In the aftermath of the long SLA campaign that I played between the
late 90’s and the early 2000’s, we gathered together and decided which game
we’d have a go at next, everyone in the group put forwards an idea of a game
and a scenario, and then we had a closed vote as to which game would be the one
that we would play.
The game turned out to be Jovian Chronicles…
For those that aren’t familiar with it, Jovian Chronicles isn’t Hard
SciFi, it’s part Heavy Gear (Same design studio), part Traveller, all Space
Opera, and the group that we put together was very much in the Firefly
tradition. AI’s and other worldbending
tech are mostly outlawed in Jovian chronicles and despite the universe being a
vast and dangerous place, we were expecting something with high adventure in
the open space lanes and firefights around every corner.
We couldn’t have been more wrong…
First mission was to deliver an encoded transmission to a destroyer on
the outer rims, not able to be transmitted due to the lack of secure
transmissions out in the belt. We had a
small ship, the pilot was one of the players, and we had a good range of skills
and clearance to do the job properly without any serious issues. We cut in the sublight engines at a
reasonable distance and broadcast the short range greeting hail.
No response…
They could have been delayed at a previous engagement, so per our
orders, we waited a short while, broadcasting the hail every hour or so. After half a day waiting, we decided that
something else had happened and checked up on the last recorded position of the
ship, making best speed for that position.
It didn’t take us long to find what had happened…
The ship was a few hundred thousand miles from us, A Valiant Class attack cruiser (think star
destroyer), it had been split in two by what appeared to be a single hit from a
double mount cannon into the spine of the ship, whereupon whatever had attacked
them had simply departed, there was still air streaming from the ship in
various places, there was some power on board and it was evident that not
everyone must have been killed immediately…
Though the characters could not have known it, the players definitely
had “This is Free Trader Beowulf,” going on in their heads at this point…
We docked, up to the bridge surrounded by the dead crew, looking like
the impact had been sufficient to tear the grav generators off line and pulp
most of them into boneless masses floating in space, took the flight recorder
and downloaded the last ship logs. The
quandary now was whether or not to call in the destruction of the ship, after
all, there might have been other ships out there with the capacity to take on
any wounded still left on this ship.
There might also be whatever did this still out there, waiting to
strike at the next target that came along, and anything that can sucker snipe a
star destroyer is not to be underestimated.
We went back to our ship and downloaded the details, the ship had been
proceeding for rendezvous with us when strange readings were detected on the
portside, and an incoming transmission sent seconds before the shot went
through the ship, single shot, straight through the primary reactor which split
the ship clean in half, cameras on board caught the second before the attack,
and then everything went red…
The senior analyst did a few rolls against various tech skills and the
GM passed him a note.
The Player went white and
their character ordered us to shut the ship off…
“Why?” came the collective cry
“Because otherwise we’re next…”
So there we are, sitting next to the broken remains of one of the most
powerful ships in the quadrant, waiting for whatever it was out there…
“It’s not certain…” the analyst said, “But it might not be Human…”
“What then?”
“Not even Organic…” the analyst said, “We need to get out of here
somehow.”
The transmission inbound signal came up on the ships dash, the gunhead character
reached to answer it, and found themselves pinned under the other four of us.
“That’s how it pinpoints…” the analyst whispered, “Only humans have
curiosity…”
“What is it?”
“Not Human…”
It took us more than three hours (our time, not the characters) to get
to what we thought might have been a safe distance, by which we measured the
amount of time between transmissions from whatever it was and when the transmissions stopped for more than a day, we fired
up the main drive and got out of there…
What was scary about it was that we didn’t know what it was, but
whatever it was had the power to wipe us out without even an afterthought, and
it didn’t follow normal rules of engagement, it hid and waited and struck
without warning and any human in the vicinity with any sense of decency would
only be prey for it, even those travelling in one of the most powerful ships in
the galaxy.
Years later, I spoke to the GM at length (we never did manage to
complete that campaign, the world got too involved for a number of us and we
drifted apart slightly) regarding that campaign, and found that it was indeed
something straight out of the book, and that all the GM had done was modify its
behaviour slightly to make it a little more dangerous. When you look at it on paper, it doesn’t seem
all that terrifying, but for those three hours, everyone one of us was
absolutely in the moment.
I’ve played games where going insane is a part of the game, I’ve
dispassionately counted down sanity points to invariable wibbling, and I’ve
failed horror and terror rolls all over the place, never once being anything
other than mechanically interested in what’s going on and counting down the
rounds till I was a functional character again rather than someone idly
standing by. That’s when I began to understand that to get people to feel
things, it takes more than an understanding of sanity rules and fear effects,
it takes an understanding of players and what’s close to them, and if the GM is
willing to put the time in to craft something that’ll get the players thinking,
then the players will repay them with their involvement.
