Pariah Session 2 - Play Report

Use the tags to find previous and for some more details. Hex fills used this session:

• Entrance to Cave Network. 4 Bears give way to Earth.
• Learned shamanic baboon + 14 captives. Flint Mine.
• River Rapids. 42, fishing village - salmon spawning.

After their feast of yak flesh, the band settled down, posting watch as normal. During the watch of Golden Other, once more four huge-headed figures loped over the hills, silhouetted against the sky. Their camp was upon the coast, leaving a large open space which the creatures did not dare cross, instead taunting the band with their hoots and gibbers. As the sun dawned, they seemingly snuck away - or disappeared entirely.

An encounter roll, boosted by the feasting, resulted in the vampiric spirits paying another visit to the party. Being intelligent, they didn’t risk the open crossing against greater numbers, opting instead to keep them up with noise.

The band moved back into the hills, away from the coast. From this vantage, they saw mountains to the distant north-west, more hills to the north and a river running through forest to the west. In a bend in the river, they saw a trail of smoke rising upwards. Having slept poorly the night before, they made the decision to make camp before setting out. They sought out a camp which would keep them shielded from the (presumed) settlement in the forest below. They camped quietly, wary of alerting anything in this new area.

During the first watch of the night, Purple Point Clever Crayfish spotted a bear snuffling towards the encampment. Sneaking back and rousing his fellows, the band decided to ambush the bear. They laid out food as bait before hiding themselves amongst the grasses and undergrowth. After an initial flurry of misses, they managed to strike the bear decisively. It decided to flee, swiping at one of the group before being cut down as it fled - despite the risk of hitting their fellows in the black of the night. Half the band stayed up skinning and smoking the bear meat whilst the rest went back to sleep.

As we’re playing over VTT, I reveal parts of the hexmap during play - in person, I’d ask them to make their own map. As they move around, they reveal adjacent hexes depending on the terrain - with mountains being seen from further way, especially from the hills overlooking the forested hexes between. The smoke was due to the settlement present in that hex. Whilst moving through the current hex, I gave them a 50% chance of ‘stumbling’ upon the main fill as well as rolling for encounters. In this case they didn’t, but camped close enough (a 3 being rolled) for the Bear to be on the encounter table that night. It was Surprised as part of the encounter roll, hence the ability to set up an ambush. The morale failure cost the bear any revenge kills, but followed through with animal behaviour.

Rather than directly approaching, the elected to follow the river to the North before travelling up it, potentially allowing for a stealthy approach. They spied a raggedy man dumping a basket of earth outside an entrance-arch dug into a hill, which they decided to come back to later. Travelling up river, the encountered a section of rapids with a rocky cliff-face near where they expected an encampment. They also found tree-stumps, evidence of sightlines being cleared. They debated whether to attack the camp or try and enter peacefully, eventually deciding to send Purple Point and Blue Fallen to observe.

They saw many people with vests of unknown material, using tridents and spears of flint to fish. Others emptied fish-traps, gutting and smoking the contents. They counted around 40 members of the encampment, 20 of fighting age. Their tents were set up for longer stays, but clearly were not permanent constructions. As the sun dipped low, one dressed in a ceremonial mask and suit studded with pairs of shells. They danced around a fire and sang, joined by the sentries before retiring, clearly heavily drained. The watchers remained until the first changing of the watch, returning to the camp.

Another cold and quiet camp to avoid detection, the only disturbance during the night was a single lost Giant Bee, clumsily slamming into trees and shrubs. During his watch, Idle Quiet One began work on his tattoo of the clay-headed spirits. In the morning, the band agreed to approach peacefully, Idle Quiet One leading negotiations by telling the story of their fight against he clay-head spirits.

The single figure was the presence of the hex-fill, determined to be on their path with the aforementioned 50%. As they were keeping a wide berth and being careful, no Stealth rolls were made for their watching. In hindsight, I could have made some Awareness rolls for the sentries. The Shamanic activity was driven by the spirit-banishing ritual unknown to the party - this ritual stopping beings like the clay-headed spirits from approaching the fire. I entirely forgot to progress the spirit-sickness with Idle Quiet One - and his forwardness with the tattoo rendered it not needed.

