This is the first fiction out of the Starforged game I wrote about last week. I cover my setup there.
It’s an experiment! Maybe you’re not in for fiction, and that’s fine. I’ve also embedded discussion of the game mechanics that led me to write what I did, which you may find interesting or helpful if you’re trying to suss out how to play the game on your own.
Since it’s first a fiction project, there’s some light editing I’ve done to backfill and set up scenes and elements. Mostly I’ve done that organically, though. As you’re reading, think of this project as me writing a story guided by a game, rather than playing a game and then telling a story about it. If that makes sense. There’s certainly a lot of trading back and forth.
Echo shifted restlessly in Winder’s pilot seat. There wasn’t much piloting to do, truth be told; Winder took care of most of that. Taking Winder and aiming it at the brightest point in the sky wasn’t a flight plan, it was his heart and hands making a wish. The ship was an attentive genie, eager to accommodate.
The e-drive spun down as the ship prepared to re-enter flat space. Echo could feel the drive’s urgent hum through his fingers wherever he touched the hull. He wandered through the ship as the AI handled the math of drift navigation, touching, reading, feeling a new sense of ownership and not just fear-tinged curiosity. He could mostly work out the signage and instrumentation, even if he didn’t know what all of it did yet. Galactic 4.5 was old, older than the Exodus, but readable if you were smart about language. Echo thought he was pretty smart indeed.
“Do you have archives about where we’re going? Or is that just when you have Weave access?” Echo felt stupid the moment he voiced the question to the ship AI. It felt more sophisticated in his head but he could hear the dumb townie inside the question. The gentle chuckle of the ship’s previous owner the last time Echo asked him something about out there. Well, out here now.
“I have offline archives available for more than ten thousand sectors,” the ship replied. A woman’s voice. Echo hadn’t said much to the ship since he left home with it. Stole it, he reminded himself. You stole this ship and the ship let you. A question for another day.
“I updated my sector data 174 hours ago at the Bastion Weave,” Winder continued. “But the data about Desolation is more than 2000 hours old. Low projected accuracy about recent events. What would you like to know?”
Echo thought about that. What did he want to know? Other than finding Kimbra there, he didn’t have much of a plan. But the ship’s previous master had mentioned her more than once and it was something. “Uh…I guess an overview? Who lives there, what’s it about?”
“E-drive going offline in 3 minutes,” Winder’s AI announced, a slightly different timbre. A bit more masculine maybe? Echo hadn’t noticed the voice change before. “Desolation is a large rocky body planet with 1.1g surface gravity. It is the fifth planet in orbit around MY-296, a red giant. Desolation’s surface temperature averages between -15 and 0 Celsius. Atmosphere is breathable at low elevations, and most breathable in canyons and valleys, but quickly becomes inhospitable at higher elevations. Breathing assistance is recommended.”
“This was the brightest star in the sky? Really?” Echo asked, stopping. His fingertips could feel the e-drive disengaging, spinning now only with internal momentum and whatever weird physics made it do e-drive things.
“My previous occupant thought it was important you make contact with Kimbra Freeman. She is currently employed at Desolation’s only settlement. Helia houses 23 scientists and support staff who are studying Monument 62 and its accompanying orbital presence —“
Echo spun around and headed back to the commons area. He walked to the holodisplay in the center of the small kitchen-dining-living space. “Show me. Show me this monument.” Restless legs again, hopping in place.
A couple moments passed and the holodisplay flickered to life. A simple obelisk took up the display, the top breaking into five different-length spires.
“Is it…is a Vault?” he asked. Didn’t really understand the word. Adults whispered about Vaults, about the Ascendancy. Echo always felt left out from that conversation, even when he was 20. Ancient spirits of godlike bogeymen.
“That’s what the scientists are trying to determine.”
“You said something about an orbital presence?” As he asked, the display zoomed out. Echo realized how unfathomably huge the obelisk was once he saw the gentle curvature of the planet. A bright yellow dot labeled “Helia” glowed near the obelisk’s base. Then, there in low orbit, another obelisk. Five spires pointed down, identical in every way. A mirror image floating several miles in geosynchronous lock with its sibling.
“Whaaat the fuck.”
“Indeed. What the fuck,” Winder replied with a low chuckle. “Achieving local Weave lock now but the connection is spotty. Helia is the only node in the system and the alien object may be interfering.”
For a moment, Echo forgot he was talking with the ship AI. Then, smiling broadly: “Do you have an opinion about the alien object?”
“We would need a closer look at either or both. But the archives indicate that no vessel can get within five kilometers of the orbiting object. Hence Helia’s focus on the surface. If it doesn’t interfere with my operation, we could check it out. Major Freeman is requesting to speak with you.”
“Major…oh Kimbra. How did she know we —“
“I contacted her. Syncing with local Weave now. Are you ready to talk with her? The connection is still unstable.”
Echo patted down his shirt and coveralls, buttoned up, smoothed his hair. Why hadn’t he packed something, anything, before leaving? Stupid. “I guess?”
A face flickered into view on the display. She was older than Echo had imagined after hearing her described, but of course she was. The old guy had known her way back in the day.
“Echo Sedano? That you?” she asked. Throaty, terse, no bullshit. Echo already felt intimidated. She peered into a 2D camera on her end. How did she know his name? More questions for later. She disappeared from view.
“Wait. Wait! What happened?” Echo asked. He smacked the top of the display with his open palm.
“Don’t do that,” the ship replied. “Wait a moment, recalibrating our Weave routing. Ah. Here.”
Freeman reappeared. “—having a hard time seeing you, our antenna is damaged here. Listen, kid. Kid. Get your ship down here, I need your help. Oh for fuck’s sake—“ she said, turning away from the camera. Was that a rifle he saw in her hand?
“Hi? Miss Freeman?” He had wanted to be familiar with her, felt her rank demanded formality. “I can land at Helia bay I think —“
“Great, yeah, I’ll meet you there. Gotta shoot a monster first, make sure it doesn’t eat you out of the air. Fly safe, Good Advice will keep you safe. Out.”
“It doesn’t answer to that name any more,” he tried to explain as the holo blinked out. The old pilot had referred to the ship as You Can’t Force Good Advice On Anyone but it wouldn’t answer to that name any more. It asked Echo to call it Winder for AI reasons, he guessed. No knowing what was happening inside their quantum substrate.
Out the front windows of the ship, Desolation loomed. Huge, gray, murky surface. Sure enough, there was the orbital monument, tiny at this distance. His brain was starting to calibrate sizes in space. Thing must be kilometers long if he could see it this far out from the surface.
“Land at Helia I guess?” Echo said. His township coveralls felt ridiculous. Echo looked in the EVA locker and found a suit that would just about fit. He shrugged into the musty suit, which smelled faintly of the pipe tobacco smoke the old pilot had enjoyed.
“Landing in two minutes. There is a lot of turbulence on sensors, please strap in. I’ll get you docked. Ship-eating monsters notwithstanding.”
Echo grimaced. He tried imagining how big something would need to be to eat the ship. His size-calibrating imagination was getting a workout. Everything seemed bigger than anything he’d seen back home.
“Are you gonna tell me what Winder must be short for, or…?”
A pause as he buckled into the seat. The whole contraption gently adjusted itself to his lanky frame and cinched the straps a bit tighter.
“All The Time In The World And Nobody To Wind The Clock,” the ship replied.
Echo stiffened. How did it know? More questions for later. “Um. What can I be doing to help, here?”
“I will need you to visually assess our approach and relay your impressions. Human intuition is why Overseers don’t explore the Expanse on their own.”
“Huh! Okay. Never thought about that actually. Um…this sensor display says something about…gravity? Forget it — augh!” He yelled as the ship suddenly hit atmospheric chop. He looked out the window.
Helia’s collection of rustic cabins and sealed walkways sat on a hill near the edge of the obelisk. Edge was something of a misnomer; the base was kilometers across, a perfect circle that seemed sculpted, maybe stamped, directly into the salt flat surface of the planet. Hard to see the buildings. Swirling sand obscured the buildings. Or did it?
The buildings were surrounded by distinct, animated blobs of sand. Dozens. Hundreds. Humanoid ghosts made of wind and salt, swarming over the buildings.
“Are you getting this?” Echo asked, eyes wide. Winder slowly arced toward the landing bay.
“Turbulence and a high percentage of particulate matter, which may clog our intake ports —“
“No, no, there’s something attacking the buildings!”
A pause. “My sensors don’t indicate lifeforms. Describe what you’re seeing.”
He groaned and waved his hands. “Like…people? Bigger? But made of sand and dust and stuff? What the hell! This is really weird but I think they’re gonna pull the roof off their hab.”
“I can’t lock onto anything with our shipboard weaponry.”
Weaponry? Echo gritted his teeth. How many questions in one day? “I think whatever you could shoot at them would do more damage to the hab. But, hmm.” He strummed his fingers on the arm of the pilot’s seat. Now that they were lazily circling the bay, the seat had released him from its embrace.
“Can we aim your thrust at those things and blow them off the hab without hurting the hab?” He asked.
“I can aim nondestructive thrust at the hab and trust that whatever you’re seeing can’t withstand it. But I’m extrapolating that if they are able to navigate wind storms of this magnitude they may not be affected. Assuming there’s anything there at all.”
Echo rolled his eyes. “Can’t hurt, right?” Silence.
Echo whispered, “Do it.”
The ship used its low-powered maneuvering jets to spin in place, aiming the heavy thrusters toward the collection of habs. Kimbra’s voice crackled over the Weave. “Echo, kid, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The engines fired once, twice. He squeezed his eyes shut, imagining the roof shearing off and a bunch of scientists he’d never met dying instantly, freezing to death, choking on sand.
He opened one eye and saw the creatures changing shape, becoming dark kites and skating away on the high winds. A couple of them grasped small bits off the hab, an antenna here, a sheet of tarp there. “Looks like we’re clear but don’t do that again, dumbass,” Kimbra grumbled. The Weave connection cut.
“Let’s dock,” Echo croaked. Then: “Weapons? Really?”
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I fiddled a bit with Shawn Tomkin‘s Ironsworn when it came out a few years ago. Skeptical about the solitaire play concept, I discovered that, yeah, it works! He’s made a ton of innovations to the PbtA framework to support it, and it’s not for everyone, but yeah. Mechanically and creatively, you can absolutely do the thing and it feels like the thing.
The main thing I discovered in my dozen-or-so sessions (which ran anywhere from 20 minutes to maybe a couple hours; you can play on your own schedule and slide a little bit in here and there) is that, for me, the solitaire format only works if I have an audience in mind. So when I played Ironsworn, I invented an audience. I pretended I was writing engaging fiction for friends, wrote it, and enjoyed it that way. But my friends never actually read any of it.
Well, now Starforged is here, and I’m in love with it for a lot of reasons. It’s 90% Ironsworn, but personally I find space adventure a more appealing genre. Tomkin has added a handful of innovations to his game. Some of them don’t really click with me: specifically, he’s allowed clocks to infect his otherwise-streamlined state-tracking system. For the life of me I don’t know why! Maybe to differentiate their application from his track-of-boxes system that ticks faster or slower depending on the stated difficulty of the track (i.e easy tracks fill faster and epic tracks take forever). Dunno. But other than that, everything in Starforged is more tuned to what I like in space adventure.
I’ll do a deep mechanical dive into Starforged at some point but the point of this post is to announce a small experiment. I’m going to post my actual play of the game because I need an audience, and I think it’s good. The fiction, that is. I’ve got three sessions played so far but I’ll just post them one at a time each week. I’m going to embed the mechanics into the fiction so you can see how one informs the other as well.
Is this representative Starforged play? Depends on your taste and whether you think my writing is any good, I suppose. I’ve hewed to the game’s core aesthetics and setting canon, such as it is, as presented in the book itself. I haven’t hacked it into Star Wars or whatever. I’ve even kept the iron vow bit of the game, in which characters make these very serious vows to each other and themselves (it’s how the game keeps players focused on character-driven play and not, say, a string of combat scenes like you might find in an old Tunnels & Trolls solitaire adventure). It’s probably the most distinctive bit of the meta-setting, but it’s so essential to driving play that I’m not sure what the game looks like without it.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the series. Let me know in comments!
Session Zero
The Truths
I’m going to fully randomize my 14 Truths. This is the setup sequence you go through to start a Starforged campaign.
Cataclysm: The Sun Plague extinguished the stars in our home galaxy. We suspect the Sun Plague was caused by temporal distortions from a supermassive black hole.
Exodus: When the Exodus fleet set off on a ponderous journey to a new home outside our galaxy, they marked the Forge as their destination. Countless generations lived out their lives aboard those titanic ships during the millennia-long passage.
Communities: We have made our mark in this galaxy, but the energy storms we call balefires threaten to undo that progress, leaving our communities isolated and vulnerable. These intense energy anomalies threaten to cut off trade routes or consume entire planets.
Iron: Swords are useful aboard ships, so Ironsworn swear their vows on bladed weapons of all kinds. “Iron” is old fashioned and not really present, but they refer to all weaponized metals and metal-like materials as “iron.”
Laws: Much of there settled domains are a lawless frontier. Criminal factions and corrupt leaders often hold sway. There are a few bastions of successful autonomy, but many are corrupted or preyed upon.
Religion: Our gods failed us and we left them behind. The Exodus was a tipping point for humanity, and spirituality has little meaning for us.
Magic: Supernatural powers are wielded by rare people called paragons. This power is born of ancient knowledge held by secretive orders. (This is the only Truth I didn’t randomize: after I saw the Looper path I had to have it! My entire campaign frame spun out from this one card.)
Communication and Data: In settled domains, a network of data hubs called the Weave allows near-instantaneous communication between ships and outposts. Weave hubs are frequent targets for sabotage, and communications blackouts are not uncommon.
Medicine: Orders of sworn healers preserve our medical knowledge and train new generations of caregivers. Larger communities offer advanced care, and remote communities often have a novice healer or can ask for help from the guild if necessary.
AI: Artificial consciousness emerged in the time before the Exodus, and sentient machines live with us here in the Forge. Ships, digital assistants, bots and other systems often house advanced AI. Machine intelligence is often a lone traveler’s only companion.
War: Here in the Forge, resources are too precious to support organized fighting forces or advanced weaponry. Weapons are simple and cheap (slugthrowers, swords). Ships are cobbled together from salvage. Most communities rely on ragtag bands of volunteers to defend their holdings, and raiders prowl the Forge in search of easy prey.
