# [Diaspora] Friday Night Science Fiction



## Paka (Nov 11, 2009)

_The Valiance Corporation started out as the humble Valiance Arms & Mercantile Company with nothing but 3 pre-slipstream technology old-fashioned rocket ships delivering goods and services to the space colonies all over the Vestal system.

How far we've grown together. Now our slipstream-capable armada delivers plague curatives as far away as the inhospitable frontier moons of Binghamton to ball bearings and microchips to the garden worlds of Ithaca. The post-war economy has allowed us to save countless clones from a life of slavery and we have the honor of depositing these sentient beings wherever a slipknot might take them so that they might start life anew.

Welcome to the Valiance family. We hope this guide might help you as you venture forth into the star cluster to enforce corporate policy and make the future more valiant.

  - Valiance Corporation Employee Handbook: Introduction_

Getting together with a group of fellas who have never gamed all together before to play Diaspora. We got along well last night and made up our star cluster. I would've liked to have seen more +4 and -4 stats on the rolls for each system (our highest and lowest were +2 and -2) but it remains an exciting place to get our game on. We fleshed out the aspects for each system, noticed where the resources and garden worlds had ended up, which systems were slipknot gate hubs and the political situation just kind of presented itself to us.

We bounced around campaign concepts...diplomats, journalists, archaeologists...and ended up as employees for the science fiction inter-stellar equivalent of the East India Trading Company.

The characters are absolutely sweet. I really liked what we came up with.

And that there is the magic of gaming. We got together, introduced ourselves, rolled some dice, drew some diagrams and a few hours later we had a setting.

Rock on.

It was important that we had a game where players could not show up week to week and we could keep on keepin' on.

I will likely write up each game as a company memo with out of game notes and player posts to talk about how the system and mechanics shook out for us. I will post up the contents of the setting bible google doc once it is more fleshed out.


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## halfjack (Nov 11, 2009)

This is one of the most hopeful starting scenarios I've seen for Diaspora, so I'm excited to see where it goes. Have you got a cluster map yet to show off?


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## madwabbit (Nov 11, 2009)

Sweet! Looking forward to more dispatches and company memos.


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## jccohen (Nov 11, 2009)

*Hope*



halfjack said:


> This is one of the most hopeful starting scenarios I've seen for Diaspora, so I'm excited to see where it goes. Have you got a cluster map yet to show off?




I can see where you got the hope, I think, since the introduction to the manual posted seems to be an indicator of the corporate growth, but remember, those *are* "recruiting materials" so to speak.  

At the table, the game... well, it isn't absent hope, but there's definitely some dark corners of the universe itself.  I'd say it has more potential, than hope.  Whether that potential will be filled by daring or despair, I'm not sure yet.  I guess we'll see in play.

-JC (one of the players)


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## Paka (Nov 11, 2009)

madwabbit said:


> Sweet! Looking forward to more dispatches and company memos.




_Subscribe now and you can join the Valiance Corporation Rocketeers, a group of elite consumers who get special bargains on all manner of Valiance Corp. products, from our legendary ball bearings to the classic Colt Slugthrower._


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## halfjack (Nov 11, 2009)

You know, the darker the universe is the more opportunity there is for hope. Hopefulness is mostly about direction -- are the characters rebuilding or just profiteering in the destruction, abetting a deeper fall? No matter how dark things are, a team that is rebuilding is hopeful.


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## jccohen (Nov 11, 2009)

halfjack said:


> You know, the darker the universe is the more opportunity there is for hope. Hopefulness is mostly about direction -- are the characters rebuilding or just profiteering in the destruction, abetting a deeper fall? No matter how dark things are, a team that is rebuilding is hopeful.




I see what you are saying.  Ironically (maybe?) my character is the company man who's main objective in life seems to be making sure the bottom line comes out at a profit - think Paul Reiser's character from Aliens - so there may be some hard choices in there.

We may pride ourselves on delivering the cure for a plague, but if the colony can't afford the payment any longer, its my job to say no.

-JC


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## halfjack (Nov 11, 2009)

See, THAT'S dark. And not so hopeful.  Maybe your character will get eaten by a giant bug!


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## Storn (Nov 12, 2009)

This got a bit long.. but I like it.  The bio (and phases) for my PC Anton Kilkenny

Bio:  
Childhood [Phase 1]:  Born to Ashton and Markeena Kilkenny, two professors at Charleston University.  A child of some privilege, Ashton was a willful boy.  Always filled with a spirit of adventure and a love to tweaking authority figures, he also had a keen interest in games of all types.  Love to play just about anything.  Despite his liberal upbringing, Anton felt confined and maybe ...too safe.  He ran away at 11 to join the Vestal Navy as a cabin boy.  By the time he was a teen, he had moved into the junior officer academy. 

Navy Service [Phase 2]:  The navy gave some important structure to the young, wild Anton.  He was a promising officer, smart, quick, had an aptitude with mechanical systems.  There was always a poker game going on base somewhere.  But his disdain for bad leadership continued to hold him back and sometimes get him into downright trouble.  His first tour he saw action as a young 2nd Lt at 16 on the cruiser class VES (Vestal Empire Ship) Valiant Griffin.  His silver spoon captain, Jon Richart was incompetent, getting the job through connections as opposed to merit.  The action saw the Valiant Griffin holed in 5 separate places.  2nd Lt. Anton led repair teams while under fire and kept the Valiant Griffin afloat.  He was rewarded with a 1st Lt. promotion and the command of long range recon Scout "boat" B-122.  His 2nd tour once again resulted in a fiasco from higher command.  During the last days of the war, the B-122 was sent on a deep recon far out from the Binghamton system, because the Admiral Leon Schneckty was convinced that Ovid ships had slipped through before the blockade was in place and where hiding (for 5+ years) somewhere out there.  This was over Lt. Anton's serious objections.  Not only did B-122 miss the final battle of the war when the Ovids made a push for the bargaining table by attacking the small Vestal fleet at Binghamton, B-122 almost ran out of fuel and water because of orders to continue to stay far, far on the periphery of the system.  Lt. Anton came back to find Leon Schneckty then denying he sent the B-122 out and it was Lt. Anton's own initiative and that it was Lt. Anton's own desertion that left a hole in the blockade.  Anton got back at Schneckty by sneaking into the admiral's quarters and sending the private log of the admiral on a news drone back to Vestal.  Then punched the admiral out on the review deck of Fort Trafalgar in front of everyone.  Anton was drummed out of the navy.

