#Morningstar episode 6: The past is with us
The situation
* The MC have disassembled the food processing plant and given the space to the Throng of Pleasure. The Throng immediately move some of their production there, guarded by their new, blank-faced muscle.
* Major Petrova and Sister Verity ventured into the dark decks and rescued some captives from the Awakeners, then returned to arrest Jagarta Tun. While a few cultists escaped, the Awakener network has been broken. The Keepers have added security to all the nearby Sleeper banks, so they will be alerted if anyone or anything interferes with them. Which is good because there are security protocols which could trip if too many Sleepers wake up.
* The MC has discovered a clue to the location of the life support system.
The Maintenance Collective consult the mind of INC-07 in their group consciousness and learn that before being placed on the ship, the political and military elite were in contact with a battle fleet that had not been eliminated. Which raises some interesting questions about what had happened to it…
The Enforcers convince the rescued refugees to work with them, removing their Need: Recruits. They also investigate the problem of the slave chips, and believe that they should be able to find the answer to how to remove them in a proper medical facility. There is one on the ship – Central Medical – but it is deep in the dark decks and will require an expedition. They inform the other families that Jagarta Tun will be charged with slavery, and say they plan to remove the slave chips from all his victims. Naturally, they expect the other families to cooperate with the removal. No-one explicitly opposes this, but its clear that the Throng are reluctant to give up their new-found military might.
The MC call a meeting of the Families to discuss life support. In the early years of the City, shortly after the Awakening, there was a factional dispute between the political and military elite (who had naturally stepped back into their roles in organising the impromptu government), and a group from one of the distant colony worlds. The latter departed in secret, and the government told the City that they had all perished as they did not want people thinking they could survive by themselves. Decades later it became clear that this was untrue, as scavs brought back the odd tale of meeting other people deep in the dark decks. The “Splitters”, as they became known, were believed to be few in number but also to be long-lived, and to dwell beyond an area of vacuum known as the Breach. Unfortunately, the life support systems seem to be in that area. The MC’s Archive/Backup persona suggests an expedition to investigate and negotiate for access. This meets with general approval: the Puppeteers are interested in trade possibilities, and volunteer to send a negotiator, while the Keepers reveal that members of the Splitters designed the Maintenance Collective’s architecture, repurposing them from ship systems to serve humanity. They may still have records or original source code allowing the MC to be debugged.
Zoom in
101010, Sister Verity, Cassius, and a bazaar trader named Mara Sri head into the dark decks, accompanied by a team of Keeper negotiators, and Puppeteer and MC guards. Being aware of the Breach, they’re well-equipped with vacc suits and a couple of portable airlocks, and they’ve ensured much of their equipment is hardened in case they run across the mysterious mobile radiation source. Fortunately, they avoid it, but while taking a rest break they discover what appears to be an old genetics lab, complete with gene editors, cell lines, DNA library, incubators, and habitat cells. Most of the latter gape open, but there is a small humanoid corpse locked in the last one, mummified by the cold air. 101010 boots the local data system and searches for records, and uncovers some disturbing information: the lab dates from shortly after the Awakening, and was used for something called “Project MARS”, which had the aim of creating supersoldiers with incredible speed, strength and endurance to be used to reclaim human territory. Verity searches for information on who did the work, and learns that they were all early members of the Agronomists. The people who built the City’s initial barebones ecology and stopped people from starving to death had a nasty little side-project. None of them fled with the Splitters, and it is surmised they were all members of the Elite. “This is exactly the sort of bullshit which got us on this ship”. As for the experimental subjects, it is unclear what happened to them. Possibly they escaped and perished in the dark decks.
101010 is interested in the possibilities of a genetic engineering facility, and can tell that Mara is thinking about sending scavs to loot it. They hastily arrange for an MC team to be dispatched to claim and defend the lab.
