Yesterday, a few of us hopped on Roll20 and played some
Starfinder. We had a nice time. I took some notes, and since everyone’s all
quarantined and sheltering in place right now, I really don’t have an excuse not to share them, do I? Nah, I don’t.
So, without further adieu, session one of our Starfinder game.
Cast
Ryan, our GM / Storyteller / Referee, what-have-you
Julian, playing Deadeye Duncan
Myself, playing Eli Tabasco
Willie, playing Gorman Sterling
Dramatis Personae
Deadeye Duncan,
an aging scrap-collector who considers himself a deadly warrior (Icon
Sharpshooter)
Eli Tabasco, a
scrap-collector and a shaman (Paranormal Investigator Mystic)
Gorman Sterling,
an operative from another place entirely (Outlaw Operative)
Setting
A red expanse of stony desert. It’s a couple hundred
years after the Burn. Our world is called Cinder Bin, but not by anyone in it. We’re
scavengers from an anarchic, low-tech society, riding around on great big desert
lizards we call horses, stealing scraps from a burnt-out society that we barely
understand. It’s not Paizo and it’s not standard Starfinder, in other words,
but it’s pretty neat. A weird Wild West inspired more by Gene Wolfe than Louis
L’Amour.
 |
| A photo I took a few years ago at Dead Horse Point in Utah |
SESSION ONE
While out scavenging in the desert one day, Deadeye and Eli
found a robot arm. They’re looking forward to trading it in for some scrap and
meal tickets. They estimate that the arm is worth a month or two of meat, easy,
and they’re riding back to town to trade it in.
They spy a strangeness in the sky. Something moving
impossibly fast, getting blasted by fire from the clouds. Bolt after bolt
punching down. And something fiery, silently screeching off toward the horizon.
Deadeye and Eli decide to investigate.
The crash site looks like somebody threw a snowmobile off
a roof, dropped a bunch of clocks on it, then struck it with lightning a few
times.
Deadeye spots a body. There’s smoke off to the southwest;
this body isn’t the source. Deadeye maneuvers over to the body and grabs a
knife off of the body’s leg sheathe. Everything else around here is nothing.
Further afield, a second impossible sight: A person
encased in amber, smoking wildly. The amber shrinks, evaporating rapidly. Deadeye
and Eli banter for a bit before Deadeye touches it and realizes it’s freezing
cold.
Deadeye—What’re you, some kinda
space baby?
Gorman—I
don’t think I’m a baby.
Deadeye —Ok. What about the first
half? A space?
Gorman—[Squeezes arms and legs.] I’m definitely real.
Deadeye —Real space?
Gorman—[Pulls out his credstick and palms it.] I am Gorman.
Deadeye —What’s a Gordon?
Gorman—You’re close, it’s actually
Gorman.
Deadeye —Sorry, it’s the accent.
Eli—Where in the world did you come
from?
Gorman—Um, ok? Ok.
Deadeye —I haven’t heard of OK.
Gorman—Um, no. So I’m on the planet.
No, I’m trying to think, remember, where, but word no happen. We’ll make sure
that my brain can think-make. I’ll take a look around here and we’ll see if
there’s anything recoverable around here. I am not sure how I came to this
point exactly.
Gorman’s wearing a hardness. A plate on it has sprung
open, its energy all used up.
Sunset. The swallows come out, buzzing around on their
stubbly fleshy wings. North, they see some folks headed out, apparently toward
the site. They ignore ‘em and head to town.
Town’s a euphemism. It’s really more of a camp. This
one’s only been here the last two or three weeks, after the earthquakes opened
up the zone.
What is there to do in town? The Lens is a bar that
serves food and drinks, but mostly drinks. Olegard runs a dice and cards place
with drinks, too. There’s chewy plant
stuff at Olegard’s, but it’s not really
food. Mel is the obese old scrapper who gives us coins for scrap. There’s
another fellow, Tyro, who’s a mechanic with a bike. A powered bike. Moves super
fast. One of a handful of power vehicles we’ve ever seen. The doctor’s called
Peska, and he’s been in town for roughly a week.
They take Gorman to go see Peska and get him checked out.
One edge of the doctor’s tent is propped up against a partial wall of rock.