Moment of Crisis [Phase 3]:  Given his almost supernatural ability to count cards, keep statistics and read people, Anton found that gambling could actually be a living.  By the time he was 25 he was a full time professional gambler, travelling all over the cluster for a game or two.  And while he could do sleight of hand, create mechanical cheats for every type of gambling, he disdain cheats and cheaters... often going out of his way to punish them.  No, he preferred Lady Luck and a whole lot of prep work called research.  He will study vids of other professional poker players, he will read voraciously about sports teams and statistics.  He has worked as a croupier at various Casinos for 2 months to 1/2 a year.  Eventually, he became well-known and eventually was invited to invitational only Mah Jong tourney on Covert.  Which rarely invites non-Ovidians.  At the same time, and underground poker tournament was happening.  Anton did extremely well and won the freedom of some 50 clone slaves when the Tong boss Ibichi put them up as collateral.  Then at the public tournament, he discovered that Jung Soo and Rennie Gertz were in collusion and using sleight of hand to build the best hands so Jung Soo would win, Anton called the two on it.  Jung Soo drew on Anton, Anton shot him, severely wounded him and then covered Gertz who was thinking of drawing his own hideout.  The court was going to be stacked against Anton  Luckily, Paul Rojas was at Covert, looking to recruit some naval clones.  He also pieced together that Jung Soo and Rennie Gertz were Ibichi's men and had deliberately provoked Anton to try and kill him.  With diplomatic pressure from the Vestal Navy and gov't, blackmail by Rojas, Anton was released into Rojas's custody.  

Sidetracked [Phase 4]:  The 450 passenger Starliner Passionate Embrace was the way back to Vestal space for Rojas, Anton and most of the 50+ clones.  Sabotage is suspected, but never been proved.  When Passionate Embrace Slipped into Vestal space, it was waaay off track.  And just to add fire, the jump seemed to trigger some kind of coma-like flu in most of the ship's crew.  The firepan is that several subsystems were off-line and oh yeah, Vestal's largest gas giant with the biggest gravity well was right outside the window.  Carter Manning, a "named" clone came to the rescue.  Having been trained as a naval officer, Carter took control of the remaining standing  crew and more than a few civilians.  Anton quickly fell into old navy habits and help get key systems back online while Carter plotted a slingshot maneuver around the massive planet.  

Recruited [Phase 5]:  Rojas, having gotten the okay to put together a crew for a Valiance Arms ship, offered both Carter and Anton jobs.  While Anton is not convinced that Valiance Arms is the benevolent megacorp we all see in the AdVids, he does owe Rojas and he does like Carter.  Carter gets a ship.  Anton gets to travel and see if there are more games to be had.  And maybe a bit of adventure too.


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## Paka (Nov 19, 2009)

Cluster data download commencing.

Please stand by...

*New Ovid*

*Export: Slaves
*Clones and Corruption
*Cloning is the work of god</li>

Tech: +2
Env: +2
Res: +2


"Our holy work will be done by multitudes, engineered by god's own designs.  When the divine toil is done, Elijah will report the coordinates of our savior, beyond man or woman, to take us to the blessed seat of our ancestors, the Holy Planet, the land of Red Dust, the Middle Kingdom."

 - Genetic Destiny Report, Double Helix Revelations, 3:12

*Culture*:  New Ovid's lush system is administered by a theocratic state, a complex science-religion with a hierarchical society of cloned slaves, science-priests and bureaucrats.    The war's harsh impact on the system, along with a powerful scientist caste led to the rise of this powerful religious state.  The religion is building towards a prophesied transhuman messianic scientist who, according to their holy book's formulas, will deliver the lost art of the FTL drive, allowing for the human empire to be whole once again, uniting the lost tribes and taking the faithful to Old Earth.

*Description of New Ovid System*: The system's slipknots lead to Vestal, Candor and Lodi, making it a vital hub for the entire cluster, rivaled only by Vestal itself.  New Ovid's capital planet, Covert (capital city: Chung Kuo), is a lush garden with diverse environments that are entirely colonized from the ocean's depths to the space elevators leading to low orbit satellites.  Several other planets, N.O.II, N.O.III and N.O.IV are being terra-formed by clone slaves, led by the finest xenographical engineers in the cluster.  The worlds are harsh at best and brutally dangerous at worst but are well supported by a robust system of satellites and spaceports.

*Habitation*:  The population of the New Ovid system is just under 15 billion people, including clones.  Covert is said to be the planet where the ancient astronauts first set foot after landing in their FTL arks.   The bishops claim that all of the beasts on Covert are from ancient Earth, having been transplanted.  Any species deemed to be not of Earth origin by the holy scientists are quarantined and stamped out.

The population on the capital live in tremendous towers that connect with geo-synchronous satellites, erected by the ancients.  The clones live in cramped mega-cities that burrow into the earth while the holiest of the functionaries live in natural wonderlands.

The cloned slaves are exported all over the cluster as both slaves to those systems where it is legal and as indentured servants.  The cyclopean factory cathedrals that manufacture the clones can be found all over the system, well guarded as holy industrial sites.


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## Paka (Nov 19, 2009)

*Vestal*

    * Aggressively Imperialistic
    * Fading Glory
    * Plague-Ridden

Tech: +2
Env: -2
Res: -2

If the name of the Vestal system resonates in your bones, that’s only because it’s the lynchpin of the entire star cluster.  When our ancestors arrived here from Earth, it was the Vestal system that first attracted their attention.  A number of inviting worlds and moons with both appropriate environments and needed supplies; it became the lynchpin of man’s development here; with only the settlers of New Ovid as any serious competition.

However, years, decades, and centuries of the need for growth and expansion lead to the depletion, degradation, and destruction of everything that had attracted the settlers here in the first place.  The environments of the habitable moons were choked by the extraction of planetary mineral wealth for construction, and became less pleasant, then unpleasant, then hostile.  Oh, you can survive on most of the established worlds, but only long enough to die an unpleasant lingering death rather than an immediate one.  As the atmosphere grew worse, the worlds of the Vestal system (2 Earth-like planets and 1 habitable moon) moved more and more in to domes and tubes.  These aren’t necessarily air tight, even if there are airlocks to the outside – they don’t need to be.  They just filter all the crap out and leave the pure.  The richer you are, the better domes you can afford to make your home in, and the better the filters make your air.  In the poorest dome slums, the major difference between the outside and the inside is that inside, you’re more likely to be mugged.

As it became obvious that Vestal was not going to last forever, waves of manifest destiny swept the people, and 2 grand colonization efforts were sent out.  In the Ithaca system, a variety of garden worlds made the colonization easy.  They quickly became self-sufficient, self-ruling, and a valuable trade partner.  Binghamton was always going to be a massive effort, and the effort was made… but… it just never worked out the way one would hope.  There are some who say – probably rightly – that it was Binghamton that broke the Empire.