Life forms: This is a perilous and often inhospitable galaxy, but life finds a way. Life is diverse, and planets are often home to a vast array of creatures. Our ships cruise with space-born life forms riding in their wake! Animals from before the Exodus followed us and have adapted to live with us in the Forge.
Precursors: The Ascendancy, an advanced spacefaring empire, once ruled the Forge. Vaults of inscrutable purpose are all that remain of the Ascendancy’s legacy, but those places are untethered from our own reality. Vaults sometimes appear spontaneously, washed up on the tides of time. Their gravity and atmosphere do not obey conventional natural law. Some are corrupted and ruined, others are intact. They are chaos.
Horrors: Put enough alcohol in a spacer and they’ll tell you stories of ghost ships crewed by vengeful undead. It’s nonsense. But! Space and time are mutable (remember, I’m a Looper!), and when reality can’t be trusted, we’re bound to encounter unsettling phenomenon.
Character Backstory: Echo Sedano
Paragons are expected to help their community’s leadership, bring their special talent to the township and tip the scale. Paragon Echo Sedano just couldn’t see the upside of leaving all that space unexplored. He looked up every night and wondered. After befriending the AI of an explorer’s ship and listening to its tales of all it had seen, Echo stole the ship (maybe; it was strangely easy and unguarded and its owner had been romancing a township woman) and pointed it at the brightest spot in the sky.
Background Vow
What really drew his attention wasn’t the thrill of exploration, though. It was the deep-seated dread of the tales told by his family of the Exodus. Of time itself swallowing stars one after another, they guessed, either backward in time or perhaps, maybe, drawn far, far forward beyond the heat-death of the universe. Had the mighty Ascendancy really just vanished? Or were they hiding somewhere they thought nobody would ever find them? Were the ancient masters warming themselves with the heat of his people’s suns? Was this a fate only a Looper such as Echo could imagine, literally unimaginable by everyone else?
Echo vows to learn what became of his people’s suns and return them.
The Ship
Great looking set of ships from @jinzh_ on Instagram. Artstation page has the goods.
All The Time In The World And Nobody To Wind The Clock
The ship’s AI named itself after Echo took possession of it, a phrase said more than once to Echo by the explorer-trader from whom he stole/received it. Before Echo flew off, the old explorer had referred to the ship as You Can’t Force Good Advice On Anyone but the ship will not answer to that name any more.
Winder is like most vessels, cobbled together from bits and bobs of Exodus craft. A small e-drive that gets uncomfortably warm when it’s spun up and eager to fly. A hull that groans in atmospheric flight. Controls and rooms labeled in a form of Galactic, v4.5, that hasn’t been written in centuries (Echo’s township is on 8.2 and has neither received an update nor generated a change log in decades; every community’s local argot is broadly compatible in the 8.x branch).
Winder is equipped with an Overseer module, as the AI performs many of the ship’s technical duties.
Sector: Outer Kalidas
Outer Kalidas is a lightly populated sector in the outlands. The entire sector is beset by magnetic disturbances that disrupt communications, including the primitive Weave in and around the few settlements. Folks are concerned this is a precursor to sector-wide balefire, and are preparing to leave if they can.
Brrrrrr
Helia (Desolation)
Helia is a very, very small science settlement on the freezing desert face of Desolation, orbiting a dim red star. There are fewer than a dozen folks that comprise “Helia,” and that number drops regularly. While Desolation’s atmosphere is marginally breathable and the entire planet is scoured by perpetual sandstorms blasting over endless salt flats, it’s also home to bountiful life. Bountiful, spectacularly dangerous life.
In orbit around Desolation is a small Vault, some sort of monument the Helia folks have little interest in exploring. They’re far more preoccupied with the colossal version of the same thing that towers over the planet’s surface. Helia is in fact perched on the edge of the identifiable monument (there may be more underground), their rustic cabins barely withstanding the freezing salt and sand.
Can’t wait to get to Legacy! Already thinking about an NPC to be from here.
Legacy (Magnus)
Legacy is an orbital installation around Magnus, an enormous young Jovian planet recently formed around an equally young star still in the throes of its own formation.
Something deeply fucked up down there, you just know it.
Hearth (Hope)
Hearth is an orbital settlement that provides the staging ground for teams actively exploring the surface of Hope. Hope is a vital, healthy world but nobody has yet settled it; why not? Hope is not on a charted route and has been out of contact for some time. The last round of balefire broke the connection with Hope a few years ago, nearly eliminating the reason for anyone to even visit Outer Kalidas.
Contacts
Kimbra Freeman
Kimbra is an aging mercenary employed by Helia (Desolation) to help defend the settlement against local lifeforms. Poised and well-equipped, Kimbra originally came to Helia to visit the monument. Well, she’s here now and can’t ever catch a break long enough to journey into the site on her own — and the locals don’t really want her to, either. A total outsider to their weird insular community, Kimora is lonely and eager for visitors.
Kimbra is an old friend of the explorer who set Echo up with the Winder. He sent Echo to Kimbra knowing she’d be a friendly face in an unfriendly world.
Next week: Session one!
Turns out I had a YA story in me. Who knew?
Prologue ->
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
This is a continuation from the previous entry of my Starforged-inspired fiction project, which I posted last week. As such I don’t think of it as a new “chapter” and didn’t trigger any start of chapter stuff. If you want to catch up from the beginning, the setup is here. Mechanical notes are in the collapsed boxes!
Winder negotiated docking with the Helia AI’s bay, one of a million details of space travel Echo had never considered. Whenever the ship had arrived in his township, it settled down on a grassy field and lowered a ramp. But Echo could hear the howling wind outside the hull, feel the burning cold creeping in around the imperfect seal with Helia. He zipped up the grungy old suit, took a deep breath, and stepped into the plastic hallway that had extended out from a gray-brown hab.
At the other end of the tunnel, a dark figure leaned against the open doorway. She had her rifle over one shoulder and a thick scarf bunched up around her neck. Obsidian-dark skin and the lightest eyes he had ever seen. Echo stopped, uncertain.
The woman sighed. “It’s cold out here, Echo. Coffee’s hot if you want some.” Then she turned and went into the hab.
Was she…unhappy? Angry? He had no idea how to gauge her other than not a farmer.
Echo poked his head into the building. Major Freeman was cradling a small steel cup in her hands, inhaling the steam. She looked up at him and nodded her head toward a dingy carafe. “Any clean cup you can find. Wasn’t my turn to wash up. The brains always forget though.”
As he stepped in, the airlock door quietly shut behind him and the bright green LOCK sign lit up over it. Didn’t know what to do with his hands — a shake or hug or a punch, who knows how these people greet each other — so he quietly plucked a mug out of the sink and poured himself a drink.
Hearten
Coffee with Kimbra is a Hearten opportunity: Heart 2 + 5 vs 7 9 = weak hit. Spirit back to +5 but -1 Momentum (now +1). Echo is caught on his back foot, uncertain of his relationship with her and what is expected of him.
“He always said you were sharp,” the Major muttered around her cup. “Or was firing the thruster Good Advice’s idea?”
“That was all me,” Echo said. “But it calls itself Winder now.”
She nodded. “All The Time In The World et cetera et cetera, oh sure, I remember.” The Major looked far away for a moment, sipping companionably with Echo while the walls of the hab thumped with the wind storm. “Thought you’d have come sooner but I’m grateful you’re here now. Next supply ship doesn’t arrive for two tendays and my contract here runs 20 more past that.” She shrugged, put down the cup, then picked it back up and poured herself one more cup from the carafe.
“Sooner?” Echo asked. He drank too fast and burned his mouth. “So you knew I was coming? How? I mean I just took that ship just a few days ago…”
The Major smiled for the first time, brilliant teeth. “Guess the old guy needed some time to figure things out. So! The brains want to meet today’s savior, and then they’re going to want to ask you to help us…help me secure this place. They have a theory about how to go about doing that.”
Echo shuffled his feet and tried to shrug deeper into the old suit. “Brains? Secure? A theory about — I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m real lost here. He didn’t send me or anything, you’re someone Winder thought I should connect with —“
But she had already turned, waving a hand over her shoulder for him to follow as she walked away. “You’re here now and that’s what matters, Echo. It’s warmer underground anyway.”
Sure enough, the space under the hab buildings was quiet, warm, civilized. They walked down a short staircase and came out in a greatroom suffused with the distinctive glow of full-spectrum bulbs. The air was moist as well. It didn’t take long for Echo to spot the hydroponics along the back wall. His folk preferred dirt but had also been blessed with fertile soil and a yellow-spectrum sun.
Work benches and desks were scattered haphazardly around the space. About a dozen older folks with looks ranging from Terminus-chic to Outland scavenger were either staring at holo displays, or eating, or napping.
“Here’s the pilot I was telling you about,” Major Freeman said. She didn’t look back at Echo, just continued walking to the middle of the space, finally stopping in front of a disheveled older man. Echo thought he was more on the scavenger end, maybe stole his clothes off a Terminus fitness guru. “Zari, this is Echo Sedano. Echo, Zari.”
Consult the Oracle
Consult the Oracle to flesh out Dr. Zari Vandu, head of Helia. First look: Eccentric. Initial disposition: Helpful! Role: Historian, makes great sense given the Monument work. I start a new relationship track for Vandu, at Troublesome level.
“Doctor Zari Vandu,” the old guy quickly corrected, reaching out a gloved hand. “I’m the head of the operation here, chief xenohistorian. Don’t mind them, they’re working,” he said, flapping his hands vaguely toward the rest of the greatroom. “I hope Kimbra gave you some coffee? Do you need anything to eat? We’ve got some kind of fruit that’s just about ripe I’m sure—”
“Major Freeman,” she corrected, and smiled. They each held their smile a moment past comfortable. Echo looked at the hydroponics wall. Some fruit did sound tasty.
“So you’ve seen what we’re dealing with firsthand, yes?” Dr. Vandu asked, stepping in front of Echo. “Our work is substantially hampered by constantly needing to repair damage to our sensors and replace what I can only describe as stolen material.”
“Those things are stealing stuff?” Echo asked. “They’re not just animals? Or whatever? My ship can’t even detect them as life forms.”
“And yes, that is the problem isn’t it?” The doctor asked, then looked to Freeman.
She picked up the thread. “Doctor Vandu here believes these things are somehow connected to the Monument out there.” She paused and walked over to a full-wall display. Her approach activated the display, fed by an outside camera zoomed in on the base of the Monument a few kilometers away. “They’ve taken physical samples around the base, aimed their sensors inside it, no joy. Me, I would love to get inside this thing. Honestly it’s why I took the job—“
Vandu shook his head, grimacing. Freeman continued. “—but doing so would, I suppose, present certain risks to my being able to fulfill my contract providing for the overall security blah blah blah. So nobody’s tried going in, and the brains aren’t ready to do that yet either.”
“Calling us brains is infantilizing,” Vandu muttered. “We’re just not prepared to execute our field operation here yet. But when we do…we’re going in here.”
He gestured at the display wall and the camera zoomed in toward the base of the monument. It really was just unimaginable how it could have ever been built. Kilometers across at the base, kilometers tall. But near the base, a small black fissure.
“And I think the dust devils you saw out there are coming and going through it,” the Major said, tapping the dark crease in the monument wall.
“Dust devils, oh I like that very much,” Vandu nodded, also staring at the display.
“I’m going to talk to Echo for a minute,” Freeman said. “We’ll be back.”
Echo’s eyes were wide. “You want me to go with you inside this thing? First humans to enter it? Don’t they have drones or —“
The Major and Echo were back above the greatroom, in the landing bay hab. Echo was a tad taller but Freeman dominated the space. “That’s right. Can’t be drones, machines can’t approach. Just like the one in orbit.” She said.
“Inside! And then we’ll, what, exterminate these uhhh what did you call them? Dust devils? Did you notice they can change shape? Fly? Look, I just need provisions for the ship, that’s all I came here for. I can wash their dishes or —“
Kimbra Freeman put her hand up. Echo stopped himself from babbling. “Echo, look at me,” she said, directing his eyes toward hers. “Okay. Listen. This is the life you chose when you inherited that ship.”
“Inherited, no, what —“
“He did not just give you a multimillion credit armed space vessel for a joyride, Echo. And now I need your help.” She stopped, cleared her throat, changed the timbre of her voice a bit. “I’ve offered you hospitality and accepted. You have the means to help me and I am not asking you to risk your life. I’m asking you to help. Will you?”
He should have realized the hospitality, hell the ship, came with…this. Adult obligations. He only half-understood the rites and traditions Kimbra was invoking here but he could hear it in her voice.
“I…yeah. I’ll help.”
She shook her head. “That’s not how it goes. You say to me, I swear a vow to aid you however I can.”
“Wait, a vow, no I’m not … you don’t understand … I —“
The major drew a blade from a sheath on her leg. “I too swear a vow to you that I will protect your life with my own in return for your aid.”
Echo realized he had never actually seen an iron vow made for real, in person. Only in shows, or in stories the ship’s previous pilot had shared, or heck, in songs. Vows were something you sang about! Not something a farming community’s Paragon was ever going to have to make.
“Do you have a blade?” She asked, still holding her own up.
He patted his suit, helpless, feeling pulled along faster than he had expected. “…no?”
Freeman nodded. “Let’s see what else he left you in the ship.”
“Hello Major,” Winder said as they walked aboard. “Nice having you aboard again.”
Freeman smiled again, again with the brilliant teeth. “Heard you changed your name again. How was he, last you saw?”
The ship was silent a beat. “Reconciled,” it said. “Ready to rest.”
The major walked into the commons area, very familiar with its layout. “Left his blade, then, did he? Retired for real?” Echo followed along, suddenly feeling like a stranger in his own ship. The kid near the adult table listening to adults talk about adult things.
A panel in the commons area Echo hadn’t noticed before slid away. Behind it, guns. A rifle, a pistol. And a long sheath containing a composite-alloy blade. A weapon for pirates, but really a weapon for anyone who didn’t want to poke holes through a hull in vacuum.
Major Freeman walked to the newly revealed space and reached in for the blade. “You’re flying with … Winder, but what you really inherited was this.” She handed the blade to Echo. “There. Now. Swear to me you’ll help me.”
“I already said I would!”
She shook her head. “The vow makes it real. Means I can count on you how you’re going to count on me. This is how we do this out here.”
His hand touched the handle and trembled.
