Last night we started our new Apocalypse World 'West Marches' style campaign that we named Gun Bay 12.
As the GM I knew nothing about this game world aside from the basic premise: The remnants of humanity are eking out survival aboard 100-mile-long colony ships drifting through space after some long-forgotten apocalypse. The players designed the game world while we were playing, and it was honestly one of the most amazing games I have played to date. It was 0 prep and completely character driven.
Our Characters were:
• Truth (Hocus) - a cult leader who worships the ship as divine 'mother' and prays to the technology aboard, often causing more damage than good (so far as to pull shielding off major power conduits to bathe in the 'glow' from mother's energy… oh my). He uses a faulty airlock as a test of faith, offering sacrifices to 'mother' to see what she does with them.
• Razzer (Savvyhead) - a former cultist of Truth, but who is now a real 'tech wiz' having abandoned the mysticism for a more scientific approach to the technology aboard the ship. At odds mostly with Truth's mysticism and cult, but has an uneasy relationship with him. Has recently been working on some lighting devices in his workshop, and performs repairs on Trigger.
• Serene / Trigger (Battlebabe) - a murderous psychopath young female human replicant robot (think skinjob Cylon) who doesn't realise or accept that she is a droid. Truth has seen her soul and thinks she is a manifestation of 'mother ship', and Razzer helps her by maintaining her when she needs it while dancing around the fact that she isn't human. She was constructed by a woman she called 'mother' and works for a mysterious 'Architect' and as a part time job as a pit-fighter
• Kai (Brainer) - A psychic who gets along well with Razzer through their shared understanding of the psychic maelstrom as some unifying and permeating force that can affect both human minds and technology in familiar ways.
Rolling his 'Fortunes' move before the start of the session, Truth the Hocus triggered one of the wants of his group of cultist followers - choosing 'violence'. Cool!. This was the perfect opening for the game!
We open our scene in a cavernous mile long gun bay of a 100 mile long ship, darkened but for the faint lights of the shantytown nicknamed 'Gun Bay 12' by the players. An enormous office building sized cannon fills one end of the bay, protected from the void beyond by a great blast door, while at the other end their shanty town has been cobbled together from parts of what used to be a second great gun.
A crowd is gathered in the town square, a single gunshot rings out, and Truth collapses to the floor - a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth onto the deck plates. Standing over him holding a pistol is Jorgen the town leader - turns out he didn't take kindly to the violence perpetrated by Truth's followers and decided to show him who's boss.
Giving a signal to his followers (many of whom are children) Truth has them swarm around the gang leader trying to disarm him when the gun goes off, killing one of the cultist children. The mood of the broader crowd starts to turn sour, so Jorgen beats a hasty retreat back to his compound with his gang of thugs.
Emerging from his workshop, Razzer is annoyed by the distraction of gunfire - and sidles up next to Trigger who has been dispassionately watching these events unfold from within the crowd of townsfolk, who are now dispersing back to their daily grind. Kai descends from the rooftop where he too watched the scene without intervening.
The cultists picked up Truth and took him back to their cultist encampment beneath the barrel of the great cannon, where he set about rejuvenating himself in the holy glow of the power coupling that his followers had stripped the shielding from(!!!). Razz knew this was a bad idea, and made note to chide his former mentor on this reckless behaviour at the appropriate time.
Kai, Razz, and Trigger heard the clanging of tin bells and metal gongs which signified 'outsiders' by the guards posted at the doors nearly a mile away at the other end of the gun bay, and made their way down there quickly, bypassing Truth and his followers as they passed his encampment at the great cannon. Kai got close to one of the cultists named Tommy with the intention of psychically controlling him later - promising to 'show Tommy the truth of the psychic mother' or something. They soon saw through the murky light what seemed to be a group of outsiders engaged in a rolling brawl with the half-dozen or so guards posted there. Razz looked for a leader by pulling out a device he'd been working on - a portable lamp type machine - and spotted a figure lurking next to the enormous bulkhead entrance door, and Kai used his psychic ability to read his mind - finding that this mysterious person was 'holding back' - filled with confidence that he could destroy Gun Bay 12 if he really wanted to, but was content to test their mettle for now. As they paused to assess the situation, the fighting escalated - first knives were produced, and then quickly a gunfight evolved. Trigger decided to skirt the fighting and head straight around to the back for the big guy by the bulkhead door - she copped some stray gunfire for her troubles but reached the leader intact - he put his hand on his enormous pistol as a warning to her, but did not unholster it.
Kai wanted to stop the melee from escalating further, so decided now was the time to lob in his psychic 'pain grenade' but misjudged the distance a little - he overshot and collected both the main melee but also Trigger and the boss man behind it. Trigger dropped to the floor in pain while the boss man (a little stunned) pulled out his gun ready to execute her. Razz figured that now was the time to blind the guy with his flashlight again, but his tinkering with the device meant that he had somehow overcharged it - rather than temporarily blinding the guy, he scorched both the enemy leader and his friend Trigger with a supercharged beam! Kai's pain grenade had stopped the fight, but Trigger was down and seconds from death - shot, in pain, and now burned. At some point here Truth arrived at the melee with some of his cultists but didn't enter the fray I believe. Ignoring the downed Trigger at his feet, the bad guy opened up with his handgun, causing some damage to Kai who ducked for cover and Razz who decided to march forward with stoicism. Truth trusted in his faith in 'mother' and ran (unharmed!!) through the hail of gunfire over to the door and hit the control panel to shut the enormous door. As it was closing, Trigger decided to play the literal ace up her sleeve - she retracted her right forearm to reveal the built-in rifle that Razz had built for her. Unfortunately all the damage she had taken caused a malfunction and she blew her own hand off with the inbuilt rifle, just as the door slammed shut with the bad guy on the outside of Gun Bay 12 and his remaining three raiders being overcome and surrendering.