The war came, and the war went.  Vestal was already out of funding from the failed efforts at Binghamton, but the worlds were never in really grave danger from the war – the system just had too much military might to really be in danger of outright destruction.  Maybe that’s why the war went “bacterial”.  People talk about the Plague as if it were one disease, but that’s not how it was.  Weapons labs weaponized, and deployed, militant versions of over 2 dozen of the virii, bacterium, and fungi that mankind has been dealing with for millennia.  Sure, there were communities devastated by the more expected necrotizing bacteria and deadly flus, but there was also a dome-city completely destroyed by a monstrously infectious and hungry variation on ringworm.  For the most part, the plagues were programmed to destroy themselves after a few days, but sometimes, someone opens the wrong box with the wrong spores left over…

Everyone knows that the days of Vestal's glory is behind them, but no one in power is ready to really acknowledge it yet.  In fact, a new wave of hawkish politicians have swept in to office, even with the war a recent memory, who are pushing for military power to be the only power that matters in the system, and who want to take whatever they want “for the greater good”.  Strangely, this has also led to the rise of the anti-slavery movement.  The movements started on the more enlightened communities of Ithaca, but were taken up by those who correctly identified New Ovid as the main rival for power, and is used as an “us versus them” scenario.  In the end, how many people in Vestal actually care if a clone has rights or not is probably fairly different from how many say they do.

So, Vestal.  The Old Crown, the Tarnished Jewel.  The blackened heart at the center of all human endeavor.  God help us all.


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## Paka (Nov 19, 2009)

*Candor*

    * Heavy Worlder Miners
    * Hangs in the Balance
    * Ferociously Independent

Tech: +1
Env: +2
Res: 0


Candor is a G Class Yellow star surrounded by 4 planets:   

*Castor*:  A “dwarf giant” planet.  Castor’s orbit takes it close to it’s neighbor Bellerophon twice a year.  This unique positioning makes it a sub-tropical environment for part of the year.  The Castorians also live in a 2.1g environment.  The planet is home to some 11 million people and is ruled by a global government acting under a Jeffersonian 3 democracy (Executive officer is chosen by lottery from the population and serves 6 years, Legislative Parliament is comprised of ministers from some 400 parishes and manors serving 4 year terms with only one re-up, Judiciary is comprised of a Tribunal chosen by Executive)

*Bellerophon*: A Hot Jovian planet, its surface temperatures and pressures are so great that it emits nearly the same amount of temperature as a red star, reflects almost no light, and metals form a vapor in its atmosphere.  These vapors are mined by Heavy Worlders from Castor.  Bellerophon is the 2nd furthest from Candor.

*Pegasus*:  Bellerophon’s major moon.  Habitable and used as the mining companies’ base of operation.

*Glaucus*:  Bellerophon’s minor moon.  This moon crosses the planet’s magnetic field generating massive electrical discharges which are harnessed by the miners for their continued operations.

*Pollox*:  3rd from Candor and much colder, but still habitable.  Most of this planet is aqueous and ice-encrusted which is used to provide other areas with fresh water and ablative shielding for spacecraft.  Candor is home to 1 million souls and follows Castor in its government.  Pollox also has an array of mass drivers used to slingshot asteroids and ice chunks in-system for processing.

*Aegeus*:  The other Gas Giant in the system, this planet has rings.  The atmosphere is too turbulent to be an effective mining operation.  The rings on the other hand…

Originally, a mercantile colony of New Ovid in the Days Before, Candor now enjoys a respectable independence and a curiously involved constituency.  The system allows indentured servitude, usually with a 40 year contract, for clones to do the menial jobs around the various habitable planets.  The more hazardous jobs of mining in dangerous atmospheres, etc., are dealt with by semi-volitional robots.  The resurrected motto of Candor is: “Live Free or Die!”


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## Paka (Nov 19, 2009)

*Lodi*

    * Backs against the wall...
    * Ancient Archive
    * One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter


Tech: -1
Env: -1
Res: -2

"Oh no, stuck in Lodi again."
 - ancient folk song

*Description of Lodi System*: Lodi consists of five gas giants circling a pair of dim suns.  The suns are known as The Crones and the gas giants are known as the Five Cruel Brothers.  There are archaeologists who believe the moons once were terra-formed for human occupation but even if this was true, the effects have long since been reversed, either through poor xeno-terra-engineering or biological warfare with technology too horrifying to contemplate.

New Ovid once tried to colonize the system and set up a series of satellites around many of the moons but the endeavor was not cost-effective and the satellites were abandoned.  The satellites whose orbits have not entirely deteriorated have no more air.  Air is obtained through lengthy and expensive processes that draw oxygen out from ice under the moons' crusts and from mercy missions from New Diaspora.

The only gates to Lodi lead to Candor and New Ovid.

During the war, New Ovid used the system as a place to safely re-fuel its battleships and sometimes press gang Lodi folk into naval service.  Many of these press-ganged veterans have returned to the system to inform their brethren of the garden worlds to be found in other systems, causing agitation and preaching revolt.

*Habitation*: The population is just under five million, a staggering amount, considering the brutal conditions these people live under.  They are seen as desperate and are known for hijacking spaceships or breaking them down for parts or stealing their breathable air and burying the crew in a crater.  Before the war, there was talks of relocating everyone in the system but negotiations broke down when no one could figure out where exactly to put them and as talks were underway, several goodwill ships containing air and water were hijacked, crews left to the vacuum.

The indigenous space travel is not done with fuel as much as using the gas giants' gravity and the satellites as whiplash stations to break orbit and be sent into space.  Lodi-born space travelers are known as Whips and have the mystique that cowboys, samurai and astronauts did on Old Earth.

The pride of the system is the archive, built in a bunker, built deep within New Daedalus.  Several terrorist groups have tried to take it over by force, holding its knowledge for ransom to the rest of the cluster but the Archivists have a brutal counter-terrorism team, comprised almost entirely of free-clones from New Ovid.  Air and water comes from all over the star-cluster to the archives, in order to keep governments' rights to seek out its information resources.


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## Paka (Nov 19, 2009)

*Binghamton*

    * Colony, Scranton
    * ed
    * Wild Frontier


Tech: +1
Env: -2
Res: -3


*Description of Binghamton System*:  The Slipknot for Vestal is the only route to the Binghamton System.  It consists of 1 large yellow star, 4 large gas giants and 12 planetoids (pluto size), none of them anywhere near the 1g mark.  The moon called Scranton that is around Bing III is the only body at or near 1g and it happens to be exactly at 1g.  But due to its orbit, it is an erratic planet, with large tidal oceans that are barely oxygen producing and 1/2 of the 435 day year, they dry up as the planet moves away from Bing III and gets too much radiation and heat.  This dries up the oceans and locks it into swirling clouds of methane, hydrogen and barely any oxygen.  When the planet moves into the shadow of Bing III again, the Monsoons begin, and the deluge starts.  