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Pariah Session 1 - Play Report

I’m going to try and write play reports more often. I think they’re an important part of the space which we don’t see enough of anymore. Rather than just narrativising play, I’m aiming to also talk about any techniques or decisions I made in play.

Prior to this session, I generated a hexmap which I’m filling up “ahead” of the players. I’m experimenting with extremely terse one-line hexfills in the style of Carcosa. I’m finding it fun to wildly diverge from my approach in Wolves - the entire session happened within a single hex with the fill “Spirits which appear as mudmen with bloody mouths. Blood controls them - banished by seawater.” That’s probably the longest fill I’ve written so far, most are more like “Stinging sulphourous water. 3 Giant Toads.”

The Band of Pariahs awoke on the beach, cast out from their homes for various crimes and misunderstandings. Set upon small, flimsy vessels and given to the sea. A hound of unusual intelligence dragged the disparate forms together - this taken as a sign of a multiplicity of ancestors dwelling within the dog, the group bound together.

Immediately they set to work - Idle-Quiet One White-Gazelle led much of the band in fishing in the sea, Blue Fallen Disgusting Honeybird and Cunning Mountain Disgusting Dreamingtime assisting with fish-traps. The Hairy Auroch twins moved up into the nearby hills to find firewood and shelter. Blue-Grove spied a herd of 8 yak cropping distantly whilst Golden-Other found low, tortured trees which could form a rudimentary basis for a simple camp.

The named Pariahs are the player characters here, obviously. The twins are such because they happened to roll the same “second names” - and both rolled a leopard skull helmet. Starting with skills and a pressing need - you have no food - set the band immediately in action. Their first encounter rolls led to no result, the Yak-spotting being a deliberate bit of tracking.

Those in the hills began constructing a camp of lean-to structures whilst the fisherman dragged their significant haul of fish up to the camp, beginning the process of smoking the fish they didn’t eat that night. All contributed to their joint song. Blue-Grove took a single dose of the Shaman Shroom before whispering to their bound spell-spirit to go and find more. The noise and the fire highlighted the presence of the band to any in the hills. Idle-Quiet One decided to practice using the tattoo-kit that had survived the journey, tattooing a mystic symbol on Blue Fallen.

As the songs ceased, Golden-Other took up watch. After some time, they spotted loping humanoids with large lumpy heads loping over the hills, silhouetted against the sky and heading towards the camp. They roused the band, who stood guard and awaiting the creatures. Having camped on one slope of a hill (avoiding the strong coastal breeze), they heard a strange “koo-koo-ko” noise from the other side of the hill. A brief conversation with the creatures indicated they wanted “a drink and a fire, that we might be like your little four-legged one.” Asked to show themselves, they emerged atop the hill - large heads of wet clay, empty eye-sockets gouged with thumbs and open mouth-holes scraped out of the material. From these ‘mouths’ dripped a liquid indiscernible in the night. One of the four commented that the “fire had no ward” - something which excited the group, and left the Band nervous. Blue-Grove commanded his spell-spirit, a mother leopard, to attack the group. The sudden sounds of a she-leopard sent the group fleeing downhill, pursued and slain by the band.

An encounter roll, boosted by the fire and song, led to the inhabitants of this hex being summoned. Pariah specifies a ritual for banishing spirits from a campfire - the lack of this being an invitation to such entities. A failed morale roll after the spirit-attack led to them fleeing, giving the Band a decisive upper-hand. For fighting whilst charging downhill, any failed attack caused a Save - failure resulting in that character tumbling down hill too.

Where these beings were struck, they did not bleed but emitted only black dust. From their wet-clay mouths, blood dripped. Set within the mouths was a chaos of human teeth, rammed in without thought or reason. Idle-Quiet One gathered this dust and some of the blood, forming a paste with it. He then proceeded to burn the bodies, which emitted translucent fumes. Blue-Grove led a chant over this, even if he kept a distance from the flames. This done, all retired back to camp to resume resting. The rest of the night was uneventful. On his watch, Idle-Quiet One began planning a tattoo using the materials gathered from the corpses.

