This was intended to be part of a single, self-contained article – but the more I look at it, the more inevitable it seems that what did happen, would happen. Make sure you’ve read Part 1 before continuing!
I intend to dive straight in and pick up exactly where I left off, but first, there’s a bit of housekeeping.
Whenever you incorporate a table of contents, which I did in part 1, you give the impression that the planned content is set in stone, and to the extent that the planned sequence of topics is logical, this is true.
Behind the scenes, until that table is published, things are less fixed. They move around because the flow of narrative is smoother, or because the content of a section provides a better lead into the next topic than expected, or simply to better space out the illustrations dotted here and there to space out the blocks of text. So long as you also update the table of contents, no-one will ever know.
Except when you have to ‘fess up, because occasionally mistakes get made, and something that was intended to be in one place accidentally doesn’t get moved when it’s parent section in the hierarchy does.
This happens in adventure writing all the time, too, and that’s directly relevant to the RPG-related content of this post.
There was meant to be a subsection to the discussion of books on cosmology and astrophysics that got left out, for whatever reason. So, to start with, I have to take a slight side-step and plug that void.
Planetary Types
The State Of Cosmological Texts (cont)
The Price of Reference Books
In (the previous section), I made the point that any book on Cosmology or Astrophysics that’s more than 5 years old is likely to be so out of date, such has been the rate of progress in the field, that it is as likely to be misleading or counter-productive, and recommended choosing the textbooks and reference books that are being used in university classrooms right now. This practice won’t get you right up to date – it takes time to produce and publish these books – but it will get you past the worst of the out-of-date material.
There is an inherent problem with that approach, and it’s something that I meant to address before moving on.
Textbooks tend to be expensive at the best of times, and the more current they are, the more this is true. There are two solutions to this that are worth considering.
The first is that bulk-purchase discounts from university bookstores are often a way to get significant discounts, especially at the start of first semesters. Some such stores will sell online, even if you aren’t a student at the faculty in question. Other such bookstores will impose a premium for non-students or even refuse to sell to them outright, but with so many institutions out there, you should be able to find one that gives you access to the marketplace.
I would look, at least initially, at institutions that provide remote-distance degrees, then at institutions located near to you, and then at the largest national or international institutions.
The alternative is to look for bargains. The hard way to do this is repeated searches across multiple bookseller sites for the books that you specifically want – and don’t ignore eBay, especially at the conclusion of a year of study; there will always be students looking to sell their old textbooks to finance the purchase of those that they need for their next year of study, or who have changed majors and no longer need the old books. Institution Noticeboards, especially if they are online, can be a prime source of private sales.
But there is another approach, one that may require a little more flexibility on book choices but that can pay off significantly, and that’s using a bargain comparison site. At least one has a section dedicated to Astrophysics & Space Science books that would be a great place to start. Find a book whose title sounds promising, open it in a new tab, and by clicking on the “more” at the end of the description, you will get a publication date. There are other controls, such as price, that can help focus the selection.
Options like Humble Bundle, which mostly sell bundles of e-books and PDFs, can also be an extremely cost-effective solution – but you are taking a bigger risk concerning the publication date.
Getting up-to-date in this area doesn’t have to mean breaking the bank.
Dr Who: Venturi Station
About 18 months ago, I published Vortex Of War: A Dr Who campaign construction diary, in which I described both the process of creating my current Dr Who campaign in detail, and the results of that process. There was a lot of focus on campaign structure, and pacing. Adventure number six was named Venturi Station and it was inspired by parts of the cover text from a Star Frontiers module, “Bugs In The System”, though it used virtually none of the interior content.
The adventure was outlined in broad strokes in a large 244 word paragraph, which is partially quoted below (I can’t quote the whole thing because it contains spoilers that I don’t want my player to read).
A gas giant named Venturi contains huge clouds of petrochemicals that are being mined for pharmaceuticals by an orbiting siphon, which concentrates the clouds, extracts the good stuff (discarding the rest) and then transporting the concentrate (at subzero temperatures) as a frozen sludge to an orbiting collection station, once every hour (when the collection station is directly overhead). [Unusual] electromagnetic disturbances in the atmosphere [have been taking place], and the collector [has been damaged] several times, forcing the collection station to send down repair crews. The last such repair crew were killed until there were only two left, before evacuating back to the collection station. [One of the survivors] is being held in the sick bay of the collection station because his bio-readings are all over the place, in fact he should be dead based on those readings. The commander of the station is preparing to send a second repair crew when the Doctor arrives.
Anything in [square brackets] has replaced a lengthier part of the outline to protect secrets.
I though it important to give this redacted summary, however, because it highlights how and in what ways these initial outlines evolve when they expand into a full adventure.
The Needs Of Story
The first step in any such expansion is always to decide how you are going to proceed. In this case, there were multiple elements to the adventure outline that needed to be juggled:
- What did I need the characters to know and how was I going to put that information in front of the player?
- How many NPCs did I logically need, who were they, how would they interact both with each other, and with the PC, and how was I going to introduce them?
- Speaking of interactions, what were the characters to actually do? I didn’t want this to be a pure gab-fest, there needed to be some scope for interaction with the plotline.
- What is the purpose of the plotline, in terms of the campaign, and what do I need it to contain in order to achieve that?
The last one is the easiest to answer. In the previous adventure (which was re-titled at the last minute to “The Eternal Upgrade”), the Master, the Doctor, and Quasima the Azurite, had defeated a plot by the Cybermen aimed at achieving galactic domination. They had dealt with this plot by rewriting galactic history, changes that were much more far-reaching than followers of Who might expect. Only the three participants would be aware of the changes, to everyone else continuity would be seamless. So the purpose of this adventure was to bookend that event and to rub the players nose in the changes, making them feel a bit more real.
A secondary purpose was to continue to evolve the personality and capabilities of the companion, Quasima, who has been growing more confident and capable in recent adventures.
The second question has quite a high variability – a space mining operation could be anything from a small city (most of whom would be cookie-cutter background) to a handful or two of characters. In some measure, it depends on exactly when in Who continuity the adventure is to take place, and the technological level associated with that time period.
The first question was a really critical one; the process of the mining operation needed to be detailed and to at least sound plausible, and that meant that the gas giant itself, Venturi, needed to solidly conceptualized – hence the research that I reported in part one.
The third item produced the first major decision of the writing – I would move the arrival of the PC and his companion closer to the start of events. This would create opportunities for action and activity and exposition and interaction. Everything else would come from the plot needs and breaking up the information on the gas giant and the mining operation, which made that the key to unlocking the structure.
Dr Who: Defining Venturi
Clue number 1 is the name, Venturi. That is (broadly speaking) another word for wind, so winds had to be a prominent feature of the gas giant. I wanted this particular gas giant to be an outlier, so that the Doctor would know of it – and would expect there to be no such mining operation there. That ticks off the campaign-level requirement, the need to make the changes to history apparent and tangible.
