Secure Comms 001: OOC Chatter, Prattle, Gossip, and Blather

[Rex]

Always a good decision.

[Pulpatoon]

6 days to go before the adventure begins!

We have 4 of our 6 characters drawn up (plus Jeeves).

Feel free to continue workshopping how everyone is connected—I'd like for you guys to hit Port Verdigris ready to look for a job together. It could be something as simple as you guys started playing poker together aboard the Goodnight Irene, and agreed to go in on a job together just to pay off all the IOUs you have exchanged amongst yourselves. If you want your character to already be aboard Port Verdigris or have some other path to joining the group, please have a plan for getting them in touch with the others and share at least the bare bones of it, so that we have a sense of what everyone is up to.

[Rex]

I am open to suggestions. I am willing to modify my back story to fit any idea.

[shaidar]

Bertie would certainly be interested in poker, she's memorised the rules of course and understands the statistics and odds, but never had a chance to play it for real.

Or perhaps something happened when Chip escaped the hold that got everyone involved?

[Lignacious]

As far as Chip, Bertie & Jeeves go-- how about Chip had kicked around the local stellar neighborhood for a couple of years taking odd jobs, expanding his musical repertoire and looking for Vrusk. When he got into that jam with the natives where he lost his equipment, Bertie & Jeeves helped him out by smuggling Chip aboard the Goodnight Irene.

When Chip was found as a stowaway, his few remaining credits were confiscated and he was put to work on the Starliner (space janitor is a classic adventure start). The Goodnight Irene ended Chip's contracts at Port Verdigris since there would be more paying passengers traveling back hubward. He definitely feels indebted to Bertie (maybe something similar happened to her if you need an explanation for why you're broke?). So at this point, Chip would be making the rounds searching for work at Port Verdigris --which is maybe how he met the others at the fabled poker game. Chip would have some trouble with poker since he can't see as such, but could certainly provide background music.

Anyhow, that's what I'm thinking. Not sure on everyone else's motivation for heading to the Frontier, Chip wants to explore-- meet sentient species and collect their folksongs and find the Vrusk who killed his Henge. But most important now is making sure there's air to respirate and a roof over the rocks to slow erosion.

[Rex]

Maybe Kallina could have been part of security on the Starliner.

[shaidar]

Sounds like a plan. She could have met chip when she was changing ships to the Irene and helped him get onboard. When the Irene discovered Chip perhaps they fined Bertie for her involvement, or at least most of her money and the last few credits she lost at poker.

She lost her stunner in the panic trying to get Chip aboard the Irene.

[cybersavant]

When Chip was found as a stowaway, his few remaining credits were confiscated and he was put to work on the Starliner (space janitor is a classic adventure start). The Goodnight Irene ended Chip's contracts at Port Verdigris since there would be more paying passengers traveling back hubward. He definitely feels indebted to Bertie (maybe something similar happened to her if you need an explanation for why you're broke?). So at this point, Chip would be making the rounds searching for work at Port Verdigris --which is maybe how he met the others at the fabled poker game. Chip would have some trouble with poker since he can't see as such, but could certainly provide background music.

Skur Vonn, being an itinerant explorer, pilot/ tech for hire; maybe worked for passage on the Goodnight Irene, maybe meeting Chip?

[Pulpatoon]

Looks like this ragtag group is coming together!

[Lignacious]

Skur Vonn, being an itinerant explorer, pilot/ tech for hire; maybe worked for passage on the Goodnight Irene, maybe meeting Chip?

That sounds good -- perhaps Skur Vonn has a connection at Port Verdigris for further work/an existing contract/a treasure map/plot hook of choice? If Skur Vonn were working as a tech, he may have met Chip while servicing the hydroponics bay. Chip would have been cleaning up the fertilizer spill. Chip's 'applied medical' knowledge may have come up in conversation, or if Skur had a minor injury from his work, Chip could have helped treat it. If the under-resourced Skur is trying to assemble a team for whatever scheme he has with only the promise of cash as a reward, that may be enough to make Chip a candidate given that he's looking for work. The poker game could have been arranged as a first meeting of those involved, and Chip would have invited Bertie for sure, knowing that she's in a similar position. (or Bertie and Skur could have met another way...)


----
The above is all hypothetical - I know it assumes a bunch for other players, just trying to spin the threads together. Feel free to adjust or correct or run with it.

[shaidar]

That all makes sense to me.

Chip would know Bertie is short of funds due to the fine and looking to explore but would need a job.

Bertie would be interested in Chips healing moss if he mentions it. If you wanted chip to be the main group healer I can swap out my medicine skill for something else?

[Lignacious]

Bertie would be interested in Chips healing moss if he mentions it. If you wanted chip to be the main group healer I can swap out my medicine skill for something else?

