Category: Uncharted Worlds: Actual Play

#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

#ToProsperIsToFall   #Part2  

Welcome to Part 2 of my play report for my on-going Colony game of Uncharted Worlds! This time, gameplay went more smoothly and we wrapped up a proper amount of play in a week… unlike last time, which took a full month, oh goodness.

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 Part 1 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 a horrible sandstorm filled with red lightning sweeps over the colony 

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

• Imagine a starship get blasted by lightning — intercut with scenes of destruction inside — while hearing Liv and Zeph shout back and forth about landing the damn thing 

• Imagine Jiro watching Vandikar’s “business associates” leave, outraged with his offer on their narcotics supply 

• Imagine seeing Nenn dragged to safety by Merit, in complete and utter slack-jawed awe of her 

• Imagine the cargo hold of the New Horizon basically torn to pieces, and we see Liv throwing some debris to the side while audio tells us the new machining parts are ruined 

• Imagine Jiro ushering a pair of people into the bar while sand and lightning whip around the screen threateningly, and we hear Reason say he thinks he knows where the damn storm came from 

• Imagine Merit looking at a plant — and dialogue tells us its the only plant left from the field — and we see her start smashing it to paste; intercut with the surgery that saves a fieldworker’s life 

• Imagine Jiro observing the mark underneath Reason’s prisoner’s ear, complete with dramatic music telling you “yeah, that’s a big deal.”

—

Breakdown of the action this session:

• Vandikar and Reason quarrel about what should be done with the Acheron infiltrator; Vandikar thinks it’s a “colony issue” to be dealt with internally (and likely he has an invested interest in the weird tech she brought with her) – meanwhile Reason thinks this is a significant enough threat that the Void Confederation should be involved.

• Reason tries to appeal to Jiro to weigh in and give him a hand, but Jiro plays it cool and is noncommittal, insisting that instead they get answers first and worry about jurisdiction later. Jiro picks Crux, a lax (and maybe alcoholic) doctor out of the crowd in the bar.

• Crux and Jiro turn Vandikar’s private booth into a makeshift first aid station, laying out the unconscious infiltrator on the table. She’s in bad shape: bloody face and her throat is torn up, both raked by the sandstorm; swollen black eye from fighting with Reason.

• While Jiro is getting some salt water for Crux to clean the patient’s throat, he gets the idea to palm the infiltrator’s weird device that Vandikar is coveting and has now taken from Reason… but plans on doing it later. Then, there is a violent crash.

• Jiro finds the infiltrator has awoken, broken Crux’s nose (and the table) and has her boot planted on his chest, pinning him to the ground. Oh god, she recognizes Jiro (remember he is AWOL from Acheron)! 

•What does Jiro do? He closes the distance and forces an entire shaker of salt into her open mouth and throat to choke her (look, you use the tools at hand), shutting her up before she can say his real name out loud. 

• Jiro gets an unwelcome surprise when he discovers she is a Gecko™ brand Acheron Infiltrator – even whilst choking on a whole canister of salt she still is fast enough to both put Jiro into a headlock inches from snapping his neck and twist his arm around so far she could snap it and/or dislocate it with one small flex.

• But see, Jiro is also an Acheron asset — or at least he was one. So, while anyone else would need to get loose before they could do anything, he goes with it, striking the infiltrator square in the diaphragm and getting into a pure Jason Bourne-esque fight before finally getting loose and having her at his mercy.

• Jiro wants to know who she is and what she’s doing here, but she resists answering… until Jiro starts snapping her fingers one by one. Turns out, Jiro has a past with Acheron, and they taught him everything he knows. The infiltrator finally relents: her name is Ilyana and her assignment was to block transmissions between the surface colony and their satellite overhead. 

• Why? So Acheron Operatives could have undisturbed access to its sensors and cameras for 24 hours while surveying the planet below! Since the rights to colonizing the planet belong to Prosper, via the Confederation, Acheron has gone behind everyone’s back, seeking new territory.

