New NESes, ideas, development, etc

Desert Journeyman said:

The King is Dead! Long Live the King!

Garland is dead, the expedition dissolved, and chaos reigns.

Absent any guarantee of physical security or even a functional chain-of-command, damage control efforts abroad the starship Unity have all but ceased. Meanwhile, violence between the fragmenting crew and newly-awakened colonists grows hotter by the hour. Firefights have broken out amidships as hastily-formed factions clash over access to escape craft and supplies. The hydroponics, heavy equipment, and cryobays between the secondary reactor (Y) and the primary computer core (B) have become a deadly No Man's Land. Dozens of crewmen, many of them grievously burned and near death from radiation poisoning, stream forward from the damaged secondary reactor.

Internal alarms blare in every compartment. An anodyne voice calmly informs the doomed passengers that their lives are imperiled by fire, radiation leaks, hazardous material spills, and decompression. Several compartments amidships are flooded with water and foam. While it is difficult to distinguish honest alarms from false, many crew are refusing to venture out of emergency bunkerage without self-contained breathing apparatus and other survival gear.

While heavy weapons are confined to the armory, several factions appear to have brought their own small arms. A few even appear competent in their use.

Based on scattered pieces of intelligence recovered from functional surveillance systems, refugees from other sections of the starship, and scouting reports, the following is known to all factions:

• Marine forces have occupied the starship's Bridge [A] and Computer Core (B), but not without suffering severe casualties in a long, bloody odyssey from armory to prow. Despite employing less-lethal tactics to the fullest extent possible and refusing engagement whenever it was not stricly necessary, the Marines were ultimately forced to rely on lethal force. Once ensconsed on the command decks, however, the Marines were quickly beset by attacks from The Human Hive.
  
  
• The ships' Computer Core (B) is largely useless. The Marines arrived to find it previously accessed and gutted. Rumor has it that there is now no possibility of acquiring a manifest of crew or equipment.
  
  
• A body of armed United Nations constabulary has reportedly seized and secured Cryobay 5.
  
  
• A doomsday cult is alleged to be in nominal control of the ship's Emergency Command Center (ECC) [J]. The cult has successfully sealed off the ECC from intrusion by several squads of Unity Marines. The Marines, in turn, routed a stick of men from the Hive sent to seize the same objective.
  
  
• A group of survivalists who appear to have paramilitary training and access to military-grade small arms stalks the crew spaces and hydroponics bays along the Unity's spine.
  
  
• Religious fundamentalists are reputed to be in control of the ship's forward sensor suits and Orbital Survey Pod (OSP) [T]. Word has it that they executed a flanking maneuver through adjacent machinery spaces, taking by surprise bodies of men loyal to both Sheng-ji Yang (formerly a chief adviser to Captain Garland) and the aforementioned cult.
  
  
• The Unity's complement of Marines has successfully repulsed an attack on the ship's Armory [Z] by doomsday cultists. The Armory has since become choked with personnel seeking safety, as well as with new recruits for Darlan's forces. Several new arrivals successfully absconded with weapons when, posing as a damage control team, they instigated temporary panic just as the Marines were attempting integration with firefighters and emergency workers under contract with Comprehensive Transport.
  
  
• Wounded personnel fleeing the reactor leak aft report that Zakharov's engineers have abandoned their attempts to avert a meltdown.
  
  
• The following factions have successfully acquired a landing pod: The Human Hive, The Exiled, The Tribe, The Workers' Council, and The Restoration.
  
  
• The following factions have deployed a colony pod: The Human Hive, The Tribe, The Restoration, and The Exiled.
  
  
• The following factions have successfully acquired new recruits from open cryobays: The Human Hive, The Exiled, The Ascendancy, The Guardians, and The Restoration. In this case, mutual apprehension resulted in tacit non-aggression that enable all parties to awaken those members of the crew of greatest interest to themselves.
  
  
• The following factions successfully recruited from former Garland loyalists: The Hive, The Restoration, and The Guardians.
  