Kai connected psychically with one of their three captives, finding out some info about their plans. It seems they are coming from deeper within the ship and closer towards the forward bridge - still many miles away. They have quite a large fighting force and the prisoner is in no doubt that they could wipe Gun Bay 12 off the map - this was just a scouting party and the main attack is on its way. At some point here, a deal was stuck between Truth and Kai for Kai to open up psychically and 'show mother's true wishes' to Truth for some reason? I think maybe in exchange for allowing him to have the prisoners? Anyway, that didn't go well and Kai and Truth were greatly harmed by psychic resonance from the earlier battle at this very spot - maybe lots of death and pain is not good for the psyche? The group decided to head back to town and get some healing from the Angel (healer) as all of them had taken some serious damage. They paid some jingle each to get healed up and spent several days recovering.
When they were feeling better, Kai tried to use his psychic powers again on the captives - only to learn some devastating truth from the first captive, a man named Jekk - the raiders didn't just want to take over Gun Bay 12, they wanted to open the massive blast doors and fire the cannon at some enemy of theirs. Everyone realised that opening the doors would mean the end of the small town here at Gun Bay 12 as they would be sucked out into the starry void. Interrogating the second prisoner (Smithy) led to a possibly more frightening and certainly more earth-shattering conclusion - the enemy they wanted to fire at was not on this ship - they were going to fire on ANOTHER ship. Kai decided to keep this to himself, as he knew the implications for the faith of Mr Truth who believed that the ship was god and knew he wouldn't take well to there being another ship out there. Truth put the captives into the airlock one by one as his faith demanded, but only the third captive was sucked out - both Jekk and Smithy were spared by mother, so Kai used his powers on them to psychically command that they never leave Gun Bay 12 again. We decided that the ONLY time the people of Gun Bay 12 ever saw the stars was through the airlock when someone went out - so it was quite an event and very spiritual.
Kai decided to take Razz aside and explain the situation with the cannon and the raiders wanting to fire it, and Truth sent one of his cultists, a young man named Garaz, to eavesdrop on their conversation. Garaz got the info about the second ship, but was exposed to the power conduit in doing so - setting him up to become a future horrific cannibal (oh - did we not mention this? There are 'Reaver' style cannibals living nearby on the ship, having been driven mad by exposure to unshielded power conduits, they now hunt throughout the ship seeking victims… yeah… look out Truth!!).
This was truly world shattering news for poor Truth, who had only ever believed in the one ship. He quickly decided that maybe the raiders were right - after all, it sounds like they want to defend mother ship from some rival… so he sent the captives Jekk and Smithy to make a deal with their boss, as he had secretly found out a way of opening the massive blast door in front of the cannon... At some point Kai decided that he also agreed with this and decided to switch his allegiance to the raiders. Also at this point I think Truth made Trigger promise that if anything happened to him, she would take on his cult leadership position as she was 'special to mother' in his eyes (he thinks she is a manifestation of mother ship). Methinks that Mr Truth might be gearing up for a suicide mission?
Trigger and Razz went out beyond the bulkhead door where they had fought the raiders earlier, looking for opportunities to turn the tables - this 'no-man's land' between the settlements is a warren of unused, uninhabited, and dangerous rooms and corridors. Razz was looking at how he could understand the engineering of the ship to possibly divert something deadly or suck away the oxygen from selected rooms / corridors to stop the incoming raiders. Razz had some success, and made a mental map of several critical corridors and rooms which he could use for this purpose, while Trigger encountered a pair of incoming raiders with submachine guns. She stared them down (!!!) and casually sauntered up to them and took their machine guns - one in each hand - and hosed the poor fools down with their own weapons. Razz began crawling out of the conduit he was in and looked for ways to support Trigger, while Kai arrived soon from within the gun bay. Razz diverted a steam conduit to give cover in the corridor to Trigger, but she stubbornly decided to stay where she was and loot the two dead guys.
Trigger was quickly approached by a team of 6 more raiders, but they couldn't see through the steam and started spraying bullets indiscriminately down the hallway. Razz ducked for cover with Kai, while Trigger picked up one of the corpses to use as a shield and waltzed(!!!) through the fog with it - the confused raiders seeing only a crazed young girl emerge from the fog dancing with their dead friend paused in disbelief. A second too long.
She transfixed them with her unnerving stare again, and rather politely gave them the ultimatum to "F right off, or end up like their mates here" (gesturing to the dead raiders). "Get her" they cried, but were too slow and she unloaded on them until both magazines were empty.
More raiders were approaching, and Kai used his mental powers to scare them off. The captives Jekk and Smithy couldn't leave Gun Bay 12 due to the mental command from earlier, so handed their message to one of the other raiders to pass on to their boss.
At this point, all aboard felt the familiar 'bottom of the stomach' feeling that meant the ship was about to make a warp-jump. Invasion, battle, and current plans and schemes forgotten - every living soul aboard abandoned whatever they were doing, and made haste towards the nearest stasis pod to sleep safely while the ship jumped to a new destination.
Thank you so much Peter, Rowan, Shaun, and Tamara for an amazing game!
I've 100% failed to do justice to how fun this game was and how much story the players developed here - there is just so much going on, and I can't wait to return to this game!
Comments