#Morningstar 5: Against the Awakeners
The situation
* At the Call to Order, everyone asked the Keepers to do everything, so now they have to find a way of reactivating Stasis Pods so the Enforcers can put criminals to sleep, and find a way of debugging the flight system for the MC.
* The Listeners have recently begun exhibiting unusual flocking behaviour.
* A new refugee, Jose, told Verity of how he was woken and then imprisoned by a group of medics, before he escaped. Verity and Agent Johnson have directions to where he was found.
* 101010 and Brother Curiosity’s expedition to find space for the Throng’s drug factory uncovered an unusual mobile radiation source, a food processing plant full of mustard gas which had been made after the Awakening, and many questions. An MC work crew has been detached to disassemble the plant and make it safe.
The Maintenance Collective consult the mind of INC-07 in their group consciousness and learn that there were two factions among the Sleepers: the political and military elite responsible for the war crimes, and colonists from far-flung parts of the human empire.
The MC set to work disassembling the food processing plant, and the Keepers assist by providing information on the best way of dealing with the gas. unfortunately the cleanup isn’t perfect, and residual contamination causes unpleasant injuries to several members of the Throng, incurring Treaty. The MC also gains Need: Prestige, reflecting their feeling that they are under-appreciated. They control the bridge, but they’re still being treated like scutters by everyone else.
Meanwhile, the Enforcers and Keepers start to look into the Awakeners. Major Petrova hits the streets, and learns that an Awakener priest named Vusa is holding meetings in the back room of Kana’s coffee house. She arranges for Kana to plant a tracking device on him so he can be followed next time he ventures into the dark decks.
Verity meets with Jose again while he is undergoing orientation. Sleepers were all fitted with a subcutaneous RFID chip containing location and biographical data, as well as a UV tattoo to provide a physical check. Verity reads the latter, and learns they were woken from bank 227-A, deep in the dark decks.
Major Petrova continues her investigation using the Enforcers’ surveillance system and records, as well as a few snitches. From Vusa’s preaching, the Awakeners believe that the voyage is endless and that the ship is all humanity has. It is unjust to deny the Sleepers a part in human civilisation, so they want to wake everybody up, ideally all at once. The good news is that they haven’t figured out how to do this yet, but are actively looking for someone in the Sleeper holds who can. They’re operating out of a small clinic in the darker recesses of the left bank, high up in the catwalks with excellent escape routes. Surveillance feeds show the clinic is well-guarded, with blank-faced security guards who seem to be… not all there.
Eventually, the surveillance pays off, and Vusa heads off into the dark decks with a pair of disciples and two of the blank-faced guards. With Sister Verity and Agent Cassius, a sharpshooter, Major Petrova sets out in pursuit. The tracking device lets them keep tabs on Vusa, but they have a run-in with the mysterious mobile radiation source, then get lost while trying to get out of its beam-path. They know where to go, but not how to find their way back.
Eventually, they find Vusa and his party in a lit room which has been converted into a makeshift jail. While the blank-faced men stand guard, Vusa distributes food to about a dozen recently-awoken Sleepers. At this stage, Verity tries to convince Petrova of the importance of stopping another Awakening: apparently there are emergency protocols which could trip if too many Sleepers wake up (this may be why the original Awakening was so lethal – and why there is a food plant full of mustard gas). Preventing this is one reason why the Keepers have been reluctant to restore the MC to full capacity. Petrova doesn’t seem entirely convinced, but is more than willing to act to prevent Sleepers being kidnapped and kept prisoner. Sending Cassius off to get an advantageous position, she calls out to Vusa that the area is surrounded and demands his surrender. When a stunner shot over someone’s head doesn’t convince them, Cassius drops one of the blank-faced guards – and the other one is disturbingly unmoved by this. Vusa is persuaded however, and surrenders. Petrova gets the cuffs on everyone, frees the prisoners, and starts asking questions.
The prisoners are all recently awoken from bank 227-A and have been kept here for a few days. The blanks don’t respond, but Verity checks out their tattoos and finds that they are from bank 221-7, further away, and that they are… not right. They obey Vusa’s commands, and are generally docile and obedient. The best she can tell is that something has removed their soul.
Vusa is persuaded to talk (and to lead them back to the City) with promise of immunity and protection from the Keepers. The Awakeners work for a man named Jagarta Tun, who owns the clinic in the Left Bank. They’ve been waking Sleepers for some time, looking for the one who can wake everyone. They haven’t found him yet because some people aren’t in the right pods, and in the meantime they’ve been installing slave-chips in those they wake, and using them as muscle or selling them to other Factions to fund the cause. Tun performs the operation at the clinic, sneaking the prisoners in in the dead of night via one of the many service passages leading from that part of Left Bank.
Petrova thinks it will be impossible to get a dozen refugees plus prisoners into the City secretly, so marches in openly, effectively telling the Awakeners that the game is up. The Enforcers immediately declare Jagarta Tun a wanted criminal and mount a raid on his clinic, capturing him and some of his guards, though some Awakeners escape. Once she’s got him in a cell, Petrova offers Tun a deal: she won’t add slavery to the charges if he shows her a way to undo it. He demands bail as a “sign of good faith”, but Petrova refuses. If Tun could figure out how to implant a slave chip, someone can figure out how to remove it.
Meanwhile, the Keepers act to protect the Sleepers from interference. Having finally received their security gear from the Puppeteers, they call in a debt on the MC to get them to install it in the Sleeper banks. The Keepers help, of course, using their knowledge of the nearby banks to make the system far more effective, but the MC interfere with one of the the Throng’s business plans and end up exposing themselves a lot in the dark decks, gaining Need: Security. But the City now has a permanent security system for the Sleepers, which should prevent any future Awakener activity and potentially warn of refugees. The MC then Call in a Debt to get the Keepers to publicly acknowledge the assistance, and the Keepers rouse the minds of the unbelievers to give them some public recognition, removing their Need: Prestige.
Finally, the MC announce that they have found a clue as to the location of the life support systems.
I flailed a bit in places here with improvising details, but the session seemed to work OK. And we learned a few things about what was important to the Keepers and the Enforcers. We also got our first real use of the Treaty rules, though the fiction ended up trumping the mechanics (the Keepers had previously called in debt on the Puppeteers to get Surplus: Security, which should have zeroed their Awakener-related Need the moment it arrived. But they wanted to use their new Progress move they’d learned from the MC to get something which affected the whole City, and so contrived a chain of moves solely so they could lend aid and do that. Which ended up with the MC getting more debt…)