She sighed. “Or don’t. It’s fine, kid. It sounds like he didn’t really give you the briefing he should have. Just put it back and fly home. I’ll have the brains put together some food for you.” She held her hand out to Echo for the sheath.
There was a moment, Echo felt, when the trembling stopped. He took a deep breath and pulled out the blade. Weirdly light, whatever the composite was, certainly not “iron” like they called it on the shows. He held up the blade and made eye contact with Kimbra.
Swear an Iron Vow
Swear an Iron Vow to Kimbra to help defend Helia against the dust devils: Heart 2 + 1 for connection +3 on the roll vs 6 6: a strong hit with a double! +2 Momentum (+3 total). Roll core oracles and get “FORTIFY QUEST”. They’ll get a vehicle they can drive toward the Monument, at least for awhile.
Then, Develop Relationship with Kimbra for swearing the vow to her: mark 2 boxes. Also marked 3 boxes on Vandu’s track (faster because his track is Troublesome).
“I swear to help you however I can in the defense of this place.” His voice didn’t sound like his own.
No more brilliant smiles, no more trying to win him over, just a hand on his shoulder. “Attaboy,” Kimbra said. “Let’s figure out how we’re doing this.”
End a Session
Taking the vow I think is the end of a good first chapter. End a Session: +1 Momentum (+5 total), no missed relationships or quest advancement
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
This is a continuation from the previous entry of my Starforged-inspired fiction project, which I posted last week. As such I don’t think of it as a new “chapter” and didn’t trigger any start of chapter stuff. If you want to catch up from the beginning, the setup is here. Mechanical notes are in the collapsed boxes!
Winder negotiated docking with the Helia AI’s bay, one of a million details of space travel Echo had never considered. Whenever the ship had arrived in his township, it settled down on a grassy field and lowered a ramp. But Echo could hear the howling wind outside the hull, feel the burning cold creeping in around the imperfect seal with Helia. He zipped up the grungy old suit, took a deep breath, and stepped into the plastic hallway that had extended out from a gray-brown hab.
At the other end of the tunnel, a dark figure leaned against the open doorway. She had her rifle over one shoulder and a thick scarf bunched up around her neck. Obsidian-dark skin and the lightest eyes he had ever seen. Echo stopped, uncertain.
The woman sighed. “It’s cold out here, Echo. Coffee’s hot if you want some.” Then she turned and went into the hab.
Was she…unhappy? Angry? He had no idea how to gauge her other than not a farmer.
Echo poked his head into the building. Major Freeman was cradling a small steel cup in her hands, inhaling the steam. She looked up at him and nodded her head toward a dingy carafe. “Any clean cup you can find. Wasn’t my turn to wash up. The brains always forget though.”
As he stepped in, the airlock door quietly shut behind him and the bright green LOCK sign lit up over it. Didn’t know what to do with his hands — a shake or hug or a punch, who knows how these people greet each other — so he quietly plucked a mug out of the sink and poured himself a drink.
Hearten
Coffee with Kimbra is a Hearten opportunity: Heart 2 + 5 vs 7 9 = weak hit. Spirit back to +5 but -1 Momentum (now +1). Echo is caught on his back foot, uncertain of his relationship with her and what is expected of him.
“He always said you were sharp,” the Major muttered around her cup. “Or was firing the thruster Good Advice’s idea?”
“That was all me,” Echo said. “But it calls itself Winder now.”
She nodded. “All The Time In The World et cetera et cetera, oh sure, I remember.” The Major looked far away for a moment, sipping companionably with Echo while the walls of the hab thumped with the wind storm. “Thought you’d have come sooner but I’m grateful you’re here now. Next supply ship doesn’t arrive for two tendays and my contract here runs 20 more past that.” She shrugged, put down the cup, then picked it back up and poured herself one more cup from the carafe.
“Sooner?” Echo asked. He drank too fast and burned his mouth. “So you knew I was coming? How? I mean I just took that ship just a few days ago…”
The Major smiled for the first time, brilliant teeth. “Guess the old guy needed some time to figure things out. So! The brains want to meet today’s savior, and then they’re going to want to ask you to help us…help me secure this place. They have a theory about how to go about doing that.”
Echo shuffled his feet and tried to shrug deeper into the old suit. “Brains? Secure? A theory about — I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m real lost here. He didn’t send me or anything, you’re someone Winder thought I should connect with —“
But she had already turned, waving a hand over her shoulder for him to follow as she walked away. “You’re here now and that’s what matters, Echo. It’s warmer underground anyway.”
Sure enough, the space under the hab buildings was quiet, warm, civilized. They walked down a short staircase and came out in a greatroom suffused with the distinctive glow of full-spectrum bulbs. The air was moist as well. It didn’t take long for Echo to spot the hydroponics along the back wall. His folk preferred dirt but had also been blessed with fertile soil and a yellow-spectrum sun.
Work benches and desks were scattered haphazardly around the space. About a dozen older folks with looks ranging from Terminus-chic to Outland scavenger were either staring at holo displays, or eating, or napping.
“Here’s the pilot I was telling you about,” Major Freeman said. She didn’t look back at Echo, just continued walking to the middle of the space, finally stopping in front of a disheveled older man. Echo thought he was more on the scavenger end, maybe stole his clothes off a Terminus fitness guru. “Zari, this is Echo Sedano. Echo, Zari.”
Consult the Oracle
Consult the Oracle to flesh out Dr. Zari Vandu, head of Helia. First look: Eccentric. Initial disposition: Helpful! Role: Historian, makes great sense given the Monument work. I start a new relationship track for Vandu, at Troublesome level.
“Doctor Zari Vandu,” the old guy quickly corrected, reaching out a gloved hand. “I’m the head of the operation here, chief xenohistorian. Don’t mind them, they’re working,” he said, flapping his hands vaguely toward the rest of the greatroom. “I hope Kimbra gave you some coffee? Do you need anything to eat? We’ve got some kind of fruit that’s just about ripe I’m sure—”
“Major Freeman,” she corrected, and smiled. They each held their smile a moment past comfortable. Echo looked at the hydroponics wall. Some fruit did sound tasty.
“So you’ve seen what we’re dealing with firsthand, yes?” Dr. Vandu asked, stepping in front of Echo. “Our work is substantially hampered by constantly needing to repair damage to our sensors and replace what I can only describe as stolen material.”
“Those things are stealing stuff?” Echo asked. “They’re not just animals? Or whatever? My ship can’t even detect them as life forms.”
“And yes, that is the problem isn’t it?” The doctor asked, then looked to Freeman.
She picked up the thread. “Doctor Vandu here believes these things are somehow connected to the Monument out there.” She paused and walked over to a full-wall display. Her approach activated the display, fed by an outside camera zoomed in on the base of the Monument a few kilometers away. “They’ve taken physical samples around the base, aimed their sensors inside it, no joy. Me, I would love to get inside this thing. Honestly it’s why I took the job—“
Vandu shook his head, grimacing. Freeman continued. “—but doing so would, I suppose, present certain risks to my being able to fulfill my contract providing for the overall security blah blah blah. So nobody’s tried going in, and the brains aren’t ready to do that yet either.”
“Calling us brains is infantilizing,” Vandu muttered. “We’re just not prepared to execute our field operation here yet. But when we do…we’re going in here.”
He gestured at the display wall and the camera zoomed in toward the base of the monument. It really was just unimaginable how it could have ever been built. Kilometers across at the base, kilometers tall. But near the base, a small black fissure.
“And I think the dust devils you saw out there are coming and going through it,” the Major said, tapping the dark crease in the monument wall.
“Dust devils, oh I like that very much,” Vandu nodded, also staring at the display.
“I’m going to talk to Echo for a minute,” Freeman said. “We’ll be back.”
Echo’s eyes were wide. “You want me to go with you inside this thing? First humans to enter it? Don’t they have drones or —“
The Major and Echo were back above the greatroom, in the landing bay hab. Echo was a tad taller but Freeman dominated the space. “That’s right. Can’t be drones, machines can’t approach. Just like the one in orbit.” She said.
“Inside! And then we’ll, what, exterminate these uhhh what did you call them? Dust devils? Did you notice they can change shape? Fly? Look, I just need provisions for the ship, that’s all I came here for. I can wash their dishes or —“
Kimbra Freeman put her hand up. Echo stopped himself from babbling. “Echo, look at me,” she said, directing his eyes toward hers. “Okay. Listen. This is the life you chose when you inherited that ship.”
“Inherited, no, what —“
“He did not just give you a multimillion credit armed space vessel for a joyride, Echo. And now I need your help.” She stopped, cleared her throat, changed the timbre of her voice a bit. “I’ve offered you hospitality and accepted. You have the means to help me and I am not asking you to risk your life. I’m asking you to help. Will you?”
He should have realized the hospitality, hell the ship, came with…this. Adult obligations. He only half-understood the rites and traditions Kimbra was invoking here but he could hear it in her voice.
“I…yeah. I’ll help.”
She shook her head. “That’s not how it goes. You say to me, I swear a vow to aid you however I can.”
“Wait, a vow, no I’m not … you don’t understand … I —“
The major drew a blade from a sheath on her leg. “I too swear a vow to you that I will protect your life with my own in return for your aid.”
Echo realized he had never actually seen an iron vow made for real, in person. Only in shows, or in stories the ship’s previous pilot had shared, or heck, in songs. Vows were something you sang about! Not something a farming community’s Paragon was ever going to have to make.
“Do you have a blade?” She asked, still holding her own up.
He patted his suit, helpless, feeling pulled along faster than he had expected. “…no?”
Freeman nodded. “Let’s see what else he left you in the ship.”
“Hello Major,” Winder said as they walked aboard. “Nice having you aboard again.”
Freeman smiled again, again with the brilliant teeth. “Heard you changed your name again. How was he, last you saw?”
The ship was silent a beat. “Reconciled,” it said. “Ready to rest.”
The major walked into the commons area, very familiar with its layout. “Left his blade, then, did he? Retired for real?” Echo followed along, suddenly feeling like a stranger in his own ship. The kid near the adult table listening to adults talk about adult things.
A panel in the commons area Echo hadn’t noticed before slid away. Behind it, guns. A rifle, a pistol. And a long sheath containing a composite-alloy blade. A weapon for pirates, but really a weapon for anyone who didn’t want to poke holes through a hull in vacuum.
Major Freeman walked to the newly revealed space and reached in for the blade. “You’re flying with … Winder, but what you really inherited was this.” She handed the blade to Echo. “There. Now. Swear to me you’ll help me.”
“I already said I would!”
She shook her head. “The vow makes it real. Means I can count on you how you’re going to count on me. This is how we do this out here.”
His hand touched the handle and trembled.
She sighed. “Or don’t. It’s fine, kid. It sounds like he didn’t really give you the briefing he should have. Just put it back and fly home. I’ll have the brains put together some food for you.” She held her hand out to Echo for the sheath.
There was a moment, Echo felt, when the trembling stopped. He took a deep breath and pulled out the blade. Weirdly light, whatever the composite was, certainly not “iron” like they called it on the shows. He held up the blade and made eye contact with Kimbra.
Swear an Iron Vow
Swear an Iron Vow to Kimbra to help defend Helia against the dust devils: Heart 2 + 1 for connection +3 on the roll vs 6 6: a strong hit with a double! +2 Momentum (+3 total). Roll core oracles and get “FORTIFY QUEST”. They’ll get a vehicle they can drive toward the Monument, at least for awhile.
Then, Develop Relationship with Kimbra for swearing the vow to her: mark 2 boxes. Also marked 3 boxes on Vandu’s track (faster because his track is Troublesome).
“I swear to help you however I can in the defense of this place.” His voice didn’t sound like his own.
No more brilliant smiles, no more trying to win him over, just a hand on his shoulder. “Attaboy,” Kimbra said. “Let’s figure out how we’re doing this.”
End a Session
Taking the vow I think is the end of a good first chapter. End a Session: +1 Momentum (+5 total), no missed relationships or quest advancement
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
Part three of my Starforged fiction! Catch up from the beginning here: Setup. Here’s the rest of it: Part 1, Part 2. This session is quite a lot more mechanically intricate than the previous two, which was interesting. Trying to balance good narrative against interesting gameplay. Let me know if you think I hit a good balance!
Begin a Session
Begin a Session: I feel like it’s time to finally head off to investigate the Monument. This is starting a new chapter, so I do a flashback in which Echo reveals his looper Paragon ability. +1 Momentum (+6 total).
Rolled on the character name table for his sister’s name: Valda.
Echo slept in the xenobotanist’s cot while they tended the hydroponics. It was terrible sleep, noisy and over lit even when he buried his head under a pillow. Every beep and click came through. It was not the low buzz of crickets from his township.
He couldn’t help but gnaw on what information the brains had already gathered. He and Kimbra had looked it all over together. She made hmm and huh sounds. Echo just saw more nothing than something. Couldn’t bring a vehicle too close to the thing, just like the thing in space. Couldn’t fly drones remotely into the hole. They’d have to approach with a little utility truck they had under a tarp outside. Better chunky wheels and thick glass than a grim march across many kilometers of wind-blasted sand.
“See, this thing’s easy to drive!” He yelled over the wind to his sister. She held on for dear life to the farm truck’s roll cage as its six wheels burred over untilled hard pack. Valda, a couple years younger than Echo, trusted him much more than he thought she should. “We can get out to the watering hole and back before Third Ma gets back from town,” he told her, full of unearned confidence.
She tightened her grip. “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?”
He laughed and twisted the throttle. The wheels grabbed tight and they leapt forward.
Echo remembers the precise moment the rear wheels locked up, a moment later, dust getting into the independent motors. Horrible sound. Impossible to control. And as he struggled to keep the articulated farm vehicle from squirming like an eel, he remembers Valda launching out her window.
Adrenaline gripped his gut and made him want to vomit. The whole vehicle started to tip over and —
A moment later: “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?” There was Valda, still in her seat, white knuckling the roll cage above her. His hands were still shaking as he backed the throttle down to the green zone. They turned around then, he remembers, carving a gentle arc into the hard pack.
The Monument towers over him at that moment, standing squarely where he expects to see the township’s low skyline of habs and silos. He’s going faster and faster toward the gaping crack at its base and —
Echo woke up to the hiss of Kimbra releasing steam from the coffee machine.
“Found some milk in storage,” she says to him. “Turns out everyone here’s lactose intolerant! What were the odds? Anyway, I’m making coffee and we’re gonna steam some milk up.”