  
• The following factions have secured and launched heavy equipment bays: The Human Hive, The Restoration, The Ascendancy, The Workers' Council, and The Tribe. Military and manufacturing equipment were most hotly contested. All factions involved suffered moderate casualties despite encountering certain success.
  
  
• The ship's heavy equipment bays are being systematically looted by self-described "entrepreneurs" who answer to a mysterious stowaway named Nwabudike Morgan.
  
  
• Unity's Marine Force commander, Rear Admiral Darlan, has successfully rallied many of the non-aligned crew (along with virtually every Garland loyalist) by making repeated appeals to calm. Employees of Comprehensive Transport, including (armed) private security contractors, have been seen accompanying Marine forces on patrol or at checkpoints amidships.
  
  
• A faction calling itself the Peacekeepers has formed under the ship's Chief Medical Officer, Pravin Lal. Lal's personnel have established a makeshift surgery ward in the armory under the protection of Darlan's troops.
  
  
• The ship's complement of convicts organized as The Labrynth and took passage for Unity's surface aboard two landing pods, but not before smashing most of Cryobays 3 and 4.
  
  
• Dozens of landing pods, colony pods, heavy equipment, and hydroponics bays have been launched into Chiron's orbit. Although launches have been intermittent, many were carried out in coordinated waves.
  
  
• The Human Hive has left Unity for Chiron.

Click to expand...

Desert Journeyman said:

And Now, For Something Really Spectacular…

General Information

Panic grips the Unity. Just forty-eight hours after Garland’s death, the limited organization that allowed for coordinated damage assessment and emergency response activities is an already-distant memory. Firefighting and other damage control activities have essentially ceased as crew scramble to find berths on outgoing Landing Pods.

First things first: get out. Radiation levels are spiking, and so far as anyone has been able to tell, the secondary reactor [Y] will reach meltdown within twelve hours. Casualties continue to pour into the makeshift surgery established by the Peacekeepers in the vicinity of the ship’s armory [Z] and a nearby emergency locker located on the same ventral fin. Engineers escaping the disaster, many of whom had already suffered fatal doses of radiation, spoke of successful attempts to control the original event, but reported that they were later thwarted by sabotage of fail-safes and the murder of unit operators attempting a SCRAM. The attackers identified themselves as “Spartans” and made clear that they intended to see Unity destroyed along with most of the crew.

Several large factions have by now coalesced. It is known that Dom Francisco d’Almeida, the Unity’s Executive Officer, led most of the officers and a significant number of laborers to the landing pods almost immediately after the expedition was dissolved. D’Almeida was heard to call for the foundation of an estado novo, or “new state,” on Chiron. Among his peers on the command staff, d’Almeida was well-known for his insistence on decorum, highly paternalistic attitude toward the junior staff, and blatantly chauvinistic remarks toward female officers.

One of the many apparent stowaways concealed behind false bulkheads was Nwabudike Morgan, formerly the world’s richest man. Discovered by security personnel during Garland’s initial sweeps, he was initially confined in the crew quarters near the bridge. A rags-to-riches story, Morgan was born in the town of Walviis Bay in Südwestafrika, a protectorate of South Africa. Smuggling himself across the border to Portuguese West Africa, thence to the Belgian Congo, and finally as far as independent Katanga, Morgan made his first million by age twenty, then went on to play a major role (and profit handsomely as a middle man) during the Saharan Burst Wars of the late 1980s. Although his calls for a society based on free trade and ingenuity were perhaps non-sequitor whilst the ship burned around him, Morgan was eventually liberated by paid retainers shortly after Garland’s death and whisked away to points unknown.

One of several factions said to function nominally as cults, The Labyrinth, active near the forward sensor arrays, answers to a figure known only as “Seth,” and has readily hindered damage control and exploration in that vicinity. Faction recruits are reportedly well-armed with assault rifles and flak jackets.

