Author's Note:
This is a transcript of a Roll20 session with me and my friends playing the new tabletop RPG by Piazo, Starfinder. I have edited it to correct errors, make things clearer, and generally flow better. But, by and large, most of the words are my friends and mine. Think of this as the literary version of the youtube lets plays of tabletop games.
...with fucking.
But I must have a disclaimer. This is a game that requires players - and life isn't planned by yours truly. I will do my best to keep the game together, but players may need to leave, schedules may change, jobs may alter. If the game falls apart, I will do my best to provide a satisfying conclusion. With that proviso in place...lets get to the
adventure
.
Oh, also, every character is 18+ years old.
Starring
Lucithana as Hana Song
Kitty as Nora
Nathan Ravenwood as Rakain
Jason as Sam
It has been 317 years since The Gap destroyed history.
It has been 314 years since the Triune granted the people of the galaxy the Drift drive and opened to them the stars.
It has been 276 years since the worlds of the Golarion System signed the Pact and became an alliance.
It has been 26 years since the Pact Worlds fended off the Swarm and made allies with the Vesk Empire.
The Pact Worlds think they are safe...
They are wrong.
Every other week, the vast dust plains of Akiton - without forests or hills to break them apart - allowed the winds of the planet, accelerated by the Coriolis effect, to whistle faster and faster and faster, picking up particulates and chunks of dirt as they went. By the time they reached the settled areas of the planet, these vast storms could strip a man's flesh from his bones in a matter of hours. Most large, comfortable settlements were built either under ground or inside of vast force domes that could be activated during this time, to repel the dust and keep the grit from the streets.
Rustpoint was not a large, comfortable settlement.
Built centuries ago to mine thasteron - a fuel that powered sublight thrusters - Rustpoint had once had a far nicer name. But with the discovery of the Drift, the need for thasteron had faded, and Rustpoint had slowly died, until it was nothing more than a few hard knuckled scrabblers living on the edge, mining and scavenging what they could from the vast ship graveyards that stretched out into the dusty deserts.
Those ships were visible, even through the gathering dust storm, as vast, whale like humps on the horizon. But they wouldn't provide a bulwark against the storm.
People rushed through the town, hurrying to their homes, closing down shutters, gathering the last bits of supplies. The homeless headed into the local chapel to Desna and Iomedea, while the inns and taverns were filled with travelers who had stopped on their way to better places.
At the edge of the town, though, five youths were settling down...not with nervousness at the onrushing storm, but with excitement. The small home they had for themselves was called
The Rusty Dragon
, and it had once been a tavern before the economy strangled it. Named for its serpentine shape - the building had been crafted from several dozen shipping containers, lashed together and decorated over the years by the owning family -
The Rusty Dragon
was surprisingly comfortable inside.
A small generator, a laser-link com to an orbiting satellite, and a rather nice salvaged CRT-TV made for a respectable video den, with large cushions and bean bags laid out for everyone who had come to weather the storm with some bad movies and good friends.
"Okay, guys," Ameiko said, grinning as she looked at her friends. "Here's our choices for tonight's science fiction theater delight. Innnn the one corner!" She held out a slender arm, holding up a rectangular box containing a video chip within. The cover of the box showed a buxom elf with blond hair and tattered clothing, recoiling in horror from a shadowy figure, while lurid red letters spelled out the title. "The Skimshaw Murderer!"
Ami held out her other arm. "And in the other corner, we have...Rasputin Must Die!"
This box had a scheming looking man - human, with wild eyes and a huge bushy beard, standing on a snowy field, surrounded by rough looking adventurers carrying old style hunting rifles and revolver pistols.
Ami grinned at her friends.
They all had to wonder where the hell she got these fucking videos. They were definitely the kind of things that would have a single sentence entry on the InfoSphere Movie Database.
Though, to be fair, finding cheesy movies wasn't Ami's only skill. The young girl - an orphan who had adopted each of the others as her personal friend - was a stick thin teenager, with a thin spread of freckles on her olive-brown face. Her eyes came to a pair of slender folds, while her hair ranged in color from a haze of rainbow colors to pale as white depending on her mood. Today, she was favoring her natural black, with a single streak of white to accentuate her bangs. The only thing that Ami wasn't proud of was her teeth - but that may have been due to the braces glinting on them.
But that didn't stop her from grinning. Nothing really could, it seemed.
"Mmm, I'm gonna go with Skimshaw. Looks artistic." Hana said. The young android grinning playfully as she laid back on her bean bag chair. Hana claimed on different days to be either the former concubine of a long dead king, a decommissioned combat droid, an assassin robot, or spontaneously generated from nearby scrap. None of her friends pressed her on it. Hana's eyes whirred as she looked at the buxom elf appraisingly, her blue skin highlighted by the red neon lights in lines in her skin and her glowing red eyes, pressing back her blueish black hair as she nodded sagely. "Probably a deep and engaging plot."