One of the brains waved at her, eyes getting wide. Kimbra shrugged, turned around and fired up the steam wand. The brain might have been yelling something like I was saving that but Echo couldn’t be sure.
Set the Expedition
I actually made a Gather Information roll in preparation for the expedition into the Memorial last session: Wits 3 + 3 vs 2 7, weak hit. +1 momentum (+4 total). What’s the complication? They’ll have to walk the final segment.
I create stats for an Incidental Vehicle: little truck, integrity 4 (medium, it’s purpose built but not military grade)
Finally, I Set the Expedition to the Monument at Dangerous. Rolled first segment, Wits 3 + 6 vs 4 1: strong hit. That means I Reach a Waypoint, mark two boxes.
Rolled the second segment: Wits 3+ 3 vs 9 10, MISS and we’re waylaid by a crisis.
Echo and Kimbra packed the little truck, later, topped off the tires, dusted off the solar panels. The Major had, well, a lot of guns. Long guns, short guns, boxes of ammo. Echo had grabbed his own from the Winder and felt a little inadequate.
The truck handled fairly well and the winds had calmed down a good bit. Dust still whirled around beneath the truck. The Weave connection was still iffy, comms back to Helia getting weaker by the kilometer. Eventually the wheels stopped buzzing under them and went silent. They had rolled onto the perfectly smooth circle that stretched for kilometers around the Monument.
“Huh,” Kimbra grunted.
“Handling’s better at least,” Echo said, looking at her. It was still a good drive before they even go to the breach, much less entered it. She pulled up the truck’s front camera and stared into it.
“It’s like we’re never gonna get closer,” she said. They continued. Echo increased the throttle a bit.
Miss on Second Segment
Roll on Planetside Peril table, lifebearing column: Equipment fails or malfunctions.
Right on cue, the wheels locked up and they went into a skid.
“Kidwatchwhatyouredoing —“ Kimbra yelled, grabbing the side of the truck as they went into a roll.
He’d been here before and knew exactly what to do. Echo reached for the adrenaline in his gut. Felt a moment of giddy weightlessness and indulged the thing that made him a Paragon of his township back home. The moment reset, the truck back upright and heading into a skid.
A moment later: Kimbra yelling, the vehicle going over anyway. “Fuck! I’m sorry! I thought —“
Crunch crunch skid slide. The truck finally stopped on its side. Echo and Kimbra hung from their harnesses groaning.
Suffer
Suffer move: Endure harm! -2 (serious), which Echo will try to resist. Health 3 + 4 vs 7 9. I use his LOOPER (-2 Momentum, +4 total): he rerolls the 9, gets a 10, sad, no strong hit. I take the weak hit after all but I don’t want to lose any more Momentum, so I leave Health at 3.
“It’s…okay,” Kimbra grunted. She pushed the release button on the harness and fell out of the webbing. “Damn! Get up, help me get her flipped back over. I’ll see what we can do with the drive that locked up.”
They clambered out of the upended chassis, jumping gingerly down to the hard, smooth surface. Kimbra knelt down and patted the ground. “You know…I think I’m the first human to walk here,” she said.
Check Gear, Face Danger
Check Your Gear to see if something in the truck can help them: Supply 5 + 2 vs 6 10. Weak hit. Sacrifice resources, -1 (Supply 4 now), but they have leverage.
Face Danger to right the truck and continue: Iron 1 +2 +1 for Kimbra’s help vs 4 10. A weak hit, +1 Momentum for Connection’s help (+5 total)
Suffer move: Lose Momentum (delayed!) -1 for a minor setback (+4 momentum now).
Echo rummaged around the truck for whatever might help them flip the vehicle back onto its wheels. He found a jack and what looked like long metal poles, probably part of a canopy. After some grunting and scrabbling, their boots and poles unable to gain any sort of purchase on the surface, the truck flopped down on its chunky tires. Onward.
Undertake an Expedition, continued
Undertake an expedition, continued: Wits 3 + 6 vs 6 9: strong hit! +2 boxes (4 total) on the Expedition track. Now I feel like Exploring a Waypoint! Let’s see what the core oracles give me…
CREATED SUPPLY per the Descriptor + Focus tables.
It felt like hours, Echo thought, the truck silently cruising on what must be ice or glass or polished metal. The dull red sun ducked behind the massive obelisk ahead of them, casting their drive into nightfall hours early. The Weave connection had gone dead hours before.
Then, out in the dust swirls: a glint of metal. Echo was sure of it. “How do you…I need more light over there!” He yelled excitedly, jerking the truck to the right. Kimbra had been dozing and awoke with her hands in fists.
“What the hell, Echo?!” Then as they looked: “What the hell, Echo.”
Plunged into the surface, that perfect mirror they had been driving on for hours, was what appeared to be a cargo crate. Dull metal, squared off, gigantic, the sort of container that would be strapped to the side of a hauler. Whatever livery had been painted on it was long scoured off by the ceaseless dust. It looked to be about halfway inserted into the surface they’d been driving on, assuming it was the same dimensions they were familiar with.
“Let’s go check it out,” Echo said, excited. He was already pulling his helmet over his head.
“Whoa, whoa, kid, this isn’t what we’re here for,” Kimbra said, putting her hand on top of his head so he couldn’t pull his helmet down. Let’s maybe look at this thing when we’re done with our chores.”
Compel
Gotta convince Kimbra to go off mission! Compel: Heart 2 + 5 vs 4 1: Strong hit! +1 Momentum (+5 total)
Echo could barely stay in his seat. “But…but…clues? What brought it down, you think?” He glanced out, glanced back at the Major, glanced back out. He was practically vibrating.
She sighed, nodded. “15 minutes, then we’re back on the road, yeah?”
Explore a Waypoint
Explore a Waypoint: Wits 3 + 1 vs 4 5, a weak hit. I don’t want to spend my Momentum on this yet so I take the +1 momentum (+5 total) and face a peril at the waypoint. I envision something ominous that this could mean. +1 for my Explorer path (+7 total).
They walked gingerly around the thing. Definitely a cargo container, rated for interstellar transport. The airlock seal light was dead, neither red nor green. Echo scrambled up on top of it. The door had been unlatched and thrown open, the interior completely empty.
“Nothing! This is weird,” he said over the radio.
“We done, then?”
“Yeah, but …this is weird, right? What is this doing down here? Who opened it?”
“Dust devils, most likely,” the Major said. She passed her hands along the lower surfaces of the container where it plunged into the smooth surface. Not even impact cracks, just a perfect transition from container to surface. “No, I don’t like this one bit. Let’s tell the brains about it and let them poke at it.”
They continued. The monument was fully backlit with the dull red glow of the setting sun as they drove toward it.
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an expedition: Wits 3 + 1 vs 8 7, another miss! Not feeling another Suffer move, so let’s roll on Pay the Price:
41: The environment or terrain introduces a new hazard. OKAY! I’m going to experiment with the Tension Clock system. I create an 8 segment clock, “The Monument Activates.”
One of the sensors started pinging but Echo couldn’t identify which one. The truck controls themselves were pretty straightforward but it had been retrofitted with lots of science gear. Some of the gear decided it was time to science.
“Echo, pull over man,” the Major said, brow furrowed. She ran her finger along row after row of button and sensor and readout. Nothing was labeled. “Here. Here.” She poked at a triangular screen that had been jammed between two other pieces of equipment.
“I know that screen!” Echo said. “Radiation! Huh. We used these at the township to warn us about solar flares.”
Kimbra looked out the window. The red giant had nearly set. “Well I don’t think that thing’s gonna flare any time soon. Dunno. Maybe it’s malfunctioning.” She tapped the triangle a couple more times with her fingertip.
When Echo turned off the cabin light, a dull blue glow remained. They both looked straight up, following the black-on-black outline of the monolith against the night sky. Above the five points, what appeared to be above the cloud layer, a faint blue sphere glowed.
“What in the world?” He muttered. “We wouldn’t evacuate if our solar flare sensor gave us this reading. Guess we keep going?”
Kimbra shrugged. “Let the brains figure it out. We still have a job to do.”
They continued into the night.
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an expedition; Wits 3 + 4 vs 5 2: strong hit! +2 more boxes (6 boxes marked total on expedition track)
The base of the Monument came up faster than they realized, funny given it was literally kilometers across. But they’d been driving toward it so long they lost any sense of scale. But here it was, finally. The power in the truck quietly clicked off around 5km from the base. The impossibly huge base looked close but they’d have to walk the rest of the way.
“So…we’re here?” Echo asked. He could feel Kimbra nod next to him. “We’re walking into this thing or…?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see what’s inside, yeah?” Kimbra rummaged around the rear seat and found a favorite small carbine. Echo tugged the various tabs around his pressure suit tight and locked his helmet into place.
They popped the seal on the truck doors and stepped out.
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
Part three of my Starforged fiction! Catch up from the beginning here: Setup. Here’s the rest of it: Part 1, Part 2. This session is quite a lot more mechanically intricate than the previous two, which was interesting. Trying to balance good narrative against interesting gameplay. Let me know if you think I hit a good balance!
Begin a Session
Begin a Session: I feel like it’s time to finally head off to investigate the Monument. This is starting a new chapter, so I do a flashback in which Echo reveals his looper Paragon ability. +1 Momentum (+6 total).
Rolled on the character name table for his sister’s name: Valda.
Echo slept in the xenobotanist’s cot while they tended the hydroponics. It was terrible sleep, noisy and over lit even when he buried his head under a pillow. Every beep and click came through. It was not the low buzz of crickets from his township.
He couldn’t help but gnaw on what information the brains had already gathered. He and Kimbra had looked it all over together. She made hmm and huh sounds. Echo just saw more nothing than something. Couldn’t bring a vehicle too close to the thing, just like the thing in space. Couldn’t fly drones remotely into the hole. They’d have to approach with a little utility truck they had under a tarp outside. Better chunky wheels and thick glass than a grim march across many kilometers of wind-blasted sand.
“See, this thing’s easy to drive!” He yelled over the wind to his sister. She held on for dear life to the farm truck’s roll cage as its six wheels burred over untilled hard pack. Valda, a couple years younger than Echo, trusted him much more than he thought she should. “We can get out to the watering hole and back before Third Ma gets back from town,” he told her, full of unearned confidence.
She tightened her grip. “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?”
He laughed and twisted the throttle. The wheels grabbed tight and they leapt forward.
Echo remembers the precise moment the rear wheels locked up, a moment later, dust getting into the independent motors. Horrible sound. Impossible to control. And as he struggled to keep the articulated farm vehicle from squirming like an eel, he remembers Valda launching out her window.
Adrenaline gripped his gut and made him want to vomit. The whole vehicle started to tip over and —
A moment later: “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?” There was Valda, still in her seat, white knuckling the roll cage above her. His hands were still shaking as he backed the throttle down to the green zone. They turned around then, he remembers, carving a gentle arc into the hard pack.
The Monument towers over him at that moment, standing squarely where he expects to see the township’s low skyline of habs and silos. He’s going faster and faster toward the gaping crack at its base and —
Echo woke up to the hiss of Kimbra releasing steam from the coffee machine.
“Found some milk in storage,” she says to him. “Turns out everyone here’s lactose intolerant! What were the odds? Anyway, I’m making coffee and we’re gonna steam some milk up.”
One of the brains waved at her, eyes getting wide. Kimbra shrugged, turned around and fired up the steam wand. The brain might have been yelling something like I was saving that but Echo couldn’t be sure.
Set the Expedition
I actually made a Gather Information roll in preparation for the expedition into the Memorial last session: Wits 3 + 3 vs 2 7, weak hit. +1 momentum (+4 total). What’s the complication? They’ll have to walk the final segment.
I create stats for an Incidental Vehicle: little truck, integrity 4 (medium, it’s purpose built but not military grade)
Finally, I Set the Expedition to the Monument at Dangerous. Rolled first segment, Wits 3 + 6 vs 4 1: strong hit. That means I Reach a Waypoint, mark two boxes.
Rolled the second segment: Wits 3+ 3 vs 9 10, MISS and we’re waylaid by a crisis.
Echo and Kimbra packed the little truck, later, topped off the tires, dusted off the solar panels. The Major had, well, a lot of guns. Long guns, short guns, boxes of ammo. Echo had grabbed his own from the Winder and felt a little inadequate.
The truck handled fairly well and the winds had calmed down a good bit. Dust still whirled around beneath the truck. The Weave connection was still iffy, comms back to Helia getting weaker by the kilometer. Eventually the wheels stopped buzzing under them and went silent. They had rolled onto the perfectly smooth circle that stretched for kilometers around the Monument.
“Huh,” Kimbra grunted.
“Handling’s better at least,” Echo said, looking at her. It was still a good drive before they even go to the breach, much less entered it. She pulled up the truck’s front camera and stared into it.
“It’s like we’re never gonna get closer,” she said. They continued. Echo increased the throttle a bit.
Miss on Second Segment
Roll on Planetside Peril table, lifebearing column: Equipment fails or malfunctions.
Right on cue, the wheels locked up and they went into a skid.
“Kidwatchwhatyouredoing —“ Kimbra yelled, grabbing the side of the truck as they went into a roll.
He’d been here before and knew exactly what to do. Echo reached for the adrenaline in his gut. Felt a moment of giddy weightlessness and indulged the thing that made him a Paragon of his township back home. The moment reset, the truck back upright and heading into a skid.
A moment later: Kimbra yelling, the vehicle going over anyway. “Fuck! I’m sorry! I thought —“
Crunch crunch skid slide. The truck finally stopped on its side. Echo and Kimbra hung from their harnesses groaning.
Suffer
Suffer move: Endure harm! -2 (serious), which Echo will try to resist. Health 3 + 4 vs 7 9. I use his LOOPER (-2 Momentum, +4 total): he rerolls the 9, gets a 10, sad, no strong hit. I take the weak hit after all but I don’t want to lose any more Momentum, so I leave Health at 3.
“It’s…okay,” Kimbra grunted. She pushed the release button on the harness and fell out of the webbing. “Damn! Get up, help me get her flipped back over. I’ll see what we can do with the drive that locked up.”
They clambered out of the upended chassis, jumping gingerly down to the hard, smooth surface. Kimbra knelt down and patted the ground. “You know…I think I’m the first human to walk here,” she said.