In the morning, it was discovered the grass around this fire was not burnt but dead - and nothing remained but teeth. Idle-Quiet One smeared some of their ancestor-dog’s slobber on it for good measure. The Band decided to head North, seeking better long-term shelter. En-route, they discovered the trail of the Yak herd they saw yesterday - Golden-Other determining that one of the herd has a split hoof, easy prey for endurance hunters like Blue Fallen. The Band used numbers to spook the herd, separating the injured Yak and driving it to the coast where the sand and waves exhausted it quickly. The Band realised that the yak could feed all of them, and declared a feast - they would be unable to carry all of the meat if smoked and treated for journeying. Some set about trying to tan the hide of the yak to create tents, whilst Blue-Grove went to the hills to find entheogenic plants. He discovered six leafy plants, the flowers reminding him of bones.

Handling these spirit-corpses triggered a “secret” poison Save, which Idle-Quiet One failed. This was to cause a spirit-sickness resulting in a condition from the (very useful) spiritual bane tables provided in Pariah. The player explained that they were going to make a kill-tattoo - this seemed exactly the sort of action likely to give protection to a warrior killing spirits and handling their remains. As such, they already have the cure in hand even if the condition has yet to manifest. For a glorious waste of resources in a Feast, I gave the party an ‘X’ - analogous to XP for carousing in other games.

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Limited Monsters

At the outset of Wolves, I made the decision to limit myself to only using recurring monsters from Volume 2: Monsters &. Whilst there are the occasional unique creatures, the vast majority of monsters are taken from it.

For those not familiar, V2M& is a rewrite of a select few monsters from OD&D Volume 2: Monsters & Magic - a selection of which can be read using the MMM tag on this blog.

This restriction has added to to the cohesive feeling of Wolves - rather than being able to simply invent creatures, or select a novel one from a larger collection, the use and re-use required me to think deeply about each type of creature. The differences in each instance stem from the situation they are in - these situations being an outcropping of both the setting and the implied history and nature of each creature specifically. Furthermore, the placement of such beings across the world adds to their context, something visible as the writer, as the GM and as the player over recurring encounters. Whilst this method requires more thought in placement and presentation, I think limiting your palette of monsters can have a very positive effect. It’s too easy to have a fantasy game feel like a (more) fucked-up safari when each encounter is with a new creature entirely - and requiring less thought and care than having the unique situation be the interesting element in any given encounter. The world feels richer, each denizen worth investigating and understanding when they are not one in another chain of ‘one-offs’ - and those rarer, unique creatures stand out all the more for bucking the trend.

This deepening effect helps combat the presentation of the inhuman as ‘fair game’ - an empty Other, valid targets for all viciousness to be visited upon. The root of many monsters in V2M& being humans transformed by their own actions also helps with this - and this effect extends to those creatures which are not human in root, whether that be to underline that they have their own existence and motivations or to make their total inhumanity even more startling and uncomfortable.

In future, when developing a campaign setting, consider doing so ‘Monster First’ - and being very deliberate about using something from outside your initial list.

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Mentorship Applications Open

APPLICATIONS NOW CLOSED

I am now open to submissions for round 4 of the mentorship scheme I’ve been running. This is done free of charge to give back to the wider TTRPG scene.

As outlined here, the mentorship consists of regular calls to discuss techniques as well as taking a critical look at other works in the TTRPG space.

The mentorship prioritises marginalised people, although everyone is welcome to apply.

Those who have applied for previous rounds, I ask you apply again due to the slightly different format.

Scope

I am working with writers to develop adventures and sourcebooks for use with games. I am focused on helping you take a set of ideas and developing that out into a first draft - both in terms of generating quality ideas, but also techniques to help with the writing process. Manuscripts in the early stages of writing are also considered, although projects which have already had a round of crowd-funding are not eligible.

I also help with finding resources for self-publishing, or for finding a publisher. Engagements last for a variable amount of time, although there will be regular check-ins to ensure we’re making good progress and that the mentorship is still right for all parties.

If wanted, all communications can be held with a third party present - just indicate this during the application process.

Applying

To apply, please send an email to lukegearing.games@gmail.com.

In the subject line, please put your “[Your Name] - Mentorship Application”

In the body, please introduce yourself with any links to prior work (not required, just useful to have). If you consider yourself marginalised, please mention this here (no details are required).