• Meanwhile elsewhere, Zeph tries to categorize the losses from the New Horizon’s dismal landing; meanwhile, his daughter Miane laments having to live planetside. She is – like her father – an Ender, born and raised in space, and she feels stifled by gravity, the atmosphere, the complete upheaval of her lifestyle at her father’s hands.

• Miane’s complaints border on the xenophobic, calling those around her born on a planet Turfers, and her words raise the ire of pilot Liv, leading to a shouting match where Liv criticizes Zeph for being the kind of Ender who passes on his own arrogance to his daughter. Liv tells Zeph she wouldn’t be surprised if one day he just picked up and left, abandoning the colony – he has a daughter to worry about and he’s not from around here, how can Prosper ever trust him?

• Zeph is in a tough spot: Liv is criticizing his position in the community, questioning his reliability, and even suggests he can’t properly run his own ship… if she walks out of here, spreads that to the other pilots, his work is shot. He’s screwed. Plus, if he handles this poorly, well, what message will that send his daughter? 

• Luckily, he handles himself with grace and poise, explaining – sternly – his decision to remain with the colony and his decisions… Liv is temporarily placated, acquiescing to his command once more and even apologizing in her own way for her behavior.

• Then he turns his attention to Miane and chastises her behavior, telling her she needs to adjust and accept the new life they have. There’s no going back. This is where they are. Miane – with some reluctance – says she understands… and that she has even taken steps to try and become part of the community

• Miane reveals a contract she has signed with Fountains, a captain of Class-1 cargo tug The Wayward Sun; she intends to join his ship as a junior engineer and make the six-month intrasystem delivery circuit. The way Miane sees it, she gets to touch space again and live the life she wants, but she is still doing it for the community and will be based out of Prosper. Its perfect, right? Zeph is unsure, and wants Merit to take a look at the contract and make sure Fountains isn’t pulling anything.

• When the storm breaks, Merit and her research crew move their wounded to the Clinic so they can tended to.

• There, Merit learns that the field hand (whose life saving treatment required the destruction of the last living plant) should recover nicely, although there will be some permanent scarring; their name is Leslie, we determined.

• Merit also learns from her cohort, Squire – an Academy-trained nurse – that Nenn (the fieldworker who thinks Academics are magic, and whom Merit found praying in the middle of the storm for her to save him) has been telling his family and friends about what she did, and others are being swayed by his words.

• At about this point, Nenn’s grandfather comes into the clinic, finds Merit and gives her a leather necklace with a painted piece of paper: it’s a Cardyst charm painted with the symbol (remember Cardyst’s tattoo their arms to commemorate life events) for “Mystic” or “Cleric” – basically, the symbol a Cardyst religious leader marks their body with when they take religious vows to serve a community.

• Merit thanks him, and then behind his back tells Squire this behavior should be discouraged; Squire doesn’t see the harm in it if it means the conservative Cardysts will stop fighting against every scientific advancement The Academy introduces to Prosper.

• Around then Zeph appears, looking for Merit to discuss Miane’s decision and the contract. Cue some quality role-playing between the players: The Academy wants knowledge to be free, and Hermes Corporation thinks their proprietary space knowledge is their right and everyone else can get fucked. The players handle these ideological hurdles really well and they play out a scene where Merit questions Zeph’s parenting decision to let Miane run off with Fountain’s crew, Zeph laments the difficulties in giving your child room to grow while disciplining them without stifling their hearts, and finally Merit says she will make time to examine the paperwork later.

• Finally, with nothing else to keep her busy, Merit works up the nerve to go tell Cosmos – the colony’s botanist – that the crops are a complete loss; shredded by the storm, buried in the sand, even the lively specimens that looked like good candidates are gone, and that she had to destroy a sample to save Leslie’s life.

• Merit finds Cosmos in the hydroponics bay of the main colony facility, as you would expect, and when she breaks the news about the loss of the crops Cosmos flies into a manic state. She smashes an algae pool, she collapses against a wall, she has a fit and is a sad sight to behold.