I knew that I wanted it to be larger than most gas giants by a considerable margin. I wanted to define the chemistry in terms of climatic cycles. Liquid chemistry and a swirling wind-flow from deeper in the planet outwards, with complex carbon-chain building-block molecules forming on the liquid surface and floating on and through the liquid until they were carried upwards, where interaction with high-energy sunlight caused them to form still more complex compounds. And for some reason, I very firmly wanted it to be a bright blue color. Beyond those foundations, though, I didn’t have a clue.
The first thing I had to do was discard a prejudice – because Jupiter is larger than Neptune or Uranus, the size specification oriented me towards Jupiter-like chemistries. I spent quite a bit of time trying the different Jupiter options before concluding that none of them would work.
That meant a Neptunian chemistry, but that left me with a size problem; while there were large Neptunes, none of them approached the size that I wanted for Venturi. I was going to have to devise a new variant on the planet types already discovered or theorized with any level of acceptance.
An important clue came with a decision as to how the massive size was to be demonstrated to the player in-game – I decided that this super-planet had managed to capture a small Jupiter-sized gas giant of it’s own. Typical satellite-to-primary ratios being on the order of 10-to-1 or more, that meant that the size of Venturi would have to be ten times that of the small-Jupiter “moon”.
Where there can be one, there can be two, maybe more. That raised the possibility that super-Neptune had absorbed a ‘wrapper’ of Jovian chemistry, forming an upper atmosphere. The next problem to overcome was the restriction upon the size of Jupiters – past a certain point, they don’t get any bigger, gravity being enough to compress them down to roughly the same physical size.
I solved that partially by making the liquid a less-compressible one than most hydrocarbons – I didn’t go into what made it that way, just that it was so. By definition, that meant that it would occupy a larger volume than was indicated by mass, and have a lower density, while at the same time, lowering the overall mass of the planet and hence the gravitational attraction. As a result, gravity would flatten the layer of “ex-Jupiter” Hydrogen, Helium, and Methane somewhat, but not as much as would normally be the case. That made the planet potentially somewhat larger, but it was only a partial solution.
It was when I posited an interaction between the orbiting mini-Jupiter and Venturi that everything seemed to start coming together. This enabled “Hot Jupiter” effects with each high tide, creating a ‘hot spot” in the atmosphere of Venturi. That in turn would cause Venturi to “puff” out, increasing its diameter into a slightly egg-shaped cross-section.
Gases ionized into plasma would stream away from the Hot Spot, recombining into various simple compounds as they cooled; the resulting ring-like structures would not be stable, they would be torn apart by the winds and form streaks and ribbons that would be propelled toward the opposite side of the planet. At some point during the process, they could encounter the more complex hydrocarbons being flung upward by the convection currents above the liquid ‘ocean’, enabling still more-complex chemistries.
Such a system would be incredibly unlikely, but I only needed there to be one of them. What I wanted was an unforgettable world, and that was always going to require it to be something rare.
There were a few additional details that would be worked out along the way, but that was the central concept of Venturi – a gas giant with unique climatic conditions.
Further Research
I set out to do further research into the relevant carbon-compound chemistry that would let me attach names to some of the compounds, but ran out of time. Besides, it has been my experience that calling a spade a spade – describing, in this case, an improbable but plausible planet and then labeling it rare or even unique – enhances the credibility of your creation at least as much as additional detail, if not more.
Instead, I had to turn my attention to the mining process and the technology employed by the station. This involved
- Some way to ‘capture’ the hydrocarbons being mined;
- Some way to discard all the ‘unwanted’ compounds into the atmosphere of Venturi except monatomic hydrogen (especially Deuterium);
- Using the gas flow of the unwanted compounds to refrigerate the purified atmospheric distillate, taking it from a gaseous state to a liquid, and compressing it somewhat;
- Recombining the liquid with the Deuterium set aside earlier in the process;
- Transshipping this liquid to the main station, where it could be separated and further refined into a number of especially desirable compounds, Deuterium, and some waste.
- Use the Deuterium to employ fusion as one arm of a redundant power supply for the station. Use any Hydrogen contaminant to power transshipment of the processed liquids (see below) to a collection point.
From there, some further refrigeration taking advantage of the periodic eclypses of the star by the “lunar” gas giant – which would be a regular and recurring event – could super-chill the purified liquids, permitting it to be stored in cryogenic tanks that could be shipped to a collection point.
This was a complex enough process that it was plausible; it separated processing into two distinct locations (needed for plot purposes); and it avoided getting mired in the organic chemistry that I did not have enough time to research.
The process is refined enough that it was clear this would not be the first time the station personnel’s species had done this, but the uniqueness of the planet being mined would pose fresh engineering challenges, and present an opportunity for some small innovations to boost efficiency (if they work). Technologically, this is a static snapshot of a dynamically-evolving concept – and that’s very hard to achieve.
Some additional research into the weather within gas giants was necessary to get some idea of the conditions of the collector part of the station.
Plot outline
With these details decided, I could construct a bullet-point outline of the plot. Something like:
- Doctor arrives, recognizes location as a human space station.
- Gas Giant. BIG Gas Giant.
- Vertical Zero-G shaft.
- Captured by [NPC1]. First hint of troubles aboard.
- Interrogation by Captain. Repair Mission underway. Introduce additional NPCs.
- Repair Crew emergency, Rescue Plan.
….and so on.
A Cast Of Characters: Integrating Introductions
I wanted the crew of the Mining Station to be a very disparate bunch, but all competent and all contributing equally toward the success of the mining operation. There needed to be something to bring together such a motley crew and bind them into a collective whole.
I decided that having them all be co-owners of a business venture would provide the binding factor that I needed, but having equal shares in what was obviously a significant investment didn’t seem entirely realistic. Instead, I had one organizer putting up the seed capital, a few large investors providing funding, and a select crew recruited to fill various operational roles, with loyalty purchased with shares in the profits.
That bound the time to somewhere in the relatively early part of human galactic expansion, a period marked by a certain rustic sci-fi look to the equipment, a dinginess that carried loads of atmosphere, a certain look-and-feel and a limited level of technology that fitted the notion that this was a more advanced prototype of something that humanity had been doing for a while.
I could add a sense of urgency and unwillingness to simply walk away when things started to go wrong by specifying that the resulting corporation had entered into contracts that had not anticipated the difficulties encountered, which were pushing them toward a default which would bring the entire corporate house of cards crashing down.
By the time I had finished outlining the essential tasks needed to set up such an operation, I had a crew of 12. I added an AI and a primitive automaton that would help tie the whole story into whovian continuity for the player (but not for the character) and make interaction with the historical records a roleplaying function and not a die-rolling one – always a preferable outcome if you can arrange it – and which added to the sci-fi sensibility of the whole adventure.
These were arranged into a series of logical encounters and distributed through the early parts of the adventure outline in the same fashion as the example offered a little earlier.
Just-In-Time Infodumps vs. Background Teasers
In particular, I realized that between the societal and corporate background, the physics and chemistry of the planetary system, the nature of the station and its technology, and the problems that needed to be solved and associated mysteries, I had a LOT of information to impart to the player. There are three basic approaches to achieving this:
- A massive pre-game infodump;
- A massive in-game infodump;
- A series of Just-In-Time Infodumps.
