merit’s help, but not bring the criminal underworld to her doorstep.. Sadly, The Gerant has eyes everywhere and word gets back to him that she is who Jiro is talking to.

• So, Jiro shows up with the device, overhears Merit and Zeph discussing an illegal salvage op, quietly announces himself and asks Merit to take a look at the gadget he’s brought.

• Zeph recognizes the thing as a slave-circuit. The Hermes Corp fleet uses something like it as emergency analog stop-gaps, in the event of a digital autopilot failure.

• Merit wants to know where it came from, and then the tension in the room skyrockets when the Ambassador and the Missionary realize Jiro is the man who beat and tortured Ilyana the saboteur…

• …And that this is the missing device tearing apart the peace between the Confederation and Prosper.

• While that talk happens, Merit is plugging in the device to run a diagnostic and access it’s system logs. She has a hard time getting into the system, but Zeph steps in to bypass some security protocols…

• …This brings the unit online, and gets them in, but it establishes a computer downlink between the slave-circuit and the master-circuit.

• Merit doesn’t notice, and is reading away, but Jiro notices it and immediately Deduces that there’s a problem: whoever is on the other end of the downlink is working with the saboteur, but hasn’t disconnected the link. They’re not trying to hide right now: they’re watching. They’re connected to Merit’s computer system and they’re learning about who has their hardware.

• Jiro tears out the connection, trying to head off any more trouble he’s inadvertently brought down on Merit.

• Merit cross-references the record of slave-circuit commands that she saw in the logs with some other information in her library and comes back with some new information:

• The slave-circuit was remotely activated, hijacking the Navigation Control Tower’s satellite feed 24 hours before the storm that wound up decimating the fields, injuring dozens, and causing tens of thousands in damages.

• The other slave-circuits on the network (their orders copied locally on this circuit) were issued orders that Merit recognizes as zero-g positioning corrections. She correctly concludes they’re orders issued to Prosper’s satellite.

• Which means someone was actually aboard the satellite, installing additional slave circuits. This is a little concerning. The log also shows that someone was siphoning information from the satellite’s logs.

• She is able to use her brilliant training to translate the instructions in the log into a working idea of where the satellite’s cameras were pointed instead of at the colony, and she circles the place on a map.

• Zeph, being the Colony’s Ambassador (and thus up to speed on their history), recognizes the location: a plain of land some 300km away. The area is criss-crossed with rich and dense deposits of prisellium (jump drive fuel) that make the area geologically unstable, and unsafe to settle. Prosper’s original settlers couldn’t erect a colony there or nearby, and couldn’t justify a remote outpost so far off so early into settling the planet, so it has remained untouched.

• So, clearly the saboteur is working with someone who has demands on Prosper’s claim to the area’s prisellium veins… Jiro knows that it’s Acheron who has these designs. Zeph wants to gift the circuit to the Confederation in exchange for Ilyana.

• However, Merit and Jiro convince him it is best to hold onto the circuit. Merit by arguing that there’s no way of knowing the Confederation will follow through on anything they learn, and Jiro by arguing that there is more going on behind the scenes and acting too soon could be dangerous.

• Zeph gives in; he wants to know how long they can afford hold onto the device and lie to the Colony and the Confederation — while trying to get more information from Ilyana — before retribution comes for them. Jiro says he can handle it.

• With no more info to be gained for now, and with their makeshift counter-conspiracy now in place, the trio’s business is done. Zeph veers conversation back to Merit’s illicit favor, perhaps figuring Jiro has already shown his own hand (at least sort of)? Zeph tells her they’ll need help to pull off this salvage job.

—

A very talky session, but hey nothing wrong with that.

One of the players was super interested in a ship, so I let them have the New Horizon with tons of social baggage — so I’m trying to push that ship into the limelight, make it needed, put it at risk, so the player can enjoy it. We’re well on our way to that.

The players really liked the idea of s Colony game, so I’m doing my best to think of how Threats would come for the Colony besides the immediately obvious choice of “Reavers!” or the equivalent. I’m taking inspiration from Western movies, and my associate knowledge of claim-jumping, cattle rustling, et cetera and from Science Fiction source material like Battlestar Galactica and Defiance. If you haven’t checked out Defiance, by the way, it’s an excellent source for Colony game inspiration.

I’m really enjoying the Assessment move! I don’t know why, but I particularly like this implementation/fusion of the Read a Sitch/Learn about the world moves of other World hacks. The players gave it a workout this session, learning several important things about Miane’s contract with Fountains and about Ilyana’s slave-circuit device.

Going forward from here, I suspect next session we’re going to see Barter get rolled to see if Zeph has any wealth to his name, and Acquisition to gear up for Merit’s expedition. We’ll see how things shake out!

Below, I’ve included a link to the slide deck we’re using for our game, with character sheets and so forth.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1c1dvlHqRqR9FxIExix4Lt9HBPDQbN9_0z1xcH-pWhvY/edit?usp=sharing