Thanks to Alex for the mostly accurate (from his character’s perspective) summary of the events so far!
Heading to a planet run by insectoids. Florans (plant people) are here to mine ore for their planet. Insectoids are mean to them. We are security for the news crew interviewing the florans. I ask a floran if they get harassed a lot. Just as I do a ship arrives telling us to cease operations. Michael DeSanta draws his gun on the balcony and the insectoids get ready to fire. I jump in front and throw up my hands. I tell them we come in peace and convince my crew to lay down arms. Hitler the 4th, Daphodillius, and the news anchor come down to talk. The News anchor runs her mouth and the insectoid goes to hit her. I step in and take the punch and spit blood all over. Jack Shift tries to use his tellariian powers but he still seems to not understand them. The insectoids become enraged I step in and convince him that the psychic powers were because of malfunctioning mining equipment. He sends for reinforcements. I tell the insectoid that I saw some suspicious activity near the rigged platform. He heads over and is electrocuted but still standing. The reinforcements arrive. Jack fires his pistol killing one. The insectoids fire on Lars and he lives. They fire on me and they incapacitate me. They fire on Jack and he’s okay still. Michael DeSanta draws his gun and fires but can’t seem to hurt them. Lars runs into a garage to hide. Hitler runs to me and heals me. I’m up but still heavily injured.
The crew sets out with their brand new ship “Star Venture” to travel to a nearby star system called Amineh, with a Jumpgate. The crew spent the 28 days or so, learning about the ship, the new AI, and reading up on the history of the Ghostreach Sector. One thing the crew fixated on (and rightly so) was the Rec Hub, where they can pick up jobs to do to keep the ship going until they find their way home.
They find a job on offer on Samksha to track down and kill a wild boar that is destroying villages around an old Tenarii artefact. They land at the spaceport that is run by a company called PrimaCorp, but the whole place is in fact run by a psychic crusading religion called “the Veiled Mind”. They seem opposed to the killing of this boar. But the local Serran population needs help to stop the destruction.
Our heroic criminals quickly jump in for the princely sum of $5,000 to kill this boar. Once they arrive close to the forest a sudden electrical jamming kills anything running on electronics (including implants), which shuts down the vehicle and all their comms. While tracking through the forest, a boar is spotted and Desanta runs after it, taking a blind shot into the woods where he thinks it may have gone…but instead shoots a PrimaCorp soldier causing a raucous. Luckily he didn’t kill him or things would have gotten much worse!
The PrimaCorp squad shows up and when Desanta refused orders to drop his weapon, they opened fire on the crew. Hitler, as always the voice of reason, dropped his weapon and the other followed suit. Afterwards the crew was escorted back to their vehicle and left to wait out the power jamming. They quickly overpowered the one guard that was left and they continued on their hunt.
While searching for the boar, they came across $1,000 worth of valuable minerals to sell at the spaceport. They were attacked by the boar and was able to take it down. The Serran’s paid the bounty and back at the spaceport Jack Shift was sweet talked into joining the “The Veiled Mind” and underwent the process of having his mind tinkered with by a machine built Millenia ago for a completely different type of being. Smart guy. But now he has Psionics! And some hindrances that he is aware of, and at least one he is NOT aware of.
Also, every crewman (regardless of whether or not they joined in on the hunt) should make a persuasion or intimidation roll and text or email me what they rolled. I will send separate texts or emails to each person based on their roll. If I don’t get a response from someone that’s ok…you just won’t have any information.
Dr. Stone and Walter White take up positions on the outside of the door leading into the Raiders’ base. The remaining crew (Lars, Jack, Hitler, and DeSanta) head through the door after it gets cracked. The stairs lead into an underground cavern that has a force field up where it leads into a well-built underground base. Lars disables one of the force field generators enough to let the crew slide through, upon which, the entire base goes into lockdown.
They are quickly attacked by the Raider guards, and again, one slips away. They soon hear machinery and generators, as the temperature in the ice-cold base starts to rise dramatically.
The crew quickly subdue the remaining Raiders in their area only to find a generator room with some strange pods, that quickly turn in to face huggers! The crew manages to fight off the huggers with no “impregnations” and begin to search the rest of the facility, when they hear someone struggling and making noises. Turns out it their intrepid pilot Wash was captured on the way back to the ARC base and was being held in the Raider base. They quickly release him, only to find they are faced with a full-size Hunter-Warrior that had been released from its icy prison by the generators.
After a quick search of the facility to clear out any additional Raiders, the computer releases the locks, and they call ARC for pickup. When the ARC team arrives and sees what was really in the base, they decide to throw in $60,000 worth of Cyber-Tech for the Crew to compensate for the extra danger.
The crew eagerly departs the ship to greet the friendly aliens. They are immediately yelled at in a different language. These aliens look like they have guns pointed at our crew! Quick thinking by Dr. Stone who tests to see if these aliens understand the language he has programmed. They do. They seem hostile and demand everyone get on their knees. The crew obliges and are soon manacled with restraints that cover their hands like metal mittens!
Suddenly the aliens are talking animatedly and Jack Shift realizes there are some other figures on a distant hill. The all hell breaks loose as the two alien groups begin a fire fight! Hitler quickly wild attacks his guard while Lars steals the keys with his mouth off of one of the dead aliens and frees himself and DeSanta who immediately attempts to shoot an alien rather than free his comrades. He does not kill the alien. The aliens decide to ignore the other group and all shoot at DeSanta…and they all miss. :(
The new group finishes off the group they call “Raiders” who live out in the desert causing trouble. The new group is from the ARC Alliance and they are the ones our heroes originally contacted. Turns out their understanding of English was a bit less accurate than Dr. Simon’s understanding of their language!
