Clash at the Ikara Archive

Tonight we played Clash at Ikara by Randy Lubin, a new game on his Story Synth engine with a crew of eight heroes committed to protecting the encoded alien archive discovered on the planet Ikara research site. The scientists and researchers have reached out for help from us after having been threatened and attacked by stellar raiders. We are Stanislas the Sage, who wants to protect the knowledge stored at Ikara; Marcia the Untested warrior, who wants hopes to prove herself worthy in battle; Xander the Tinkerer, who wants to help the weak; Terg the Strategist, who wants to test his stratagems; Mitsumi the Tagalong, who wants to find a new place for herself after her husband’s recent passing; Geo the Charmer, who is following his patients and wants to keep everyone safe and happy; X4 the Veteran, a robot built as part of the archive by the ancient race that created it; and Lyric the Virtuoso, who wants to test his skill in a real life situation.

The Ikara archives is buried deep underground with only a single tunnel to access the alien archives, so we decide to turn that tunnel into a costly gauntlet the alien raiders must drive through. Their previous attacks have burned the countryside surrounding the archive complex. In preparation for the coming battle, Xander modifies the lab equipment into weapons and teaches the researchers how to use them. Terg has a skirmish with a bandit scout and learns their origins based on symbols upon their clothing. Unfortunately, recent volcanic activity could threaten the safety of the archives on Ikara, so we prepare precise evacuation protocols in case an eruption occurs. X4 activates the complex’s internal scanning and tracking systems and a flotilla of drone defenses to protect the archive core, but as Geo discovers, activating the defense systems accidentally erases some of the archives untranslated files. Finally, Lyric asks Terg to plan a complex of booby traps that Xander arms with high-powered lasers. Then Lyric tests the trap for effectiveness using his acrobatic fighting techniques.

As the battle begins, Mitsumi, wearing her husbands old armor and carrying his sword, fails to save the group of scientists first targeted by the robotic centaurs that comprise the first wave of the attack. Geo sees an incoming asteroid launched by the raiders but can do nothing but watch it crash into the planet, causing widespread devastation. X4 sees the scientists who revived them, in particular one scientist who taught them to communicate with the human researchers, endangered by raiders armed with automatic weaponry and intercedes to save her life, overriding their primary programming to protect the archive itself at all costs. However, Lyric leaps into the fray to retrieve X4’s memory core, which Xander is able to upload into the archive’s main computer systems, so that X4 becomes the archive base. Xander then rigs up a device to allow us to intercept the raider’s communications and predict their next moves. Terg wades into battle using his traps to undercut the raiders before finishing them off with his plasma katana. Then the raider leader arrives, a massive minotaur-like creature wielding twin plasma battle axes, as he begins to sweep through the tunnel into the archives, Stanislas steps forward to slow his assault, barely able to deflect his blows, constantly falling back as the raiders continue to move deeper into the complex, until at the appointed moment, Stanislas stumbles and Lyric flips in to pull him free just as Terg’s laser traps activate to fell the leader of the raiders, stopping their progress, and allowing us to turn them back.

After the battle, X4 now lives as the primary intelligence within the archive complex and spends his time assisting his beloved scientist in her research. Terg walks away after a job well done, returning to space. Xander stays on to heal from their wounds and to help rebuild and fortify the archive for the future. Lyric meets with X4 and asks them to initiate a daily training algorithm to help him hone his gymnastic craft. Geo decides to stay and open a rehab center for those who’ve suffered from trauma, including the veterans and scientists who survived the battle. Mitsumi stays on to serve as den mother, having realized that she is no warrior like her husband and bestows her armor on Marcia, who proved herself worthy during the fighting. And Stanislas stays on briefly to study what wisdom the archive has to offer before leaving to wander the stars once more.

Palanquin Across the Water

Tonight we played Palanquin by Jason Pitre in which we hear the tale of how five loyal courtiers escorted Princess Ulku-alzi to the safety of her aunt’s palace after her family had been killed in a coup. Besides the princess, our company includes Lan the Faithful who leads our worship of the goddesses; Ulu the Veteran whose heyday was long ago; Xanling the Scholar, an outcast from another land who has tutored the Princess; Periani the Hunter who saved the Princess’s life recently on her first royal hunt; and Illic the Shadow, a criminal who escaped out of the dungeons right into our flight.

We begin by fleeing the palace into the surrounding town, trying to find a way out through the night market. After procuring a cloak to hide the Princess, a group of soldiers from the palace begin searching the market. Illic the Shadow deftly guides the group away from the soldiers and into a dark alleyway filled with unsavory characters, so we avoid the patrols as we make our way into the smuggler’s tunnels beneath the city.