The first has the advantage of generating a permanent document that can be referred to whenever necessary. But it’s an extra task to generate such a document, it can create a disconnect between the contents and the adventure, you either give away more than you want to or leave the document inherently incomplete, and it removes the presentation of information as a means to add interest to an in-game event. That’s a lot of downsides, and it’s not even the full list – read A Helping Handout and Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question. The first article is mostly about generating and using handouts and making them fit for purpose; the latter deals more with problems, focusing on “How long should a handout be?”
Of course, you could simply read the handout to the player(s) before play begins, probably boring the socks off them and definitely magnifying the risks of miscommunication exponentially. Worse still, you can interrupt play long enough to do so – that’s option number two on the list. See My Biggest Mistakes: Information Overload in the Zenith-3 Campaign for some notion of how badly this can backfire.
With both the first options carrying potential or inevitable problems embedded within their very natures, my preferred go-to is always the third answer, except on those rare occasions when it doesn’t work for some reason.
It’s best achieved by breaking the information to be imparted into small lumps, and ensuring that these are delivered immediately before they become necessary for player decision-making. That will leave a few sections that need to be presented at some other point in the adventure (because the critical sections need them to provide context) or that can be casually imparted because it’s logical for the information to be accessible at that particular moment.
Keeping each of these blocks tightly integrated and cohesive helps; don’t try and write them as one cohesive narrative block that you then subdivide. It’s often easier to simply outline them in note form until you have the subdivision worked out, then write them into more fulsome text passages in isolation. You can even do them out of order if that helps make them more isolated and discrete.
Spacing The Pacing
The final thing that I do is to run a weather eye over the content that results and assessing the pacing of the results. It may be necessary to add in some filler to spread things apart a little and let the recipients digest what they’ve just been told. This need will usually vary from one player to another and often from one topic to another.
A lot will depend on how much you can pack into NPC exposition (with accompanying interactions), and how much has to be delivered ex-cathedra. Being able to use visuals (however crude) can also pay a big dividend.
That reminds me of an encounter in my Zenith-3 campaign that’s somewhat relevant and a lot of fun to contemplate.
PC tracks down an NPC who was a good guy, but who has exiled himself since. PC plies the NPC with questions about a certain Temporal and Cosmic phenomenon, which the NPC is quite happy to explain, with animated holographic diagrams to make the difficult bits easier to fathom. The PC, who is not a genius nor an expert of the caliber of the NPC, is barely able to keep up, but just barely manages to do so.
NPC then explains his self-confinement – the knowledge that he possesses is inherently too dangerous to be let loose out in the real world. NPC makes clear that he has done terrible things, villainous things, to confine this knowledge, as the lesser of two evils. And now that the PC possesses this knowledge, he, too, can never be permitted to leave. PC duly escapes, with the NPC and former good guy hot on his heels…
Adventure Content
Below is what you get when you spin all of these elements together, transform into narrative, and sprinkle with a bit of characterization and roleplay – the actual adventure as it has been played to date, presented verbatim.
Format
Each section has a title that consists of a number, and a bullet-point summary. The numbers mark logical divisions between parts of the story and hence logical break points for the end of play. So “1”, “1.2”, “1.3”, and “1.4” are all closely connected and play should not break them up (“1.1” is assumed to be incorporated into “1”). If I needed to shuffle things around or drop in a scene, you might sometimes get a “2.2a” or whatever.
Numbers in brackets (0601) instruct me to show a picture of that name at that point in the narrative. Text in (brackets) are pacing instructions to me as GM.
A double asterisk like this ** gives additional GM instructions, especially regarding branch points such as the success or failure of a skill check.
Words bracketed by a pair of =equals signs= indicate emphasis – this was written in a far less sophisticated text editor than Campaign Mastery content, it doesn’t support bold or italic text, so I use this to remind myself of points to emphasize.
That lets me use italics to drop in the occasional comment or side-note directed to the reader. This is material that is not part of the original adventure.
Adventure Content (played so far)
0. Retro / Status
Last time, the Doctor and the Master collaborated to reweave the strands of history broken by the Cybermen. After three days of mindless tedium reporting on the events to the High Council, he was more than ready to escape – anywhere would have to be better than this! Accordingly, rather than show up for a fourth day of repeating the same answers, you and Quasima ‘liberated’ your Tardis and made a tun for it. As you feared and expected, the Master has completely vanished, and no trace can be found of him; he has dug a deep hole somewhere in which to hide.
Perhaps the biggest change engineered during this rewriting was the instigation of a war between Daleks and Cybermen in order to frustrate both enemy races. There were a number of such changes, some the Doctor knew about and some inserted by the Master as surprises. The Domino effects of the consequences mean that the universe will be new and unpredictable for the Doctor as he travels.
In the course of the shattering of time and it’s restructuring at the hands of the two miscreant Gallifreyans, a number of things about time travel that the Doctor thought fixed, solid, and reliable turned out to be none of these things. Fixed points in time, for example, cannot change, but the paths both to and from them =are= mutable, and they =can= be excised from continuity completely. He has also learned more about the Black and White guardians than he thinks is known by any other Time Lord.
And, finally, he learned that everything that he has experienced lately has been induced by the Master in order to ensure that the coalition between them was one of the remaining Fixed Points in time, circumscribing the options of both of them until that outcome became an inevitability – everything from the Oans to the Submarine Captain who thought he had glimpsed the future, from the Pacifist Poet Dalek to the Davros booby trap targeting him specifically.
What was more, the Master had liberally sprinkled the doctor’s timeline with challenges and surprises as a parting gift (and a distraction from his own activities). Since the =fact= of these is fixed, but the =content= of them is not, all that can be definitively said of the Doctor’s past, and his future, is that there is now and =always has been= more than one individual acting to steer troubles and ‘interesting times’ in his direction; to date, he’s been ‘blaming’ it all on his Tardis, but now a second hand has been revealed to muddy the waters.
When you put all this together, the universe is a new and revitalized place for the Doctor to explore, with guaranteed twists and turns that he won’t see coming. For this reason, his itch to explore it has been rejuvenated, making those three days of endless debriefing all the more tortuous.
Even Gallifray itself, and its inhabitants, have been subtly changed as a result of this intervention – much as they might think of themselves as the masters of Time, the reality is that in this instance, Time has mastered them. But the only people to notice this are The Master, Quasima, and the Doctor; everyone else in the Universe has reacted, according to their natures, to whatever stimulus has confronted them in the moment, ensuring an internally-consistent timeline that holds surprises only for the three of them who retained their knowledge of the prior course of history. To everyone else, the world is now how they have always perceived it, even if it was different up until three days ago (on the trio’s personal timelines).
As the Tardis dematerializes, it occurs to the doctor that the entire accidental recruiting of an Azurite would have been one of the items ‘scripted’ into reality by the Master to ensure that the building blocks of reality could be manipulated to undo the Cybercontroller’s master plan. With the great rewrite now behind them, who knows what the future holds on that front, too?
** ensure that XP has been given, and spent.
1. Arrival
The Tardis materializes in a space station docking bay near an instrument panel (0600a). The docking bay currently contains two ‘bugs’ (0601), a small craft designed for local space travel, with space for two more. Gravity feels about 2/3 earth normal and seems artificial in nature. There is a span of almost a thousand years in human history that used this basic technology, so where and when you are remains somewhat uncertain. Of course, you could consult the Tardis’ data systems, but where’s the fun in that?