The ship’s armory officer, the Dutch-Indonesian Jamai Von Tromp, expelled from her post by Darlan after she resisted his calls to arm the Unity’s Marines, has articulated a weird vision appealing to those skeptical of Garland, and now Darlan. Although small, her band of followers succeeded in making it aboard one of the first landing pods to depart for Chiron.

The Situation Aft

Heroic efforts to shut down the secondary reactor [Y] have failed, and the unit is now leaking radiation. Dozens of crewmen lie dead in the gangways and machine spaces. Many were shot or stabbed; the rest died from burns, were overcome by smoke inhalation, or were killed by radiation. The firefighters and other responders active in this area of the ship only twelve hours before have now fled, often into the not-so-tender hands of the Spartans, who indulged in their systematic execution.

The sensor suits and slave computer cores [M] have been smashed, apparently in an attempt to deny them to the crew. The nearby emergency locker [o] has been looted. Evidence indicates that more than half of the Landing Pods [P] in this section are already detached.

Personnel located aft of the non-functional Communications module [D] are beginning to present with the symptoms of radiation poisoning.

The major combat in this part of the ship occurs between various factions under the general protection of R. Adm. Darlan, including Pravin Lal’s so-called “Peacekeepers” and a large body of employees of Comprehensive Transport answering to Chief Operating Officer Marcel Salan, and the Spartans. The battle is first joined when the coalition attempts a heavily armed reconnaissance of the hydroponics section amidships en route to the engine spaces, through which they must pass in order to board Landing Pods. The Spartans, employing light machine guns, anti-tank rockets, and fragmentation grenades, succeed in holding up the advance party for several hours before giving way in the face of superior firepower. Ultimately, the coalition carts off most of the remaining contents of the two heavy equipment bays aft.

During the fight, a small clutch of survivors under the expedition’s chief geneticist strike out for the Landing Pods through the combat zone. Rounding up milling survivors, whom they dragoon into lugging their stock of heavy equipment, they make their escape while Rome burns. Despite taking significant casualties, they get away.

Late on the fourth day, a strong party of Unity Marines wearing vacuum suits risks passing through the reactor housing, apparently with the intention of attempting repairs. Despite losing half their numbers in a running firefight with the Spartans en route from armory [Z] to engine spaces [G], they succeed in regaining access to the ship’s aft spaces. (The Spartans, very few of whom have donned protective gear, decline to give pursuit as far as the sensor suites [M].) All of these brave men and women will ultimately die while jettisoning the ship’s primary reactor core [X], which begins autonomous descent to Chiron.

Due to the necessity of taking unprotected personnel through the damaged reactor housing in order to reach the Landing Pods, the coalition endures mild-to-moderate contamination and widespread radiation sickness. A significant proportion of the crew thus far assembled under Darlan therefore opt to attempt the journey forward, hoping to link up with either other factions or else the Marines known to have occupied the Emergency Command Center [J].

One development contributing to the mass exodus of personnel is the infiltration of the wounded and aimless by agents provocateur espousing Marxist doctrine and encouraging workers under Darlan’s protection to quit their association with “a retrograde hierarchy designed to serve capitalist predilections.” Although the organizers do not succeed in provoking a general strike, they are able to convince hundreds of personnel to break with the larger body of coalition refugees. Despite carrying out sporadic incidents of sabotage, the labor organizers are generally unable to substantially impede the departure of other factions. Indeed, much of this skullduggery has already been accomplished by the Spartans. Ironically, the propagandists eventually join the general flood of personnel aft, heading to the landing pods. At this point, they too are sickened by radiation.

The Situation Amidships

Most of the hydroponics section has been ravaged by firefights between factions seeking to launch individual bays ahead of planetfall and highly disciplined stowaways who appear to have access to heavy weapons independently of the ship’s armory. Several of the thick plastic domes cracked during the fighting, leading to catastrophic decompression of multiple bays and adjacent crew spaces.