*Habitation*:  Pop:  approx 701,000.  The colonization of Binghamton system was an enormous financial burden on the Vestal Empire.  It cannot sustain itself.  The atmosphere calls for rebreathers and head to toe covering in the "summer" and aquatic versions of  self contained space suits in the "winter".  Most of the life on the planet is inedible, yet doesn't seem to mind eating us, like the giant Siltworms that slither in the silt of the oceans.  What it does have in abundance is easily transformed silica into microchips.  But with no space elevator, too expensive to export.   There are 3 major robotic factory/firms and 5 dozen mom & pop robotic manufacturers on Binghamton.

Most of the population live in the Spheres, ranging from 1000 to 10,000 pop in size.  Designed to ride out the tidal waves, volcanoes and earthquakes during the "winter" months when the ocean is raging, they settle into the silt during the summer months.  There is also one decrepit space station that has shuttle service down to the planet and a slightly better Research station around Bing III.  

Scranton is actually quite mineral rich, occasionally diamonds can be found on the ground.  Rubies, sapphires, plenty of natural gas, oil from yearly dying plant life are on the moon.  However, it is SOOO lethal to try and get it.  Seems that the alien lifeforms have a preternatural desire to rip apart man and machine.   Robotic platforms the size of ancient terran oil rigs have been dismantled in a night.   Then it is so expensive to try and move it out of Bing III's orbit.  But it is the Big Score that keeps Binghamtonians in system.  And that they have no where else to go.


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## Paka (Nov 19, 2009)

*Ithaca*

    * Enclave (Of Vestal Empire, but can keep their own systems/money aka Hong Kong)
    * System works
    * Everything happens under the surface


Tech: +1
Env: +1
Res: +1

Remaining cluster data forthcoming.

Please stand by...


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## Paka (Nov 21, 2009)

*Valiance Corporation Action Memo - Sars Family Oxygen Mining Company Contract*

Valiance Corporation Action Memo - Sars Family Oxygen Mining Company Contract

*To*: The Board, Diplomatic Corps. - Candor, Diplomatic Corps. - Lodi, Paul Rojas, Libertine Logbook

*Opportunity*: Sars Family Oxygen Mining Company  arrived at the Valiance main satellite, in geosynchronous orbit above Vestal City.  They docked with a newly christened slipship from New Ovid but  registered as the Credence with a Vestal shipyard, on the fringe but surely trustworthy.

Paul Rojas, an up and coming middle manager, was given a crew with all of the skills necessary to broker corporate policy across slipstreams.  Along with Mr. Rojas was Captain Carter Manning of his Valiance-leased ship, The Libertine, and Anton Kilkenny, a new hire, a highly decorated engineer from Ithaca.

The Sars family was seeking supplies, military-grade weapons and the ability to ship their deep-mined oxygen beyond Lodi.  

*Actions*:  Rojas' team had legitimate concerns.  Lodi has a reputation for piracy and terrorism and the Sars family's ship was of dubious origin, a New Ovid made slave ship.  Kilkenny's initial scans noted that the ship's hold was filled with cryo-tubes filled with clone slaves.  As part of the negotation process, these slaves were awoken and freed, relocated by a non-profit, non-governmental organization that aids clone-refugees who have made their way to the Vestal system.

The Sars family's mining is among many holdings on their moon.  They are also involved in the Lodi barter economy and to some interpretations, their family could be seen as a crime family or even a full-blown syndicate.  The Sars delegation was comprised of the eldest son, Carlov Sars, their eldest daughter, Min Sars and a cousin named Solace, a clone.  How Solace was a cousin when he was indeed vat-grown was not clear, though the adoption of outsiders into a family, even clones, and calling them cousins is not uncommon in Lodi.

With Kilkenny on board the Credence as engineer and Min on board the Libertine the ships traveled to Lodi via the Candor slipknots.

*Profit*:   After a month of hard negotiations, the team set up a foothold with the Sars Family that should prove profitable before too long, giving the Valiance Corporation a strong place at the Lodi table.  Rojas convinced the patriarch of the family, a hard-nosed vacuum-warrior named Kale Sars to give Candor's mining robots a try, despite Lodi's strong superstitions and bigotry against machines of that sort.

Kale signed his name to an agreement that would get the mining operations away from its slave-based economy and into a robotic foundation, as long as it proved profitable after a quarter of work.

Congratulations to Paul Rojas, who not only sealed a fine deal for Valiance Corporation profit and anti-slavery morals but also found himself a fine relationship with Min Sars, with whom he has entered into a romantic engagement.  Should marriage blossom, this will only further strengthen the corporation's base in Lodi, as Min is cunning, archive-trained librarian and based on Lodi law, stands to inherit a controlling share of the mining company along with her brother.

Stockholders Major and Stockholders Minor will be notified of this success once the deal is brokered with Candor's robotic engineers and we have a firm quarter of robot-driven profit at the mines.  The Board is pleased that not only was a profit opportunity was created in a place where few see any but that in doing so, New Ovid was given a nice bruised eye in the process.



*Mechanical Thoughts*:

_We had set up a cool playground but could we play there?

Yes, we could.  We breezed through stunts and left some blank for later.  Honestly, I think we could start the game with nothing but aspects and fill in skills and stunts as we went.

I set up a nice situation with profit coming into conflict with morals and family and corporation with the possibilities there for gun-play and space piracy if that is how the star decides to go nova.

All being very corporate, I basically sent the players on a mission and off they went.  The first part of the game was spent making rolls that put aspects on things in case  went poorly.

Storn's hard gambling starship engineer made an engineering roll to put a shut-down over-ride on the Sars family's ship, the Credence and it was an aspect, Shut-down over-ride.

Pete's clone space captain tossed up an Emergency Shut-down for his own ship in case the Sars kids tried to hijack 'em.

This was all being done together, as a group, a kind of team effort.  I wanted some scenes with the characters alone, a kind flash of them each in their home environment.

Did a scene with Pete among his clone brothers and sisters, all touching in a kind of web of hands on shoulders and on hips, discussing their distrust of Valiance but hope now that they were free.  Pete made a nice speech and I asked him to make an Orate roll and put an aspect on the clone family, "Hope for the future..."

JC's corporate middle man had a scene at a party of corporate suits, all discussing Rojas' most recent assignment, with jokes being amde about clones and a backwater assignment to Lodi.  JC delivered a really nice line about how teams like his were the future of the company and again, I asked for a roll, putting the aspect on the company, "We are the future of Valiance Corp."