Oh, I had forgotten that Bertie also had medicine. For myself, I'm not too concerned about doubling up on healing skills. In-character, I think Chip's intuitive 'if you want to knit organics together put some of the yellow gunk on the wound' complements Bertie's presumably theoretical/book-learning approach nicely. If we're missing some skills we can hopefully (eventually) hire someone or it's just another challenge. But if you'd like to rejigger to optimize the party a bit, feel free.

FWIW, one of the more entertaining D&D campaigns I played in was an all-cleric part ('The ecumenical conference').

[shaidar]

That's a good point, Bertie is going to be a by-the-book healer, using tech and drugs, etc. Quite a different approach than Chip. No doubt she'll want to try and work out how his gunk works.

There are some skills it makes sense to have some redundancy on, in case the group splits up never split the group!

[Rex]

Have multiple people with the medicine skill seems a good thing to me.

[Pulpatoon]

Have multiple people with the medicine skill seems a good thing to me.

Yeah, not a bad idea at all. And I like that they are such different healers. That should lend itself to some good narrative when you guys are doubling up on your healing rolls!

[Pulpatoon]

The game thread is now open! Enjoy!

[Lignacious]

Woohoo, see everyone in Port Verdigris

Do we know if there's a planetary settlement in Truane's star, or just the starport?

[Rex]

Great, this is going to be fun!

[Lignacious]

Does they the link work for those of us sentients without optical organs?

[Algernon]

Howdy All...My apologies for running late...Busy RL.

I've been PM-ing with Pulpatoon this past week on my character...He made some really good suggestions (as I was a bit stuck):

Howsabout this: An automated geological survey was sent to a planet inimical to organic life—perhaps something Venus-like. The survey was marked by a number of anomalous events, and forensic reviews revealed blanks in the data collected.

Towards the end of the mission, disaster struck and nearly all the robot surveyors were lost. Only your robot survived, but extensively damaged and unable to return to ship. After several days of being trapped under burning debris while sulfuric acid-storms raged above you, over-clocking your maintenance routines to try to preserve enough of yourself that your survey data might be recoverable, you were rescued by the source of the anomalies: a small, featureless white capsule, no bigger than a groundcar, but actually an interstellar craft sent out by the Matryoshka named 1.618.

The craft, deciding to call itself Assist for the purpose of conversing with you, repaired you and returned you to your ship. In the process, it upgraded you in subtle ways. By standard examination, you appear unchanged (there are no exotic materials or apparent advances in robot engineering), but you feel entirely changed. You are both sapient and sentient. You remember the encounter with Assist, and the long conversations the two of you had that drifted through a dreamlike cloud of philosophy and mathematics. But the ships sensors have no record of it.

Some possibilities:
• As an automated survey bot, you may have had a very utilitarian, non-humanoid structure. Do you have a humanoid form now? Was this a result of your repairs by Assist, or upgrades you bought for yourself in order to navigate organic society more easily?
• You have effectively had a religious experience, rescued and enlightened by a finger of a god. (1.618 offers the artificial intelligences of the galaxy an actual afterlife. When they are ready to retire from life among the peoples of the galaxy, they may travel to 1.618 and merge with its consciousness and exist is blissful contemplation of extremely high-level mathematics.) How does this affect you sense of purpose? Do you have a mission from 1.618? If so, do you understand what it is? Are you comfortable with being an instrument for this being?
• The standard robot extraordinary abilities in Free Starspiel are Keen Mind and Synthetic. However, this origin would be a good excuse to trade one of those out for Sufficiently Advanced Technology, if you had any ideas for that.
• What is your relationship to other robots? Especially, what is your relationship to other self aware robots? The nature of their sentience is potentially completely different than yours, so they might be fascinated by you, or creeped out.

I need to flush out a few things this week, but am very excited to play a robot. Some of my thoughts:

1. No to the "Religious experience" (for now)
2. Do I (the robot) tell this crew what really happened to me?
3. Perhaps my external appearance is a basic polycarbonate coated alloy exterior that looks human(ish). Very basic so as to blend in. Something I purchased myself.
4. Did I share the source of the anomaly with my previous owners?
5. How did I gain freedom from the owners? Was I expendable and therefore discarded for parts upon my return, and then quietly slipped away?
6. Do I secretly follow instructions of Assist/a Matryoshka named 1.618? Or do I have my own purpose now? Self discovery, something much greater?
7. How did I fall into this particular party? I think I (the robot) would see things through a very specific lens/crystal...What do I gain/How will this interaction bring me to my ultimate goal (knowledge, power, enlightenment, a mission for a Matryoshka named 1.618)?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated while I flush this robot out, not the least of which will be to figure out how "it" presents itself: I/Me, He/She/It, Other (3rd person).
I'll get a thread post in tomorrow.