Under the direction of their leader, a self-styled colonel named Corazón Santiago, the latter group has so far slaughtered dozens of technicians organizing under Deidre Skye, Unity’s chief botanist, adding to a body count that already includes whole squads of United Nations constables and Marines dispatched to restore order and an estimated two hundred engineers attempting to contain fires aft.

Efforts by some factions to gain access to hydroponics bays is abetted by the Spartans’ aforementioned distraction. Many Spartans are therefore killed in ambushes, or else neutralized because they could not obtain timely reinforcement.

The Situation Forward

The sheer number of factions active in the forward section of the ship leads to sporadic cases of confused violence amidst a general tendency to live-and-let-live.

The cultists holding the Emergency Command Center [J] ultimately negotiate a peaceful withdrawal with the besieging Marines, leaving with weapons and hides intact. The price for this hand-over is Darlan’s cooperation in a join assault on the hydroponics section amidships, an action that routs the few, scattered Spartan defenders along with loitering Gaians. The cultists then receive Marine escort aft to available landing pods, where they too fall ill with moderate radiation poisoning.

En route to the hydroponics bays, the Marines seize, hold, and awaken personnel located in Cryobays 1 and 2, sending them aft to the landing pods once the lull in combat with Santiago permits. Here, the Marines rally with armed police sent by the Guardians of Truth, busy organizing the occupants of Cryobay 5 and evacuating nearby heavy equipment bays. At some point, joined by the Marines and a few curious individualists calling themselves the Exiled, a party of Guardians personnel stumbles upon a false bulkhead [?] and gains access to the area beyond…

A group of individualists, growing larger with the influx of refugees from elsewhere aboard the ship, reaches a Colony Pod near the main communications arrays [D]. Using this location as a makeshift headquarters, they scout aft, only to discover that the way is fraught with violence. Taking the opportunity to consolidate their gains, they pilfer nearby equipment bays, engage in desultory skirmishing with the personnel of a dozen assorted factions (especially the Guardians of Truth), and generally muck about.

The Lord’s Conclave, alone at the very front of the Unity, effectively closes that portion of the ship to outsiders and subsequently claims a vast quantity of equipment, along with the only landing pod located to the fore. Swelled by refugees from other sections of the ship and providing newly-awakened crew with the sinister choice – join us or be sent aft into radiation soup – Godwinson’s folk rack up big – if not exactly sustainable – gains.

The Situation in Space

Hundreds of Colony Pods, a handful of Hydroponics Bays, and a dozens of Landing Pods now scuttle toward the surface of Chiron, dodging the detritus of the starship that bore them this far.

At one point, a Landing Pod launched from the aft ring ventures too close to one of the thrusters and is destroyed by an unexpected burst of reaction mass. The act was obviously intentional.

Meanwhile, on Chiron

The Hive arrives… and promptly does stuff.

Wrap Up

• The following factions have departed the Unity: The Tribe, the Workers’ Commonwealth, The Restoration.
  
  
• The following factions remain aboard the ship: The Exiled, The Guardians, The Lord’s Conclave.
  
  
• For storytelling, the following factions receive 1 Wild Pip: The Tribe, The Workers’ Commonwealth, The Exiled, and The Human Hive.
  
  
• All factions that spent this turn aboard Unity (everyone sans the Hive) gain 1 pip of Size.
  
  
• The Exiled gains 2 pips of Appeal. The Guardians of Truth gain 1 pip of Appeal. The Restoration gains 1 pip of Appeal and 1 pip of Talent but loses 1 pip of Power, reflecting extremely heavy losses of trained soldiers. The Lord’s Conclave gains 1 pip of Talent. The Hive gains 1 pip of Planet.
  
  
• The following factions suffered heavy casualties during this impulse and will need to take measures to rally next impulse: The Restoration and The Ascendancy. The proficiency of both factions will be reduced in the interim.

Click to expand...

