DEATH IN SPACE

The year is irrelevant.

Years ago, the galaxy went to war with itself over Gems, a physical resource that is the backbone of all great scientific and technological advances.

Ten years ago, the war ended and five corporations stood as victors, pat themselves on the back and carved up what remained with knives and teeth.

Today, something is horribly wrong. Existence has become unstable. The great machines are falling apart, the corporations scramble for control and things from the spaces between lick their lips and wait for their turn to feast.

Years from now, it ends. Refugees from what will be are pouring through the cracks in all things to live in the past, either to avoid what will come or avert it.

People believe that something broke during the war, something important, and there were no attempts to fix it. Existence is in a decaying orbit around a star, and nobody is sure what to do next.

That doesn’t stop you from needing food. Water. Shelter. Time may be running out but you’re still alive right now. Tick tock, feed the meter.

Death In Space is a d20 OSR game by Christian Plogfors and Carl Niblaeus of Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League. It will be our backup game for whenever a player needs to miss a session, a drop-in drop-out game for whoever is able to attend, and will be updated whenever it is played.

CHARACTERS

Bastion as CASSANDRA the Velocity Cursed (she/her)

A woman out of time, out of place, with only the Long Bones, a surviving friend and a locket to try and make sense of it all.

Grint as MOHS-6 the Cyborg (they/them)

A machine intelligence in human body, missing the majority of their memories, compelled to figure out who they were and why people know them.

Lavender as ORION SALTS the Punk (she/her)

A survivor of an atrocity turned wanderer, motivated by a brooding mind and a need to know why what happened happened.

Sophie as PATIENCE WHITTAKER the Solpod (she/they)

A voluntary immortal with the power to choose to wait, blueprints for a grand design that went awry years ago and a loaded gun by her side.

THE LONG BONES

Faster-than-light travel only happens under certain circumstances: if there are two “bridging buoys” connecting points and if the craft itself is certified to make the trip, a “bridger craft”. They exist in the current era as experimental mass-transit vehicles for those with the holos and nerve to ride a machine that makes within system transit instantaneous, between system take weeks and inter-galactic take months. They are also dangerously fickle and temperamental crafts. Bridging ships go missing, end up in the wrong place or even the wrong time, and sometimes they bring things with them from the places in between. The most common and safe form of transit is to use cryopods for prolonged period of time. Even that is risky.

The Longbow was a bridging ship from the future that was damaged beyond salvation, carrying a few amnesiac survivors like Cassandra and Helen and others who dispersed out into the Iron Ring, all Velocity Cursed. It is unclear if it was intentionally sent back or if it was a casualty of transit. They stripped it for parts all the same and turned a space-faring vessel into a station, habitable but immobile without help. Due to its incomplete documentation and the damage done, when the salvage crew jokingly referred to it as “The Long Bones” the name stuck.

It may hold lost secrets of the future or other hidden treasures to be found. One thing for certain is it now holds these four central figures as they try to get by in the world.

Death In Space is a campaign about the far future gig economy on the cusp of an irreversible and inevitable societal and existential collapse. It includes themes of gang violence, contracted violence, prisoner exploitation and abuse, existential dread, authoritative abuse, cults, spree violence, memory loss, corporate exploitation, poverty and depersonalization. Other content warnings will be added as is necessary.

EPISODES

THE ENEMY

#01 ROBOTICS

Medicine, engineering, augmentations, human experimentation, black-bag operations, xeno-studies and more. Everything scientific flows through #01 Robotics to the public. Budgets are low, pressure is high and profit is mandatory. There is no success gained in innovation or altruism, not when you can get people addicted to sims and sell drugs to help uncook their brains.

OBLOQCHAIN

Communications and transmissions, social media, business and finances. Number goes up, bodies hit the floor. Obloqchain is addicted to the churn of media, aroused by the sensation of holos changing hands, grinding its teeth for the next big meme and willing to kill for its fix. It flaps its wings like a terrible hummingbird trying to make the nectar flow faster.

POPPIN’ BRANDZ

Being Cool never ended, not for Poppin’ Brandz. Originally they put gem mining run-off in energy drinks and sold it as a miracle elixir. Now they hold the reins of food production and make anything they want. Some feel it’s a perverse desire for acceptance, but then you read the ingredients list and realize it’s not that they want to be loved. They want others to suffer.

QUARK-INFINITY TRADING HOUSE (QIT)

You could block out a sun by filling its orbit with defunct, abandoned factories, warehouses and construction facilities in the wake of the war. QIT is a corporation of professional necromancers digging up the dead and forcing them to dance. Damn near everything inedible is cranked out by their vast machines at marginal prices and dropshipped to your door. And when it breaks, you buy a new one.

TRIGGR

Once upon a time a staffing company got its wires crossed with a private military company. Their awful offspring was called Triggr. Triggr does not create; it assigns purpose. They create contracts, hire employees, kick in doors, kill for money and collect on debts. Its business is in human resources, and it’s one of the few reliable resource pools…for now.

Death In Space was inspired by:

Cowboy Bebop and the movie
Ghost In The Shell
Alien, Predator, Terminator, Robocop, all that rolled into one big ball, but especially how time travel works in Terminator
The PBTA RPG “The Sprawl” for corporation construction
The background and world-building in Borderlands and Bulletstorm (Jess’ note: you can play Bulletstorm. You don’t ever need to play a Borderlands game)
The Bioshock series of games
The music of Wasteland 3
The fact that America as a country desperately needs prison reform and to stop relying on the latest form of acceptable slavery
The Outlast series of games (Jess’ personal note: these games run the gauntlet from “okay” to “fucking awful and hateful” but damn if they don’t go for a funky sort of maximalism in The Outlast Trials. Sometimes you just need to ingest cheesy crap to learn what you want to steal).
Mouthwashing
The death toll of the American Prosperity Gospel and the blood on the hands of televangelists who went from holy rollers to right-wing survivalist shills
The YouTube horror channel “Life Of Luxury”
Adult Swim infomercials
The unrelenting incompetence/disinterest in change of corporate America and unwillingness for major forces to invest a single red cent into making anything better
Working a retail job and really wanting another career where you are not so alienated from your labor

are you Washed in the Blood of The Lamb?