In these drainage tunnels we run into a number of problems, the least of which are the various creatures scurrying about, but little do we suspect that the creatures are fleeing the rising tide of the waters rushing into the tunnels. Ulu the Veteran tries to find a path he thinks he remembers from the war, but everywhere he turns leads deeper in rather than out. Xanling the Scholar finally finds a hidden compartment with a lever inside; he pulls the lever and a stone closes the tunnel behind us, cutting off the flow of water and the roar of the approaching flood. Next we encounter a group of the nights watch, rousting through the tunnels, but they’re no match for our Veteran, who disarms and routs them easily. But the greatest challenge is a lone palace guardsman who claims to be here to take the Princess to safety. First, Lan the Faithful tries to convince the guard he must be anointed in the waters before he can have the Princess, but the guard ignores her and grabs the Heir. The Scholar steps in to challenge the guard’s authority and position, but he appears to truly be a member of the palace guard. Losing patience and alarmed seeing the guard hurting the Heir in his grip, Periani the Hunter sends forth his falcon to attack the guard, which comes at the guard’s eyes with talons flashing, chasing him back up the entrance and away from us.

A young woman with long red hair and wearing a blue and white dress stands with one hand on her hip. Her limbs and dress have symbols on them and a sigil floats in the air in front of her. Lan the Faithful, Cleric of the Eternal Waters is written above and Palanquin 2-17-21 written below.

As we emerge from the tunnels at last, we see the holy river and a small village and remote temple across the water. We check that everyone is well and discover ticks covering the Princess’s cloak, which the Shadow brushes off before the Hunter gives her a tincture to protect her. Lan the Faithful asks the priests at the shore for a boat to cross the river, and they provide one, but rather than cross the river, we immediately head down it using magic-driven paddles. We are making good time until river pirates appear and surround the boat. Illic the Shadow tries to convince them that we’re poor travelers with nothing worth taking, but they know their quarry and persist. Lan the Faithful tosses each pirate a stone with the squiggly-lined sigil of Malsana, which immediately sends each into gastronomic distress, and we easily leave them behind as they retch and clutch their guts.

Safely ensconced in her Aunt Baru’s palace, Princess Ulku-azi judges the trustworthiness of each bearer and rewards them according to her judgment. To Ulu the Veteran, bearer of warfare who defeated the night watch in the tunnels, she grants a future favor from her royal person. Knowing that Periani the Hunter, bearer of nature who warded off the guardsman, cares not for worldly treasure, Her Highness bestows upon him a lifetime of hunting unmolested on royal grounds. She graciously gives Lan the Faithful, bearer of religion and the curser of stones, one week’s head start before being arrested, being too dangerous to walk free. Her Highness appoints Xanling the Scholar, bearer of society and learning who disguised her in the market and stopped the floodwaters, as royal counselor in the court. And for Illic the Shadow, convicted criminal who led her through the alley into the smuggler’s tunnels to escape the capital, she gifts a small chest of gold and a royal pardon for service well-rendered.

Death on the Selene

Tonight we played Final Voyage of the Selene by James Mullen in which we sail from node to node through substitial space on board the interstellar vessel The Selene. We begin our story seeing Lieutenant Kazarian awaking from a nightmare about a military squad in danger, drenched in sweat, and ordering a booking aboard the Selene. We see ambassador Masiri attending a wedding, accompanied by his wandering wife, between an Epsilon and Omicron, a joining that would cement the long-sought peace he had brokered between the two warring species, before boarding the Selene. In a montage, we watch Professor Caris board the Selene with a handful of plant specimens, then years later, staying on board because she feels close to a breakthrough, then more years later, again determined to make her breakthrough refusing to leave the ship, and again throughout the years. We see Chief Pryce, a cyborg engineer, getting dismissed from ship after ship, until the merchant marine office gives him one last chance aboard Selene. Finally, we follow Doctor Tsien getting spurred out of his dorm room and general dissipation to answer a job ad for a medical office aboard the Selene.

Act I begins with Chief Pryce visiting Doctor Tsien in the Med Bay and jacking himself into the Doctor’s medical systems and complaining about how his internal systems leak and the interface between organic and inorganic parts don’t always mesh well. Professor Caris sits down with Ambassador Masiri in the Lounge to partake of the flavored oxygen, enjoy the lively theremin music, and talk about the mysteries of the universe that she’s learned from her studies of plant life while sailing on the Selene. Later, the Ambassador visits Lt. Kazarian at the security office to assure her that the death threats against him by an Omicronian sect are very unlikely to come to fruition. Kazarian reports to the Med Bay as ordered to get a prescription to help with the nightmares so she can sleep, but the Doctor only half-heartedly listens and agrees to say he’s seen her when the captain asks even though she leaves without any meds.