1.2 location
The docking bay is open at one end and reveals a deep space view that must be reasonably close to the galactic core based on the number of bright stars and the obvious blue-shifting showing that they are accelerating toward this location. There is a source of reflected light of considerable intensity but it’s below the bottom of the portal.
Significant panels are dedicated to impressive greenery; clearly for oxygen recycling, the redundancy of their frequency is a commendable design feature.
The door out of the docking bay is a very innovative six-bladed design with each blade twisting and extending in two halves which then interlock like an aircraft plug door so that it doesn’t matter which side pressure fails on, the integrity of the door is secured (0601a)
This leads to a tube that connects the main spindle of what is clearly a space station of some kind (0601b). The tube contains transparent panels above, below, and to the sides. It’s slightly disorienting because the artificial gravity system only operates at full effectiveness in the opaque parts of the resulting corridor; in the middle of the transparent panels, gravity is only about 1/3 normal and makes you feel like you are both leaning away from the center of the panel, and not, both at the same time.
But the view is nevertheless captivating, revealing a vivid blue gas giant with strange bursts of otherworldly color that erupt in a flash of light that streaks across the surface of the clouds in a direction completely distinct from the line of rotation of the planet (0602).
To your utter astonishment, another gas giant begins to rise behind the first, a mere fraction of it’s size. It’s VERY rare for a gas giant to be large enough to have another such planet as one of it’s satellites, even if the second is at the small end of the size scale, in fact, you’ve never heard of it before. This place should be famous, on all the galactic tourist charts, but the station clearly has nowhere near enough capacity to service a tourism industry.
(pause for reply)
1.3 activity
This brings up the rather obvious question of just what this station is designed to do. The configuration suggests several possibilities. What can be said is that there are very limited signs of activity on board at the moment; whatever it’s purpose, it doesn’t seem to be doing it right now.
1.4 encounter
Past the view-port=passage, there’s another door that leads to an intersection point. What’s remarkable is that the intersection is between the horizontal passage that you have been following and a vertical shaft, which is ringed by trees and a small garden. (0602a). Above and below the intersection, this connects with another tube, running the length of the spine of the station, connecting multiple levels. Normally under zero-gravity, it’s easy to float from one level to another, but there are handrails for use if the station is under acceleration. About half of the station lies upward of the level where the docking port was located, so you can go either up or down.
With most human designs, up is more likely to lead to the command and control sections, down is more likely to lead to the functional parts of the station. Which way do you want to go?
(decision)
*** It doesn’t matter which way he chooses, the scene will still proceed.
As you approach another level, a door into another intersection point dilates and a human exits into the tube, spotting you immediately (0603). “What the– okay, just hold it right there,” he says, pointing some sort of electrical tool toward you. Behind him, you can see some sort of automated greenhouse, which he has probably just been repairing (0603a).
With his other hand, he slaps a panel on the tube wall, activating an intercom. “Captain Quaid, this is Engineer Simpson. I may have an explanation for recent events. I have just discovered two stowaways, one human and one not. Perhaps they have been sabotaging the operation.”
“Bring them to the command deck immediately,” comes the reply. “Aye, sir”, acknowledges the engineer.
Quasima, more confident in his abilities these days, asks the doctor telepathically, “Do you want me to stun him?”
(Pause for reply)
2. Accusation
Captain Quaid (0604) demands that the intruders explain their presence. Just as the Doctor is about to reply, Quasima ‘speaks’ up telepathically.
This emphasizes two points worth noting. First, that these sections are no longer than necessary. There’s virtually nothing to this section – two sentences, and play moves immediately to section 2.2. Second, using images to depict characters means that there’s no need for descriptions.
2.2 Azurite Deception
“You are in error, Captain. We are not the cause of your problems, in fact we are here to investigate and help, if we can.”
2.3 Business Manager
“Did the company send you?” asks another man, who the captain introduces as Business Manager Lanning (0605).
“I’m sure they would have done, had they known we were available”, Quasima replies. “It just so happened that we were in the vicinity.”
2.4 Suspicion
“We detected no vessels approaching,” says a woman, her primary focus of attention the status display panels in front of her (0606)
A male voice, bathed in surprise, erupts from one of the panels at her workstation. “Did someone say we had stowaways?”, to which the woman replies, “Stay focused, Repair Team One. Leave the heavy lifting to the Captain.” “Confirmed, Lorraine” comes the reply.
Glancing at the instruments reveals that the station currently has a four-man repair team currently in the missing bug somewhere outside the station.
“Do you have an answer to the question, gentlemen?”
“Our craft translates directly from location to location, Captain Quaid. We were literally not there for your systems to detect,” replies Quasima.
The captain, clearly unused to telepathic communications and accustomed to accepting his own thoughts without question, swallows this improbability whole.
“Very well, gentlemen, I will take your explanation at face value, at least for now. Nevertheless, it would be prudent to take precautions – you could still be pirates running a glib line on me.” Touching a control on a glowing disk on a pedestal in front of him, angled so as to face him, (0607), he announces, “Bilson and Torch to the command deck immediately. Draw sidearms from the vault en route.”
2.5 Where and When
Doctor, you have the feeling that Quasima has taken matters as far as he could; proceeding would require knowledge and expertise of galactic history that his species doesn’t possess. It’s time for you to take over the conversation and the place to start might be establishing where and when you are, and what’s going on here.
(roleplay)
3. Venturi
Captain: “The gas giant below is named Venturi for the strange winds that create the molecular excitation that produces the dramatic bursts of color on the surface.”
3.2 Venturi Station
Business Manager: “Logically, therefore, this station is named Venturi Station. It exists to mine huge atmospheric clouds of petrochemicals which are the basis of pharmaceuticals.”
3.3 A puzzlement
Doctor, this information allows you to refine and place the contemporary time-frame as the latter days of the Human Alliance, which overlapped with the rise of the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire – sometime in the late 31st or the 32nd century (human dating) or possibly the early 33rd. The Human Alliance was, historically, a group of human colonies that rose to control the Galactic Arm in spite of numerous conflicts with the Daleks. The primary distinction between the Alliance and the Empire that succeeded it was equality and peaceful relations with non-humans, starting with the Silurians and Zygons. The other major distinction was that Earth was not at the epicenter of the Empire.
But that brings up a minor mystery: Neither of these cultures should have anywhere near enough experience with aliens not to blink twice at a creature as unlikely as Quasima – every other alien they knew of was either an enemy or in the thrall of an enemy.
(roleplay)
3.4 Solution
“You have been seriously misinformed, Doctor,” replies the captain in a puzzled tone. “There are more than 130 species represented in our Confederation, and the Zygons were amongst the first, several hundred years ago.”
Abruptly, Doctor, you realize what has happened – when the Master triggered war between Cybermen and the Daleks, he wasn’t just handicapping the Cybermen, he was supplying a serious check on Dalek expansion. That would have delayed the Dalek expansion, giving many of races they had wiped out in his original history more time to expand and strengthen, which in turn further delayed Dalek expansion, giving still more time to those more distant from Skaro.