Then there’s a surface tarp and two ‘rooms.’ They knock on the tent flap and
get a, “Just a minute!” in reply. Ties are untied and an old prospector named
Jinx comes on out with his arm in a sling. “Evening guys, took a bit of a
spill. Nothin’ to worry about.”
Inside, there’s a filing cabinet and a waist high cot. Peska
says to Gorman, “Just lay on your back, lie still. Don’t worry, I’m a highly
trained professional.”
He pulls an electric scanning device from an old metal
filing cabinet. Pre-Burn. Neat stuff. He runs it over Gorman.
Peska—You don’t actually look hurt.
Did you by chance run into something earlier, though?
Gorman—Yes.
Yes, I did. High speed.
Peska—Unusual. You’ve never broken
any bones.
Gorman—Not really that unusual. It’s
just being careful.
Peska—Good lung capacity. Heart
rate’s in the 40s. Is that normal for you?
Gorman—I
mean, I am in an elevated state right now.
Peska—Huh. Good to know. Hmm.
That scanning device looks almost new. Unsalvaged.
“Doc! Doc!”
Peska runs out abruptly. There’s been a bar fight and a
couple bleeding young drunks are yelling at each other in the street. Tyro’s
broken it up and called for the doc.
Eli makes his way to the bloodiest young man, talks him
into walking off and sitting down, and uses his healing touch to fix up his
head wound. Quiet-like. No need to call attention to it. They sit together and
the young man’s scalp starts knitting back together faster than Tyro’s bike.
Back in the doctor’s tent, Gorman and Deadeye banter.
Gorman—What’s your story?
Deadeye—Top
ranked fighter ‘round here. Reckon I’m at least tenth. Tenth overall. Other
than that? Just scavenging. Making ends meet. Y’know.
Gorman—Wow, people could just
disappear out here, couldn’t they?
Peska is setting the other bloody fellow’s arm, which is
clearly broken. Tyro escorts the other guys back to their respective crash-pads
and thanks doc for his troubles.
Peska—Gorman, it looks like you had
a sudden stop recently. A bit of internal discombobulating. Get a good meal in
you, and you’ll be just fine.
Eli—But doc, what about his memory?
Peska—What
now? Nobody said anything about amnesia. [Eli
had, in fact, said something about his memory, but the doctor has forgotten]
Fine, just a moment. [Peska examines
Gorman’s eyes with a pen light and asks him questions] What’s the first
thing you can remember today?
Gorman—When these dudes woke me up
and I had a gun pointed at me.
Peska—Oh, well. I’m glad that worked
out for the best… And you were just there in your sleeping roll, and these
fellows walked up to you and pulled a gun? Can you count to 20 for me?
Gorman—One, two, ten, and the rest
to twenty.
Deadeye—[Excitedly] See? He’s dumb!
Peska—No, no, he was just making a
joke. Come on now. (Pulls out stylus) Can you draw a clock for me?
Gorman—Yeah, I can do that. (Square
box with numbers)
Peska—Good. Are you familiar with
another sort of clock?
Gorman—Hm,
I suppose there’s the kinds that, uh, at the other settlements, not the nice
ones but like, the round ones? All right. (1-11, 13-23) The numbers don’t go out
the way they’re supposed to.
Eli—He can count above ten but I
don’t think he understands how a clock works.
Peska—Hm. Well, you have amnesia.
Relax, stay away from anything frightening for the next couple days.
Deadeye and Eli go to exchange our robot arm at Mel’s. The
robo-arm is a bit of a prize, a once-a-year find. Mel greets them warmly and
starts inspecting the robot arm with real swiftness.
“Wiring’s good. Not broken. Minor corrosion around the
joint, potentially usable though. Good steel (she pinches it)… Yes, yes, ok.
Well, it would be a once-in-a-year find, but…”
Another arm setting by the wall, virtually identical, but
painted red.
“People have been bringing in a lot of very, very good
stuff lately. Jacob’s crew brought that in, plus a chunk of torso. Very good
find. So, here’s what I can offer you.”
5 red, 2 blue, and 1 green chip. 2 weeks of meat, 1 month
and a half of fungus, and the red ones alone could get us into a fine dice game.
Gorman remembers something.
