Whereas last week we did mostly character creation, this week kept us busy with sector creation.
First, I spent sunday in setting up my website to host recaps of my efforts. Who knows, how long Twitter will still exist. And this way, people that don't want to check-in to twitter daily, can read up on sundays. I spent way too much time in creating a theme for the timeline though.
I also spent quite some time in writing up some broad ideas about my setting. There is a complete "Truths" exercise in the book, but I wanted to get started as quickly as possible and skipped that. I mostly will make it up as I go anyway and I have some ideas on how it should look and feel like. The only major thing I wanted to write down, because this will help understand my "actual play", is how the Forge actually is structured. In the book, there are several regions that spread out from an initial point in the cluster. I wanted to have more of a layered approach (you know, like an onion).
Travelling into the deeper regions of the Forge is much more difficult and I can give the layers some additional flavors on what you might expect there (at least in theory). This also lead to the way drifts and passages are explained (and why it is harder to navigate in deeper regions) and some stuff about communications. All in all, I have a bit the Warhammer 40k approach on human settlements. At some point in time they spread out so far and wide that far away sectors got "isolated" from the others and humanity became mostly divided.
I have some ideas about other stuff about the Forge, but I keep them a secret for now. Other stuff I might write down and update the settings guide.
But without further ado, lets have a look into this weeks timeline.
- I had some thoughts about my "campaign" setting. Not complete truths but a start. Campaign Settings Guide
- F596J45.7D Comed A and B: Binary Star (Class M). Two red burning suns in such close proximity, that they exchange mass constantly like an hourglass. One star will shrink while the other grows until the process is inverted.
- "Crux Depot" - This small settlement inside an old battleship, orbits a planet in the Comed system. The planet is surveyed for valuable resources and salvaged. Every attempt to hinder their operation, shattered against their unyielding determination.
- A shattered planet, floating in pieces in open space. Any life long gone. The planet is held together by fleeting gravitational forces, in constant battle with the nearby binary stars. Its integrity fragile, as pieces break of the main body constantly. Treacherous as the planet may be, precious resources are abundant, attracting salvage operations - if they are bold enough - such as the "Crux Depot".
- "Port Vega" - The last remaining few people left in this settlement are trying to get off the planet, but they currently lack the resources to do so. Infighting keep them from forming cohesive decisions or plans to fix their current situation.
- Over the last decade the sea level has risen dramatically on this planet, for reasons unknown. This also lead to violent storms and big tsunamis. The ocean covers 99% of the planet's surface and only one small landmass remains.
- "Helia Station" - A small space station, only operated by a dozen people is harnessing the violent electrical storms of its host planet to store and sell energy. Although quite lucrative it is not entirely legal.
Same as the week before, I had to find my tone. Again I switched from a technical or mechanical to a more narrative tone as the week did go by. I also did a little challenge for myself to try to stuff everything into one twitter message. But with all the hashtags the number of usable characters becomes less and less. I mostly rolled for the stars, planets and settlements and it came mostly together by itself. I can already see some stories evolving from this setup. I did tweak some of the choices a bit to my liking, though.
We're almost done with the sector so I assume that next week we can start with the story proper.