Several would have become space-fairing races during that interval. Which in turn means that several human colonies would never have happened, as other species got to them first.
The domino effect of that one change has transformed the Human Alliance from an intrinsically human political alliance to a multicultural multi-species assemblage, and that infusion of new blood would have transformed the Alliance of the 32nd century from a time of decadence to a far more politically vibrant time.
The captain continues “This crew is somewhat unusual, Doctor, in that everyone visually appears to be Human. They aren’t, but there are no obvious non-humans represented, purely by chance.”
3.5 A Catalog of strange events
Curiosity satisfied on that front, the conversation returns to the current situation. A strange storm built up, proceeding against the prevailing winds of Venturi, until it enveloped the collection mechanism suspended 1000km beneath the station. That was two weeks ago. Immediately after the storm dissipated, an intense wind damaged the collector mechanism.
It was repaired easily enough, but the same thing has happened four more times since. There were no recorded examples of such atmospheric disruptions prior to the establishment of the mining station. If it were a new technology, they might suspect that their designs had overlooked something, but it’s not; gas giant mining has been a practice for centuries.
Oh, there have been a few refinements to the process over the years; Venturi Station uses a preliminary refinement process to discard the compounds they have no interest in, and concentrate the remainder, allowing for more efficient transfer up to the primary extraction mechanism at the base of the station. But nothing that could explain these atmospheric phenomena.
Early suspicions were that their efforts were being sabotaged by a pro-human terrorist group, the “Sons Of Earth”, but no link to the group could be found amongst the crew, and no-one could think of a way for a lone crewman to commit sabotage so often. So they have been forced to return to the theory of natural phenomena.
3.6 Collector Malfunctions
The most recent such collector malfunction was a few hours ago, and there is a four-man repair crew now approaching the damaged collector to do a job that should be needed once every five years or so, for the fourth time in a fortnight.
So, what’s your opinion? What’s going on here?
(reply)
As you answer the captain, two crewmen arrive (0608). The Captain turns to them and orders, “These people heard we were in trouble and have come to see if they can help. I want you two to watch them like hawks, but don’t get in their way. If they find anything you think I should know, report back to me. Don’t let them take anything apart without my authorization, but other than that, anything goes – I’m giving them temporary top-level access. Understood?”
He then makes introductions. “Doctor, these are technicians Bilson and Torch. They normally keep the non-industrial tech running around here, and help out with the industrial side of things from time to time, so they know this place better than just about anyone else, so they can take you wherever you want to go and show you anything you want to see.”
(reply)
The pair are eyeing Quasima with openly fascinated expressions.
(roleplay)
4. Repair Crew
The repair crew dock with the collector while Bilson and Torch give you a quick rundown on how the station operates.
- Triple-redundant power supplies – electromagnetic induction, solar panels, and a fusion generator at the bottom of the spindle. Any one of them can power the station, any two of them can power the industrial processes. There are also battery backups good for 72 hours.
- Loops sweep through the clouds of gas while an electrical current runs through the loops. This traps compounds which can be polarized electrically or magnetized in a surface field stretching across the face of the field like a dust particle on a soap bubble, while leaving others, like Methane and Ammonia, behind.
- Physical screening then removes any material with too low a molecular weight to be of value, returning it to the clouds. Tritium is also accumulated to power the fusion reactor.
- Cryogenic compression is then applied to condense the material from its initial slush-like state into something that’s a solid at the atmospheric pressures within the Gas Giant.
- That pressure is is slowly reduced to a level of 1.2 standard atmospheres. This causes some substances to sublimate directly into gas, and permits others to melt out of the solid and be drawn off. This pre-processing splits the chemicals up into six different categories of compound. Three of those categories are deemed worthless, so they are raised to boiling boiled and expelled. Only the three categories of interest are then re-compressed, granulated, packed into cryogenic storage containers, and shipped up the tether to the station itself via magnetic induction.
- Various physical and chemical processes are then used in a station processing facility dedicated to handling that category of compound to separate the constituents and refine the resulting chemical compounds. There is a separate processing facility and a separate process for each of the three classes of organic compound.
- At full production, 100 tons of atmosphere can be processed daily, yielding 3-5 tons of distillates. When compressed, these become a cylinder 10m x 1m wrapped in steel. External motors are added and the cylinders launched into a stable parking orbit at the L2 point between the Gas Giants. Cargo vessels are supposed to call to collect these once a month.
- There are twelve crew aboard the station, normally, thirteen if you count Dr Cord’s Synth, fourteen if you also include Duncan, the AI that translates higher-order instructions into specifics and relays those commands to the relevant subsystems on board.
At the same time, the routine conversation of the Work crew can be heard over a number of hidden loudspeakers; the repairs seem to be going well, so far. The damage described suggests that great force was encountered, multiplied several-fold by a focal point. This breached the outer walls of the collector, shearing lines, severing wiring, shattering a number of pressure vessels, and so on; some of the parts are repairable, some have been reduced to scrap, and some have been lost within the atmosphere of Venturi. It’s like someone hit an alarm clock with a baseball bat. They estimate that it will be at least 10 work-shifts of repairs before the collector is operational again.
Business Manager Lanning looks like he is going to be physically sick at hearing this assessment. He reminds Captain Quaid that the first transport vessel is due to arrive in sixteen days, and if there isn’t a lot more to show for the effort, this facility will be declared bankrupt less than a week later. Is it possible to prioritize the A-Prime process flow, that’s the most valuable, and would at least buy them time to get the whole facility operational again?
The Captain seems to regard this as a reasonable proposition, but wants the repair crew’s assessment; they are the ones with eyeballs on the damage. Lorraine passes the request for an evaluation of the strategy on to the repair crew.
It’s becoming clear how the station operates. Lanning acts as an accountant and advisor to the Captain, who makes the big decisions while maintaining an overview of the situation and environment. Lorraine acts as the interface between the repair mission and the captain, monitors the health of the personnel, and has operational command to implement the Captain’s orders. In many ways, it’s an evolution of the practices he has observed aboard a 20th century submarine.
It should be noticed that this section conveys most of the essential information about the Gas Giant, Venturi, but leaves off some details for later exposition.
4.2 Environmental Anomaly
A beeping sound accompanied by a flashing light commences at the captain’s control hub. Pressing a control, he silences the alarm, and warns Lorraine, “Duncan is detecting a sudden rise in electrical activity nearby, another storm may be on the way. Get the repair crew out of there, ASAP.!”
(reaction)
Lorraine immediately begins warning the repair crew, who start returning to the bug. This is obviously not happening as fast as she would like; after her third reminder to ‘hurry’ to the repair crew, they reply “we’re going as fast as is safe, Lorraine. Remember, it’s 140°C, 8 atmospheres of pressure, and winds of 600 km/h on a calm day down here!”