Check Gear, Face Danger
Check Your Gear to see if something in the truck can help them: Supply 5 + 2 vs 6 10. Weak hit. Sacrifice resources, -1 (Supply 4 now), but they have leverage.
Face Danger to right the truck and continue: Iron 1 +2 +1 for Kimbra’s help vs 4 10. A weak hit, +1 Momentum for Connection’s help (+5 total)
Suffer move: Lose Momentum (delayed!) -1 for a minor setback (+4 momentum now).
Echo rummaged around the truck for whatever might help them flip the vehicle back onto its wheels. He found a jack and what looked like long metal poles, probably part of a canopy. After some grunting and scrabbling, their boots and poles unable to gain any sort of purchase on the surface, the truck flopped down on its chunky tires. Onward.
Undertake an Expedition, continued
Undertake an expedition, continued: Wits 3 + 6 vs 6 9: strong hit! +2 boxes (4 total) on the Expedition track. Now I feel like Exploring a Waypoint! Let’s see what the core oracles give me…
CREATED SUPPLY per the Descriptor + Focus tables.
It felt like hours, Echo thought, the truck silently cruising on what must be ice or glass or polished metal. The dull red sun ducked behind the massive obelisk ahead of them, casting their drive into nightfall hours early. The Weave connection had gone dead hours before.
Then, out in the dust swirls: a glint of metal. Echo was sure of it. “How do you…I need more light over there!” He yelled excitedly, jerking the truck to the right. Kimbra had been dozing and awoke with her hands in fists.
“What the hell, Echo?!” Then as they looked: “What the hell, Echo.”
Plunged into the surface, that perfect mirror they had been driving on for hours, was what appeared to be a cargo crate. Dull metal, squared off, gigantic, the sort of container that would be strapped to the side of a hauler. Whatever livery had been painted on it was long scoured off by the ceaseless dust. It looked to be about halfway inserted into the surface they’d been driving on, assuming it was the same dimensions they were familiar with.
“Let’s go check it out,” Echo said, excited. He was already pulling his helmet over his head.
“Whoa, whoa, kid, this isn’t what we’re here for,” Kimbra said, putting her hand on top of his head so he couldn’t pull his helmet down. Let’s maybe look at this thing when we’re done with our chores.”
Compel
Gotta convince Kimbra to go off mission! Compel: Heart 2 + 5 vs 4 1: Strong hit! +1 Momentum (+5 total)
Echo could barely stay in his seat. “But…but…clues? What brought it down, you think?” He glanced out, glanced back at the Major, glanced back out. He was practically vibrating.
She sighed, nodded. “15 minutes, then we’re back on the road, yeah?”
Explore a Waypoint
Explore a Waypoint: Wits 3 + 1 vs 4 5, a weak hit. I don’t want to spend my Momentum on this yet so I take the +1 momentum (+5 total) and face a peril at the waypoint. I envision something ominous that this could mean. +1 for my Explorer path (+7 total).
They walked gingerly around the thing. Definitely a cargo container, rated for interstellar transport. The airlock seal light was dead, neither red nor green. Echo scrambled up on top of it. The door had been unlatched and thrown open, the interior completely empty.
“Nothing! This is weird,” he said over the radio.
“We done, then?”
“Yeah, but …this is weird, right? What is this doing down here? Who opened it?”
“Dust devils, most likely,” the Major said. She passed her hands along the lower surfaces of the container where it plunged into the smooth surface. Not even impact cracks, just a perfect transition from container to surface. “No, I don’t like this one bit. Let’s tell the brains about it and let them poke at it.”
They continued. The monument was fully backlit with the dull red glow of the setting sun as they drove toward it.
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an expedition: Wits 3 + 1 vs 8 7, another miss! Not feeling another Suffer move, so let’s roll on Pay the Price:
41: The environment or terrain introduces a new hazard. OKAY! I’m going to experiment with the Tension Clock system. I create an 8 segment clock, “The Monument Activates.”
One of the sensors started pinging but Echo couldn’t identify which one. The truck controls themselves were pretty straightforward but it had been retrofitted with lots of science gear. Some of the gear decided it was time to science.
“Echo, pull over man,” the Major said, brow furrowed. She ran her finger along row after row of button and sensor and readout. Nothing was labeled. “Here. Here.” She poked at a triangular screen that had been jammed between two other pieces of equipment.
“I know that screen!” Echo said. “Radiation! Huh. We used these at the township to warn us about solar flares.”
Kimbra looked out the window. The red giant had nearly set. “Well I don’t think that thing’s gonna flare any time soon. Dunno. Maybe it’s malfunctioning.” She tapped the triangle a couple more times with her fingertip.
When Echo turned off the cabin light, a dull blue glow remained. They both looked straight up, following the black-on-black outline of the monolith against the night sky. Above the five points, what appeared to be above the cloud layer, a faint blue sphere glowed.
“What in the world?” He muttered. “We wouldn’t evacuate if our solar flare sensor gave us this reading. Guess we keep going?”
Kimbra shrugged. “Let the brains figure it out. We still have a job to do.”
They continued into the night.
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an expedition; Wits 3 + 4 vs 5 2: strong hit! +2 more boxes (6 boxes marked total on expedition track)
The base of the Monument came up faster than they realized, funny given it was literally kilometers across. But they’d been driving toward it so long they lost any sense of scale. But here it was, finally. The power in the truck quietly clicked off around 5km from the base. The impossibly huge base looked close but they’d have to walk the rest of the way.
“So…we’re here?” Echo asked. He could feel Kimbra nod next to him. “We’re walking into this thing or…?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see what’s inside, yeah?” Kimbra rummaged around the rear seat and found a favorite small carbine. Echo tugged the various tabs around his pressure suit tight and locked his helmet into place.
They popped the seal on the truck doors and stepped out.
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
Posted on March 30, 2023 by Paul Beakley
Part three of my Starforged fiction! Catch up from the beginning here: Setup. Here’s the rest of it: Part 1, Part 2. This session is quite a lot more mechanically intricate than the previous two, which was interesting. Trying to balance good narrative against interesting gameplay. Let me know if you think I hit a good balance!
Echo slept in the xenobotanist’s cot while they tended the hydroponics. It was terrible sleep, noisy and over lit even when he buried his head under a pillow. Every beep and click came through. It was not the low buzz of crickets from his township.
He couldn’t help but gnaw on what information the brains had already gathered. He and Kimbra had looked it all over together. She made hmm and huh sounds. Echo just saw more nothing than something. Couldn’t bring a vehicle too close to the thing, just like the thing in space. Couldn’t fly drones remotely into the hole. They’d have to approach with a little utility truck they had under a tarp outside. Better chunky wheels and thick glass than a grim march across many kilometers of wind-blasted sand.
“See, this thing’s easy to drive!” He yelled over the wind to his sister. She held on for dear life to the farm truck’s roll cage as its six wheels burred over untilled hard pack. Valda, a couple years younger than Echo, trusted him much more than he thought she should. “We can get out to the watering hole and back before Third Ma gets back from town,” he told her, full of unearned confidence.
She tightened her grip. “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?”
He laughed and twisted the throttle. The wheels grabbed tight and they leapt forward.
Echo remembers the precise moment the rear wheels locked up, a moment later, dust getting into the independent motors. Horrible sound. Impossible to control. And as he struggled to keep the articulated farm vehicle from squirming like an eel, he remembers Valda launching out her window.
Adrenaline gripped his gut and made him want to vomit. The whole vehicle started to tip over and —
A moment later: “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?” There was Valda, still in her seat, white knuckling the roll cage above her. His hands were still shaking as he backed the throttle down to the green zone. They turned around then, he remembers, carving a gentle arc into the hard pack.
The Monument towers over him at that moment, standing squarely where he expects to see the township’s low skyline of habs and silos. He’s going faster and faster toward the gaping crack at its base and —
Echo woke up to the hiss of Kimbra releasing steam from the coffee machine.
“Found some milk in storage,” she says to him. “Turns out everyone here’s lactose intolerant! What were the odds? Anyway, I’m making coffee and we’re gonna steam some milk up.”
One of the brains waved at her, eyes getting wide. Kimbra shrugged, turned around and fired up the steam wand. The brain might have been yelling something like I was saving that but Echo couldn’t be sure.
Echo and Kimbra packed the little truck, later, topped off the tires, dusted off the solar panels. The Major had, well, a lot of guns. Long guns, short guns, boxes of ammo. Echo had grabbed his own from the Winder and felt a little inadequate.
The truck handled fairly well and the winds had calmed down a good bit. Dust still whirled around beneath the truck. The Weave connection was still iffy, comms back to Helia getting weaker by the kilometer. Eventually the wheels stopped buzzing under them and went silent. They had rolled onto the perfectly smooth circle that stretched for kilometers around the Monument.
“Huh,” Kimbra grunted.
“Handling’s better at least,” Echo said, looking at her. It was still a good drive before they even go to the breach, much less entered it. She pulled up the truck’s front camera and stared into it.
“It’s like we’re never gonna get closer,” she said. They continued. Echo increased the throttle a bit.
Right on cue, the wheels locked up and they went into a skid.
“Kidwatchwhatyouredoing —“ Kimbra yelled, grabbing the side of the truck as they went into a roll.
He’d been here before and knew exactly what to do. Echo reached for the adrenaline in his gut. Felt a moment of giddy weightlessness and indulged the thing that made him a Paragon of his township back home. The moment reset, the truck back upright and heading into a skid.
A moment later: Kimbra yelling, the vehicle going over anyway. “Fuck! I’m sorry! I thought —“
Crunch crunch skid slide. The truck finally stopped on its side. Echo and Kimbra hung from their harnesses groaning.
“It’s…okay,” Kimbra grunted. She pushed the release button on the harness and fell out of the webbing. “Damn! Get up, help me get her flipped back over. I’ll see what we can do with the drive that locked up.”
They clambered out of the upended chassis, jumping gingerly down to the hard, smooth surface. Kimbra knelt down and patted the ground. “You know…I think I’m the first human to walk here,” she said.
Echo rummaged around the truck for whatever might help them flip the vehicle back onto its wheels. He found a jack and what looked like long metal poles, probably part of a canopy. After some grunting and scrabbling, their boots and poles unable to gain any sort of purchase on the surface, the truck flopped down on its chunky tires. Onward.
It felt like hours, Echo thought, the truck silently cruising on what must be ice or glass or polished metal. The dull red sun ducked behind the massive obelisk ahead of them, casting their drive into nightfall hours early. The Weave connection had gone dead hours before.
Then, out in the dust swirls: a glint of metal. Echo was sure of it. “How do you…I need more light over there!” He yelled excitedly, jerking the truck to the right. Kimbra had been dozing and awoke with her hands in fists.
“What the hell, Echo?!” Then as they looked: “What the hell, Echo.”
Plunged into the surface, that perfect mirror they had been driving on for hours, was what appeared to be a cargo crate. Dull metal, squared off, gigantic, the sort of container that would be strapped to the side of a hauler. Whatever livery had been painted on it was long scoured off by the ceaseless dust. It looked to be about halfway inserted into the surface they’d been driving on, assuming it was the same dimensions they were familiar with.
“Let’s go check it out,” Echo said, excited. He was already pulling his helmet over his head.
“Whoa, whoa, kid, this isn’t what we’re here for,” Kimbra said, putting her hand on top of his head so he couldn’t pull his helmet down. Let’s maybe look at this thing when we’re done with our chores.”
Echo could barely stay in his seat. “But…but…clues? What brought it down, you think?” He glanced out, glanced back at the Major, glanced back out. He was practically vibrating.
She sighed, nodded. “15 minutes, then we’re back on the road, yeah?”
They walked gingerly around the thing. Definitely a cargo container, rated for interstellar transport. The airlock seal light was dead, neither red nor green. Echo scrambled up on top of it. The door had been unlatched and thrown open, the interior completely empty.
“Nothing! This is weird,” he said over the radio.
“We done, then?”
“Yeah, but …this is weird, right? What is this doing down here? Who opened it?”
“Dust devils, most likely,” the Major said. She passed her hands along the lower surfaces of the container where it plunged into the smooth surface. Not even impact cracks, just a perfect transition from container to surface. “No, I don’t like this one bit. Let’s tell the brains about it and let them poke at it.”
They continued. The monument was fully backlit with the dull red glow of the setting sun as they drove toward it.
One of the sensors started pinging but Echo couldn’t identify which one. The truck controls themselves were pretty straightforward but it had been retrofitted with lots of science gear. Some of the gear decided it was time to science.
“Echo, pull over man,” the Major said, brow furrowed. She ran her finger along row after row of button and sensor and readout. Nothing was labeled. “Here. Here.” She poked at a triangular screen that had been jammed between two other pieces of equipment.
“I know that screen!” Echo said. “Radiation! Huh. We used these at the township to warn us about solar flares.”
Kimbra looked out the window. The red giant had nearly set. “Well I don’t think that thing’s gonna flare any time soon. Dunno. Maybe it’s malfunctioning.” She tapped the triangle a couple more times with her fingertip.
When Echo turned off the cabin light, a dull blue glow remained. They both looked straight up, following the black-on-black outline of the monolith against the night sky. Above the five points, what appeared to be above the cloud layer, a faint blue sphere glowed.
“What in the world?” He muttered. “We wouldn’t evacuate if our solar flare sensor gave us this reading. Guess we keep going?”
Kimbra shrugged. “Let the brains figure it out. We still have a job to do.”
They continued into the night.
The base of the Monument came up faster than they realized, funny given it was literally kilometers across. But they’d been driving toward it so long they lost any sense of scale. But here it was, finally. The power in the truck quietly clicked off around 5km from the base. The impossibly huge base looked close but they’d have to walk the rest of the way.
“So…we’re here?” Echo asked. He could feel Kimbra nod next to him. “We’re walking into this thing or…?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see what’s inside, yeah?” Kimbra rummaged around the rear seat and found a favorite small carbine. Echo tugged the various tabs around his pressure suit tight and locked his helmet into place.
They popped the seal on the truck doors and stepped out.
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<em>Related</em>
A short session this week. The procedures are still prominent but producing interesting prompts. If you’re just now finding this, the story starts at the Prologue. I’ll keep injecting the mechanical bits per the rest of the series. My takeaway with this session is that Starforged is designed to deliver good gameplay, not necessarily good narrative, and the real creative work here lies in finding ways to treat the game’s output as useful prompts without getting pulled along by mechanical momentum. The fact I need to be consistent and principled in things like establishing fictional positioning for my characters helps, but honestly? Not sure I’d bother if I was just playing “for myself.” Thanks for being an audience to play — and write — toward!