Desert Journeyman said:

Some of You Guys Have Issues

Aboard Unity

The Exiled anxiously prepare a Landing Pod for descent, but, aware that daring now could spare them hungry winters later, faction leadership commissions a raid forward into ship’s spaces held by the Lord’s Conclave.

The plan is simple: a small body of volunteers, leavened by the faction’s blooded fighters, will probe forward in hope of being able to secure heavy equipment. They will pose as refugees, volunteering their services as porters, then, once inside the bays, attempt to decapitate Conclave leadership. An audacious plan, to be sure, trusting much to the theory that most of Miriam’s followers are with her solely out of desperation.

The plan succeeds: the infiltrators are given safe conduct back through Miriam’s lines even as Conclave men surge forward as far as the Bridge. Making a concerted effort to pick clean the heavy equipment bays in this section of Unity, Miriam’s lieutenants are only too happy for the additional hands. When the Exiled strike, they are modestly successful. In two bays, with the exception of a few holdouts loyal to Miriam, most of the other porters prove willing to transfer their allegiance. (Those declining to do so quickly suffer acute lead poisoning.) It is a great irony that, even as Miriam preaches to hundreds of frightened colonists only a few hundred meters away, the “tail” end of her logistics train scatters like chaff in the wind.

"Modestly successful" doesn't mean wholly successful. In a third bay, Miriam’s forces (along with an unexpectedly large number of sympathizers) rally in sufficient numbers to suppress and overwhelm the attackers before they can capitalize on their initial round of killing. Survivors are crucified and placed in the crew spaces leading forward as a warning to their comrades. The Conclave doubles the guards on duty outside each bay. The loss of equipment is significant, but not crippling. Although many of the forward compartments have already been picked over by both the Hive and the Tribe, Miriam nevertheless secured a significant deal of exclusive real estate. Her “flock” will still come away from Unity better than a large majority of other factions – assuming she survives transit to the surface.

While the Exiled wreak havoc in the heavy equipment bays, Conclave saboteurs up the ante on the starship’s bridge. Here, unmolested, they engage the ship’s maneuvering thrusters yet again. The immediate result is to cause collisions with dozens of nearby pods, several of which promptly explode or depressurize. Another pair are immolated by the heat of the blast event. As the Unity turns into Chiron’s gravity well, factions attempting to escape the ship find that their ability to plot a specific course to the surface falls into doubt. Destroying the controls behind them, the martyrs at last retreat to the forward spaces where they join in Miriam’s exodus.

The Guardians, making use of their atypical complement of weapons and fighting skills, succeed in clearing out the last of Santiago’s fighters along with a few sticks worth of Labyrinth troops who complain of having been left behind. Wearing protective gear, a volunteer force is sent to launch several of the remaining landing pods and attempt a complicated operation to dock them forward of the hydroponics bays. The effort, managed by highly-qualified pilots, might have succeeded with flying colors – if not for the fact that the security police arrive at the bridge to find it a shouldering ruin. Meanwhile, one of the two Landing Pods making the “hop” is knocked radically off-course by Miriam’s surprise maneuver and presumed lost. The remaining pod succeeds in temporarily “mating” with the main hull just long enough to take on about half the available cargo. The remaining colonists must now make a mad dash for the rear of the vessel, radiation be damned.

The Exiled, leaving the Unity, are exposed to the radiation soup building aft and suffer minor casualties as they transit amidships to reach a Landing Pod. Working together with the remaining Guardians personnel, both factions pile into the few remaining Landing Pods and punch out just as the ship starts to break up around them.

In Space

Miriam's gambit succeeds in damaging, destroying, or knocking off-course a significant fraction of the heavy infrastructure and grown food required by those colonists already away, but this specific act of sabotage, while the most catastrophic thus far, was not the last attending Unity's final hours.

The Restoration, after making a heroic effort to keep station above Chiron long enough to spot the active Orbital Survey Pod in its orbit, successfully hacks the onboard computer despite attempts by the original operator to foil the intrusion. While the Pod does send a final burst of data to an unknown user just before security protocols are broken by Darlan's techs, it is ultimately directed to serve the Unity Marines.