4.3 Death Below?
Suddenly, all Lorraine’s instruments go haywire, multiple alarms sound, and the life-signs monitors for three of the repair crew go dark. The fourth remains lit up. “Morgan here, Lorraine. Everything’s electrified, must be 1000 Amps or more. The others were all in contact with a metallic surface, their instrument packs are fried and they aren’t moving. I’m about to contact the surface too, I can’t stop myself…”
“Hang tight, Morgan, if you can hear me. Help is on the way!”
Captain Quaid states, “Even with hotshot pilot Vanders at the controls, it will still take the best part of an hour to get there, Doctor. If their environment suits have been compromised, the repair crew will be long dead by then. The blue alien who accompanies you said that your vessel can transit directly from one place to another – can you get to them faster?”
(roleplay)
Quasima can pilot the Tardis, but with 4 people to rescue, the Doctor will need four physical bodies (including his own) to retrieve them. Bilson and Torch make two, the Doctor makes three, he will need one more.
Before he knows what is happening, Simpson is volunteered to be the fourth rescuer.
It’s perhaps worth pointing out that while each of the NPCs has been given a specific personality, I don’t come out and announce that profile. Nevertheless, a number of subtle cues have been deliberately buried in the narrative – the example in this case is “Simpson is volunteered” implying a hesitation. It doesn’t announce that he’s a coward, it just demonstrates that he’s not especially brave.
This didn’t seem to affect him when he was first confronting the PC and his NPC companion, which implies that confronting a couple of potentially armed and dangerous saboteurs was less dangerous than the planet below. The combination of the two passages adds nuance to the character while implying that the situation is more dangerous than it might initially appear.
4.4 Rescue
It’s going to be impossible to tell which of the repair crew are alive but unconscious and which if any are dead, without opening their suits, which would kill them instantly. The only solution is to retrieve all four and take them to the station infirmary for examination. (0609)
Bilson points out that it’s not going to be that simple. Everyone, including the rescuers, will need to wear space suits rated to withstand the enormous atmospheric pressures (0610, ignore the background). These weigh almost 2500kg apiece, and while they have muscle-amplification technology, those are just enough to enable someone to maneuver in the difficult environment. It will take all four of them to retrieve the repair party one member at a time.
(response)
Quasima suggests (if the Dr doesn’t think of it) the gravitic compensators that he intended to use on the Fracture Of Harmony created by the Oans (0611) – if the Dr has four of them, the four rescuers should be able to handle one victim apiece, simultaniously..
(roleplay the rescue. There is no sign of the bug that transported the repair crew to the collector.)
5. Infirmary
Dr Kord and his Synth are standing by when you re-materialize in the infirmary (0612). A ‘Synth’ is a synthetic person, somewhere between an android and a robot, treated as as the latter. Although the doctor has never met any, they are an artificial replacement for the Ood, which a future incarnation will liberate from servitude. Equipped with a very limited AI that does not approach modern standards of sentience, they make good personal assistants, servants, and skilled labor; Dr Kord is a leading researcher in the biomechanical design and construction of better Synths. The Doctor doesn’t know why they went out of style, but suspects that the forthcoming Cybermen War may sour the Human Alliance on artificial pseudo-life.
The station infirmary consists of a central hub connected to the main spindle, with four small ER-style compartments radiating off the hub. These are more brightly lit than most of the station, probably a good thing when it comes to making life-or-death medical decisions (0613). A fifth compartment contains a dispensary, and a sixth, a small surgical bay. If all four members of the repair crew have survived, it will be at capacity. You don’t think that it’s been designed to cope with anything major; small industrial accidents and routine medical needs, but not much more.
Each of the rescuers is carried to one of the infirmary beds, and the gravitic compensators deactivated. The beds abruptly groan under the sudden load. Bilson, Torch, and Simpson begin removing the components of the spacesuits while Dr Kord does likewise to the patient carried in by the Doctor.
Kord pauses for a moment to look at you. “Doctor, eh? Of Medicine?”
(reply, assume in the negative)
“Then would you please get yourself out of the way while I attempt to save this man.”
(response).
Sadly, it soon becomes clear that crewmen Leader and Chapp have not survived. Although their suits are insulated against the normal electrical currents to which they might be exposed, nothing short of not being there at the time could protect one against discharges of the power observed at the collector.
By the time this has been established, Captain Quaid has arrived. Upon being informed of the repair crew’s condition, he turns toward a blank wall. “Access Duncan, authorization Quaid Alpha Two Four.”
A face forms from a myriad of data displays (0614). “Duncan Accessed. Voice-print confirmed. Hello again, Captain Quaid; what can I do for you today?”
“Observed facts: Electrical phenomenon on planet Venturi causing electrification of the collector mechanism. Four crewmen in appropriate pressure suits are exposed. Two survive, injured; two do not. Analyze and theorize.”
“Working on it, Captain.
“1% of all lightning strikes on earth exceed 200,000 Amps and 1% of those achieve the ‘worst case maximum’ of more than 350kA. Lightning on Jupiter is up to 1000 times more intense than this – the 1% of 1% value will be in excess of 200MegaAmps, or 94% of the typical annual power output of the largest nuclear reactor in US as of 2022.
“Venturi is a super-Jupiter that comes close to being a hot Jupiter. Some of its cloud layers reach temperatures of 2400 degrees centigrade, ripping molecules apart into plasma, which constantly stream toward the night side of the planet, where they recombine into new molecules and compounds. But outside these two extremes are bands of greater stability through which these raw atoms stream, energizing local weather patterns; consequently, lightning on Venturi is as much as 1000 times more intense even than a standard Jupiter. 200 BILLION Amps.
“Fortunately, while intense, the bolts didn’t strike the workers directly, they just electrified the metallic surfaces; and, since like charges repel, this is a self-limiting phenomenon. At most, 0.02% of the electrical potential of the lightning strikes would have found it’s way into contact with the crew, or about 40 Million Amps. Their suits would have dissipated a lot of this, surrounding parts of the station, even more; and the duration would have measured in fractions of a second, perhaps even milliseconds. Actual exposure would have been 200-2000Amps.
“The duration becomes important; 200 Amps for a second is more than enough to disrupt human neural activity, triggering heart attacks and electrocution; 200 Amps for a millisecond would rarely be fatal, but 2000Amps for that length of time would be just as lethal.
“All of which explains why two of the four could survive, and two not. But there is a wide scope between the state of being healthy (for a human) and being dead, and the rescued crew currently occupy different positions on this spectrum.”
Doctor, you find this analysis fairly compelling. There have been a number of unverified logical leaps along the way, and some unproven speculation, but both are justified by the fact that the resulting prediction matches and explains the observed outcome.
Another small infodump from the additional research.
“Supplemental Query, Duncan. Positing the assumptions and observations which yield the observed outcome, is it possible for some form of additional protection to be added to such pressure suits sufficient to leave a future incident survivable to a degree defined as an acceptable risk by standard regulations and the Venturi Corporation’s established Charter?”
“Working. An additional layer of electrical insulation should be applied to the external surfaces of all metallic elements of the suit. Additional metallic suit elements should be designed and incorporated that will flash into vapor upon encountering 500Amps of electrical current through the suit; these should consist of a platinum-osmium compound that will carry away some of the excess charge as static electricity. Survivability would be 99 and four 9s percent, provided that the theoretical exposure would not exceed that assumed for this event.”