Recap Everything
Quick review of everything so far!
Stats
Momentum +7
Health 3
Spirit 5
Supply 4
Relationship tracks
Kimbra Freeman (Dangerous): 4/10 boxes
Dr. Zari Vandu (Troublesome): 3/10 boxes
Other tracks
Help Kimbra defend Helia (vow, Formidable): 0/10
Expedition to Monument 62 (journey, Dangerous): 6/10
Tension clock: The Monument Activates: 0/8
Session starts without any session moves. This isn’t a new chapter, I don’t need to set any flags, etc. Let’s proceed with the expedition!
The little Helia truck sitting dead in the dust, Echo and the Major walked toward the dark crack at the base of the monument. Looking at it with his own eyes, Echo thought he could see a bit into the darkness. But the huge red sun had fully set and the only light was the dim blue glow of whatever was going on above the Monument, kilometers over his head.
The suits’ power sources seemed to be working just fine. Echo had no idea why, and the Major wasn’t questioning their good fortune. She was cycling through her various camera lenses and image processors, standing stock still under the faint blue glow, touching her own helmet to refine what she could see.
Secure an Advantage
Getting out of the truck and making the approach warrants a Secure an Advantage moment as Echo and Kimbra take stock of the situation. They’re just observing, now that they’re on-site and relatively close, Wits 3 +1 for Kimbra’s relationship +2 vs 5 7: a weak hit. Gonna take +1 on our next move, which will be Undertake an Expedition.
“Rangefinder says the crack is less than a kilometer high,” she muttered into their radio channel. “Not seeing any movement. Piles of junk right where I was gonna walk us…kind of weird. Guess the dust devils decide what to keep after they haul it back here.”
Her words chirped in Echo’s ears, tinny and unreal. He’d never worn an environmental suit before. A few hours into it, he couldn’t recommend the experience. He felt itchy and heavy and slightly damp. He craved sunlight on his skin, thinking about what a gift living in his farming township had been.
Why had he left? What was so great about standing in the shadow of this colossal alien thing? He craned his neck back as far as he could, remembering his dream with his sister.
The tickle in his gut, the little adrenaline spike that meant he’d gotten a glimpse of something bad in his immediate future, kept ticking over. Low key anxiety crawled up his spine and down his fingertips, without any particular glimpse at all. Just the warning sense, humming in his skin.
“Maybe we come at it from the left?” he said, pointing to an especially tall pile of junk. He recognized a Weave transmitter atop the pile, bent into a V shape, as well as bits of corrugated metal and spirals of stiff wire. “Can we hide ourselves behind all that?”
Kimbra bobbed her upper body to convey agreement through the stiffness of the environmental suit. “Kill our lights, too. I think whatever that is,” she said, pointing at the blue light, “will give us enough to see. Nothing to trip over, anyway.”
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an Expedition roll, continuing to be vigilant because why not? Wits 3 +1 for Kimbra +1 for Secure an Advantage + 4 vs 6 8, a strong hit! Reach a waypoint, +2 boxes on the track (8 total).
They set out across the mirror-flat surface, each step feeling almost slippery. Eventually they reached the junk pile, which like everything else Echo had seen since leaving the township forced him to re-evaluate the scale involved. Mostly he noticed there was more junk in the pile than the dust devils could have possibly pulled off the Helia habs without simply taking every scrap, including the habs.
“Where’d it all come from?” he asked aloud. Kimbra walked around the base, still carefully keeping it between her and the looming black hole. She poked her carbine into the pile here and there.
Explore a Waypoint
I think Kimbra is actually Exploring a Waypoint at this point. Echo of course joins in. Wits 3 +1 for Kimbra +3 vs 6 7, a weak hit. +1 Momentum (+8 total) +1 more for Explorer (+9 total).
Go to the oracle for a ship name: Mercy. Character name: Arcus.
She pulled out a mass of fabric with the barrel of her gun and turned it slowly toward Echo. It was a gray jumpsuit, the most common bit of clothing worn by ship crews. The Major carefully spread it out on the ground and they stared down at it: MERCY was emblazoned in an arc across the back, with official corporate livery of Helia below it.
“I don’t know what this is,” Kimbra muttered. She flipped the jumpsuit over. The name badge read ARCUS.
“Did the brains arrive on a ship called Mercy?”
She shook her head. “No. I mean, I was told they arrived by passenger shuttle a couple years ago. Never heard of this Arcus, whoever they were. Never heard of a ship calling itself Mercy, either.”
“Maybe not an Overseer? Just a dumb ship?”
The Major stared, silent, body language screaming I do not like this at all. She nudged the jumpsuit with her boot toe. “No signs of injury, no entry or exit holes, no blood. The dust devils grabbed someone’s laundry? They’ve only ever shown an interest in metal and smart materials.”
Echo poked his head around the junk pile and looked at the yawning hole. It wasn’t far now, just a couple hundred meters away. Still no signs of movement, no change in the blue light, no monsters bursting out of the junk piles. The wind had stopped. The stars quietly turned overhead.
“I think we’re alone,” he said. He turned to look at Kimbra, watched her carefully fold the jumpsuit and slip it into her backpack.
“Got some questions for the brains after this,” she muttered. Then, louder: “Let’s get inside this thing and see what’s what.”
Undertake an Expedition
Last Undertake? Wits 3 +1 for Kimbra +4 vs 4 4: strong hit with a match, +2 boxes (10 total, time to finish the expedition)! Let’s go to the action/theme Core Oracles to see what it gives us: BREAK WEAKNESS. Huh, not sure what to do with that. Let’s try the descriptor/focus set as well: PERILOUS ROUTE.
They crossed the final few meters to the chasm. The opening was dozens of meters across, and towered up and out of view as they looked up. This close to the Monument, they lost the overhead blue glow. Kimbra flicked on her suit lights.
Finish an Expedition
Finish an Expedition: our first Progress roll! 10 boxes vs 8 10, oh no, a weak hit! Looks like we know how our Oracle rolls play out now. 1 tick on my Discoveries legacy track (boo), +1 tick for Explorer. The journey, I think, is a chance to Develop Your Relationship with Kimbra, so +2 boxes on her relationship track (6 total). We’ve also Reached a Milestone on our quest, first box on our (formidable) Vow track.
So the Monument is obviously a Precursor vault. I already know a lot about it based on previous rolls, so I can skip over generating the exterior. Inner first look table: TOXIC ATMOSPHERE.
A sturdy industrial tripod stood perched at the edge of the opening, suddenly obvious under her lights. Echo recognized the type immediately; farmers of the township used these all the time to secure structures, provide mounting points for sensors, string up tarps for picnics. This one had a heavy duty cable reel bolted to the top. The cable was taut and aimed a few degrees downward into the darkness.
“What the…we’re not the first ones?!” Kimbra almost yelled. “Damn it. Damn it! I wanted to be first. Why didn’t —“
Echo walked up to it and pulled on the cable. “It’s stuck to something down in there, can’t see what.” He turned on his own lights and followed the cable into the dark. “At least 50 meters in, I can’t see where it ends or how it’s hooked into anything. Good thing it’s here, though.” He knelt at the edge of where the Monument should have ended were it not for the crack. “There’s no way in or down without it.”
A sensor pinged a notification on his face plate: a quick sniff of the atmosphere within the chasm said the air was bad-toxic. Like evacuate immediately toxic in the case of a suit rip or faceplate crack.
Undertake An(other) Expedition
Probably the right way to proceed is to Undertake An(other) Expedition to find the dust devil nest they’re actually here to deal with. Don’t love that, it feels a little repetitive, but I’m not sure I’d have established the first expedition a different way without seeing how this one turned out.
I start a new track: Explore the Monument (dangerous). I pick dangerous because this feels like a pacing choice more than a threat-level choice, and the trip across the flat just to get here felt long “enough.” This might be where my narrative choices conflict with good-game-play choices.
The Major pulled on the cable, hard, putting her weight into it. It barely budged the tripod.
“Do you trust it?” Echo asked. He peered back down into the darkness, directing his suit lights all around. Still no movement or even any signs of features other than complete void.
“Hell no I don’t trust it,” she replied, also staring down into the dark. “Maybe there’s something in the truck we can use to secure ourselves up here.”
Check Your Gear
Check Your Gear for something to help them use the cable: Supply 4 + 4 vs 3 3: another strong hit with a match! +1 Momentum (+10, maxed out), and consult the Oracle for something to do with that match: FORTIFIED VOID, interesting!
They made the trek back and poked around the truck bed until Kimbra yelled, triumphant. “Yes…yes! This is perfect.” She pulled out climbing harnesses, ropes and other depth-delving bits and bobs. There was even a set of ratcheted grips that would let them work their way back up the cable.
“Helia packed the truck with all this?” Echo asked, skeptical. “Like they were expecting to go down a hole?”
Kimbra grimaced. “Yeahhh. Vandu and I are going to need a long talk when we get back. Grab your gun, let’s go find us some dust devils.”
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
A short session this week. The procedures are still prominent but producing interesting prompts. If you’re just now finding this, the story starts at the Prologue. I’ll keep injecting the mechanical bits per the rest of the series. My takeaway with this session is that Starforged is designed to deliver good gameplay, not necessarily good narrative, and the real creative work here lies in finding ways to treat the game’s output as useful prompts without getting pulled along by mechanical momentum. The fact I need to be consistent and principled in things like establishing fictional positioning for my characters helps, but honestly? Not sure I’d bother if I was just playing “for myself.” Thanks for being an audience to play — and write — toward!
Recap Everything
Quick review of everything so far!
Stats
Momentum +7
Health 3
Spirit 5
Supply 4
Relationship tracks
Kimbra Freeman (Dangerous): 4/10 boxes
Dr. Zari Vandu (Troublesome): 3/10 boxes
Other tracks
Help Kimbra defend Helia (vow, Formidable): 0/10
Expedition to Monument 62 (journey, Dangerous): 6/10
Tension clock: The Monument Activates: 0/8
Session starts without any session moves. This isn’t a new chapter, I don’t need to set any flags, etc. Let’s proceed with the expedition!
The little Helia truck sitting dead in the dust, Echo and the Major walked toward the dark crack at the base of the monument. Looking at it with his own eyes, Echo thought he could see a bit into the darkness. But the huge red sun had fully set and the only light was the dim blue glow of whatever was going on above the Monument, kilometers over his head.
The suits’ power sources seemed to be working just fine. Echo had no idea why, and the Major wasn’t questioning their good fortune. She was cycling through her various camera lenses and image processors, standing stock still under the faint blue glow, touching her own helmet to refine what she could see.
Secure an Advantage
Getting out of the truck and making the approach warrants a Secure an Advantage moment as Echo and Kimbra take stock of the situation. They’re just observing, now that they’re on-site and relatively close, Wits 3 +1 for Kimbra’s relationship +2 vs 5 7: a weak hit. Gonna take +1 on our next move, which will be Undertake an Expedition.
“Rangefinder says the crack is less than a kilometer high,” she muttered into their radio channel. “Not seeing any movement. Piles of junk right where I was gonna walk us…kind of weird. Guess the dust devils decide what to keep after they haul it back here.”
Her words chirped in Echo’s ears, tinny and unreal. He’d never worn an environmental suit before. A few hours into it, he couldn’t recommend the experience. He felt itchy and heavy and slightly damp. He craved sunlight on his skin, thinking about what a gift living in his farming township had been.
Why had he left? What was so great about standing in the shadow of this colossal alien thing? He craned his neck back as far as he could, remembering his dream with his sister.
The tickle in his gut, the little adrenaline spike that meant he’d gotten a glimpse of something bad in his immediate future, kept ticking over. Low key anxiety crawled up his spine and down his fingertips, without any particular glimpse at all. Just the warning sense, humming in his skin.
“Maybe we come at it from the left?” he said, pointing to an especially tall pile of junk. He recognized a Weave transmitter atop the pile, bent into a V shape, as well as bits of corrugated metal and spirals of stiff wire. “Can we hide ourselves behind all that?”
Kimbra bobbed her upper body to convey agreement through the stiffness of the environmental suit. “Kill our lights, too. I think whatever that is,” she said, pointing at the blue light, “will give us enough to see. Nothing to trip over, anyway.”
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an Expedition roll, continuing to be vigilant because why not? Wits 3 +1 for Kimbra +1 for Secure an Advantage + 4 vs 6 8, a strong hit! Reach a waypoint, +2 boxes on the track (8 total).
They set out across the mirror-flat surface, each step feeling almost slippery. Eventually they reached the junk pile, which like everything else Echo had seen since leaving the township forced him to re-evaluate the scale involved. Mostly he noticed there was more junk in the pile than the dust devils could have possibly pulled off the Helia habs without simply taking every scrap, including the habs.
“Where’d it all come from?” he asked aloud. Kimbra walked around the base, still carefully keeping it between her and the looming black hole. She poked her carbine into the pile here and there.
Explore a Waypoint
I think Kimbra is actually Exploring a Waypoint at this point. Echo of course joins in. Wits 3 +1 for Kimbra +3 vs 6 7, a weak hit. +1 Momentum (+8 total) +1 more for Explorer (+9 total).
Go to the oracle for a ship name: Mercy. Character name: Arcus.
She pulled out a mass of fabric with the barrel of her gun and turned it slowly toward Echo. It was a gray jumpsuit, the most common bit of clothing worn by ship crews. The Major carefully spread it out on the ground and they stared down at it: MERCY was emblazoned in an arc across the back, with official corporate livery of Helia below it.
“I don’t know what this is,” Kimbra muttered. She flipped the jumpsuit over. The name badge read ARCUS.
“Did the brains arrive on a ship called Mercy?”
She shook her head. “No. I mean, I was told they arrived by passenger shuttle a couple years ago. Never heard of this Arcus, whoever they were. Never heard of a ship calling itself Mercy, either.”
“Maybe not an Overseer? Just a dumb ship?”
The Major stared, silent, body language screaming I do not like this at all. She nudged the jumpsuit with her boot toe. “No signs of injury, no entry or exit holes, no blood. The dust devils grabbed someone’s laundry? They’ve only ever shown an interest in metal and smart materials.”
Echo poked his head around the junk pile and looked at the yawning hole. It wasn’t far now, just a couple hundred meters away. Still no signs of movement, no change in the blue light, no monsters bursting out of the junk piles. The wind had stopped. The stars quietly turned overhead.
