No One Will Hear You Scream (in Space)

Fear is not a well known emotion to a roleplayer. Player characters, by their very nature, are the types who will run towards danger for the sake of the story. Whether that danger be the man who killed your father, a fire breathing dragon or an outer dimensional monstrosity is immaterial. The party will stand their ground knowing that if it has Hit Points, we can take it down!

However, ask a player to give away their character sheet and they will know fear.

Deal out characters!

This is exactly what happened as we sat down to the much anticipated first session of Stars Without Number. I was truly looking forward to getting into the character of Ian. Most of my idle thoughts this past week were considerations of his personality and behavioural quirks. You cannot possibly imagine the horror I felt as we've been told to pass our character sheets to other players.

I was sitting there, staring at an unfamiliar character sheet and worrying that someone else will add some unsavoury characteristic to my very own creation. Fortunately, the Game Master quickly explained that we'll go through a prologue as NPCs and these sheets are there only to make use of skills for rolls that we might attempt. This shuffling of characters was nothing permanent.

We shortly find ourselves on SS Aurelia, a starship transporting refugees from a planet engulfed in civil war between the governing body of the Hanuun Conglomerate and the Purity Front. It was explained to us that the Purity Front believed the planet was suffering from pollution caused by space wreckage in close proximity to the planet's orbit and their only chance of survival would be to blow it up. This was a view that the government didn't agree with, hence a civil war erupted. We were refugees on board this ship.

Each of us had to come up with a quick character name and a description of what they were doing while the ship entered multidimensional space. Nia tended to the wounded, Rob spoke with captain Emily Ryan about what happens to him and his family upon arrival to Hild, Derrick helped fellow refugees in writing correspondence to their loved ones, Bob worked out while Clive avoided people.

The most elaborate side plot belonged to Duncan who snuck out of the cargohold, made his way to the mess hall and used their version of a replicator to create fish casserolls for the refugees. He was soon found by an imposing crew member but managed to convince him to let him go with his meals that he then distributed among the starving refugees.

The next scene transitioned to a briefing room in the headquaters of a company called Seven Sons. They were contracted by the government of Hild to check refugees coming to the system for potential threats. We were informed of this by a higher ranking official, given details of the starship and its coordinates after emerging from multidimensional space. This was our first mission as a team so we headed straight into character introductions.

First was Jokkenson, a massive beast of a man who has clearly seen his fair share of battles. He carried a chain axe and assured the Lieutenant Captain Warchief that he will gladly pulverise anyone who dares to go against the chain of command.

Next we have Cyrus. A young man who graduated from a wizard academy. Low-tech planets such as Jokkenson and Cyrus hail from consider psychic abilities to be magical by nature so it was very interesting to listen to a conversation between him and the next character who would be our ship engineer.

His name is Yannick and he clearly has some kind of device surgically implanted in his skull. Anyone who heard of the procedure would be able to tell this from the scarring on the side of his head. Other than his role to keep our ship in one piece, he is also a mech pilot. This machine takes quite a lot of space in our small vessel.

Our pilot introduced himself as Cole. His personality truly shined when we got to the ship.

Ian didn't say much about himself other than he served with Captain Keiran on Shakti and that they left the army together. I described him as wearing a standard uniform, smoking a cigarette and having a scar going down his neck and under his clothing.

Finally, we get to Lieutenant Keiran, formerly a captain in Shakti military. He gave off an amicable demeanour to his crew that couldn't help but note that the standard uniform he wore looked much better on him than anyone else. His current rank and Ian's insistance on calling him a captain caused the confusion Jokkenson was experiencing with ranks and titles.

Overall, we ended up with an interesting mix of character personalities. I decided that Jokkenson's respect for Keiran's position impressed Ian enough that he would develop a liking to the character. Personally, I also like how both characters have similar characteristics but their personalities go in opposite directions. Jokkenson appears very talkative and eager to fight while Ian does not.

Spaceship!

Soon after the introductions and initial character chatter, we made our way to our ship, SS Bullet, and took off into space. During the flight Cole made sure to make it exciting with his pilot announcements and treating this flight as if it were a public transport aircraft. Jokkenson assured Lieutenant Captain Keiran that he can kill the pilot for his foolish behaviour with just one word from him but Keiran assured him that for all his flaws, Cole was an excellent pilot and some level of eccentricity was perfectly fine. Ian, being used to Cole's piloting, ignored the pretended turbulences and enjoyed his cigarette. Meanwhile, Yannick made some quick modifications to the ship.

During the journey, Lieutenant Keiran assigned positions to each crewmember and made the crew perform some drill exercises before reaching our destination. When we arrived at the coordinates, SS Aurelia emerged from multidimensional space and we hailed it. After two attempts to garner a response, Lieutenant Keiran ordered to board the ship despite the starship failing to answer.

We approached the ship while our pilot entertained us with the ships detailed specs, to the extent that he provided us with the number of screws required to build a ship of that size.

This proves to be a very interesting party and the mission is already not going according to plan.