Storn's gambler was in a high stakes game with the upper level CEO's when the Sars eldest son came in and started playing.  Storn used gambling to put a taggable aspect on him, "I know your tell."

I like those kinds of little conflicts.  The conflicts don't change the world as much as allow the character to attempt to put a spice in the soup.  Even if they failed, something would have happened to add taste.  As it is, the aspects are there, offering mechanical benefits for future conflicts.

I need to write about the social combat we had but its getting late and I am getting tired.  More on the social  combat tomorrow.  I really liked how it shook out._


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## Storn (Dec 2, 2009)

My character is Anton Kilkenny and is basically Bret Maverick who is an ex-starship engineer.

The "VA" was my quickie logo for "Valiance Arms", a sorta proxy for the Dutch East Indian Company for this scifi world/cluster.  We work for Valiance Arms as explorers, diplomats and traders in the game itself.  






Next up is the spaceship, Libertine.  Which is based on some concepts from Atomic Rocket.  These ships are never atmospheric.  It was my morning warm up sketch this morning.  






Atomic Rocket:  Atomic Rocket main page

These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. 
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Generic


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## Paka (Dec 3, 2009)

Storn said:


> These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
> Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Generic




*H.R. Report*: Mr. Kilkenny is a new hire, taken out of incarceration in order to serve under Mr. Rojas' Special Project team aboard the Libertine.  His military background has saved the cooporation valuable time and money that would have had to be invested to train an engineer of his talents and his underworld contacts and his inter-personal skills are seen as an asset to any team he is put on as long as his heightened sense of honor and moral code do not conflict with corporate policy.



> *Name*: Anton Kilkenny (its a irish surname)
> *Homeworld*: Ithaca       *Age*:  36    *Hair*:  Black   *Eyes *:  Blue
> 
> *Rank 5 Skill*: Profession:  Gambler
> ...




*H.R. Report*: The Valiance Corporation has a long history of successful employees who came to work with the company after escaping slavery.  Carter's skillset are invaluable and due to his entire series being employees and signing on with different ships and duties all over the cluster, his sense of isolation and other-ness will be lessened to a great extent.  Upon signing an employment agreement, he also signed a lease on a slipstream-capable cruiser, the Libertine, that he uses in the course of his job-related travels.

We have high hopes for Mr. Manning and the entire newly freed Manning Series.



> *Name:* Carter Manning
> *Homeworld*:  Covert, New Ovid
> *Age*: 14/*Hair*: Strawberry Blond/Eyes: Dark Brown/Clone series distinguishing marks: high ear mark indicating bred/blessed for leadership, type 4 skin tone, batch number indicated on left scapula.
> 
> ...





*H.R. Report:* Mr. Rojas is the Project Manager for this team.  The concept is a new idea in the company, championed by Rojas, a diverse group of skilled corporate operatives who can be trusted to enforce corporation policy and increase the profit margin for our stockholders.

He is taking an intense risk, spending company money to Mr. Kilkenny and vouch for a convict.  Other middle-managers who have worked alongside Rojas describe him as competent and competitive, aspects that are necessary when operating in the less civilized systems in the cluster.



> *Name*: Paul Rojas
> *Homeworld*:  Vestal
> 
> *Rank 5 Skill*: Bureaucracy
> ...


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## Woas (Dec 5, 2009)

Love the naming convention for the systems! I went to college at SUNY Binghamton so all the names invoke certain emotions that might get lost with someone else not familiar with the Southern Tier. Plus I'm real interested in this game so I am definitely keeping an eye on it!


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## Paka (Dec 5, 2009)

*Social Combat*

We tried out social combat at the end of our first game.

*The situation*: The Sars Mining Company is owned and run by the Sars family, who are also a fairly formidable criminal syndicate in the Lodi system.  They use slaves for their mining operations, not seeing any other way to make money.  Lodi is a desperate place, one of the Aspects for the system is, Backs against the wall.

The players wanted to convince the Sars that they could stop using slave labor.  The social combat was on.

It was a montage, in the fiction, a representation of a month of negotiations and back and forth.  Social Combat in Diaspora has a map, which is something new for me.  Making the map was really interesting.  I quartered the map into four sections: Family, Profit, Morals, Corporation.  In the corners of the Family section were Clones and Sars.  In the corners of the Profit section were Sars and the Valiance Corporation.  Morals had Anti-slavery, Justified Servitude and in Corporation there was Valiance gains foothold and Valiance Owes Sars.

On the map were each of the PC's and the four major members of the Sars family: Carlov, Illen, Min and Solare, the father, mother, daughter and son - respectively.  We set up a time limit, in this case, 3 rounds of combat, going around the table, with a Sars NPC acting in between each of the players' actions.  

In Social Combat, you can do a few different things.  You can erect a barrier around a spot, making it harder for someone to get into that position or to get in.  Right away, JC used Rojas social prowess to make it really difficult for the Sars family to gain a profit and made it hard for them to feel they had the moral high ground on Justified Servitude.  We saw this as him showing them that they could make money in other ways.  You can put an aspect on a character so that another character can use the free tag to gain a +2 to an attack on them.  You can move yourself or another character, all by rolling to move.

Storn attacked, destroying the son's social hit points, so to speak, using gambling.  We decided that he cleaned the son right out.  As a side-effect of this, I had Storn win a container of clone-slaves the son had picked up during the last game.  This would be a huge part of the next session, when they found out what exactly kind of clones they had acquired and also, because Storn's character is an active anti-slavery proponent.  I knew that gaining a container filled with clones in a kryo-sleep would be problematic and interesting for him.

As I recall, Pete's character ended up squaring off with the matriarch of the family and moved her firmly into the anti-slavery camp.  There were scenes where Pete's clone captain and her went into zero-G to look at their ship from the outside, as she has a love of spaceship architecture.  They bonded and she realized that clones are in fact people too and holding them to work for their company was wrong.

The father barricaded himself in the Sars corner of the Family quarter.  

The daughter got interesting.  She moved into Valiance gains foothold and on the last turn, the father moved her over to Valiance Owes Sars.  This, coupled with her attacking JC's character earlier with an attack using a seduction skill, meant that we decided the characters got engaged.  The Valiance company could have a share in the Sars Family Mining but she would marry into the company, sealing the pact.  For now, they are engaged.

As it turned out, they convinced the Sars to adapt robots for their mining and to free the slaves once the robots proved profitable with the Valiance Corporation picking up the tab on the robot acquisition in return for a share of the profits.

So, there are a couple of techniques we used in making Diaspora Social Combat interesting, gleaned from our years of playing Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits:

*Tangible Effect*: The Social Combat has a tangible effect on the in-game fiction.  Otherwise, you are just moving pieces around a board for no damned reason.  When Storn's gambler blew the Sars son right out of the combat, there were consequences and in-game stuff happened.