Out in the sea is where safety is. The
Simplification needs to be stopped. Not just finding their goon squads with hammers,
but going to the top. But that’s not something that I think I can do quite yet.
And it’s not something I can do alone. I think it needs to be an idealogical
break, not a genocide. Though genocide would make it quite easier.
A booming voice comes from the direction from the bar. A
man raving. “Give up the bones of the past, give up and move on and create a
future! A future that doesn’t involve these filthy machines!” This is a street
preacher’s rant. A man in a box wearing a beat up yellow robe is preaching the
simplification message.
“We have clung to the past, to the dead, to the bones for
too too long. Make our lives simple again, reject all of this obscene junk, and
we can become as we were meant to be, simply men living in the world that the
great above has given us!”
Gorman and Deadeye heckle him, and Deadeye goes as far as
to walk up to him and give him a shove. The priest pulls out an assault hammer;
Deadeye quickly unsheathes his longsword.
Priest—This is your last chance. The
power of the great above will pound you into the earth!
Deadeye—I may have lost 55
consecutive fights in a row, but I figure I got your number pegged right now.
Gorman is scratching his back with his hand on his pistol,
waiting for blood to start spilling. Eli goes into Olegard’s to buy drinks.
He’s seen Deadeye do this before.
Combat!
The priest attacks Duncan with a hammer and deals 5
damage.
Duncan retaliates and hits the priest with his longsword
for 5.
“We will pound you into the earth!” The priest hits
Duncan for another 5.
Deadeye—“There’s only one of you. I
don’t think you understand grammar.”
Gorman—He means the royal we.
Deadeye—A queen’s taking a piss?
Deadeye pulls out the tactical knife he found earlier in
the day and takes a swing.
Deadeye—I’m’a hit you with this
fancy space knife I got from a clock man! (rolls 7)
Priest—Just give up the mechanics!
Deadeye—This
knife is made of mechanics! (rolls 7)
Priest—You’re clearly powerless
against us! (miss)
Eli orders drinks, then decides to check on the fight. Seeing
Deadeye’s down a bit, he uses a telekinetic projectile to tap the priest with a
stone in the back of the head. Deadeye uses the opening and stabs the priest
through the chest with his longsword. It’s a bloody strike and it ends the
fight, though Deadeye collapses to the ground before the priest does.
Gorman goes through the priest’s stuff. Necklace with a
small clearish crystal. Stone tablet. 2 x 8, strange script. Yellow robe. Nasty
compressed food thing. Waterskin.
Eli brings Duncan into the bar and we do some shots.
Gorman makes a show of helping the priest up, as there’s
been a small crowd watching, then walks him over to the alley and kills him with
a knife. Stealth 16. So, like, Gorman doesn’t notice anyone noticing. He heads
back to Olegard’s tavern.
Gorman notices a large, broad-shouldered man playing
cards, and a crowd of cronies surrounding him. The broad man is probably
winning. He also notices a pair of identical twin siblings, female, whispering
to one another, and a 14-year-old kid who looks like a tavernkeep. Everyone
else looks like a scavenger.
Eli hands Gorman a glass of moonshine. Gorman looks at it
quizzically.
Deadeye—You drink it. Do you drink
things in space land?
Gorman—Jesus.
Yes. [drinks, spits the liquor out in a
cloud]
Deadeye—See, you swallow it, though.
There’s a great salt sea to the east, and a great plain
of salt around it. Eli knows it, and he asks Gorman if that’s where he came
from. Gorman can’t answer, but he shares some of what he’s remembered. He
mentions that the sea means safety, but it becomes apparent that they’re talking
about different places.
Eli—I’ve been to the sea.
Gorman—I don’t think you’ve been to
THE sea.
Deadeye—See, I told you he’s not
very smart.
They change the subject to the Simplification. Another
preacher was roughed up by Jacob’s crew last week. Deadeye says, “They’re all a
bunch of nerds, they usually get bullied away.” Gorman approves of Deadeye’s
decision to pick a fight, and tells him he made a good decision today.
The 14-year old kid walks up to them with three plates of
meat. Good chunks. “From my dad, he wants to talk to you after you eat.” Points
to a blanket cordoning off a back room. Must be Olegard.
