A NOCTURNE — v0.8 Play-test Session #3

A NOCTURNE — v0.8 Play-test Session #3

The crew arrive in the forbidding system of Fitzwilliam’s Ashes, dominated by the glowering black hole known as Night’s Mouth. Over the next few days, they drift into the mid-system, where they enter the orbit of Fitzwilliam II, an orphaned moon that serves as the base of the Apophatic Order, a monkish religion with ties across the cluster. They’re here to get some advice, or at least learn something, about whatever else calls their craft The Ghost home, the things that move objects and steal others while they’re down for the coldsleep.

Fitzwilliam II is a scarred ball of ice-rhimed rock. For a reference point, I showed the players some images of Monument Valley in the winter, except that the stone mesas have been carved into massive, faceless statues. They take their rickety landing craft down into the valley where the Templi Apophanai’s obelisk bulk hunches on the shoulders of more of these status. At the huge, sealed doors (Fitzwilliam II is a few hundred below freezing, and mostly airless), they’re confronted by a lone temple guard, a seeming child piloting a war-shell that appears to be an eight-foot classical statue, similar to the giants that flank the valley. It asks for tribute. Nix hands over an old war medal dug from their pile of old stuff on the craft.

After depressurizing in the stone airlock (Nix takes of his helmet, grateful for the now-manageable cold air that reminds him of his frozen homeworld), they’re lead deep into the Temple along a predetermined route, carefully selected to hide the order’s secrets from prying eyes. A short wait in an side chapel gives Nix time to reflect on the frescoes adorning the walls – turns out (according to a quick fortune roll) that his homeworld was host to a branch of an offshoot of a distant cousin of the Apophatic Order. He knows that they’re sort of like a doomsday cult that got their end-scenario, believe space is one big, complicated afterlife.

The few monks they meet are ritually blinded, and tethered to some unseen core by thick cables that hang from their spines. The archivist (wearing an artificial shell along the lines of a headless, 16-limbed arachnid) informs them that they’ve had dealings with a crew of the Ghost before, that these problems may be caused by colony of simple machine intelligences, interstellar parasites they call “Limpets.”

It’s score time, and as it happens, a test of how scores work when you do them aboard-craft. Turns out, pretty much like any other score! This is a “special mission” type score with a Social plan, intended to negotiate with the Limpets, get them to not bug them any more.

Unfortunately (fortunately?), things get complicated fast.

Roxanne elects to roll the 2d engagement roll and gets a 4. Not bad, but it’s a Risky position starting out. They’re descending into the bowels of the craft, down through crumbling air shafts and dripping, pipe-strangled tunnels. Ghost, the craft AI, is guiding them from a distance, sending them Driveward. Sine they’re not under thrust, they’re in microgravity, mostly crawling hand-over-hand along ladder rungs and down upended corridors.

There’s a clanging in the distance. Sounds of movement.

Entering a large, spherical room that looks like it might once have been a node for Ghost’s AI matrix, criss-crossed by girders and mothballed server racks, they spring an ambush. It’s not the Limpets, though – it’s a gang of pale, shaven-headed panhumans wearing ragged pressure suits, their faces daubed with strange symbols. One of them holds a welding element to Nix’s face, while Bug manages to throw off two easily (a fantastic resistance roll, for which Roxanne rolled the devil’s crit of 666, clearing 1 Damage), before one of them (a scrawny woman) pulls a wide-bore service pistol and aims it at the uplifted hyena’s head. They drift in the microgravity, at an impasse.

The pale gang’s leader, an old man with a thick beard that spills over his pressure suit’s collar, claims that they’re the real crew, that the Ghost AI is a false god. He and the rest speak in an archaic form of spacer cant (I got this across in play by doing my best impressions of the characters in THE WITCH). Apparently they’ve been at war with the Limpets here in these sections for generations. They argue a little, but before the leader can get too riled up, one of his men (a guy with a wrench who’d hung back to keep an eye on the other access tunnels) hisses a warning – the Limpets are coming. To save their skin, Bug quickly tries to make the pale crew see sense – Roxanne only gets a 5 though, for less effect – Bug convinces them that they’re fellow crew, worth helping out, but doesn’t manage to make them realise that Ghost is legit, or that the Limpets are worth talking to.

We end the session as the Limpets close in. Maybe this Social plan ain’t gonna be so friendly after all….

Stray thoughts: I admit, I had some doubts about how craft scores might play out when I first introduced them in the text, but this plays like gangbusters. It’s all about building on what’s set down at craft creation, and really laying on the technological decay imagery. Lots of mutated vermin and venting pipework. I’m definitely cooking up some more commentary for how to come up with aboard-craft factions for the new version based on this, too, though it was actually quite natural how some basic factions emerged from selecting the AI and background back in session #1.

This session also inspired me to add a bit to craft creation concerning getting + or – statuses with factions based on whether they’ve had good or bad relations with the craft before play begins, using the craft’s background as a springboard. It seems neat, but I’ll have to see how it plays out when we do it retroactively next session.

I’m also thinking of changing Damage back to stress, ‘cos I keep slipping and calling it that during the sessions. Thoughts?

Again, though, I can’t stress (heh) how good the core Blades system is at failing gracefully. When in doubt, use the core action mechanic or a fortune roll. I already loved Blades a whole bunch, but making a hack of it just makes me appreciate it even more. This is the good shit.

Next time: We find out what happens to the pale crew and/or Limpets. Whose side are the crew gonna take? Are they going to take a side? Will they hire a contingent of the pale crew as an unstable cohort at some point? Is Ghost hiding some things about its past? I may be biased, but I’m liking this game a lot, y’all.