*Compromise*: There has to be a mechanic for compromise.  In this case, I used several different members of the opposing factions, each of which with slightly different goals.  The father wanted what was best for the family.  The mother wanted to keep the slaves.  The son wanted to see the family gain control over the corporation and the daughter wanted profit.  By seeing where everyone was positioned at the end, we could see how the combat shook out.  If the players had just attempted to destroy every member of the Sars family's damage track, it would have gone very differently; they might have just liberated the clone-slaves on the spot.

As it was, I was very pleased with how it shook out.  The map is a really interesting way to represent the whole abstracted process and it really allowed us to compress a month of game-time into a half hour or so of play.  We got to roll dice and be strategic while giving the night a fun, dynamic and interesting conclusion.

Now to write up last night's game, in which they find out that Anton Kilkenny, in a card-game with Carlov Sars, won a cargo container filled with lost black-ops Void Marine clones, lost since the New Ovid-Vestal war that ended 20 years back...


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## Paka (Dec 5, 2009)

Woas said:


> Love the naming convention for the systems! I went to college at SUNY Binghamton so all the names invoke certain emotions that might get lost with someone else not familiar with the Southern Tier. Plus I'm real interested in this game so I am definitely keeping an eye on it!




We have all been living in upstate New York for a while now and thought it was almost goofy at first, now we really like the local names.

Thanks for reading.

Last night's game was really, fun, so, more to come...


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## jccohen (Dec 5, 2009)

Woas said:


> Love the naming convention for the systems! I went to college at SUNY Binghamton so all the names invoke certain emotions that might get lost with someone else not familiar with the Southern Tier. Plus I'm real interested in this game so I am definitely keeping an eye on it!




We actually were tossing around naming conventions at the beginning of system creation and one of the suggestions was Greek Myth, which was used to name many of the towns around here.  As we began to get more of a feel of the systems, though, they sort of solidified in to the feel of some of the local towns (or our own opinions of them) and so it wound up being more of a local cities naming scheme.

It feels a little weird sometimes but for the most part its worked out well.


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## Storn (Dec 5, 2009)

We gamed last night, our 2nd session. It was a blast. I had such fun, I tried my hand at doing a journal/log to compliment Judd's AP. Judd liked what I did and asked my log to be the starting point for the AP, but I'm including his contribution too. We keep a google doc with all of us having access to add things as we want. It is a very cool game aid. 

Librarian's Journal: Sun Washington (Judd's librarian NPC and Judd wrote her journal entry)
Note: If you have somehow broken the encryption on this journal, you are breaking Archive Law. This is the private journal of an Archive-trained fully bonded Librarian and is thus classified. The journal's purpose is for the librarian's own reflection and critique on hir data-collecting techniques.

Archive Date: Jule 21, 3245 Astronaut's Descent

The Valiance Corporation's latest retrieval team has arrived to take the company's latest data key back to Vestal. This team, on board a New Ovid-made scout class slipstream-capable ship, is different than other data retrieval teams. Their research patterns are different and team is made up of a mix of corporate administrators and former military personnel that must make for tense travels among the stars.

The Libertine is a handsome ship with a free-clone captain who reminds me of my own husband when I first met him, so confident concerning what he was told he was bred to do and so unsure of everything else. The crew was very excited to have the services of a Librarian and made good use of the Archive's vast data. They have access at a high level, as the Valiance Corporation is a major sponsor, our security teams all wield custom-altered V.A. weapons.

My first duty was to discover what was the nature of the clones they had in their ship's cargo hold. Apparently, the ship's engineer, Anton Kilkenny, had won them in a card game in a Lodi oxygen mine. The clones turned out to be a lost cadre of special operations soldiers, bred in the highest quality factory-cathedrals of New Ovid.

The squad's specialty was drifting at a satellite or a ship in orbit, making magnetic contact and then wreaking havoc. The Andrews series of clones are legendary. The Libertine had a full compliment of 30 in a state of the art stasis container attached to their ship.

Engineer Log: Lodi Archive docking (I wrote this part)
I think these logs are total waste of time. But to keep our corporate masters happy with the idea we actually read their memos and they read ours, here is my sad attempt.

One heat sink got stuck and would not rotating. Banging on the coupling seemed to do the trick.

Besides that, the Libertine is running very good for a 40+ year old ship.

Upon docking at Archive, met up with Safron Delaney, who is joining our intrepid crew. He is a decent guy for a suit. Picked up some Data Key for Valiance Arms. 

VA payed for remarkable amount of access to The Archive. Capt Carter spent his time researching some Clone myths. Rojas helped me look into a decent place to unload the clones I won in that card game awhile back. They are still on ice. Good cargo parameters, their drain on ship's power resources are well within reasonable tolerances. 

Researched clones missing manifest, try to figure out what they were grown for. Didn't find much, probably because it is New Ovid black market clones. Not much for the recording and such, these marketeers. 

{_out of character and for those who read these APs: This is a flat out lie. Clones turned out to be SpecOps, super troopers, spliced with wolf DNA to generate pack hierarchies. They were sold (or kept on ice and recently sold) some 20 years ago by Admiral Zafreet as the war was winding down and he went AWOL into "the Ink". Not only he sold clones, he sold off his "black fleet" over the years. Substantial amounts of mothballed military tech he had dibs on. Our research revealed that Zafreet sits on the board of Valiance Arms and lives a comfortable retired life. He recently sold a military scout ship to VA... that ship turned out to be none other than our very own Libertine. After virtual interaction with the head clone, Col. Jubeska Andrews, they aren't too happy about being sold down the river. 

Jubeska requested placement into civilian life on Vestal, the home system of Valiance Arms. We all were a bit squicked about New Ovid SpecOps clones running around Vestal, probably trying to kill Zafreet. Rojas went behind my back and programmed himself to be the Alpha pack leader of the Star Wolves. He admitted his mistake and that is when Carter decided to take them to Binghamton. The thought of keeping them and having our own private army did occur to us... but just doesn't seem right. I did end up changing one of my Aspects to "Heart of Gold"_ }

I think Capt Carter has decided to wake the clones up on Scranton or somewhere in the Binghamton system, so they can have their own lives and freedom and get them outta our hair. I have no problem with that. I don't feel good making money on the souls of folks, even manufactured folks. You corporate sharks probably think I'm weak for not making a financial killing on this windfall. To that, I can only say; I'm not a suit. 