Then provide a pitch of your project as well as a summary of where you are with it.

Finally, if you have any thoughts around self-publishing or being published, that would be useful to know.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for considering applying.

Journey to the Underelves

On Wednesday lunchtimes I’ve been running an hour-long session of OD&D megadungeon exploration known as Snackrifice. The game has been running for 23 sessions. This is some small prep.

From their outpost to the south of the Goblin Caverns (2 days by foot, as per the back-tattoo map), the city of Tanoij is 3 days downriver.

At the outpost the Underelves sell some boats to travel:

• A huge bone formed into a dugout canoe. 500gp.
• A shimmering, iridescent metal longship. 1000gp.
• Twelve hollowed-out mushroom heads, roped together. 150gp.

Per 12 hour watch, there is a 2-in-6 chance of a river encounter.

Raiders

Raiders are 1HD elves wearing light armour, using bows and hatchets. If they have Surprise, they have replaced their eyes with those of Stalkerbugs, able to prowl the riverways without needing light.

2-4 Crew vessels are chains of mushroom-coracles. They mostly want a new boat.
5-8 Crew vessels are rafts of immense, hollowed out shell - crustacean or arthropod. They are after wealth.
10+ Crew vessels are Underelf galleys with a ramming prow. They seek victims for sacrifice or sustenance in their cannibal colonies.

Bats

A flurry of disturbed bats has a 10% chance of extinguishing naked flames per 100 bats. In the resultant darkness, all must Save vs Petrification to avoid falling into the black waters.

Slimy Pike

HD 5 / AC as Chain / Fires spines which cause a Save vs Poison - those failing are subject to horrific muscle cramps, acting only every other turn and drowning in falling into the water.

Flesh Pyramid

HD 20 / AC as Unarmoured / No Attack

From the depths a pyramid of flesh, mind-consumed victims clinging to the rough-textured form, suckling at loathsome tubes for air. Some 30’ tall, it attempts to psionically consume the mind of all nearby. Per Round, all witnessing the Pyramid must Save vs Spells - those failing losing 1 Wisdom. Any reaching 0 are hollowed out and bound to its will.

It has 3d12 current victims, all of whom are 1HD creatures with unarmoured AC. They carry ropes of corded fishgut. The Flesh Pyramid moves slowly, but the victims swim like Olympians, their bones and muscles audibly complaining.

Pink River Dolphins

I hate them so much.
HD3 / AC as Leather
Attempt to grab and drown any near the edge of the boat. Failing this, knock against the edge to either capsize or to incur another encounter. Laugh like children.

Giant Water Spiders

HD 4+4 / AC as Leather+Shield

Giant spiders that walk across the surface of the water. Thankfully, they are not venomous. Unfortunately, they do spin webs across the width of the undeground river to ensnare prey. Victims of the web are ensnared for 8 rounds, reduced by 1 for each point of Strength over 10.

Underelf River Galley

Underelf River Galleys from Tanoij are crewed by 24 1+1HD Underelves wearing their Beetle Plate armour with full-face mandible-masks and conical helms. They wield pole arms and bows. Hostile reaction indicates intention to board and inspect for any illegal products being smuggled to/from Tanoij.

Gra-Ool, the White Crocodile

HD 10 / AC as Plate / 2d6 Damage

An immense white crocodile, burdened with trinkets of stone and gold. Accompanied by 23 Kobolds who worship him as a god and ride upon his back, clad in his shed scales and wielding his cracked teeth. They are not wrong, although he is a petty god indeed. Hunger and malice rule a brain which saw the stars fall and empires crumble. Sacrifice forgoes consumption entire - but bickering as to who is the offering enrages him.

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Dagda System

A large snippet from a forthcoming project.

Overview

Chaos reigns in the Dagda system. Heavy industries poisoned the atmosphere of Eriu, leading to a mass migration to its own moon, Airgetlam. This moon is far too small for refugee population, and many live in orbital structures under claustrophobic conditions. The Orbital Commission attempts to retain control over an exploding population, shipping malcontents to penal mines on the edge of the system and without overstepping their control and finding themselves ousted by the sheer weight of the population.

