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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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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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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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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