{_The game was a lot of fun, very philosophical as we totally debated for most of the short evening on what to do with these clones. Anthony's Safron dug into our pasts using his best skill, science. He totally outrolled my Alertness, but I struggled for a bit as most of my secrets are social... he then suggested that "have I left DNA anywhere" and I got to thinking "maybe I have a kid somewhere out there?" And that clinched it. Anton has a 14 year old daughter named Andrea, who is looking for her dad and submitted a DNA report to match. Her mom, Talia Sackett, is/was a hard scrabble prospector/frontierwoman on Scranton and we had a brief affair 15 years ago. Anton doesn't know...so it didn't go into my engineer log, Saffron does and is going to try and find my daughter when we go to Binghamton system. Very cool. I'm considering swapping a Stunt out and taking Andrea so the Libertine might get a 'cabin girl' and I get a relationship with a spunky frontier adolescent... tie an Aspect on Andrea and knowing Judd, she will be a SERIOUS FATE pt generator._}


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## jccohen (Dec 5, 2009)

I want to expand on what Paka wrote about social combat.

One of the nice things about it was that the players could work as a team, or not, and it could change in the course of the battle.  Paul started out wanting a profit, while the others started over in anti-slavery.  While we wound up not really touching each other, we could have.

The map allowed you to think really strategically.  My character made sure that Profit for the Sars corporation was hard to get in to on one of his turns, using Bureaucracy.  One of the Sars family, the daughter, Min, tried to seduce me to move me in to an advantageous position for the family.  It didn't really take, but I did a counter strike in my next turn, turning the seduction on its head and showing Min how many nice things money can buy, and she was moved in to Valiance gains foothold.

The son, Solare, tried to remove me from combat, we set up that story as an attempt to damage my space suit.  That failed, and in his next turn, Anton used gambling skill to take out Solare, which he did fairly completely; a fairly incredible role *and* high skill, which not only got Solare out but gained Anton a load of clones.

I honestly don't remember what I did in the last turn, I think I moved myself in to "Profit for valiance" (or maybe just "profit") but Paul set a minor setback when the father used his turn to move his daughter from "valiance gains foothold" to "valiance owes sars".  This set up the entire arranged marriage plotline.

The others had been focusing on the clone slave issue.  The father had fairly solidly ensconced himself in "family - Sars" while the mother had been moved in to "morals - antislavery."

The whole board added up to Valiance giving Sars robot mining equipment to replace clones, sealed in a personal way by the engagement.  I decided Paul and Min are rather fond of each other, if not in love per se, and we'll see if the marriage ever actually happens or if it remains more of a common law kind of thing.

It was a little difficult for me to wrap my head around the consequences of the map, at first.  I could see how the map worked, and began to think strategically about it (I had also considered throwing up a barrier to "valiance owes sars" but didn't have enough time to do so) but I didn't realize until a bit closer to the end that everyone moving around doesn't actually change their opinion until the end, when it was summed up.  For example, I thought the mother, once moved in to "anti-slavery" would start working against the husband, but that wasn't the case.  However, that's not a flaw in the system as much as a learning curve for me, new to the system.

It was a really neat system, and it worked really well, and I hope we do it again, however, its not needed all the time.  Our next session was full of one on one rolls against each other and role-playing, including one extended sequence where my character, Paul, decided to really dick over another character, Anton, out of cowardice.  I think we both blew 3 or 4 fate on that one to get the roles where we needed, since we both had multiple aspects that worked with it.  More about that... later.


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## Paka (Dec 5, 2009)

*To*: New Novid High Cleric of Genetic Engineering
*From*: Abbot of Covert Military Factory-Cathedral Production 
*Status*: Classified
*Subject*: Andrews Class Clone Soldier

The Andrews class is the next wave in clone soldier but needs to be utilized in very specific circumstances and then placed directly back into their cryo-pods for hibernation storage.  The cryo-pods we  have engineered for them have linked-in capabilities, allowing the officer in charge of a battalion of Andrews to talk to them while they are in hibernation and also allowing them to train as a battalion while sleeping, actually programming their muscle memory through their neural relays.

DNA take from Earth-original wolf packs have been spliced into the Andrews' DNA, giving them a ferocious bonds with their series-mates.  Using the wolf traits and the cryo-pod's linked-in capabilities, we have combined these technologies allowing the officer in charge of them to wire hirself in as the battalion's alpha.  This alpha status is not license for the Andrews handler to be irresponsible.  A wolf pack's alpha can be removed.

The Andrews are a special breed of soldier.  They are smart, independent and disdainful of weak leadership.  In short, they are dangerous.  Our AI projections see any group of them left outside of their cryo-pods in a slipstream-capable ship as real mutineering threats, especially with the skill-sets that the Admiral Kafreet is demanding of us for his Void Marines.  Due to the admiral's lack of faith in the ancient texts, it is our recommendation that a holy engineer be placed with the clones, allowing for scientific and spiritual guidance [Archive Librarian's Note: The holy engineer was never noted on any of Kafreet's ship's manifests].

Technologically and religiously speaking, these clones are a huge step forward.  They show how our genetic engineers are making real strides in incorporating all manner of genetic material into the new breeds.  While we are still far behind the schematics in our holiest and most secret of biological texts, the messiah clones who piloted the FTL ships and allowed the first human astronauts to set foot in our holy land, we are making strides.  Praise the helix and all its mysteries; the diaspora will end in our generation.


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## jccohen (Dec 5, 2009)

I need to correct myself in regards to the previous sessions social combat - Min used Charm to place a free tag on me labeled "seduced", it was any attempts to use that tag later that amounted to being less than helpful for her. - JC


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## jccohen (Dec 5, 2009)

*A letter home...*

My lady Min-

By the time this letter finds you, I expect you to be settled in my home on Vestal.  I do not know when I shall see you again, exactly, as not only is this team constantly sent on missions by Valiance, we consistently find trouble on our own and timeliness does not seem to be one of our virtues.  Perhaps I shall need to tell Valiance that for that very reason, courier works is not our forte in the future.

By the time you read these words, I believe this situation will have resolved itself, one way or the other.  I freely acknowledge that in the guise of writing to you and keeping you informed, I am also outlining my own thoughts and perhaps a new method of handling the situation will come to me.

You of course remember Anton?  He won that load of clones from your brother.  I don't know if you knew the background on these clones; I'd like to think you'd have told me if you did, or more ascribing a more selfish motive, your family would have demanded them returned.  They are... perhaps I shouldn't say explicitly, but they are dangerous, but potentially powerful.  The others want them to be freed, and perhaps that is the right thing to do - I have very little opinion on the slavery of clones.  But these particular clones, uncontrolled, is a thing I can not abide.  They are to dangerous.

