In the year is 2274 AD, the governments of Earth were on the brink of total collapse. The planet had suffered a series of devastating disasters brought on by global climate changes. As the polar ice caps melted away almost entirely, the sea level rose dramatically, swallowing up entire coastal cities. Incredibly intense ‘superstorms’ ravaged surviving communities. Agriculture became all but impossible.
With food in short supply and the human population dwindling, those in control of what government infrastructure remained came to a grim conclusion: Earth was doomed. The survivors pooled what resources remained to fund the construction of half a dozen space ships, the pinnacle of human technology and engineering, massive vessels designed to travel to other star systems.
Though spaceflight technology had advanced to the point where interstellar travel was possible, it would not be easy, fast, or simple. No method to surpass the speed of light had ever been discovered, and vessels the size of colony ships would have to travel considerably slower, relying mostly on momentum and drift to conserve fuel.
Six of these ships were constructed, each to be occupied by a hundred thousand people who volunteered to try to carry humanity’s legacy forward. Given the length of the journey ahead, it was impossible to do anything but the most rudimentary scans of possible habitable planets in nearby star systems. The colony ships had to set out into the dark of space without even knowing for certain whether they’d find a world they could safely inhabit. The colonists would be placed in an experimental form of cryogenic suspension, aging them minimally over the decades-long voyage. They’d be traveling too far to even communicate with Earth again, truly leaving everything behind for good.
This is the story of one of those ships, the colony ship Hercules. They were bound for the fifth planet orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani. It was a rocky world believed to be earthlike and just 10.5 light years from home. The hopeful colonists nicknamed the new world “Gaia”. The Hercules was placed under the command of Captain Lin Heng, a beloved and almost universally respected leader and humanitarian. Captain Heng did more than almost anyone to keep humanity together in Earth’s final years. To assist Captain Heng, a group of officers, experts in a variety of fields and disciplines, were selected to advise her and manage different aspects of the colony project.
Unfortunately, the Hercules met with disaster before it could ever benefit from Captain Heng’s leadership. A catastrophe during the voyage claimed her life along with the lives of dozens of other colonists. Now it would be up to her officers, intended only as advisors and experts in their own fields, to provide the colony with the leadership it would need to survive and thrive. Would it be possible for them to reconcile their ideas for humanity’s future and find a way to move forward? Or would the colonists turn out to have just jumped from one doomed world to another?
OOC Information:
This story will be focused on political scheming in a science fiction setting. The player characters will often be in conflict with each other and will often be pursuing their own agendas. This is a game of intrigue and scheming. You are strongly encouraged to let your subplot drive your character’s actions. Plotting with your fellow players is certainly encouraged, but plotting against them is also encouraged. It will be necessary to form coalitions to work with characters of different views and backgrounds in order to accomplish much.
All player characters in this game will be colony officers who now have to make leadership decisions which will effect the fate of the colony as a whole. Many of the challenges in this game will not be traditional obstacles with strong and weak outcomes, but will only be resolved when a majority of the colony leadership council agrees on a single course of action. Challenges with strong or weak outcomes will generally only be used to effect the exact outcomes of the ‘vote’ challenges, or to obtain additional information.
The Hercules has a diverse, international crew. Feel free to have a character of any race, gender, national origin, religion, or sexual orientation in any role. Futuristic automatic translation software makes lack of a common language a complete non-issue.
There will be a cap of five characters for this game. Applications will be open for a few days. I will be trying to pick characters with a variety of backgrounds and goals, so take a look at other submissions and try to come up with something unique. No more than one character for each nature will be accepted, and I will try to avoid taking multiple characters with the same subplots. Feel free to create your own nature, strength, weakness, and subplot cards in addition to those provided. Make sure your application discusses both your background prior to being chosen for the colony ship and a description of the role you were chosen for.
This is a relaunch of an older game from the very early days of Storium. Though you can look up the prior incarnation of the game if you’d like, I’d encourage applicants not to. It could potentially spoil plot developments from the early game.
Hosted and narrated by:
Lux Tizer (Luxtizer)
Started 06/08/16.
Scenes played: 2
License: Community License