“Thank you, Duncan. Return to Sleep. All right, Simpson, you heard the AI! Get to work – the sooner we can safeguard against a repetition of this outcome, the sooner I can send another repair crew down there. Don’t cut corners, you’ll be leading that crew. The systems down there may have fared no better than our people in the wake of that electrical discharge, and ensuring that we remain operational is your responsibility.”
“Understood, Captain,” replies the engineer.
5.2 The Impossible
Meanwhile, Kord and his “nurse” have been hooking up all sorts of diagnostic sensors medical equipment to the two survivors. The Captain’s inquiry of the AI, Duncan, gave him time to take his readings and perform a diagnosis of their conditions.
“Report, Doctor,” orders the Captain, then realizes that this could be confusing, and adds “This one,” (pointing at Kord), “Not that one!”
Kord replies, “Morgan is going to be all right, but needs to be monitored for at least 24 hours. I conjecture that she took less of a hit than the others, and maybe Zygons are more resistant to electrical effects. I’ll induce regression if I have to, but at the moment don’t think it will be necessary. Our visitors and their strange blue box craft undoubtedly saved her life.
“Jafyrd is in far worse condition. From his readouts, it’s a miracle that he survived – in fact, half of them indicate that he didn’t and all we have here is a still-warm corpse. But several of the readouts make no sense at all. His heart-rate is 220 beats per minute, his internal temperature is an unsurvivable 120°C, his synapses are lit up like a Christmas tree, and it looks like he has somehow internalized the electrical current into his nerve sheaths. Under those conditions, his heart should not be beating at all, and he should not be able to breathe. He has third-degree burns to 70% of his body, and that could well kill him in the end; it should have already melted his lungs, but maybe he got lucky and didn’t inhale the super-heated gasses. His tissues appear to have been suffused in methane, at levels more than toxic enough to have killed him by now. He’s not dead, but he should be, and I can’t explain why he’s not. It’s doubtful he’ll ever regain consciousness.”
“Is he in pain, Doctor? If so, given that prognosis, you may need to invoke the Catastrophic Mortality provisions and grant him a peaceful death.”
“With that much synaptic activity, he should be unable to distinguish pain from any other sensation, so while it might come to that, I see no urgent need. If you’ll all get out of here, I need to examine him far more closely, and review his recorded Last Wishes.”
Notice that I’ve trickled in a little information about the society of this era – formally-recorded Last Wishes (perhaps only for those in dangerous occupations) and ‘Catastrophic Mortality provisions’ within the law that protect individuals from extreme pain in situations without reasonable medical hope, with implied restrictions on the application of that law.
“Very well, Doctor Kord. Keep me advised.”
“Of course, Captain.”
5.3 Meet The Pilot
With everyone except the medical personnel and their patients turfed out of the infirmary, Bilson and Torch have rejoined the Doctor. “If Jafyrd has a chance, it’s because of you, Doctor. And it sounds like you’ve definitely saved Morgan. That won’t be forgotten, and it earns you a large helping of goodwill. So, where do you want to go now, and what do you want to see?”
Before you can reply, Torch suggests, “Tell you what – you’ve met everyone aboard except one, the chief Pilot for Venturi Station, Vanders. He’s either going to be eating or playing his damned flight sim games in his quarters – why don’t we start there, and offer to join him for lunch?”
(response)
Venturi Station Pilot Vanders is indeed in his quarters, with the lights out, playing some sort of dogfight-in-space simulation game (0615). “Doctor, Eh? Touchy about the qualification, are we? “Cause that’s the only reason I know to insist on using the a alone as a name. It doesn’t even have to be the title that someone’s insisting on. I once knew a girl who insisted on being referred to as Princess, even though she wasn’t one. Turns out she was trying to hide the fact that she’d had plastic surgery, and was still self-conscious about the way she used to look and the nicknames others had used for her because of it.”
(reply)
Garrulous and opinionated, you conclude, with the cockiness that tends to accompany piloting duties; they grow so confident in their own abilities if they are any good that they tend to think that their judgment supersedes most of the social rules that are there for other, lesser, people.
Bilson and Torch have no trouble persuading Vanders to join them for lunch, but you get the impression that you are at least half the interest. Strangers must be few and far between in an isolated environment like this, and a highly-strung pilot type The commissary is another dark and gloomy environment with most of the light focused on another wall of plants, this one featuring a design in flowers. (0616)
Noticing your attention, Bilson comments, “Green things are supposed to help keep us in the right head-space.”
Food is dispensed in the form of colored cubes from vending machines. The crew simply wave an arm over a receptor on the machine and the price is deducted from their earnings through a small implant. Of course, neither you nor (obviously) Quasima have such implants. Not that this matters to Quasima, because he “eats” electricity and other radiations directly.
“Doctor, if you wish sustenance, I could attempt to reprogram the device,” offers Quasima.
(reply)
Torch has realized the problem, and made his way to an intercom. “Torch to Captain Quaid, a minor problem Captain. We’re in the commissary, and our guests don’t have implanted credit chips, so they can’t order anything.”
“Well, that won’t do,” replies the Captain. “They’re working to help us, and that means they are earning credits. I guess they’ll have to go on the corporate account – we have a small number of external credit chips to use as expense accounts when VIPs visit. I think Lorraine is just about to head down to the commissary for lunch, I’ll have her deliver the necessary. Good catch, Torch. Lanning, we had better assign them some quarters while we’re at it.” A distant reply can be heard, “Deck 3, berths 3 and 4?” “Fine,” replies the Captain. “I guess we’re going to be neighbors, Doctor. When you’ve finished lunch, come backup to Ops and we’ll discuss next moves. I suspect that you’ll want to look over logs and old sensor readings, and I’ll have to instruct you on how to access them through Duncan.”
(reply)
A few minutes later, you are the proud holder of an expense account with the Venturi Corporation. Lorraine tells you not to worry about overusing it, the Captain drained it of all but the credits earned so far and a small bonus for field sign-up and for using your personal craft to rescue four station personnel.
(reply)
Most of the cubes are labeled with traditional earth dishes, Doctor; you’ve had almost all of them before. Some you liked, and some you didn’t. What are you ordering?
(reply)
When your cubes arrive, you are astonished to discover that not only do they seem to provide adequate nutrition (according to the very detailed label), but they have the flavor of what they purport to be, and somehow also provide the sensation of consuming what they purport to be.
Vanders seems to have been expecting your reaction; he explains “It’s something new, Doctor. Memory RNA encapsulated in a gel that sublimates in the mouth and travels to the cortex via the nasal system – replays the memory of eating something, if you’ve ever had it before, or inserts the memory if it’s not already there. It was supposed to be a way of giving people quick skill-sets, but it never worked very well in that capacity. Sure makes lunchtime more enjoyable though, and the company is cleaning up.
That’s what we’re doing out here – gathering the raw materials to meet the rising demand. If we succeed, we’ll all become very rich; if we don’t, we’ll all become very poor. This station is a big investment for all of us.”
(reply)
The final pieces of the background to the situation get delivered in this sequence. So it’s time to get the action underway.
