Cinder Bin - Session 1

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.