This was the downtime after 0 Could Have Happened to Anyone. I’ve basically decided the way I’d like to run these is:
- Very briefly out of character talk about what the next mission is
- Have each character take one downtime action
- Introduce the mission proper
- Do mission prep, by taking Power at a Cost as many times as the crew wants to
The book isn’t explicit about Power at a Cost being a sort of separate category, that players can do multiple times, but it feels like the best way to do any prep players want in a consistent way.
As Yet Unnamed
We started off with a bit of ship design. At the end of the last mission the crew uncovered an abandoned but still functional ship of unknown provenance, so we fleshed out exactly what it was like and what it looked like.
Key points:
- It’s basically just a huge slab that floats through space.
- The old Enemy of Perfection mining ship has been stripped for parts and turned into a atmosphere-capable outrigger (the main ship is not atmosphere capable).
- The interior has been painted leopard print (there’s leopard print paint in the future, its nanomachines, don’t worry about it).
- The screens in the ship look like polished sheets of black rock, and display in mono-green vector graphics.
- There’s a slot which Enlil fits into, and as she did the remaining asteroid parts sheared away to rock dust. (The leopard print paint Gorn tried to apply to her also mysteriously vanished.)
- Yumai discovered some curious bolts of shimmering fabric, and is envisioning mech fashion.
- There’s a big hangar garage, with plenty of space for Gorn to stretch out in.
- The furniture is strange, and appears to be designed for a whole range of different body morphologies. Some has been retrofitted, and some areas like the kitchen seem to be original.
Downtime
With that mostly done it’s time for our first downtime! Gorn’s up first:
Gorn’s Absolutely Great Night Out
Gorn is going to get a damn drink, flying over to Baldachin Station - a general hive of scum & villainy - he finds a dive bar called Lucky Strike.
Once inside, Gorn proceeds to get absolutely cream-crackered. Out of character, his player tells me he’s looking for criminal connection specifically so I say he can use his background accuracy as part of this, along with his “The Implication” skill trigger. I do say however, if you do invoke your background here if it goes wrong something else negative might happen along with everything else.
Whatever happened that night, Gorn is sure he had a good time. And we can leave it at that.1 He is awoken by a splash of water and a look of amusement from Olia Moure.
Yumai Needs the People to Know
Yumai is getting organised, and starting an organisation with an entertainment focus. This organisation is as yet unnamed, but will be sending out mech-related news and videos and generally creating a media presence within the system.
He’s choosing +2 Influence for the organisation’s start, and we’ll see where it goes from there!
Bill Takes a Trip
Bill wants to commune with the entity Enlil, and after a bit of to-and-fro we eventually decide that this is a Gather Information activity.2
Bill places a hand on the obelisk, now nestled directly into the floor of their ship in what appears to be one of a handful of dedicated rooms for this purpose, and finds himself falling back away from himself.
Clouds swirl endlessly around a jagged peak, Bill stands at the top of a mountain in the eye of a storm. He hears no words, nor sees a manifested presence, but feels the consciousness of the nascent god Enlil suffused throughout the space. He reaches out, specifically asking if there are others like Enlil in the system, and receives clear affirmation that there are 4 other entities in the system3. Reaching further, he asks how Enlil knows what to do, and if they are on the right path, and receives a distorted and fuzzy answer, but Enlil urges him to trust it.
He feels a moment of doubt, and removes his hand from the obelisk, returning to his own body again.
Mission Prep
Revel Hour
Seeing the mission appear on the interior screens of their ship, it is rendered in a kind of detail that most posts on the Omninet job board are not. Enlil has a hand in this, and the crew feel a kind of guiding hand on their shoulders urging them towards it.
It seems like a fairly simple extraction job, one corp wants something out from under another corp’s gaze, and you are the deniable asset tasked with that.
For further details, contact Revel Hour of Octopotenta BioTech.
They do so, and meet with Revel on Baldachin Station, in an upmarket sushi bar called Konbeni. Gorn is, for some reason, recognised by the wait staff, who shoots him a dirty look. “The Implication” is deployed to full effect, and the crew are led politely through to a private room with Revel Hour.
The job is then explained in detail - see 1 The Fall of An Unlikely Angel. Bill argues for additional pay to protect Revel, which they agree to provide (as effectively reserves for the next mission or to be used as the cost of Power at a Cost in the next downtime).
At Almost Any Cost
Bill really wants to do violence better, and so is after some augmentations for The Lower Nile’s weaponry. He’s after smart bullets, so seeks out a contact from Alzabo Extraction called Farrah. He absolutely can get what he wants hear (and is now deciding between optional smart or seeking tag for his weaponry on the next mission).
It is of course coming at a cost, one of which is the inability for Bill to Get Connected for the next 2 downtimes, the other is Farrah was more loyal to the company than he thought - and has absolutely sold him out. Alzabo are very much looking up from their asteroids to see what’s happened to the resources that were stolen.
Yumai is after something more straightforward, a detailed map of the area, which he can get but will come at the cost of being good but not complete.
Other Bits and Pieces
To get prepped for being able to infiltrate under the radar, the crew acquire a local comms shroud, and some powerful single use jump jets to drop down from the dam into the Tor Elise dome.
Footnotes
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Of course, I’m not leaving it at that exactly, Gorn has perhaps caught some attention from criminal elements in Baldachin - but the specific nature of this I’m keeping close to my chest. ↩
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The book recommends writing your own downtime actions if you need something specific, so I think I’m going to do that using Gather Information as a starting point. ↩
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I need a name for these fuckers. ↩