5.4 Dr Investigates
Captain Quaid ‘introduces’ the Doctor to Duncan and shows him how to access the various documentation. Having decided that you aren’t a threat, he returns Bilson to his regular duties as assistant to the engineer, Simpson, but leaves Torch with you as a liaison.
(roleplay until the Dr decides he doesn’t know what he’s looking for, so he’s not going to be sure if he’s found it or not. But he does get the chance to familiarize himself with the station layout and the technology it uses).
Also a drop point for extra info about the Venturi system if I think it’s necessary, and it gives the character a chance at a die roll that he’s almost certain to succeed at, which reinforces the ‘you don’t know what you are looking for yet, so you don’t find it’ message.
5.6 The Vanishing
While he’s doing so, the Captain and Lorraine discuss the rostering of a second repair crew. Simpson, Bilson, Vanders, and the Synth, at least until Morgan is fit enough to resume duties. They seem uncertain as to whether two two-man teams working separate shifts are safer and more productive than a single four-man shift working a single shift; the loss of Jafyrd, Leader, and Chapp have clearly created a resources deficit.
You are contemplating whether or not there is anything to gain from volunteering either yourself and/or Quasima, permitting two teams of three, when the discussion is interrupted by a voice from the intercom.
“Captain, it’s Morgan.”
“Morgan – what are you doing out of bed? Kord wants you to rest for at least 24 hours, that was quite a jolt you took.”
“I have to know, first, Captain – Did the others make it?”
“I can understand that, Morgan. Kord probably won’t like my telling you, but I’d want to know, too. I’m afraid Leader and Chapp didn’t survive, and it seems only a matter of time until Jafyrd checks out, too.”
“Where is he, Captain?”
“What do you mean, ‘Where is he?’ – he’s in the Infirmary Pod right next to yours.”
“Not any more, Captain – I’m all alone in here….”
It’s worth noting that the adventure was somewhat restructured on-the-fly to turn this into the cliffhanger even though sections 5.7, 5.8, and 5.9 still remain.
Fantasy Usage: General Principles
Let’s talk about Fantasy application of the many hints and tips and lessons offered up in this two-part series. You may have researched the Fall Of Rome and want to implement an Orcish version of the invasion of the Goths, for example. Exactly the same principles apply.
Or perhaps you have compiled an entirely new vision of Elvish Society that you want the players to discover, the first time that they travel into Elvish territory. Same thing – you have research, but need to translate it into plot sequences that reveal the differences, without any of them seeming forced, and without colossal Infodumps.
The basic approach of doing research and integrating the results apply, no matter what the genre of game. Fantasy campaigns may let you stretch a point of logic just a little farther, and so be just a little easier than an SF campaign, but the basics remain the same.
Fantasy Usage: Many Planes of Cosmological Grit
But that’s all bonus. What I want to dangle in front of you is a new way of perceiving the elemental planes. Ignore the basic problem of extreme gravity, and you can use the various forms of gas giant as foundations for the elemental planes of air (Jupiters), water (Neptunes), Earth (Rocky planets), and fire (Hot Jupiters). You can use a lot of artistic license and metaphor, but the basic concepts survive translation, and yield conceptual descriptions of the planes and what happens within them that are quite different.
Wrap-up: Where No Writer Has Gone Before
I’m going to close this article out with a few facts that have come from research for the Adventurer’s Club campaign that might also be useful to Fantasy GMs. These will be presented as a series of bald-faced facts.
Naismith’s Law is used to plan hiking expeditions, and states that a healthy adult can cover 5km of level ground per hour, and you should add 1 hour for every 600m of uphill hiking (10 min for 100m), twice this for exceptionally steep sections (20 min for 100m). Some sources suggest half this for steep downhill sections, so 5 min for 100m. Note that these are ground distances, not elevation changes. A right-angled triangle with elevation change for one vertical side, and map distance on the horizontal side of the right angle, and the basic formula of c^2 = a^2 + b^2 gives you the actual distance to be covered.
Experienced Hikers should rest for 5 min every hour, minimum. Most take those breaks and an additional 5 minutes before every difficult or ascending section.
Horse speed in mountains = 7 mph and up to 16mph on stretches of smooth ground.
Normal horse Gaits: Walk. 4.3 mph (7 kph) ; Trot. 8.1 mph (13 kph) ; Canter. 10-17 mph (16-27 kph) ; Gallop. 25-30 mph (40-48 kph), all on firm level ground.
Most horses will want a 5 minute break before and after each difficult or long ascent but those accustomed to the terrain, at the mountain speeds given above, should otherwise be fine ridden non-stop provided they can rest for at least 8 hours overnight and are well-fed and watered.
In jungle settings where a path has to be cleared, expect a maximum speed of 2.2 mph.
10m of standard rope weighs about 3 kg, most people should carry at least 5kg of rope. Especially strong party members should carry more.
Rope weighs 3 to 5 times as much wet as it does dry.
It is often more practical to abandon wet rope than to carry it and attempt to dry it out.
Vines have 1/3 the strength of rope but do not increase in weight when wet. They lose half this strength if they dry out. 10-20m of vine can be very handy but should be replaced every second day, minimum, depending on availability.
Each male will eat at least 1kg of food per day. Foraging/Hunting may be possible but will take up time.
Each female will eat at least 0.7kg of food per day. Foraging/Hunting may be possible but will take up time.
The food limits given are the minimums for survival. Twice as much or more is needed for good health – but this gets very heavy, very quickly.
Each person requires 1 liter (1 kg) of water per hour of exertion, in jungle heat = 11kg per day plus the weight of containers.
Water is the chief limiting factor – it’s indispensable and heavy.
Progress can be defined in terms of the water load being carried – very slow (75-100% load), slow (50-75% load), half normal speed (25-50% load), normal maximum speed (which may be only 2.2 mph as stated above) at <25% load.
The only thing worse that having too much water is running out of water. As soon as you hit the final speed rating, it’s time to try and replenish your water supplies – which drops you back into a slower pace due to the heavier load.
Horses can carry 720kg max load. They require 14kg of dry food per day, they will naturally supplement this with forage. They have a greater tolerance for lush greenery than mules but can develop colic if they overindulge. They can only go two days without water but can go almost a month without food. Every 2 1/2 days without food enables them to carry 1 extra day’s water.
Mules can carry about 320 kg max load. They need 6 kg / day of dry fodder and 18 kg per day of water. Eating food that is too lush and green makes them sick with something called laminitis which can be lethal. They have a much higher tolerance for low feed levels than horses, and can work for up to 2 weeks on virtually no feed. Their digestive processes actually grow more efficient under such conditions to better utilize the available feed.
When fully laden, anything over 7 1/2 miles a day is good going. As the load drops, this will improve – until you refill the load with more water.
Horses are less desirable than mules because they carry half as much and have higher dietary needs, so they can’t travel as far on a given weight of supplies.
Being suitably equipped and refilling only to 60% or so when supplies drop below that will carry you a lot further, a lot faster, than waiting until supplies drop to near-zero and then refilling to capacity. But the latter gives more margin of safety.
Have fun!
(Andrey C)
