Morning Star: Session 1

Morning Star: Session 1

“Morning Star” is a campaign of “Generation Ship”. we ran our first session last night. here’s how it went:

Call to Order

* Major Petrova of the Enforcers of Harmony asks the Maintenance Collective to fix the regular brownouts in the Left Bank. They accept.

* Verity of the Keepers complains that someone in The Hole is preventing children from accessing educational subsystems, resulting in widespread illiteracy. They ask the Puppeteers of trade to do something about it – build a school or something. Mr Vyapura refuses, giving Treaty to everyone. Verity then asks the Enforcers, who accept.

* INC-07 of the Maintenance Collective lays out the problem of finding the Bridge, but notes that they will likely need assistance to bypass some of the security systems. They ask the Keepers for help. They accept.

* Mr Vyapura of the Puppeteers of Trade says that they need raw materials to supply their factory workers and ensure there are sufficient goods to meet the market’s needs. The Maintenance Collective agrees to help.

The Enforcers decide they will just seize an area in the Hole from the local residents to set up a school – they’re scum, and they don’t own anything down there. They go in dumb and hard, and are promptly ambushed by the Hole Gang. The survivors flee; the bodies of the dead are dumped at the entrance to The Hole, missing a few body parts, which have been added to Igor’s collection. The Enforcers are now short of manpower and Need Recruits.

The MC reveal research to discover a new power system in the dark decks. They set about dismantling it and reinstalling it in the Left Bank to fix the brownouts (solved).

Zoom in

The MC then put together an expedition into the dark decks to find the bridge. At this stage, they’re keeping the other factions in the dark about the drone army that they believe is guarding the way (and moving towards the City), but they reveal that they know that the bridge is DNA-locked so it is only accessible to members of the bridge crew (who are a different species who look human, but aren’t). Fortunately, they have a solution: they’ve cloned a dead helm officer, Lt Elijah; force grown his body in INC-07’s incubator; and dumped his mind into it from backup. So, if they can find it, they should be able to use the controls. Should.

An expedition consisting of INC07, Verity, an Enforcer named Johnson (good at security, bad at charm), a Keeper team of “hatchbreakers” and an MC team of bodyguards for Lt Elijah head out into the dark decks. First up they encounter a team of scavvers, disassembling an important dehumidifier unit which keeps the City’s atmosphere suitable for human life. INC-07 persuades them to stop, but has to leave the bodyguard team behind to repair it and keep them from coming back. The scavvers head back to the City, grumbling (they’ll no doubt be back in future).

Continuing onward, they get lost, but find an area of the ship which is warm, with the background throb of machinery. Verity identifies it as an environmental processing plant, which could provide a surplus of water, if it could be piped back to the City. If only they could work out where it was…

They finally make it to the area of the bridge – brightly lit, well-maintained corridors, with working panels and good air. As they open a bulkhead, they’re met with a rattle of automatic gunfire. INC-07 risks being shot to identify the threat: a heavily armed and armoured walker-droid – one of the drone army. Verity realises it is a Colony Defence drone, designed as a contingency to defend the colony against threats after Worldfall. They adjust the holy iconography of their vacc suit to match that of a Colony Defence officer, allowing them to convince the droid to stand down and obey their commands.

The droid identifies itself as PD-17. It has orders to defend the bridge against “unauthorised boarders”. These boarders appear to be human (uh-oh), and have been active for some time. PD-17 itself has been active for 743.497 megaseconds – about 23 years. A search and destroy team is currently hunting for the boarders (uh-oh again). Colony Defence has become active as a contingency as shipboard security is inactive and possibly compromised.

The characters have some theories on how this disaster happened: scavs, data corruption, the current residents of the ship not being on the passenger manifest (the idea that there might be actual boarders on a deep-space sublight sleeper ship is dismissed as ridiculous). But however it happened, they have a problem: that drone army is probably looking for the City. And when it finds it, there will probably be a bloodbath…

PD-17 escorts them to the bridge, and the drone guards there (including a tracked point-defence model) stand aside as Lt Elijah is scanned in. Elijah checks his panel and notes that the Morning Star is a long way off course. The others examine their surroundings and debate what to do. INC-07 has found the security panel, and may be able to add people or groups to the passenger list, meaning the Colony Defence drones won’t attack them. But who to add? Specific groups, or all humans? The latter would allow scavs to damage the bridge area. In the end, INC adds only the MC and their Listener friends; they’ll sort out what to do about the humans later.

After the group returns from the bridge, the Enforcers dig up the old Colony Defence protocols in an effort to find a solution. They’ll need to have one before the drones arrive. Fortunately there’s mention of a kill switch, though they could just designate the City as the Colony and so refocus the drones on outward threats. But to do that, they’ll need to travel back to the Bridge to do some hacking…