Eli—Here’s to a memorable day. [toasts]
One of the older ‘twins’ goes into the back and the kid, Kess,
pokes his head out and summons them. They pile on back. Olegard is fifty or so,
both legs end mid-thigh. Sits on a rail chair, behind a wooden desk. How rare.
Most stuff is plastic. Piles of crockery on it, and a metal box in front of
him. “Be sure we’re not disturbed.”
The woman’s sat against the wall on a plastic
crate-thing. She appraises them, but doesn’t speak.
“Eli, Sunday (the woman), we have an opportunity here.
You know about the quakes. You know people have been finding unusual things. My
boy found something when he was out. Way out, further than usual, chasing that
flying thing he’s always playing with. And he saw it. It’s worth… if we divide
it among us, it’ll be worth more than any of us has ever seen.”
“You know in the world before… here, watch.”
He moves the box,
and a moving image appears, and a short video plays of an anvil dropping thru
the sky, maybe 30 or 40 feet long, and then men wearing heavy armor and
carrying guns that are six feet long swarm out. EANC.
Speaking about Kess, Olegard says, “He recognized it.
It’s one of the ships. The metal alone, even if all the electronics are rotted,
would be worth years. You might be able to buy Tyro’s bike. I tell you where it
is, Kess takes it out there, you salvage what you can, both of you, together,
and we can’t let Jacob know.”
Olegard produces a round cylindrical tube. A power pack.
Very valuable. Olegard hands it to Sunday.
Mel has a flatbed truck. A plan starts coming together.
They connive to get Blaine smashed. Blaine is Jacob’s second. Deadeye
volunteers to challenge him to heavy drinkin’ and dice.
After a few bad rolls:
Blaine—You’re worse at this than you
are at fighting. You’re terrible, Duncan.
Deadeye—You haven’t seen terrible yet!
Meanwhile, Gorman and Eli take shots (of water) with
Jacob’s other boys (drinking double-strength moonshine) and ask them all about
that red robot arm they found. Jacob eventually realizes his boys are
shit-faced and comes over to do a little damage control.
Deadeye escalates with Blaine. He bets his combat knife
against Blaine’s grenade, rolls high and wins by 1! Blaine has a look of
absolute shock but abides by the rules of the game, and holy smokes, Deadeye’s got
a grenade now. Blaine shoots another shot and retires. It’s been a good night.
Finally caught a W and it came with an Incendiary II grenade.
 |
| Lizard Riders by Yun Ling |
They all catch some Zs. Morning comes fast, and Eli,
Deadeye, and Gorman meet Sunday outside Olegard’s where she’s waiting for us
with horses. We mount up and head on out. As we’re edging town, Kess pulls up
next to Duncan and hands him a red power pack. Duncan says Ooooo, and accepts
the gift. Duncan’s longsword upgrades to a dueling buzz sword!
Sunday’s sister, Rue, meets them later, nods hello, and
says little else. The party is Kess, Sunday, and Rue, with Eli, Deadeye, and
Gorman, all riding horses. They swing really far south across the valley, and
then need to make a vault across the chasm. If they didn’t know this was here, they
never would’ve found it. The horses can actually hop it pretty easily, but the fall is a
couple hundred feet, a brutal drop.
They push west.
Kess has a cross shaped object that he flicks into the
air, and it starts spinning above him, doing larger and larger loops. He checks
something on his wrist, then alters course a bit. The plane spins in until it
lands on the ground, and Kess retrieves it.
Deadeye—What in tarnation is that
flying doohicker?
Kess—They called em planes before
the burn. The controls are tied to this thing on my wrist, but I find if I
focus and think about it, I can make it go wherever I want.
Deadeye—That’s pretty neat.
Kess—I’ve had this thing on my wrist
since I was a kid, but I built this thing out of scrap from the shop.
Eli—Very impressive.
They arrive. It’s beautiful. Half-buried in rock. Looks
like there was a landslide that exposed it. But the ship itself is unbroken.
Doesn’t look crashed, smashed, or burnt by dragons breath. This is the most
wealth any of them have ever seen. Their brains don’t really count that high.
Tons of ship-grade metal in this beast.
Deadeye—Holy cannoli.
Gorman—We’re gonna need a bigger
truck.