• Turns out that Cosmos blames herself for the fieldworkers who were injured by the storm, and she is exhausted by season upon season year upon year of failed crops and it is getting to her. Cosmos is a Cardyst, and she has struggled for years to marry her scientific pursuits with her religious ideology and the balancing act has begun to wear on her and she is finally asking herself if the two can be reconciled, or if she is a failure to the entire colony.

• Merit speaks some encouraging words, and Cosmos mentions off hand that if she could just get her hands on some SmartSeeds – a high-tech, highly expensive, impossible to acquire colonization tool that the Confederation purchases on behalf of “approved” colonial efforts – she could turn some things around. Well…

• Merit remembers hearing about the last colony that the Confederation bought those for: a world called Fatima, this perfect idyllic wonderland with twin suns and beautiful auroras that was to be developed by a tourism megacorporation. However, the colony vessel went missing! Hmmm!

• Merit shares this info with Cosmos, and she lights up with excitement! If Merit knows where the SmartSeeds could be then they have to seek them out! In Cosmos’ worldview, Prosper will never truly be civilization until the people have tamed the land and become one with it… and the SmartSeed technology will finally make it possible, make up for the years of work she considers a failure.

• Cosmos’ arguments appeal to Merit, even as her Academy education tells her that her job is to educate the galaxy, not to gallivant across it in search of adventure. Merit’s passion for discovery wins out, however, and she is persuaded; they just need a pilot, and a ship. 

• Merit remembers that Zeph wants her to concoct a lesson plan for Miane, and she tells Cosmos that the good Ambassador “owes me a favor”

• Meanwhile, Zeph hits up Herasdi – the Confederation’s Adjunct Overseer responsible for maintaining tariffs in the Colony and ensuring efficiency in the mining operation. Zeph breaks the news that the drill parts the Confederation ordered and paid for were lost when the ship was racked by lightning in the dust storm.

• It turns out — according to Zeph’s player — that the way things work around the colony is this: as long as the Colony keeps giving a hefty percentage of all gold silver tin and prisellium that they mine to the Confederation, they will foot the bill for most large scale construction projects in Prosper, provided the people demonstrate they have or can manage the infrastructure to support it. The drill parts that Zeph was transporting were purchased by the Confederation – with transport through Zeph arranged by the Confederation – to expand Prosper’s mining operation in return for an expanded deal between the two entities. So the loss of the parts is more than a little political fiasco.

• Zeph says he needs time to repair the New Horizon (which is totally true, its roughed up). Herasdi says that’s fine, but hey, delivery promise was by the end of the month and if the parts don’t arrive then there will be no pay for Zeph and they’ll happily pursue damages against him.

• Zeph gets the hell out of there and sets to work on New Horizon, leading the repair crews in an all day operation in the blistering desert sun amidst dust and a whole fleet of grounded ships, negotiating not enough repair crews, tools, machines, or parts to go around. What with one thing and another – and a dozen hours – the hull and the hold are finally repaired, as is the Clogged Intake malfunction. However…

• The New Horizon‘s shields are still down; the lightning strike, combined with the duststorm getting into every system has apparently inverted the charge running through the shield emitters, and there’s no way to bring them back online until that charge has been flushed, and Zeph doesn’t have onhand or in Prosper the tools needed for that extensive of an operation. He’s going to need to pay a visit to the star system’s local shipyard, and hope he can cover the costs.

—–

And that’s where we are, going into Part III. Lots of new and exciting ideas and characters got introduced this game! 

We now know that it was Leslie who Merit saved (don’t ask if Leslie is a first or last name). We met Crux, a maybe terrible Doctor? We’ll see. We met Squire, a fellow Academic sent to this planet as a Missionary just like Merit, except that he’s not a huge fan of the place. We met Cosmos, Prosper’s botanist and we got to hear about her personal trouble reconciling the Cardyst’s Taoist/Animist/Amish principles with her pursuit of science. We met Herasdi, the Confederation’s person-on-the-ground in Prosper. We were introduced to Fountains, a cargo ship captain, but we haven’t met him yet… and man, I wonder if Zeph is going to have words for him anytime soon.

