Ten Candles by Stephen Dewey provided us the framework to create a story on Moonbase Artemis tonight, where the sun has disappeared and disaster struck, causing our power cells to begin to fail. We quickly decide to abandon the base and escape on the rocket before life support gives out completely. Dr. Jacklyn Keats and comm specialist Barron G. Ouda lead cook André Botacello off into the darkening station in search of survivors and colleagues to rescue while pilot Mott Z. Rella and Chief Engineer Genevieve Piro begin to prep our escape rocket for take off.

Team Rescue quickly hit an impasse when they encountered a door sealed to protect against the hull breach on the other side. After crawling through the duct work, they enter the generator room to find two engineers who agree to come with them but are acting disturbingly strangely. Barron, who had heard the final message received by the station warning about the impending Them invasion, attacked one engineer, who caught the oversized wrench in mid-swing. The lights flicker and the engineers are gone; it’s Them in human form.

Meanwhile, Team Rocket use a ServerBot to repair the breach in the tunnel to the launchpad and begin launch preparations. Mott activates the launch sequence activating a one hour countdown. When Piro notices strange gravity readings, Mott decides to bypass safety protocols and shortens the countdown by 10 minutes. While searching the rocket, Mott also encounters one of Them and determines to get off the surface as soon as possible. Piro deciphers a morse code blinking light at the end of the station, a call for help, and declares they don’t have enough fuel. Mott goes back into the tunnel to retrieve more fuel but stumbles and falls.

Across the station, the rescue team decide to return to the rocket by racing across the lunar surface, but the outer airlock door jams and when they try exiting through the hull breach, they find Them lurking outside the station. After shimmying back through the ductwork, they work together to bring needed fuel and equipment back to the launchpad, but stop when they reach the tunnel where they see one of Them killing Mott, who believes They are his wife. Barron tries to blow the tunnel to destroy Them, but accidentally immolates himself. André tries to climb the ladder into the rocket but slips and falls to his death. Piro stops the launch sequence and sends the crews final personal logs into space aboard ServerBot. Keats runs into the rocket, and the two of them activate the self-destruct mechanism to prevent Them from ever leaving the moon.

This week we played Ten Candles by Stephen Dewey. After the sky went dark, and They came, four volunteers were left trying to make scientific sense of what had happened. A biophysicist, a biomedical researcher, an electrical engineer, and an anethesiologist, they spent a few days in a basement laboratory, but soon realized that their only hope was to make it to the observatory up on the hill. On the way, they picked up another survivor, a young girl who had figured out that fire keeps Them away. At the observatory, our protagonists tried to get the power on so they could observe the sky, and then tried to take samples of the goo They left behind, but all attempts at science were thwarted by corrosive goo. After being joined by an observatory staff member, finding one of Their victims in a cocoon, and losing their truck to one of Them, the band of survivors decided to abandon the observatory and head back towards town — the town might be on fire, but at least that would keep Them away. Unfortunately, the drive down the hill claimed the lives of three members of the group. When the remaining survivors made it into town, they discovered that the observatory worker was actually one of Them in disguise, and the last of our heroes quickly succumbed to the goo.

Last night we played Ten Candles, a tragic horror game by Stephen Dewey. Our characters were stranded on a resort island during a sunless apocalypse where They were hunting us. The protagonists — the resort’s cheerful activities director, a resourceful party girl, an ex-military cop, a high-powered businesswoman, and a mysterious old man — attempted to make it to the northern island to await rescue by the Coast Guard. But one by one they were lost to accidents, violence, and of course Them. In the end, all that remained was darkness.