In the outer cold of space, a small democratic colony on Dian tries to build an alternative way of life despite the airless, waterless rock they live upon. They find themselves an unofficial colony of the OC, held captive by their dependence on outside food. A religious sect similarly dwells on Tuireadh, offering sanctuary to those able to escape the penal mines. The OC is not equipped to crack their fortified home, and so bides their time.

Archlight in System

When the Archlight is in system, their cargo-lighters buzz between Eriu and Airgetlam, collecting high-tech salvage and raw materials required to keep the ship running. Huge crowds gather just to catch a glimpse of the Wheelsmen, proffering out their children to be taken aboard. Those in the Academy assemble and present themselves, their families gathering in hope that their sons are picked to serve. Such a ceremony is a wedding and a funeral - a dedication for life, and a guarantee they will never see their child again. The families are given medals representing their sacrifice - the most illustrious have walls of glittering markers, each with a name stamped on the burnished metal.

Eriu

6000mi - Dense, Tainted Atmosphere - 20% Water Coverage - Pop 3452
Eriu, once the capital of Dagda, is now under the stewardship of the Eriu Salvage and Reclamation Corporation, a major power in Dagda politics. Employment with the ESRC is coveted despite the predatory practices and debt accrued in training and transport to Eriu. The managers and administrators live in the single spaceport, Greengate, whilst the workers dwell on-planet. The Salvagers live in mobile bases supporting teams of 20, spread across the planet and paid per ton of useful salvage. The Farmers tend to huge estates growing monocultures of GM crops, worked by multiple generations. These crops contribute to the terrible health of Airgetlam Orbital dwellers, as the plants absorb contaminants from the poisoned air.

Both the Farmers and the Salvagers are indebted to the ESRC, their pay mostly covering the interest. The monopoly of the ESRC Company Catalog - where all tools and luxuries should be purchased - is alleviated by the active smuggling operations on-planet, the wages of many administrators nearly doubled for their ignorance. Many of these smugglers operate bases in the picked-clean ruins, hiding from the Orbital Commission.

Greengate

Once a true starport, able to service the interstellar ships active in the Pocket, Greengate has been gutted and re-purposed to service the heavy haulers transporting goods to Airgetlam. It houses around 500 administrative staff and 250 technical staff dedicated to maintaining the station and any ships using it. Non ESRC ships can be serviced, albeit at eye-watering mark-ups. Access to the planet, outside of tightly-controlled tourist trips, requires the bribery of an official who offers a 30 minute window to enter the atmosphere.

Phuntsok Gonpo,a Wheelsman Broker is stationed here, wearing the traditional all-black uniform. They watch the technical staff closely for potential Wheelsmen, although they entirely ignore those on the planet as unsuitable.

Ivan Boysen heads up the security force on station - and therefore over the entire planet. His small cadre of 50 marines, 4 orbital fighters and 2 troop transports are woefully insufficient. Even more corrupt than most of the ESRC, none of his security service see any action beyond breaking up drunken brawls - when they aren’t starting them.

Salvage Team 897b - “Drop Dead Crew”

Set up within a standard tracked-type Mobile Operations Centre, the Drop Dead Crew are typical Salvagers - stressed, underpaid and with a terrible track record for accidents owing to poor-quality equipment. They are currently stationed by a beach, using pocket-submarines to lift sunken wrecks. Apollonia ‘Sweetness’ Elia, the forewoman, checks and re-checks the pocket submarines - she has lost crew to them before. If they succeed in lifting the current wreck, they will find its hold full of gold bullion - enough for them all to retire, if they can get it off-planet and avoid ESRC scrutiny. If they turned it in, the finders-fee would be about a month’s paycheck.

Alexandru ‘Curly’ Stratan has been scanning the horizon - he knows they are close to a particularly secretive smuggler base, belonging to the Lyon gang. Within the ruined hulk of a hospital, they operate an illegal medical facility and drug-lab. There are 20 members present, their ship currently off-world shipping supplies to the Penal Mines. If they become suspicious, they will attempt intimidation. If that doesn’t work, they are not above killing the crew and staging an industrial accident, destroying all evidence.