We got introduced to the idea that Acheron biologically modifies some of their agents! Specifically, we were introduced to the idea that Acheron has an entire marketing division labeling its soldiers for mass consumption. What the hell is a Gecko™ Brand infiltrator? What other brands are there?! 

We got to see words like Ender and Turfer, terms that delineate between classes of people in our setting: those spaceborn and raised, and those bound by gravity.

We’re seeing a few of the Cardysts starting to fit the “magic” of the Academics into their religious worldview.

We got introduced to new terms like “SmartSeeds” and the complex technology behind them and the Agri-Box that governs them! And we discovered a new world, Fatima, where this technology may even now be lost! And oh man it looks like that space field trip might be happening! Who knows what kind of trouble they’ll run across hunting down the lost colony ship carrying this prize.

Oof, meanwhile, Zeph needs to get in the sky and hunt down new machine parts wherever he can if he is going to have any chance at all of profiting from this trip and avoiding the legal wrath of the Confederation… but the trip alone will take something like a month if he plays it safe, and by then Miane will have begun her job with Fountains… and thats not even accounting for his Shields still being dead! He needs to find answers, do his job, avoid trouble – its so hard being a space dad! Plus, ugh, there’s gonna be some political problems, I imagine, in light of those parts getting wrecked!

And of course let’s not forget this whole ‘Acheron hijacked our satellite to survey our planet for expansion, illicitly bypassing any kind of claims laws Prosper may have on the whole rock.’ How’s that gonna shake out? Are they gonna do anything about it? Is it time for a little spaceship jaunt up to the satellite to see what’s what?

Below, I’ve included a link to the slide deck we’re using for our game, with character sheets and so forth. You should be able to scroll through below, or open it in a new window by clicking the Google Slides icon.

#ToProsperIsToFall #Part1

So, 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. Regardless: it works. That said, this is just a general idea… it falls apart if things get too busy in people’s lives, as they did for me and my play group. So, even though we started playing what feels like long ago, today marks the end of Session 1 of my game To Prosper is To Fall, haha. So, what follows is a big info dump and then a brief summary of the session. Enjoy!

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

Our game is a Colony game, and we came up with all this delightful information during game creation:

• The planet (unnamed except for a bureaucratic designation within the Void Confederation) is a world of intense and unreal mountain ranges so grand as to be visible from space. Water only makes up 30% of the surface, but underwater sources exist and are very difficult to find.

• The planet is dusty and craggy, described as one player as being like the Wild West, complete with miserable native scrub brush and regular dust storms. The atmosphere is breathable, it’s just perpetually full of particles that will scratch up your throat.

• The planet has been settled for something like three generations, 60 years or thereabouts. The original settlers were a cultural mix, but the predominant people were Pasoan Cardysts.

• Pasos is a planet whose natives are pretty friendly; they ritualistically tattoo their forearms to commemorate important life events 

• Cardysm is a religious movement with elements of Taoism, Animism, and Amish or Puritan values. Cardysts pursue oneness between the individual and the universe, and follow a number of religious mores in the process. This includes constructing their geodesic domes a certain distance away from the main colony, facing magnetic north — the ritualized indulgence of specialized mind-altering hallucinogenics — and virtue-naming, where children are given titles meant to breed harmony with the universe.

• The Colony has long-held superstitions about creatures in the cliffs outside the community and the curses they can bring down on the colony and it’s people.

• ~60 years later, Cardysm now represents a minority within the Colony, although their values and some of their rites are practiced secularly by many of the non-devoted colonists.

• The Colony’s establishment was sponsored by the Void Confederation for two purposes: one, as a reminder to the the other corporate-backed worlds in this star system that they’re not too big for the Confederation; two, as a mining outpost for the metals in minting Void tinder and for prisellium ore, the raw form of Jump Drive fuel.

• Most Colonies are built on a natural landmark of some kind and this one is no different: original settlers cracked open the planet to discover an underground cistern, which has been tapped for a well, running water, and irrigation. On top of that, the colonists have settled on one of the planet’s few flat planes that stretch out uninterrupted by the world’s ubiquitous serpentine mountain ranges.