The ARC team offers a deal, they will fix up the crews’ ship for galactic travel, if the crew will find the Raiders’ base and shut it down. The crew quickly agrees. They scavenge equipment from the dead Raiders and head off into the desert.
They identify the entrance to the underground base thanks so some great Battle rolls from Hitler. A quick plan is developed where DeSanta and Lars stealthily infiltrate and make a distraction, so the others can move in without attempting to stealth. The plan works…sort of. The distraction comes a little early as Lars critically fails and sets off a blade trap. Now with the Raider guards aware of their presence, another trap is triggered by the raider to collapse a wall on Dr. Stone. Stone weathers the rock fall and soon the crew have finished off the Raider guards…but did one slip away…?
Our crew was assigned the ship “Khudkoshi”. During training, there were a few issues. This was not unexpected, since our “crimi-nauts” had never experienced modern space vessel technology, much less the physical demands of getting to and living in space. The crew was designated as backup to one of the three primary crews targeting the anomaly. After picking up the nuclear warhead at a space station, they move into position, but suddenly, the “Aatmaghaatee”, the sixth ship (targeted to go through the anomaly), careened out of control.
Our pilot “Wash” managed to avoid a direct impact from the Aatmaghatee, but unfortunately, the least useful “shooter” crew member wasn’t able to maintain his position and fell HARD into the pilot causing the Khudkoshi to swerve out of its path and they went through the anomaly! The spaghettification of the crew and ship was extremely painful and in at least one case (looking at you Jack Shift), it was life threatening!
After drifting out of control for awhile on the other side of the anomaly, they got healed up and then realized the ships on the “Sol” side of the anomaly, either did not get their warheads off, or it failed to break up the anomaly. The crew then decided to complete the mission of disrupting the anomaly from the back side. Again, the least useful “shooter” decided to not take his very best shot…just happy with close enough (probably why he was a terrible criminal). So, the crew does not know if their attempt was successful or not.
Now they are trapped on this side of the anomaly, and after the nuke went off they immediately started to pick up a signal from somewhere relatively close by. Being that they have no extra food, water, or fuel, they decided to get as close to where that signal came from as possible. They found a planet that seemed pretty low tech, even though there was evidence that the inhabitants had at least as much tech as Earth. They landed where indicated and then the crew saw their first aliens…
In the near future, the countries of Earth have detected a strange phenomenon in space quickly approaching our solar system. This anomaly has spawned some strange areas of space at first considered space storms, but later was confirmed as small space time anomalies most likely, worm holes. The concern is that where these worm holes appear, whole solar systems are being destroyed. There are five basic factions of scientific theory on how to ensure the safety of our solar system, and since time is of the essence (worst case predictions are in the 10’s of years, best case less than 60 years), the general consensus is to try all of them. Most of the theories involve massive amounts of energy needed to essentially divert the phenomenon by 10 degrees. One of them is a more subtle approach. The world could not find enough expendable people to send on these missions (if you send your best, and if they can’t fix it, and if they can’t return…no second chances).
So, the idea was floated to look at criminals that have the necessary backgrounds and either life sentences or more than 60 years to go, to become the crews for these missions. All agreed that serial killers, rapists, and their ilk should not be used, but white collar criminals (your Barry Madoff’s, scammers who have multiple back to back sentences, political revolutionaries, manslaughter, etc.) would be the most effective force.
These “volunteers” would be offered a new life if they are able to complete the mission and return back to Earth safely. Better than rotting away in prison, right?!
Session Zero – Character Creation
I am running a Sci-Fi game using the core rules, the Horror Companion, the Science Fiction Companion and a book called Worm Fire. You won’t need to know anything about it during the first game, but you will for the rest of the campaign. I will have physical copies and will put the player section in DropBox for those who want to read it. The following Setting Rules are being used:
Conviction (Core)
Born a Hero (Core)
Difficult Healing (Science Fiction)
Extreme Environments (Science Fiction)
Energy Management (Science Fiction)
Logistics (Science Fiction)
Villainous Conviction (Science Fiction)
Expanded Fear Effects (Horror)
Signs and Portents (Horror)
Dynamic Backlash (Horror)
Playing to the Tropes (Horror)
Just make a character using the core rules, Horror Companion and Science Fiction Companion. There are some things you should consider. In order to be selected for this mission you will need to have one or more of the following:
Piloting (perhaps an amateur or professional pilot, or past experience in the military)
Research and/or Science (always good for someone working in space)
Repair (would be nice if you have some experience on planes or rockets)
Leadership Edges
Good physical condition (although a terminal illness that does not affect your ability to do the job might be a bonus for you!)
Shooting (specifically experience with artillery as their may be some manual effort needed to get the missiles on target)
Fighting….just kidding, they don’t care if you can fight…they actually don’t want anyone without some control over their actions – so hindrances like impulsive and mean may exclude you…unless you are just so good they can’t find a replacement.
Linguist, since this is a world wide effort, people with the Linguist edge would be highly sought after.
Healing, you never know what trouble might occur and healing would be needed.
Anything else you can think of that might be useful to a multi-national force attempting to save the Earth!!
I will need a digital version of your character, preferably in PDF format (just print to PDF if you have it in Word or Excel).
More details to come, and I’m hoping using Harrowed Halls posts will make this a little easier and more fun to keep track of the games!