In Act II, the Chief interrupts Lt. Kazarian searching the Ambassador’s suite when he comes to repair the sonic showers. She keeps rifling through things until she finds something on a datapad and leaves. Later, after having hacked the ship’s systems to see what she was up to, Chief Pryce confronts Kazarian about the unwarranted search and learns that Kazarian suspects the Ambassador of having betrayed her unit during the Earth-Omicron war at the Battle of Antares 3. Meanwhile, Doctor Tsien calls the Ambassador to the Med Bay to inform him that he appears to have an allergy to travel through the interstitial nodes and that if he continues making jumps he could die, so provides him with a powerful alien medication to help him stay awake but that can have devastating consequences if used incorrectly. Professor Caris meets with the Ambassador again and offers a number of natural remedies that could aid with his condition, but makes a point to explain the truth of her findings, that there is no god and nihilism is the only true creed because nothing we do matters. Distraught, Ambassador Masiri flees until next we see him calling Kazarian because he found his wife’s body, in pieces, in their suite, apparently an accident with the Doctor’s prescription.

Doctor Tsien begins Act III sitting at the bar nursing a drink and lamenting how his prescription caused a woman’s death. Chief Pryce sits with him and suggests that if he wants to do good, to make a difference, he has to actually make an effort to do something, anything, instead of sitting around bored all the time. Professor Caris corners the Ambassador and Kazarian in her cabin to discuss the life of plants and the reality of nihilism and in his grief, the Ambassador agrees that nothing matters, and storms out. Before he can escape, however, Lt. Kazarian confronts him about the information she discovered about the unexplained large deposit of Epsilonian credits to his account just before the Battle of Antares 3. The Ambassador explains that his wife came into a mysterious inheritance about that time, and Kazarian realizes that she may have blamed the wrong Masiri. Finally, we see Chief Pryce jacked into the ship’s engines siphoning off energy until some…thing goes from his systems back up the jack and into the ship itself. When this happens, the Selene lurches out of substial space and begins to break apart.

In the epilogue, Lt. Kazarian manages to drag herself and Ambassador Masiri to a lifepod, but the Ambassador dies from his exposure to the pure nodal energy during the crash. Doctor Tsien also makes it to the lifepod and goes on to develop a cure for nodal allergies. Professor Caris does not make it to a lifepod, but uses her plants to protect her and land safely upon a nearby moon, where she continues her research for hundreds of more years as she learns to use the plants to prolong her life. The last image we see is Chief Pryce floating among the ship’s debris, still jacked into the engine.

Dawn of the Monster Invasion

Tonight we played Dawn of the Monster Invasion by Randy Lubin of Diegetic Games in which we created a monster movie in a little under two hours by holding six speeches or interviews.

Our story opens to the face of the night janitor at Physics Labs Inc., a middle-aged slob named Roger Stone, explaining into a television microphone how he just turned off a machine and a massive hole appeared in the floor of the quantum physics lab. The reporters are mostly skeptical, questioning his story and description of the hole and grilling him about ecoterrorists and the company’s pending sale. Next we cut to a local mall where Victor Jimenez is beginning his presentation at a small convention for monster hunters about his descent into the Pit at Physics Lab Inc. He describes the red fumes wafting from the opening and shows grainy footage of the claw marks along its walls, and the sticky blue ooze upon the floor when they stopped at what seemed to be an underground storage area that smelled strongly of sulphur and didn’t seem like part of the Physics Lab facility. Unable to repel down further, he returned with mysterious gaps in the footage of his GoPro and addresses questions from the audience regarding the blue ooze and rumors that it’s all a government trick. When asked directly what he thinks it is, he claims it’s probably the lair of a giant red saltmander, with its red chitinous shell.

Next we join a press conference being held by Lexi Weblock in the coffee shop where she works, describing her harrowing encounter with the beast in the local park. She keeps mentioning her Etsy shop, but mostly focuses on how everyone was running wildly from the park in fear of the beast eating them like it did that defenseless peanut cart and someone’s pet. She says she only escaped by ducking into a bookstore, where she got a good look at its face with five eyes, the swinging twin tails behind it, and the sidewalk hissing from its acidic drool. Next we have a live AMA with Rex Stiner of whosthemonster.com, who defended the creatures who’ve lived underground and in hidden valleys across the world peacefully until humans encroach on their lands and invade their space poking them with sticks and disturbing their slumber. If we’d only leave these poor creatures alone, they would leave us alone, so humanity ought to pull back into our human enclaves and leave the bulk of the planet to these creatures.

We come to the conclusion to our story by following the conversation on a Reddit thread started by Mr. Bananahands, who claims to have determined that the creature is allergic to peanuts, so we can ward it off with vast amounts of peanut oil, coating the town in it if needed. Many commenters are questioning the logistics and safety of such a plan, but it develops its own momentum by the end and a protest is planned at the governor’s mansion to get help in securing enough peanut oil. Our story ends with Mr. Bananahands after using the peanut plan to drive the beast into the cage, which sits behind the triumphant hero. The plan now is to study the creature before releasing it back into its home and sealing the hole. In the post credits epilogue, we see the monster being lowered into the original hole and hear its voice. It explains to its fellow monsters that humans are interesting creatures and dogs delicious, much better than boring peanuts, so perhaps the upper world is finally ripe for conquest.