• The Colony’s main exports are minerals, jump drive fuel, metals (all of which go through the Confederation first for their cut); beyond this, the Colony also trades in quality computronic technology constructed out of the naturally conductive bone structures of local fauna.

•The Colony’s main imports are machine parts, supplementary food stuffs, luxuries like entertainment, and religious hallucinogenics; there also exists a thriving trade in bootlegged alcohol, bypassing Confederation tariffs that skyrocket the price.

• The biggest benefit of the Colony’s placement are the cliffs in the east that act as a windbreak; in the cover of the ridge, the colonists maintain a field of crops that they are trying to biologically adapt to the planet’s alien soil and atmosphere.

• The biggest threat to the Colony are the semi-regular dust storms that blanket the whole area. On the good days, it’s dirty and everything mechanical gets gummed up and needs a really backbreaking maintenance cycle; on the bad days, the winds get so vicious that the particles will cut open flesh inside and out, choking those without masks on their own throat lining and blood. On top of that, the metallic particles abundant in the soil and atmosphere act as an electromagnet when carried aloft by the alien storms, creating immense and deadly lightning discharges between air currents.

• In true Cardyst fashion, the Colony’s name is Prosper.

Since this is a Colony game, they assigned their ‘work spaces’ as locations in the Colony.

• Merit’s workspace was an Academy clinic that she and other Academics had constructed for the colony to use.

• Zeph’s workspace was NavCon, a tower to the west that hooks up to a set of satellites in orbit to monitor the terrible dust storms of the planet and guide space/air traffic for the colony.

• Jiro’s workspace was a set of secret tunnels, crawlspaces, and cubbies in the crater to the south where some living quarters and his workplace existed; they’re meant to be used if Acheron ever comes looking for him.

For our Jump Point, I kept in mind this was a Colony game — our scope is larger than a ship, and the threats can be broader. I established three separate scenes, placing the characters accordingly: 

Zeph was aboard the New Horizon with his daughter and a hired pilot returning from an Acquisition with (what I later found out were) machine parts for the mine; they were in the process of re-entering the atmosphere.

Merit was in the fields with her research assistants, collecting soil and crop samples to analyze, trying to unlock why yet another season of crops had been rejected by the planet.

Jiro was at his day job bartending, splitting his attention listening to his underworld-dabbling boss fail to cut a deal with some off-world smugglers, and to his unwitting informant rattle off details about the Prosper’s administration’s inner-workings. 

The Jump Point kicked off immediately when I introduced a dust storm to end all dust storms, this colossal blow-out of a tempest complete with flesh-scouring dirt and sky-igniting lightning. 

Merit and her Crew — and their vital research — were out and exposed to the elements; Zeph and co. were caught by the storm part way down, without enough fuel to ascend, forced to fight their way to a landing; Jiro’s patrons and his boss were trapped in this tin can of a bar that the storm was infiltrating (while realizing that there’s no way the Colony’s satellite tower could have missed a storm this monstrous without interference…)

Short and to the point breakdown of the action this session:

• Merit tried to organize her researchers and the fieldworkers with a Command, getting them to all move to the cliffs for safety; she flubbed that royally, as some ran for cover, but others panicked, and others turned and ran into the heart of the storm to find and protect their families.

• Merit tried to quickly get to cover with her prize student, Prosperity-Cometh-Not-Before-Harmony, but he had failed to secure his research kit and lost a ton of tools… Including a sample of one of the only plants that had taken root and grown strong! Merit braved the storm and went back for it.

• Merit saved one of the fieldworkers who was lost in the storm; we earlier established that this worker was convinced missionaries from The Academy were magic, and he was kneeling in the storm praying for Merit to find him.

• Finally in cover with her students and a bunch of fieldworkers, Merit was trying to save the life of one of them who had been exposed to the storm for too long. It was gross and bloody and pretty heinous, and it was hard. First, Merit didn’t have a medkit, so she had to cobble one together out of what things in a research kit could pull double duty. Second — and worse!! — she had to sacrifice the only living plant sample they had from the field, grinding it up to create a medicine needed to save her patient! 

