New Campaign: Objects in Space

Oh, man, crazy session last night.  Need to catch up!

To quickly summarize the rest of the previous session:

• Trench ended up defeating the "grand vizier" of the demon-faced dudes, but being dragged down into the space hulk by sheer numbers
• Vladimir, Corbett, and Millions were left on their own
• Grace, Peppering, and our new touchstone, Sonya, broke into Vladimir's stasis pod while he was gone (with the now-insane Specialist Tamaskovitch's help)
• Peppering found the arms locker and Grace decided to attempt to freeze herself in one of the stasis pods

So, then, here were the love letters for the session last night:

---

Hi Grace!

So you’re frozen in a stasis pod, cut off from the whispers of the psychic maelstrom for the first time since the apocalypse. Doesn’t that feel lonely?

In any case, without the maelstrom clouding your mind, visions and memories of the past come flooding back to you. Everything hasn’t been lost; it’s right here waiting for you, behind the veil. Roll+sharp as per the quarantine move Past, instead of rolling Fortunes. The surplus and want of your followers is beyond your comprehension right now.

Then I guess we need to get you out of there, huh? You got a 7-9 on your roll+hard against the freezing process, so here’s your choice:

• You’ve been frozen for a few days, only slightly longer than you intended, but have been quickly and inexpertly revived; follow the quarantine instructions for “when you emerged from stasis” to decide how the psychic maelstrom welcomes you back.
• You’ve been frozen for weeks, maybe months, but somebody is smart enough to take you to the psi-isolation rig and let you thaw out there. Hopefully it’s Vladimir

Hugs and kisses, Your MC.

---

Hi Sonya!

So I guess you’re about the only reasonable person left on the station now that Grace is frozen. Let’s figure out how that went for you.

First, roll Fortunes for the time that Grace was out.

Next, Peppering’s making his play. If you’re going to stand up to him and Pellet, his new lieutenant, roll+hard. On a 10+, choose 3. On a 7-9, choose 2. On a failure, none.

• You get him to leave the children alone.
• You get him to leave Anna alone.
• You keep him from seizing control of all of the station… yet.
• You don’t let the fighting destroy any important parts of the station.

If you decide to take a more amiable stance, none of the above, but roll+cool, with the same conditions.

• You let him bring you into his inner circle.
• You let him put you in charge of something important.
• You convince him not to monitor where you go or who you talk to.

Hugs and kisses, Your MC.

---

Hi Trench,

So it’s been at least several days since were dragged down into the bowels of a space hulk by a brood of demon-faced warriors.  I wonder how that’s worked out.

Have you replaced the royal commissar who you bested in personal combat and been bestowed with his staff and demon-mask to wear proudly across your chest?  If so, just say so. This one’s free.

Have you been appointed prince-consort to the queen of this hive, the one enthroned in brass and gold on the solar throne? To do this you have to have at least pretended to embrace the beliefs and practices of their sun-cult. Also, if so, tell us about your relationship with the queen.

Have you been shown the sacred treasure that the Sun’s Children hold dearest of all? To do this you have to have ingested (or, perhaps, injected) the sacred liquor that is partaken as part of their daily ceremony. Also, tell us if you’ve taken it daily or just the once. It’s very nice indeed.

Hugs and kisses, Your MC.

---

Hi Vladimir,

First, make your Past roll.

So it’s you, Millions, and Corbett now, huh?  Out on a space hulk with a bunch of demon-masked dudes and no Trench.

Since there’s a bunch of different ways you could be spending your time, pick a few gigs from the operator playbook to represent that.  Have you been “doing murders” to crawly silver demons, conducting “infiltration” of their hive, “scavenging” or “raiding” for food and supplies, or maybe going home and conducting “compound defense” against Peppering’s takeover?

Pick a few and roll as if you had 2 juggling.  Rather than getting barter from your gigs, we’ll say success puts you closer to accomplishing whatever it is you’re trying to do.

Failure is as normal.

We’ll take it from there.

Hugs and kisses, Your MC

So Jamie's been posting tidbits from our game over on SG's Bite-Sized AP threads, but I thought I'd try to catch this thread up a bit, since we've had 2 sessions since the last post.

The letters above, which sounded really good when I was writing them, ended up being a little bit awkward in practice, especially Sonya's. Skipping Peppering's takeover made it difficult for us to figure out what exactly had happened and who was in which half of the station, because Sonya chose to resist and picked all the options except for the last one. So I said that maybe she had gathered Anya and the children and taken them to the part of the station with the stasis and Trench's old pod, but that somebody had blown the station in half during the fighting.

In the end, I learned that Love Letters are not really a replacement for properly framing the starting situation to kick off a session.  Sometimes you want to actually play that shit out instead of just having the letters simulate it.  Important to learn.

Meanwhile, Trench decided to go all the way into his new role as Grand Vizier and Royal Consort, getting into a close but nonsexual relationship with the Queen (the person in the golden demon armor from the previous session).  He also made contact with Vladamir after the quarantine failed his attempt at infiltration of the hive of the Sun Children and sent him back to check on the station.

Vlad returned to the station and docked on the half with his stasis and Trench's pod, helping Sonya get Grace into the psi-isolation chamber before she completely de-thawed, preventing the Psychic Maelstrom from overwhelming her again.  Then, the three of them made contact with Peppering and agreed to a prisoner exchange where Corbett and Vladamir would be traded for some of the children and recent mothers who were still on Peppering's half.

Meanwhile, the Queen informed Trench that the time was approaching when she would resign her rule and depart for the Sun Chariot, a mythical space barge that they tracked on an apocalypse-era monitor (the treasure they kept secret).  She asked Trench if he would escort her to the Chariot and then return and conduct the search for a new Queen (one of the jobs of the Grand Vizier).  Trench agrees.

When the day comes, a giant 2001-style rotating, wheel-shaped station (with artificial gravity) comes into view.  It is painted gold and covered in pseudo-Egyptian kitsch like it's the Luxor Casino.  Trench pilots the Queen there on a converted cargo sled, wrapped in gold ribbons and fitted with statues of snakes, and then they go inside to find that it is, indeed, a space casino filled with just 20-30 people, most of them very old, despite the huge amount of space.  They are ruled by a High Priest who has tried to preserve the faith in the gods despite declining religious fervor.  Nevertheless, the Queen is happy there, though Trench leaves her as she is slowly recovering her strength, having lived her entire life (?) in zero gravity.

Back on Legacy station, the prisoner exchange goes poorly for Peppering as Vladamir shoots him in the face. Jamie wanted to know if he should roll Go Aggro for that, but I waved it aside and asked how much harm he did (3, to his face, so... dead).  This was definitely one of those cases where the players have set it up and you just let it happen.  With Peppering down, the struggle with Pellet and his gang was over pretty quick as Grace manipulated Pellet into calling a truce and Pellet got Jackabacka and Balls to stand down, though not before a hail of bullets went ricocheting around the inside of the station.

And that's how the third session ended.

We played the fourth session this week.

Just a few days before the game, we learned that Cy (Grace's player) was going to be moving to another city, since his wife had just gotten a new job.  So, over a terrific dinner of Chinese food with the other players (Cy had to bow out), I proposed that Grace was -- unbenownst to any of the other PCs -- hit by a ricocheting bullet during the fight and collapsed later that day. Due to the bullet being lodged near something important, Rice (Peppering's wife, coincidentally and the ship doctor) decides that they better refreeze her in a stasis pod until they can decide what to do, since they don't have the medical facilities here to deal with it. The other players agreed, since it would allow us to have a reunion game with Cy at GoPlay or PAX, since he's planning on coming back for those.

More in a bit.