Beck Ranch

Five generations of Becks have lived and died on this nutrient-poor soil. Shambling nu-cows strip the earth, whilst the Sandwheat fields sway in the winds. For four of these generations, they have feuded with the Kallu family - Old Man Beck raided their farm when a blight wiped out his own fields and the ESRC threatened termination if quotas were not met.

Felix Beck, the youngest of the family, watches the estate through a high-powered scope attached to a rifle handed down the generations. The labouring families, their names absent from the ranch or the share-listings, toil down below. Theodore Clarkson deals with the passing Salvagers for scrap to keep their machines running and often thinks about joining them off-books - he wouldn’t be the first.

Mallick Hideout

The remains of an orbital-missile silo now house the Bajrapāta, a reconfigured mining ship and now the pride and joy of the Mallick family. They run a smuggling operation but also use their hideout as a safehouse for those fleeing the Orbital Commission. Bansi Mallick runs the family, lavishing his cousins with gifts.

Currently, Harm Dokter is hiding out here. An unlicensed zero-g welder, he is wanted for manslaughter - a botched weld venting a third of an orbital habitat. The administrator of the habitat is not being prosecuted, despite choosing to hire unlicensed staff. Harm has no long-term plan, and his money is running short. He can afford to stay here three more weeks. The Mallicks won’t return him, but will turn him loose on Eriu.

Eriu Generators

Salvager Teams have 1d6+15 members at any given time.

Farms have 5d20 resident workers run by a core family of 3d6.

Smuggler Groups operate in groups of 4d6, and have access to 1d6-4 (min 1) craft. There is a 30% chance the craft is off-world, leaving only d6 Smugglers at base. There are 1d6 - 1d6 people using their base as a hideout.

Airgetlam

2000mi - Thin Atmosphere - 20% Water Coverage - Pop 567 million
This moon is barely visible through a cloud of orbital habitats, each strained and cramped. Millions are packed into windowless spheres, living and dying in aluminium corridors. On the surface, the estates of the rich extend and crowd out prime agricultural land. All of this is nominally under the control of the Orbital Commission - once an arm of the coalition formed to manage the flight from Eriu, they have grown in importance and swallowed all other forms of government. Constitutionally their power on the surface is limited, but their influence leaves them the de-facto government on Airgetlam as well as above it.

Many of the Orbital Habitats are constructed from and around the original ships built to flee Eriu, some approaching 500 years old. Conditions internally vary on a gradient of hellish to bad - each Habitat it’s own knot of vicious power-politics and desperation. Politically, each Hab is a member of the federation headed by the OC, which apportions work and supplies - supposedly by need, but all know this is one of their tools of control. Another is the Orbital Peace Keepers - a paramilitary ‘police force’ kitted in power armour capable of 8 hour vacuum operations. They are some of the most vicious practitioners of a bloody profession, linked to several deliberate explosive decompression events which killed entire sections of ‘troublesome’ Habs.

The OC, despite their authority, is aware that they are a thin veneer atop a huge population - effort is made to remain popular, to keep their repressions quiet and naked violence to a minimum, attempting to act through local intermediaries where possible. When they have overstepped in the past, mass demonstrations have forced them to take corrective action. The OC Accountability Board is dedicated to reducing corruption and abuses of power, but they are small and over-worked. The OC Intelligence Agency actively works to cement itself in all levels of power and insidiously counter any threats to OC domination of the system. Despite this, much power is devolved to the individual Habs.

High Expectations

Once a super-heavy freighter, built before the disaster to service the outer rim mining efforts, High Expectations is now the biggest Orbital Hab, folding outwards like a metallic fungus. It houses the primary shipwright in-system, the old cargo-hold still exposed to the vacuum and filled with the skeletons of half-built craft.

The power of the Shipwright’s Guild is the largest organised threat to OC hegemony in-system, and the High Expectations is their stronghold. Little occurs aboard without their knowledge and cut of the proceeds. They began as a traditional labour union, but long years of calcification and privilege have corroded their solidarity and left them interested only in securing lives for them and theirs.

A significant amount of the OPK’s forces are permanently stationed aboard the Habitat - both as a central node for travel and as a challenge to the Guild. A small fleet of interceptor craft are housed here, the crews known for starting fights with those born to the High Expectations.