• Zeph ordered his NPC pilot Liv to try and land the New Horizon despite the storm; I warned that would mean flying right in… It could be tried, but it would earn the ship a Malfunction from Clogged Intakes. Zeph said do it!

• Zeph handled the shields while Liv handled trying to pilot the New Horizon down through the storm. Sadly, a failed roll saw the shields completely go offline and the cargo hold suffered a Severe Breakage! Additionally, the coolant pipes throughout the ship suffered a leak as pressure built up! The Engine room was being flooded with the poisonous gas!

• Zeph crawled his way into the belly of the engine room to get his tools on the main coolant tank, holding his breath through the gas long enough to clamp down the pressure and stop the leakage throughout the ship. Sadly, the ship was still filled with this toxic fog.

• So, Zeph blew the maintenance hatches of the engine room wide open as the ship came to a sudden (and kind of chaotic) landing in the middle of the storm. Zeph figured letting the storm in a little was better than bottling up the noxious fumes, so he opened the hatches to the outside world and let the air rush out into the storm.

• With the New Horizon now safe (albeit with a Severe Breakage, a Filter Clog, and Disabled Shields…) Zeph checked on his daughter (who was okay) and reunited with pilot Liv in the cargo bay to discover that Prosper’s new drill parts had been ruined in the unshielded lightning strike… well, shit

• Liv and Zeph almost had words… she hates him in general, and it doesn’t help that his decision to set down in the storm rather than find some better place to set down destroyed their cargo…

• At the bar, Jiro was trying to seal up the joint, get the windows closed to keep the storm out and keep the patrons safe; they were already starting to wheeze and gasp and cough up blood

• In the process, Jiro spotted two shapes moving around outside, trying to get in and he recognized one of them was Reason, the Void Confederation spy who undermined Acheron and helped him relocate here

• Getting them inside was a hazardous maneuver, as it involved opening the place back up to the storm — in the process Jiro got his face raked by the storm and was injured not-too-badly for it, but he got his friend and a strange woman inside.

• It turned out that the woman was a suspicious person of import… Reason had caught them fussing around with the Navigation Tower’s power relays; they were using an insidious control terminal that can manipulate computer systems — likely, it is responsible for why the colony was hit by this storm with no forewarning!

•  Upon examination, Jiro discovered a marking beneath the woman’s ear: it was a sign that she worked for Acheron in their Field Projects division!

—–

And that’s where we are, going into Part II. A lot of problems got kicked up around Prosper just by playing out a storm and seeing where they went.

We know that there’s some big project to construct a new mining drill — so what’s up with that? Probably part of whatever agreement has the Confederation sponsoring this colony, so how are they going to react when they find out the parts were ruined?

And a field worker who already thinks Academics are magic was just saved by one, so how is that going to go over with the religious Cardyst minority? And what about how Merit destroyed the only living plant that the colony had cultivated? And that colonist who Merit saved, but who is now horribly scarred?

And Liv is pissed with Zeph, so how is that gonna go? She’s the best pilot in Prosper, but if they won’t work together anymore, then what? And oh god the ship, Severe Breakage, clogged intakes, and busted shields, how’s that gonna shake out?

And now apparently Acheron is messing with Prosper? Does that mean they know Jiro is there, or is this coincidence? What will Mr. Vandikar and The Gerant — Jiro’s illicit employers — want to do about Acheron threatening the security of their dirty business? And what about Reason and by extension his spymasters at the Confederation? Hell, what will Jiro himself do to stay under the radar?

Meanwhile, there’s also some stuff floating around about how the colony needs additional generators built and the Confederation is SUPPOSED to foot the bill for those (but probably won’t after this drill disaster), and how Vandikar is trying to line up new importers of Cardyst drugs, and booze…

Extremely fun game so far, with so much going on already.

I’ve included a link to the slide deck we’re using for our game, with character sheets and so forth. You should be able to scroll through below, or open it in a new window by clicking the Google Slides icon.