“I think we’re alone,” he said. He turned to look at Kimbra, watched her carefully fold the jumpsuit and slip it into her backpack.
“Got some questions for the brains after this,” she muttered. Then, louder: “Let’s get inside this thing and see what’s what.”
Undertake an Expedition
Last Undertake? Wits 3 +1 for Kimbra +4 vs 4 4: strong hit with a match, +2 boxes (10 total, time to finish the expedition)! Let’s go to the action/theme Core Oracles to see what it gives us: BREAK WEAKNESS. Huh, not sure what to do with that. Let’s try the descriptor/focus set as well: PERILOUS ROUTE.
They crossed the final few meters to the chasm. The opening was dozens of meters across, and towered up and out of view as they looked up. This close to the Monument, they lost the overhead blue glow. Kimbra flicked on her suit lights.
Finish an Expedition
Finish an Expedition: our first Progress roll! 10 boxes vs 8 10, oh no, a weak hit! Looks like we know how our Oracle rolls play out now. 1 tick on my Discoveries legacy track (boo), +1 tick for Explorer. The journey, I think, is a chance to Develop Your Relationship with Kimbra, so +2 boxes on her relationship track (6 total). We’ve also Reached a Milestone on our quest, first box on our (formidable) Vow track.
So the Monument is obviously a Precursor vault. I already know a lot about it based on previous rolls, so I can skip over generating the exterior. Inner first look table: TOXIC ATMOSPHERE.
A sturdy industrial tripod stood perched at the edge of the opening, suddenly obvious under her lights. Echo recognized the type immediately; farmers of the township used these all the time to secure structures, provide mounting points for sensors, string up tarps for picnics. This one had a heavy duty cable reel bolted to the top. The cable was taut and aimed a few degrees downward into the darkness.
“What the…we’re not the first ones?!” Kimbra almost yelled. “Damn it. Damn it! I wanted to be first. Why didn’t —“
Echo walked up to it and pulled on the cable. “It’s stuck to something down in there, can’t see what.” He turned on his own lights and followed the cable into the dark. “At least 50 meters in, I can’t see where it ends or how it’s hooked into anything. Good thing it’s here, though.” He knelt at the edge of where the Monument should have ended were it not for the crack. “There’s no way in or down without it.”
A sensor pinged a notification on his face plate: a quick sniff of the atmosphere within the chasm said the air was bad-toxic. Like evacuate immediately toxic in the case of a suit rip or faceplate crack.
Undertake An(other) Expedition
Probably the right way to proceed is to Undertake An(other) Expedition to find the dust devil nest they’re actually here to deal with. Don’t love that, it feels a little repetitive, but I’m not sure I’d have established the first expedition a different way without seeing how this one turned out.
I start a new track: Explore the Monument (dangerous). I pick dangerous because this feels like a pacing choice more than a threat-level choice, and the trip across the flat just to get here felt long “enough.” This might be where my narrative choices conflict with good-game-play choices.
The Major pulled on the cable, hard, putting her weight into it. It barely budged the tripod.
“Do you trust it?” Echo asked. He peered back down into the darkness, directing his suit lights all around. Still no movement or even any signs of features other than complete void.
“Hell no I don’t trust it,” she replied, also staring down into the dark. “Maybe there’s something in the truck we can use to secure ourselves up here.”
Check Your Gear
Check Your Gear for something to help them use the cable: Supply 4 + 4 vs 3 3: another strong hit with a match! +1 Momentum (+10, maxed out), and consult the Oracle for something to do with that match: FORTIFIED VOID, interesting!
They made the trek back and poked around the truck bed until Kimbra yelled, triumphant. “Yes…yes! This is perfect.” She pulled out climbing harnesses, ropes and other depth-delving bits and bobs. There was even a set of ratcheted grips that would let them work their way back up the cable.
“Helia packed the truck with all this?” Echo asked, skeptical. “Like they were expecting to go down a hole?”
Kimbra grimaced. “Yeahhh. Vandu and I are going to need a long talk when we get back. Grab your gun, let’s go find us some dust devils.”
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
Another chapter of using Starforged as a fiction oracle. Things are getting weird! Lots of exploration but I’m getting itchy to start seeing some meaningful conflict appear. Start from the Prologue if you want to read from the beginning.
Quickly revisiting the mechanics
Now that I have a better grasp of the relationship between pacing and track difficulty, I’m reviewing my decision to make Echo’s vow to Kimbra to defend Helia “formidable.” I don’t know that I really want to spend that much time on Helia! So for now, I’m ticking it down to “Dangerous” and revising the number of boxes filled so far to 2.
Time to head into the Vault.
It took them through a meal break and a short nap before the Major was satisfied the old cable rigging wasn’t secretly a trap. She hung from the cable, bounced her body weight on it, sacrificed a random bag of bolts and a carabiner by letting it slide down into the darkness. “Yeah…I guess this is gonna have to do. Echo, you ready to go ziplining?”
Echo had no idea what ziplining was but shrugged, turned on every light on his helmet and looked down the cable as far as he could. They both had harnesses on at this point. Nothing to be done but start sliding down down down. Or, you know, go home. Home was always an option too.
The giant red sun began to rise behind them, reaching into the Monument’s darkness with its dim glow. He could see hints of surfaces within, cracked stone towering all around them. Possibly, maybe there was a shelf at the far end of the cable? Or possibly the dim red light was playing tricks on him. With enough adrenaline to make his stomach curdle, he watched the Major clip onto the cable and begin her slide down. She seemed to accelerate as she disappeared into the gloom. But a moment later, he could see the ring of her helmet lights poking back up at him from deep within the crevasse.
“It’s faster than it looks,” she said over the radio, breathless. “I’ll catch you, kid. We’re good to go. And you’re gonna want to see this.”
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an Expedition, viligant as always: Wits 3 + 3 + 1 from Kimbra vs 7 1: strong hit, and we reach a waypoint. Exploring waypoints is what they both want, so mark 2 boxes and divert to examine what they find.Made a second roll on the “Vault Interior” oracle: Abnormal Gravity. Oh interesting.
Echo opened his fist through pure willpower and began the slide down. Sure enough, he picked up speed much faster than he expected. The whine of cable-on-carabiner vibrated through the harness into his bones.
“Is the gravity weird in here?” he found himself yelling into his mic. “If I grab the cable I’m gonna burn through my glove —“
By the time he formulated his concerns, he was already careening at and into Kimbra. She sidestepped his lanky body and caught him as he passed by. Echo ended up on his feet, as if he’d practiced the move for weeks.
“Right?” she asked him, grinning like a maniac, still adrenalized. Echo looked back up the cable and burst out laughing from nerves.
“Holy shit. Holy shit,” he gasped, unclipping as quickly as possible. He couldn’t tell if he actually felt heavier or if it was just the EVA suit.
Explore a Waypoint
Explore a Waypoint: Wits 3 + 1 vs 5 2. Weak hit, but my Momentum is maxed out so let’s use that instead: 10 vs 5 2, reset Momentum to +2, +1 more for Explorer (+3 total). I take the “gain progress” option and add a couple boxes to the Explore track (4 total). Interior Feature: Vaulted Chamber. Sure, that fits.
They looked around where they had landed.
The two of them shone their helmets around where they had landed. It was a natural-looking shelf of rock, the tip of a rocket-propelled grappling hook lodged deep into the material. Echo knelt down and rubbed the surface. It felt like crumbly rock. As he stood up he got lightheaded, not just dizzy but literally lighter than he had been. Kimbra reached up and grabbed his boot as he started to drift in microgravity.
“Well this is weird,” he said, still giddy from zipping down the cable. A dozen small loose rocks continued floating up and past him as the Major pulled him back down.
Beyond the shelf they were standing on, the stone looked as though it had eroded away through some natural process. Rather than a worked passage, the stone smoothly receded deeper into the Monument’s interior. Kimbra pulled up her carbine, flicked it on, and proceeded inward. A few minutes later, they emerged into a vast, vaulted space. Clearly a made space, even if the geometry of the walls and ceiling didn’t quite make sense to his eyes.
As his lights moved along the ceiling, a dense cloud of dust and dirt puffed away from the light. It swirled along the ceiling, moving into the darkness.
“Oh dang,” Echo muttered. The Major had already dropped to one knee and brought up her carbine. There was enough atmosphere in here that he could hear the small whine of the charge humming out of the gun. “Is this…is this the nest?”
She shook her head inside her helmet so he could see her. “I think it was just the one. Throw something up there, see if we flush any more of them out.”
“Flush them…and what are we gonna do if there are more? You’re not gonna shoot dust.”
She sighed, reached down, grabbed a large bit of broken Monument rock, and chucked it at the ceiling. In the very low gravity, it accelerated away at an alarming speed. It bounced off the ceiling, but nothing else moved. “Just the one. Let’s get deeper, I think we’re onto something.”
Undertake, Explore
Undertake an Expedition: Wits 3 + 4 +1 for Kimbra vs 3 5. Strong hit. Two more boxes (6 total). Another roll on Interior Feature: Enigmatic controls or terminal. Okay, now that’s worth exploring.
Explore a Waypoint: Wits 3 + 3 vs 6 1. Strong hit again! I keep hoping for doubles, but this is fine. It’ll be more magical when it does come up. I want to gain progress and run this clock faster. Also +1 Momentum for Explorer (+4 total). Time to continue on and reach the middle of this thing. But first, let’s roll on the Vault Purpose oracle.Vault Purpose: Conduit to mystical powers. Yes! This is my rationale for leveling up Looper when I get a chance.
Somewhere from within the ceiling, a blue light very much like what they saw kilometers above the Monument outside suddenly flared bright. The light filled the chamber, glowing out from columns of sigils and scratches all over the walls. Echo could feel the intelligence behind the marks, certainly not random. One stack of markings, a square several meters wide and high, remained a blue glow as the rest of the space returned to darkness. He walked straight toward it.
“Echo, kid, Iiiii dunno if that’s such a good idea,” Kimbra muttered even as she too walked towards it.
As he got closer, the stone-carved symbols began to rearrange themselves. The stone itself seemed to flow and shift as the blue symbols changed tone and size. As he walked left to right, the dozen-or-so closest to him seemed to glow the brightest and grow the largest. Echo stopped, faced the wall, could hear nothing Kimbra was saying in his radio.
What he heard instead was his own inner tickle, the thing that let him rewind events just a smidge. Rather than a vague “I’m in trouble, help help” urge, staring into the symbols seemed to give him … focus? Purpose? An instruction manual?!
He reached his hand toward the center-most icon, which looked like a star, and all the other icons looked like stars, and soon the whole wall was filled with stars and they were winking into darkness one after another even as the center star grew and grew, and as he looked at a familiar cluster of stars they were a constellation he had been born under and looked at every day of his childhood but it too was winking out one by one —
“Echo, kid, Iiiii dunno if that’s such a good idea, “Kimbra muttered, even as she too walked toward it.
Echo startled back to the present, felt the little loop kick off in his gut, and reached a hand out to stop the Major. “No, don’t,” he said.
The Major turned toward him, at first an angry look but quickly replaced by concern. “What’s up? Are you okay?”
He turned back to the wall to point at the ever-growing central star. But it was just three vague squiggles. The blue light was starting to fade away, one, two, three pulses. Then the squiggles were gone.
“I’m … not sure what I saw. I don’t think it was for you.”
Kimbra scoffed and shook her head. “Okay. Whatever. Nest can’t be much further at this point. Let’s go, you weird kid.”
Undertake an Expedition, Finish, Forge a Bond
Undertake an Expedition: Wits 3 + 3 + 1 for Kimbra vs 7 1. One more strong hit and I fill out the last 2 Explore track boxes. Now it’s time to roll on the Inner Sanctum table.
Inner Sanctum: Abyssal Pit or Chasm. Yup, that tracks.
Finish an Expedition: 10 progress vs 6 8: strong hit, they’re done! 2 ticks on the Discoveries track, +1 tick for Explorer (5 total ticks). That’s 2 xp, which I’m cashing in for the second Looper effect. Also ticking two boxes on his vow to Kimbra for Reach a Milestone (4 total), and two more boxes on his relationship with Kimbra (8 total). You know what? I think Echo is eager to forge that Bond with Kimbra even if the track isn’t maxed out.
Forge a Bond: 8 progress vs 4 4: Strong hit with a match, what could it mean? His relationship with Kimbra is now a Bond. 2 ticks on his Bonds legacy track for that. I choose to expand her influence to give Kimbra a second role. I’m not sure how, yet. So I looked at the Role table, without rolling on it. The Action + Theme option is interesting, so I roll on that, just to see what it gives me. WEAKEN BURDEN. Huh. It seems apparent that Kimbra’ real role is going to be Echo’s mentor.
They continued deeper and deeper, hours of walking, sometimes so light they had to push themselves off the ceiling of the natural worn passages, sometimes so heavy they had to help each other take steps. They had brought enough food for a couple days of walking and were quickly approaching the halfway mark on their calories. Echo had eventually learned to ignore the taste of his recycled pee.
The passages had become a criss-crossing maze. Kimbra marked the walls every once in a while with the tip of her shipboard blade. The stone was soft, much softer than the perfect flatness they had driven across would have suggested. The maze soon felt more like an insect hive, thin bits of stone barely connected to each other.
Then the stone was gone. All of it. Echo and the Major stepped to the edge of a bottomless hole hundreds of meters across. The blue glow above had returned. As he looked up, Echo was certain he was seeing the glow that had appeared over the Monument, because this hole apparently shot through the center of the entire structure. Had the glow emerged from this hole? Or just endless dust devils?
They sat at the edge of the hole, letting their legs dangle. They were exhausted, keenly aware of the food situation, achy from fighting strange gravity, frazzled from the low-key anxiety of running into more dust devils without a real action plan for them.
“They have to be coming up from down there, yeah?” Echo said, peering down into the depths. He sucked a bit of nutrient paste out of a tube inside his helmet. It tasted a bit like an apple this time.
Kimbra nodded, looked down, and laid back on the stone. “I don’t have any idea what we do now,” she said, staring up at the blue sphere kilometers up. Echo could almost make out the starry sky at the edges of the light as he looked up with her. They laid back in silence for a bit.
“Did you know I was a Paragon for the farming outpost I’m from?” Echo finally asked.
“Mmm hmm. The old guy never told me why.”