Erian Wheelsman Academy

Constructed on prime surface real-estate, the Academy generates its own economic system - a sprawl of specialists and service personnel dedicated to the Academy. Of each intake, the administrators have no idea how many will be selected - those left behind are snapped up into the OC or high-end executive roles. Most of the students are scouted by the distributed Brokers throughout the system, although there is a growing number of families bribing administrators to select their children - the benefits of enrolment ensuring continued success.

O-HAB 5277 - ‘Easy Gi-Gi’

A smaller habitat, constructed from the salvage torn from Eriu. The 10,000 inhabitants are communally minded, voting on all internal matters whilst trying to distribute the demands of the OC amongst the entire population. The air filtration algae farms are dying from a shipment of contaminated water sold at bargain value by Mallick family. A small band of youths are considering raiding a nearby Hab (O-HAB 992 - ‘The Lobster Returns’) for a replacement system - formal assistance requests to the OC have become lost in the bureaucracy.

Airgetlam Generators

O-Habs vary hugely in population - the smallest holding hundreds, the largest supporting millions. All have good and bad areas, and offer most services. All are interdependent for specialist expertise - technicians of all sorts, but especially those not directly affiliated with the OC, travel often and freely between them.

Dian

8000mi - No Atmosphere - Pop 781
A huge, airless rock, Dian now hosts a break-away colony. Sick of the OC and slow death in orbit, a group calling themselves the Free Erian League hijacked an Orbital Habitat, restored the engines of the original ship and broke free of Airgetlam’s orbit. Those who were unwilling to join them on this journey were allowed time to leave, although this led to significant bleed-off as many volunteers deserted. In the 100 years since, those dwelling in Good Hope, the single settlement of Dian, have found out the cost of their liberty. Unable to grow their own sustenance, they are in effect a mining colony of the OC with nominal independence and voting rights over internal matters. Each generation has fiery radicals who wish to break free such fetters - and some have come close to creating controlled, self-sustaining eco-systems. The OC has several spies on the colony who ensure such efforts fail. Currently, a secretive band of Dian scientists are close once again to establishing the first steps to food independence. The OC Intelligence Agency has been unable to get close enough to ruin their progress and is considering hiring outside assets to do so.

Tuireadh

8000mi - No Atmosphere - Pop 892
The nameless monastery-settlement upon Tuireadh has stood for a century, founded by the most dedicated adherents of Teacher Entjes. The core of the sect is a dedication to good works and dedicated resistance to stifling forces through non-violence. In the early days the OC was happy to allow the Entjians to shoulder some of the burden, but this quickly led the to accumulation of power and the enactment of their other tenets, leading to several general strikes from the more faithful Habs. Pressure was applied and a smear campaign enacted, enabled by some who used the faith for personal gain and abused followers. This eventually led to settlement of Tuireadh. They now survive entirely on donations - many of those moving to the monastery forgo all material wealth. Entjian recruiters are active on Arigetlam, especially amongst the rebellious children of the wealthy - several fortunes have been gained this way. The Circle of Abbots view this as a necessary evil - they must ensure their own survival before they can continue their great work of spiritual liberation. In the mean time, they accept any escapees from the Penal Mines - an easy way to swell rank, albeit attracting some uncomfortable attention from the OCIA.

Penal Mines

The outer edges of the Dagda system buzz with activity. Mining ships, their systems locked to allow navigation only between allotted work zones and The Cells - the central control, refuelling and ore processing station which enables the entire operation. The OC sells this brutal system as providing prisoners usable skills by which they can get a good start upon release. Between industrial accidents and long sentencing, less than 20% of prisoners return able to utilise their experience.
The work-gangs the Wardens like are given the easier tasks - using powerful mining lasers from functional ships. The rest are left the gruelling work of guiding ore into the huge furnaces, prospecting amongst unstable-orbit asteroid complexes, and blasting hard rock for buried rare minerals where a mining laser might cause too much damage.

There are 90 mining ships in the Penal Fleet, varying from 40-berth long-haul to single-pilot tugs - all crewed by half-trained ‘convicts’ dragged to the very edges of their solar system.

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