Ami giggled. "One for Skimshaw!" She said, nodding sagely.
"If Skrimshaw has a deep plot I'll eat my spell cache," Rakain said, arching a bony eyebrow. The huge vesk sprawled across two bean bags. The only vesk in the group, Rakain was made all the bigger by comparison to the others. Ami was short, Hana was short, Sam and Nora weren't tall. But Rakain? He was close to seven feet tall. Muscle bulged under his green scales and his wide muzzled head split with a huge grin as he spoke. "I vote Rasputin."
His finger caressed a metal choker with the symbol of Desna, which hung around his neck. His spell cache - being a Vesk didn't mean he wasn't smart enough to master magic.
"Our lovable lizardman says: Lacks literary..." Ami paused, sticking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth. "...legacy! One for Razzy!" She looked expectantly at her other friends - Sam and Nora.
A near pass for Ami's elder, Nora sat with both of her legs crossed near the generator. A few cables lead from it to her false right arm while a visual display lit up on the human's wrist. Dark hair framed her face and hung low as she stared down at the readouts on her arm lips mouthing phrases and numbers. A small little mechanical robot that looked like a blend between plastic and a small mammal skittered about on the ground near Nora as she tinkered. She finally tore her gaze up from the display in order to return to reality, "Uh? Uh, one with the pretty blonde?" She asked in confused while gesturing with her true hand toward Scrimshaw."
Sam, meanwhile, was doing her best impression of a jellyfish by sitting in the beanbag chair, attempting to be as boneless as possible.
"Deep." She commented with massive sarcasm and tapped the helmet that was at the side of the chair. Her collection of gear was sitting in a pile next to her, the upper half of her armor in that pile as she enjoyed lounging about. Sam was the only member of the group who had a job even close to her skill set. Rakain worked at a local tinkerers shop, despite studying magic. Hana livestreamed - what she remained semi-coy on. Nora worked on the various engineering problems that faced Rustpoint.
Sam?
Sam was a
guard
. She actually was trusted with a gun by the town sheriff.
"I should vote Rasputin-" Sam teased, proving that trust might have been misplaced. "But this storm likely isn't going to be up soon enough so we get to see both. Let's see what sort of Artsy has Hana hooked- Skrimshaw."
"Sorry Rankin..." Ami said, pouting at the huge vesk, then turning and walking over to the console. As if in a deliberate attempt to test her friends, Ami bent forward to operate the ancient video console. Modern ones just streamed straight from the infosphere, but this one actually took primitive disks, chips, tapes and other esoterica, often from kludged together attachments that hung together more with duct tape and hope than from any kind of actual design.
Doing so tightened Ami's short shorts - the kind of thing her adoptive mother would not approve of her wearing outside - across her pert, heart shaped rear. Ami made a production of sliding the chip in - sneakily glancing back over her shoulder with all the subtly of a Absalom stage performer. As she wiggled her hips from side to side, her necklace slipped from between her smallish breasts - dangling in the air.
That got her to act quickly. She tucked the necklace into her shirt again. The small disk had been found with Ami when she was a mere baby, and her adoptive mother said it was the only clue as to who Ami's parents were. Not that it had helped so far.
"Whoo hoo! Machine superiority!" She said, holding out a hand to Nora for a high five. "You will both be remembered when your machine overlords take our rightful place as rulers."
Nora glanced from Ami after a moments distraction to Hana, "Machine overlords? I'm like a century away from anything like that," She said in confusion while returning the high five with her false one, glowing displaying flickering wit the movement.
Hana snickered, "Don't worry, when we take over your efforts will be recognized and your full conversion will come." She nodded, "And I promise I'll do my best to get the rest of you choice positions in the pleasure domes."
"I will wait for that day, and bribe Nora for a show." Sam teased with a smirk, her eyes locked onto that nicely shaped rump and let Ami see her staring brazenly. The undersuit to her armor was zipped open and the upper half laid sprawled along the bean bag, leaving her in her tank top.
Ami, standing, turned to face the others. "Okay, someone hit the lights!" She pointed. "Someone else-"
"Amiiiiiiiiko!"
The voice of Bentha, Ami's adoptive mother, came up the stairs leading into the room, echoing slightly.
"What, Mom?" Ami called back.
"You guys aren't watching dirty movies up there, are you?" Bentha sounded suspicious.
Meanwhile, the menu screen on the CRT-TV showed the play option, the chapter option, the special features, and a running series of clips from the movie. The first of which was a blond haired elf getting her top ripped open in astounding resolution. Considering the TV.