The Consensus, having departed along with the "first wave" of factions fleeing the dying generation ship hot on Yang's heels, conducts its own campaign of cyber warfare against nearby pods operating on auto-pilot, including several displaced by the Unity's course "correction." In this manner, the Consensus succeeds in diverting a modest quantity of heavy equipment to a landing zone of its choice.

On Chiron

The Hive landed at Sunny Mesa and immediately set upon an ambitious building programme, clearing large tracts for agriculture and raising several machine shops. The latter were quickly set to expanding the Hive’s small fleet of terraformers, all working ‘round-the-clock to set in motion the faction’s extractive economy. Meanwhile, Yang was said to be cached in his warren, perfecting some finer point of his philosophies.

Yang also directed that the Hive establish a self-defense militia, to which end arms were distributed and drill conducted. When scout vehicles of an unknown faction appeared in the fields, Hive defenders mustered in good order behind concrete bunkers and sandbag bunkers. Converted to mount light and heavy machine guns, the scout rovers were a potent threat – but one apparently outmatched by the Hive’s show of force, which included the conspicuous demonstration of rocket-propelled grenades and makeshift mortar tubes. After a tense standoff, the unknown party retreated.

A squadron of Hive Scout Rovers conducted reconnaissance in the vicinity of Sunny Mesa. The scout resulted in recovery of numerous Colony Pods. Along the Sea of Chiron, just east of their own colony, Hive troopers also stumbled upon fledgling colonies of both The Arm and The Restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

When Hive offers of “protection and assistance” were rebuffed, the armed reconnaissance fell upon both neighboring settlements, doing great slaughter. Caught flat-footed, both the Arm and the Restored Church were routed handily over the course of less than three hours. If the Mormon militia put up a sufficiently enthusiastic defense to at least distract attention from their fleeing women and children, the Arm were liquidated almost wholesale. Because of the nature of the weapons employed, most of the material assets of both colonies remained operable: the Hive looted what was moveable and razed the remainder.

While the various newly-arrived factions begin unloading their Landing Pods, the Marines launch an ambitious land-air-and-sea operation to recover the Unity Fusion Reactor, deploying rover, 'copter, and foil in a large, well-armed expedition. Leveraging the Orbital Survey Pod to conduct a search, they discover that the jettisoned reactor lies somewhere in the shallows of the Great Northern Ocean, just off a broken, fungal-infested landmass aptly called, "The Ruins." The operation is ultimately successful and the Marines return to the newly-christened Garland City with the reactor under tow by no less than eight foils, including two recovered from splash-landed Colony Pods en route. This Herculean effort is widely understood to have been possible only thanks to Darlan's willingness to collaborate with other leaders while still aboard Unity, expanding the pool of resources from which each participating faction is able to draw.

Wrap Up:

In case it was not clear, Unity will crash on Planet's surface. The secondary reactor, already leaking, will explode with the force of a large nuclear detonation.

• All factions have now departed from Unity.
  
  
• The following factions are in-transit: The Ascendancy, The Exiled, The Consensus The Guardians, The Lord’s Conclave, The Restoration, The Tribe, and The Workers’ Commonwealth. The Restoration, Conclave, and Exiled left the ship with virtual armadas of pods. Some Guardians and Exiled personnel are commingled aboard the same Landing Pods.
  
  
• The following factions have landed: The Ascendancy, The Restoration, The Tribe, and The Workers’ Commonwealth.
  
• The Restoration lands on the fertile western slopes of Mount Planet.
  
  
• The Tribe lands near the river delta south of the Upland Wastes on the coast of the inland sea that empties at Planetneck.
  
  
• The Ascendancy lands on the northwest side of the Garland Crater, along the coast.
  
  
• The Hive gains 2 pips of infrastructure and two new squadrons of terraformers. This is the result of having looted two settlements.

Click to expand...