The expedition continues. They come to the Breach and enter it via a portable airlock. Verity cannot resist investigating why such a large area of the ship is in vacuum, and finds that the answer is a huge hole, apparently the result of an internal explosion. The entire group looks upwards, and gets the first real picture of what the ship looks like: they are in a spin habitat, a giant rotating cylinder. From the hole, they can look “up” and along the spokes to the core. Looking along that, it vanishes into a dense cluster of tanks and machinery at one end, and a superstructure at the other. Beyond the superstructure, they can just make out the edges of an enormous mountain of ice, an ablative shield designed to absorb the impacts of interstellar dust and radiation. On the other side of the core, they can see the rest of the spin habitat curving around, pock-marked with holes, through some of which they can see stars. Something terrible and violent has happened to the ship, and it is a miracle that it is still flying and that they are still alive.
Beyond the Breach it is obvious that the corridors are regularly visited. 101010 instructs their guards to guard the airlock, and the group proceeds. They come across two people doing maintenance, and after some initial surprise, are introduced to Under-secretary Amah Resa of the Provisional Government. Negotiations commence, with the Keepers focusing on gaining access to the life support systems for themselves, and the Puppeteers focusing on trade opportunities.
While the Keeper negotiators do their thing, the others are given a tour. Its clear that the Provisional Government (as they call themselves) are well trained and in control of the life support system. They seem to have a few thousand people, with a democratic mode of government, a reasonable level of technology, but not a lot of weapons. They’re safe behind the Breach, which Amah offhandedly mentions being caused after the split to prevent pursuit.
101010 talks to a scutter-bot, Repair Unit 57, or “Rippy”, and tries to convince them to join the MC’s group consciousness. Rippy is appropriately cautious – like the MC, the bots here are a mix of models, but rather than a group consciousness, they’re independent duplicates of an original personality matrix, designed by the Chief Programmer. Rippy will join if the Provisional Government vouches for the MC, and if they can leave when they want, and takes 101010 to speak to the Secretary for Maintenance – a humanoid orchestrator model named ORC-153. 101010 tries the same pitch with them, and pushes for integration of computing systems, but is rebuffed. ORC-153 considers the MC’s collective consciousness to be an aberration from the Chief Programmer’s original design. 101010 wants a couple of bots here to join the MC to provide a network node, but ORC refuses, and instead suggests sending a few PG bots to the city to act as ambassadors. They also want access to the Bridge, which 101010 naturally refuses.
Meanwhile, the negotiations over life support have been fruitful, though the Puppeteers are involved in the deal. Both they and the Keepers will have access to investigate, repair and upgrade the system, and there will be trade as well. The PG will be sending Undersecretary Amah back to the City to act as a formal ambassador. Brother Charm, the negotiating team head, will remain in life support to speak for the Keepers. The Keepers immediately make plans to ensure a permanent route through the Breach, and begin upgrading and testing the system.
Once negotiations have completed, Verity secures an interview with the Chief Programmer, Lai Wei. Like many in the PG, they are in fact a survivor of the original Awakening, genetic modification for longevity being common on the colony world from which it originated. Verity persuades them to assist with debugging the MC’s group consciousness, to enable it to make decisions more efficiently, but also to prevent a reversion to their natural protocols which would see them repair the ship to its proper, pre-human state. Wei agrees, and 101010 is happy to cooperate by allowing their code to be investigated and mapped.
Negotiations complete, the expedition heads back. as they return, 101010 receives over the network the death-cries of the squad sent to claim the gene lab: they were attacked from the darkness by a group of squat, half-naked humans, wielding improvised clubs with tremendous strength. It seems that some of the supersoldiers survived, and they or their descendants are living in the dark decks. The expedition gives the area wide berth.
A big backstory episode here, with the players driving a lot of the detail. The Provisional Government has been officially introduced as a new Faction (as soon as I work out their surpluses and needs), and all the stuff about the Elite, secret battlefleets, and geneticly engineered longevity has made everyone wonder if they’re still around and still pulling the strings. They may emerge as a Faction or Front in a future age, depending on how the story goes…