A NOCTURNE v0.8/0.9 — playtest sessions #9 and #10 “PR Offensive”

A NOCTURNE v0.8/0.9 — playtest sessions #9 and #10 “PR Offensive”

We’ve got a double whammy this time around, folks. Strap in.

We started session #9 with downtime in Remonstrance after the skirmish on Heaven. Nix did some more investigating into the digital disease they’ve contracted, called Castor’s Syndrome. Turns out they’ll need to go to the Gear-Queen or the Patriarch for more answers. It’s rumoured to be what made the Vordians the way they are now (empty pressure suits, unable to inhabit organic bodies). Meanwhile, as Bug and Nix train and externalise stress, Timothy heals up and starts working on his own long-term project, the addition of keratin armour to his goopy artificial flesh shell.

Then, it’s down to business. They’ve still got a job outstanding: utterly cripple the Remonstrance IV AgriCorp known as House Minor Vex’s ability to hold power on the planetary council, wiping out their entire line if need be. The crew head to the warm agricultural world, putting down in one of the many dry canyons outside the population centres and slipping into Arctura, one of the gleaming, steel-and-glass cities that stud the planet’s winding fertile valleys, dominated by corporate arcologies.

In the shadows of one such arcology stands an Apophatic Order temple. They convene with the abott there to get up to date with goings-on on Remonstrance IV. Apparently Vex is homing in on taking an unprecedented sway over the council. Their leader, Fashra Vex (fashionable clothing, slender but obviously industrial-grade armature) has gained a lot of popularity. Things just got a lot more urgent.

Timothy spends a few weeks digging up all the dirt he can find. There’s plenty, as it turns out – rumours of sloppy assassination attempts on other house overseers, and all manner of blatantly poor employment practices even compared to the other Houses (as alien as the rest of the cluster is, Remonstrance IV operates on pure crony capitalism and a level of technology somewhere only a hair past our modern world – while describing it, I was thinking of a cross between California, Dubai, and Singapore).

From here, we launch into the score. This was where I really got to stress-test A Nocturne and my own thinking regarding how scores work when time and space are blown up to such large scales. This score really stretched the default definition, but it was perfect for how A Nocturne operates: rather than one compact chain of cause and effect in a tight time-frame, we went through a series of short vignettes taking place over a few weeks, following short chains of actions and consequences within them. It actually worked remarkably well, and naturally lead up to an action-filled climax.

In brief: the aim was to completely discredit Vex, to make them look like, at best, evil morons, and at worst, actual villains. Bug went down into the dusty agricultural belts and, after a brief altercation in a worker’s bar, managed to plant the seed of unionising in a few workers’ heads. Meanwhile, Timothy embarked on a dirty campaign of misinformation, sowing bad info and outright confusing reports through the planet’s press network. Finally, Nix came on screen for the final blow, using their Mercurial special ability to impersonate a member of the House (a woman called Sand Obal-Vex) and call an emergency press conference to combat all these vile rumours floating around. Nix intentionally dug even deeper, outright admitting to all manner of nasty things and generally sowing even more doubt and confusion.

Unfortunately, as well as this was going, time was running out. Vex had obviously caught wind of this press conference immediately, and sent a detail to the corporate arcology it was being held in to confront “Sand”, whom the PR man dragged into another room to berate about stepping outside her bounds as a representative of the AgriCorp. It’s at this point that two things happen: first, Timothy emerges from his hiding place in this side room and engulfs the PR guy, crushing him to death. Second, Vex’s private security descend, a wing of black tringular VTOLs gunning in over Arctura’s skyline.

The crew make their escape in a ground vehicle stolen by Bug, across snaking eighteen-laned highway and down into trash-filled side streets. They manage to lose the VTOLs, but not without causing an almighty amount of chaos and property damage along the way. Camera drones raced behind them for most of the chase, broadcasting it to the megalopolis.

But, they did what they came to do, and made it to the payoff. The Apophatic Order quietly ships several tonnes of raw materials, oxygen, and water into orbit for Ghost to pick up, and we add enough Chaos to Remonstrance’s track to bump its next Chaos roll to three dice (that’s a lot of Chaos, lemme tell ya).

A fortnight later we pick up again for downtime, with just Brendon and Edwin this time as Roxanne couldn’t make it. We were expecting a quiet session. Boy, were we wrong.

This session I introduced a new change coming to v0.9: Fallout, which is basically a free-form entanglements phase before downtime proper. I’m adding this to pump some of the urgency and forward momentum back into A Nocturne’s downtime, which was sagging a little without Entanglements proper.

For this round, they rolled Revenge. After a spot of downtime activity, Nix picks up a transmission: they’re being hunted. A mercenary craft, likely hired by House Minor Vex. Luckily, the craft is having trouble finding Ghost thanks to Ghost’s lack of a meaningful heat signature, but it’s only a matter of time. They’re incredibly close, close enough for Ghost’s external cameras to pick the mercs up visually. Improvising, Timothy pulls their breaking-apart old in-system jumper out of storage once again, and leads the mercs on a merry months-long chase around the system, eventually managing to lose them.

Hoping to avoid further entanglements, the crew gun it out to the outer system, to wait it out in the shadow of a wrecked cannibal craft, going down for the long one in their coldsleep capsules. They knew that Vex is on the ropes, but they want to see what a few years might do. At this point, I basically laid bare the Movement rules to the players. They decided to wait a decade, and we rolled Remonstrance’s Chaos. Remember, three dice. Edwin made the roll.

He got a crit. A crit. Two movements, competing or tangled up with one another, and +2 Chaos. Remonstrance’s Chaos level was now at 4 dice. While Edwin and Brendon sucked in their breath and I laughed perhaps a little too much, I had Edwin roll 2d8 on the Movement table to see what was happening in Remonstrance. We got Decay and Deprivation. I couldn’t be happier.

They wake to months-old news transmissions flowing across Ghost’s sensors: Remonstrance is gripped by famine and civil war as the AgriCorps fight brutally amongst themselves in open battle across the planet’s surface, as well as in low orbit. Turns out the Vex situation that the crew precipitated was the straw that broke the camels back. The AgriCorps had been gearing up for war for years, and it all exploded while the crew slept their dreamless sleep at the system’s edge.

Naturally, when we went through XP and found that the craft had earned an advance, they picked the special ability “The Ends Justify the Means”, which means they only take stress for pushing themselves for violence or mayhem if they roll a 1-3. It’s evil and I love it.

Also, and I wrote this down specifically so I could mention it here, but Brendon’s closing remarks were brilliant: “Are we the baddies?”

Next time: The crew get ready to strike the final, fatal blow against Vex, likely plunging the entire system into a forever war if they’re not careful (seriously, Remonstrance IV is one Chaos away from maxing out, and another new thing is that when a system hits maximum Chaos, it tips over and takes on a new status quo based on what’s happened to it so far – think Traumas, but for the setting itself). That session’s tonight, by the way. I’m shaking with anticipation.

Stray thoughts: In case you can’t tell, I’m very, very pleased with how this last session turned out. This was my aim with A Nocturne all along: the crew’s actions having massive, lasting, horrendous effects on the systems they passed through and messed around with. This idea of rippling consequences and situations quickly spiraling out of control as the crew break the surface tension of panhuman society. Even before this was Forged in the Dark, back when it was just a creepy glimmer in my weeping compound eye, A Nocturne had this baked in. The more I can lean into this stuff, the better.