“You two talked a lot, didn’t you?”
“Oh you know. Lots of years. We have the kind of friendship that waits. It’s like no time had gone by at all no matter how long it was since I saw him.”
Echo nodded and took another sip. Something meaty this time, maybe fowl of some sort. “Yeah, so. Remember that room back there with the lit up symbols on the wall?”
“I do. They only lit up for a second though, I couldn’t even see what they were supposed to be.”
“My township made me a Paragon because I can see the future, sometimes. Or maybe I can rewind time a bit. It’s never much, just a few moments. I’m not really sure how it works.”
Kimbra nodded. “That’s a good one. Only ever heard of one other like you out there. Your folks were lucky to have you.”
“Not really! I mostly kept my family from getting hurt by some dumb thing I had done.”
Kimbra sat up and pushed herself away from the edge of the hole. “As I understand it,” she said, now moving more like the old woman she was and not a battle-hardened veteran, “these things take time to develop. I’m sure you’d have been ready when it was time to do something more with it. The colonies don’t pick Paragons lightly. It’s not cheap to throw extra resources at some random kid just because their parents think they’re special.”
“I think this place showed me how to work it.”
“Huh. How to work your time thing? See further into the future or rewind more of it?” She shook her head. “Well I’m glad one of us got something out of our little hike. But now we need to head back and explain to the brains what all we’ve seen here, see if they can give us more of an action plan.”
“See, I think I can use it to bring back more intel.” Echo also stood up, equally stiff. He started looping rope around the nearest, largest bit of stone he could find. “Or at least make sure nothing stupid happens if I try.”
Kimbra saw he had a belay device in his hand, the rope fed through it. “Oh whoa wait kid, you haven’t tested —“
Echo took one step back and fell down the hole.
Final Business
Last bit of business to set up before the end of session: I’m using the new Looper ability to create a link at the moment before he steps into the pit to explore. Health 3, Spirit 5, Supply 4, Momentum 4.
I’m also setting up one more track for exploring the Sanctum to defeat/deal with the dust devils: Find the Dust Devils (Dangerous).
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
Another chapter of using Starforged as a fiction oracle. Things are getting weird! Lots of exploration but I’m getting itchy to start seeing some meaningful conflict appear. Start from the Prologue if you want to read from the beginning.
Quickly revisiting the mechanics
Now that I have a better grasp of the relationship between pacing and track difficulty, I’m reviewing my decision to make Echo’s vow to Kimbra to defend Helia “formidable.” I don’t know that I really want to spend that much time on Helia! So for now, I’m ticking it down to “Dangerous” and revising the number of boxes filled so far to 2.
Time to head into the Vault.
It took them through a meal break and a short nap before the Major was satisfied the old cable rigging wasn’t secretly a trap. She hung from the cable, bounced her body weight on it, sacrificed a random bag of bolts and a carabiner by letting it slide down into the darkness. “Yeah…I guess this is gonna have to do. Echo, you ready to go ziplining?”
Echo had no idea what ziplining was but shrugged, turned on every light on his helmet and looked down the cable as far as he could. They both had harnesses on at this point. Nothing to be done but start sliding down down down. Or, you know, go home. Home was always an option too.
The giant red sun began to rise behind them, reaching into the Monument’s darkness with its dim glow. He could see hints of surfaces within, cracked stone towering all around them. Possibly, maybe there was a shelf at the far end of the cable? Or possibly the dim red light was playing tricks on him. With enough adrenaline to make his stomach curdle, he watched the Major clip onto the cable and begin her slide down. She seemed to accelerate as she disappeared into the gloom. But a moment later, he could see the ring of her helmet lights poking back up at him from deep within the crevasse.
“It’s faster than it looks,” she said over the radio, breathless. “I’ll catch you, kid. We’re good to go. And you’re gonna want to see this.”
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an Expedition, viligant as always: Wits 3 + 3 + 1 from Kimbra vs 7 1: strong hit, and we reach a waypoint. Exploring waypoints is what they both want, so mark 2 boxes and divert to examine what they find.Made a second roll on the “Vault Interior” oracle: Abnormal Gravity. Oh interesting.
Echo opened his fist through pure willpower and began the slide down. Sure enough, he picked up speed much faster than he expected. The whine of cable-on-carabiner vibrated through the harness into his bones.
“Is the gravity weird in here?” he found himself yelling into his mic. “If I grab the cable I’m gonna burn through my glove —“
By the time he formulated his concerns, he was already careening at and into Kimbra. She sidestepped his lanky body and caught him as he passed by. Echo ended up on his feet, as if he’d practiced the move for weeks.
“Right?” she asked him, grinning like a maniac, still adrenalized. Echo looked back up the cable and burst out laughing from nerves.
“Holy shit. Holy shit,” he gasped, unclipping as quickly as possible. He couldn’t tell if he actually felt heavier or if it was just the EVA suit.
Explore a Waypoint
Explore a Waypoint: Wits 3 + 1 vs 5 2. Weak hit, but my Momentum is maxed out so let’s use that instead: 10 vs 5 2, reset Momentum to +2, +1 more for Explorer (+3 total). I take the “gain progress” option and add a couple boxes to the Explore track (4 total). Interior Feature: Vaulted Chamber. Sure, that fits.
They looked around where they had landed.
The two of them shone their helmets around where they had landed. It was a natural-looking shelf of rock, the tip of a rocket-propelled grappling hook lodged deep into the material. Echo knelt down and rubbed the surface. It felt like crumbly rock. As he stood up he got lightheaded, not just dizzy but literally lighter than he had been. Kimbra reached up and grabbed his boot as he started to drift in microgravity.
“Well this is weird,” he said, still giddy from zipping down the cable. A dozen small loose rocks continued floating up and past him as the Major pulled him back down.
Beyond the shelf they were standing on, the stone looked as though it had eroded away through some natural process. Rather than a worked passage, the stone smoothly receded deeper into the Monument’s interior. Kimbra pulled up her carbine, flicked it on, and proceeded inward. A few minutes later, they emerged into a vast, vaulted space. Clearly a made space, even if the geometry of the walls and ceiling didn’t quite make sense to his eyes.
As his lights moved along the ceiling, a dense cloud of dust and dirt puffed away from the light. It swirled along the ceiling, moving into the darkness.
“Oh dang,” Echo muttered. The Major had already dropped to one knee and brought up her carbine. There was enough atmosphere in here that he could hear the small whine of the charge humming out of the gun. “Is this…is this the nest?”
She shook her head inside her helmet so he could see her. “I think it was just the one. Throw something up there, see if we flush any more of them out.”
“Flush them…and what are we gonna do if there are more? You’re not gonna shoot dust.”
She sighed, reached down, grabbed a large bit of broken Monument rock, and chucked it at the ceiling. In the very low gravity, it accelerated away at an alarming speed. It bounced off the ceiling, but nothing else moved. “Just the one. Let’s get deeper, I think we’re onto something.”
Undertake, Explore
Undertake an Expedition: Wits 3 + 4 +1 for Kimbra vs 3 5. Strong hit. Two more boxes (6 total). Another roll on Interior Feature: Enigmatic controls or terminal. Okay, now that’s worth exploring.
Explore a Waypoint: Wits 3 + 3 vs 6 1. Strong hit again! I keep hoping for doubles, but this is fine. It’ll be more magical when it does come up. I want to gain progress and run this clock faster. Also +1 Momentum for Explorer (+4 total). Time to continue on and reach the middle of this thing. But first, let’s roll on the Vault Purpose oracle.Vault Purpose: Conduit to mystical powers. Yes! This is my rationale for leveling up Looper when I get a chance.
Somewhere from within the ceiling, a blue light very much like what they saw kilometers above the Monument outside suddenly flared bright. The light filled the chamber, glowing out from columns of sigils and scratches all over the walls. Echo could feel the intelligence behind the marks, certainly not random. One stack of markings, a square several meters wide and high, remained a blue glow as the rest of the space returned to darkness. He walked straight toward it.
“Echo, kid, Iiiii dunno if that’s such a good idea,” Kimbra muttered even as she too walked towards it.
As he got closer, the stone-carved symbols began to rearrange themselves. The stone itself seemed to flow and shift as the blue symbols changed tone and size. As he walked left to right, the dozen-or-so closest to him seemed to glow the brightest and grow the largest. Echo stopped, faced the wall, could hear nothing Kimbra was saying in his radio.
What he heard instead was his own inner tickle, the thing that let him rewind events just a smidge. Rather than a vague “I’m in trouble, help help” urge, staring into the symbols seemed to give him … focus? Purpose? An instruction manual?!
He reached his hand toward the center-most icon, which looked like a star, and all the other icons looked like stars, and soon the whole wall was filled with stars and they were winking into darkness one after another even as the center star grew and grew, and as he looked at a familiar cluster of stars they were a constellation he had been born under and looked at every day of his childhood but it too was winking out one by one —
“Echo, kid, Iiiii dunno if that’s such a good idea, “Kimbra muttered, even as she too walked toward it.
Echo startled back to the present, felt the little loop kick off in his gut, and reached a hand out to stop the Major. “No, don’t,” he said.
The Major turned toward him, at first an angry look but quickly replaced by concern. “What’s up? Are you okay?”
He turned back to the wall to point at the ever-growing central star. But it was just three vague squiggles. The blue light was starting to fade away, one, two, three pulses. Then the squiggles were gone.
“I’m … not sure what I saw. I don’t think it was for you.”
Kimbra scoffed and shook her head. “Okay. Whatever. Nest can’t be much further at this point. Let’s go, you weird kid.”
Undertake an Expedition, Finish, Forge a Bond
Undertake an Expedition: Wits 3 + 3 + 1 for Kimbra vs 7 1. One more strong hit and I fill out the last 2 Explore track boxes. Now it’s time to roll on the Inner Sanctum table.
Inner Sanctum: Abyssal Pit or Chasm. Yup, that tracks.
Finish an Expedition: 10 progress vs 6 8: strong hit, they’re done! 2 ticks on the Discoveries track, +1 tick for Explorer (5 total ticks). That’s 2 xp, which I’m cashing in for the second Looper effect. Also ticking two boxes on his vow to Kimbra for Reach a Milestone (4 total), and two more boxes on his relationship with Kimbra (8 total). You know what? I think Echo is eager to forge that Bond with Kimbra even if the track isn’t maxed out.
Forge a Bond: 8 progress vs 4 4: Strong hit with a match, what could it mean? His relationship with Kimbra is now a Bond. 2 ticks on his Bonds legacy track for that. I choose to expand her influence to give Kimbra a second role. I’m not sure how, yet. So I looked at the Role table, without rolling on it. The Action + Theme option is interesting, so I roll on that, just to see what it gives me. WEAKEN BURDEN. Huh. It seems apparent that Kimbra’ real role is going to be Echo’s mentor.
They continued deeper and deeper, hours of walking, sometimes so light they had to push themselves off the ceiling of the natural worn passages, sometimes so heavy they had to help each other take steps. They had brought enough food for a couple days of walking and were quickly approaching the halfway mark on their calories. Echo had eventually learned to ignore the taste of his recycled pee.
The passages had become a criss-crossing maze. Kimbra marked the walls every once in a while with the tip of her shipboard blade. The stone was soft, much softer than the perfect flatness they had driven across would have suggested. The maze soon felt more like an insect hive, thin bits of stone barely connected to each other.
Then the stone was gone. All of it. Echo and the Major stepped to the edge of a bottomless hole hundreds of meters across. The blue glow above had returned. As he looked up, Echo was certain he was seeing the glow that had appeared over the Monument, because this hole apparently shot through the center of the entire structure. Had the glow emerged from this hole? Or just endless dust devils?
They sat at the edge of the hole, letting their legs dangle. They were exhausted, keenly aware of the food situation, achy from fighting strange gravity, frazzled from the low-key anxiety of running into more dust devils without a real action plan for them.
“They have to be coming up from down there, yeah?” Echo said, peering down into the depths. He sucked a bit of nutrient paste out of a tube inside his helmet. It tasted a bit like an apple this time.
Kimbra nodded, looked down, and laid back on the stone. “I don’t have any idea what we do now,” she said, staring up at the blue sphere kilometers up. Echo could almost make out the starry sky at the edges of the light as he looked up with her. They laid back in silence for a bit.
“Did you know I was a Paragon for the farming outpost I’m from?” Echo finally asked.
“Mmm hmm. The old guy never told me why.”
“You two talked a lot, didn’t you?”
“Oh you know. Lots of years. We have the kind of friendship that waits. It’s like no time had gone by at all no matter how long it was since I saw him.”
Echo nodded and took another sip. Something meaty this time, maybe fowl of some sort. “Yeah, so. Remember that room back there with the lit up symbols on the wall?”
“I do. They only lit up for a second though, I couldn’t even see what they were supposed to be.”
“My township made me a Paragon because I can see the future, sometimes. Or maybe I can rewind time a bit. It’s never much, just a few moments. I’m not really sure how it works.”
Kimbra nodded. “That’s a good one. Only ever heard of one other like you out there. Your folks were lucky to have you.”
“Not really! I mostly kept my family from getting hurt by some dumb thing I had done.”
Kimbra sat up and pushed herself away from the edge of the hole. “As I understand it,” she said, now moving more like the old woman she was and not a battle-hardened veteran, “these things take time to develop. I’m sure you’d have been ready when it was time to do something more with it. The colonies don’t pick Paragons lightly. It’s not cheap to throw extra resources at some random kid just because their parents think they’re special.”
“I think this place showed me how to work it.”
“Huh. How to work your time thing? See further into the future or rewind more of it?” She shook her head. “Well I’m glad one of us got something out of our little hike. But now we need to head back and explain to the brains what all we’ve seen here, see if they can give us more of an action plan.”
“See, I think I can use it to bring back more intel.” Echo also stood up, equally stiff. He started looping rope around the nearest, largest bit of stone he could find. “Or at least make sure nothing stupid happens if I try.”
Kimbra saw he had a belay device in his hand, the rope fed through it. “Oh whoa wait kid, you haven’t tested —“
Echo took one step back and fell down the hole.
Final Business
Last bit of business to set up before the end of session: I’m using the new Looper ability to create a link at the moment before he steps into the pit to explore. Health 3, Spirit 5, Supply 4, Momentum 4.
I’m also setting up one more track for exploring the Sanctum to defeat/deal with the dust devils: Find the Dust Devils (Dangerous).
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