There is a control mechanism, and I used it.  I had no right to do so as they are Anton's property, although he doesn't believe they are property so I find his use of that argument a bit hypocritical.  I don't particularly want or need control over these clones, except in my darkest desires, but I know they need to be controlled, and the only way I knew they'd be controlled is if I did this.  It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission, in this regard, although it has not been particularly easy to gain forgiveness.  Anton and I are not friends, nor are we the kind who would be friends, but I want a mutual respect, and I disrespected him by doing this, and lost what respect for him I had built up.

It was necessary.

Anton will not act against me directly, and he made a good point - if anyone on this ship has anything close to a right to control these clones, its Carter.  Carter doesn't want it, of course, and I knew that.  He may wind up with it anyway.  Or we may free them without a control.  On a world where they lacked sufficient ability to strike against citizens, that might be allowable.

My new assistant, Saffron, is a capable fellow who so far has stood up to my abuse.  I actually need to abuse him less;  there's a difference between professional detachment and criminal indifference.

I hope you are settling in well, and that access to my properties and accounts has been granted fairly easily.  Valiance *should* be taking care of that.  I know that the men and women on Vestal are not the company you are used to, but they may see you as a curiosity and try to make friends.  Or they may make fun of you.  It is my sincere hope that by the time I see you again, you'll have made the former, and not taken the head off the latter.

Until then - Paul


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## Storn (Dec 7, 2009)

Yup. We were pretty silly bunch in the beginning, took awhile to settle down. But we definitely got to some good role playing as the night went on. Very happy with that session.

And I agree with John, I wanted to win for my character, but I was actually okay with losing as I knew that the situation was gonna be juicy. 

I sketched up the rest of the Libertine crew. I had another pic for Anthony's Saffron Delaney...but I wasn't happy with it, so I re-sketched him. I also want to resketch my own guy at some point. Because we hadn't played with Anthony yet (he missed the first session), I hadn't heard his description of his character....and that first session, I had described my PC as being a tall, gangly dancer like body... sorta playing against typical starship engineer body-type. But with Carter Manning coming in at 6'3" (totally fine with super-leader clone) and then Anthony declares that Saffron is 6'7" due to genetics. Again fine. But in my head, I was like "what?!?! 3 tall, beanpoles, we could be the Libertine GRAV Basketball Team....and I just wasn't into wanting to be yet another tall dude. I was think 6'4", Tom Selleck height)... so I retro described being 5'10" and stocky, more in line with an engineer who has to clamber around a 40 year old spaceship to keep it going. 







I also doodled up my soon to be revealed daughter, Andrea. I think she had a scavenger, hard-scrabble life on the planet Scranton.


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## Storn (Dec 7, 2009)

And this morning for my warm-up sketch, I did Anton again.  Made him a bit stockier (and a lot more handsome... not sure how that happened...some times the pencil has a will of its own).  I'm much happier with this version.


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## Kobold Stew (Dec 8, 2009)

It's really gratifying to see the AP of the social combat -- you have no idea how nice it is to see how the ideas at one's own table play out somewhere else, with people we've never met. 

Thanks for all of this -- it looks like a great campaign! -- and I look forward to continuing to follow. (The art is great!)


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## Paka (Dec 8, 2009)

Kobold Stew said:


> It's really gratifying to see the AP of the social combat -- you have no idea how nice it is to see how the ideas at one's own table play out somewhere else, with people we've never met.




Thanks.  The act of creating the map was funky and takes some doing.  It is a funky map, because it isn't a place but a situation and people are moving to ideas and moral stances...funky stuff.



Kobold Stew said:


> Thanks for all of this -- it looks like a great campaign! -- and I look forward to continuing to follow. (The art is great!)




Thank you for putting out a fun game.

And yeah, Storn's art is a boon to any table he graces it with.  It is amazing.


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## Paka (Dec 12, 2009)

Valiance Corporation Inter-Departmental Memo

*To:* The Board,  Human Res, Diplomatic Corps - Binghamton, Slipship Leasing Div, Space-Nav, Paul Rojas

Mr. Rojas,

Your petition for being placed under the status of Special Project, leading your team (Manning, C/Safron/Kilkenny, A) aboard the Libertine to the Binghamton System despite having no corporate directives leading you there is hereby accepted.  Your timeline and meetings will be adjusted accordingly.

Sincerely,

Valiance Corporation A.I. #4513.4 - Human Resources



Valiance Corporation Action Memo

*To*: The Board,  Diplomatic Corps - Binghamton, Slipship Salvage Div, Military Ordinance Div

*Action*:  In the Binghamton System, Bing III, Scranton, Paul Rojas' team has forged a contract with the Chinung, Collins, Svanna and Andrews Mining Collective.  The C.C.S and A is a clone-run mining company, dealing in deep silt mining for precious minerals through robotic mining platforms.  The mining industry on Scranton is dangerous and competitive. 

This mining company has a fine portfolio, being comprised of three clone series, the Chiung, Collins and Svanna.  These were New Ovid naval clones who freed themselves just as the war ended through mutiny.  In the decades since have flourished, a haven for escaped clones who seek out the free life of the cluster's frontier and as ruthless miners in an environment where the least of one's worries are cyclopean siltworms and the highest mortality rates come from erratic weather and other miners.

The addition of Andrews to the company name is a recent development that the company has refused to comment on in any kind of public way.  Data on the Andrews series of clones is nonexistent, though myths and tall tales abound.

*Profit:* Rojas' contract is a cut and dry slipship salvage taking part outside of the gravity well of Bing II, a gas giant with titanic storms in the upper atmosphere.  A ship from the war has been stored there and will be retrieved.  All contents of the ship belong to the mining collective, while the ship itself will be the property of the Valiance Corporation.  A team of engineers from Slipship Salvage Div have been put into position near the Vestal/Binghamton slipknot, should Mr. Rojas need their services.

Once the ship has been properly assessed, the Stockholders Major and Stockholders Minor will be told of the company's success in turning New Ovid's wartime carelessness into Vestal profit along with a concrete plan for the ship's use to be decided by The Board.


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## Paka (Dec 12, 2009)

_I am at that point in play where I need to go back and re-read the rulebook.  There are a few opportunities that I feel like I missed.  I need to re-read about consequences, the ship's damage track and the maintenance check on a ship.

It is unclear to me how to set the numbers for fixed difficulty rolls.  I did it tonight but it felt very hand-wavey.  I just wasn't sure what setting the difficulty for a roll at 2 means, really.

We probably should have taken out the social combat mini-game for the negotiations between the Void Marines and the mining company (another damned mining company!) but instead we did it in a single roll._


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## Korgoth (Oct 1, 2010)

OK... this is an old thread. But I was wondering if the campaign kept going; it was a fun read so far.

The interest is because I'm going to be in a Diaspora game pretty soon, and so I was poking around for threads about it.

Diaspora just came out in softcover and was available at a FLGS. It is pretty awesome.


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