Deck Of Fridays 25: A Simple Mistake

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Thermal_exhaust_port

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our not-so-weekly feature here at FATE SF! Each week (more or less) since the release of the Deck of Fate, we have made a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the aspect A Simple Mistake. There's a certain amount of metaphor at work in this one so it may or may not work well for your gaming table.

***

A Table of Simple (or not so simple) Mistakes 
(or B-b-b-lunders)

 Roll 4DF or draw a card from the Deck of Fate, and consult the appropriate outcome corresponding to the numerical result on the left. 

• +4: "Listen, if you were to rescue her, the reward would be..."

• +3: "Uh, uh...negative, negative. We have a reactor leak here now."

• +2: "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

• +1: "Now witness the power of this armed and fully operational battle station."

•  0:  "It is obvious to even the simpleminded that Lokai is of an inferior breed."

• -1: "Never. I'll never turn to the Dark Side."

• -2: "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."

• -3: "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk."

• -4: "Cardassian* forces will not have a combat mission - we will not get dragged into another protracted war."**

*Or Klingon, or Romulan, or Sardaukar - or American.

**Actual quote is: "American forces will not have a combat mission - we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq."

Deck Of Fridays 24: Made Up For It

Starchild with Stylus

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF! Each week (more or less) since the release of the Deck of Fate, we have made a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the aspect Made Up For It. The card has a value of zero, so my guess is that the original intent behind this Aspect was "equivalence" or "a wash". But zero really isn't that exciting a standpoint, so let's get creative. Let's assume this is actually about appearance.

As in, "You're made up for it."  Here's a 4DF table of SF cosmetics and beauty supplies.

***

Essential SFnal Beauty Supplies Table

Every starport's Essential Beauty Supply franchise has just what you need. The very thing to get your face on. Or get it off. Stretch out that sagging integument. Swap out that old keratin for something with a bit more pizzaz.  Roll 4DF or draw a card from the Deck of Fate, and consult the appropriate outcome corresponding to the numerical result on the left.

• -4: Envizion (TM). It's expensive. The ultimate anti-aging product, the Envizion chemical peel uses proprietary alien enzymes to dissolve and reshape wayward flesh. It is injected subdermally. Then you just wait - a few hours or a few days, depending on your physiology - and meditate.(But don't fall asleep.) Imagine the face or body you want to have. Usually that is what you get. Indefinitely.  Side effects, which can be avoided or minimized by retaining a licensed Envizion meditation coach, include Doppelganger Syndrome, in which the user begins to resemble a celebrity from the Signal - and Spiders from Mars Syndrome, which is just plain bad. 

• -3: Stylus (TM). These wand-like programmable fabricator-applicators use triple effector beams* to apply cosmetics flawlessly. They can also be configured to custom print and apply nails. A favorite tool of assassins, the Stylus can produce nails and lip gloss with a range of toxic and hallucinatory affects.  

• -2: COMpact (TM). This small programmable beauty kit includes a mirror, a nanofabricator, and a convenient reservoir for balms, creams, and serums. Visit any world with Signal, and the COMpact immediately hooks into the vine and downloads the latest data on cosmetic trends. Select preferences displayed over the "mirror" touchscreen, and then the nanofabricator sets to work producing the cosmetic options of your choice. A variety of applicator extensions are also available for this kit.

• -1:  Freshwig (TM), Hair that Doesn't Fight You! The ultimate in reflexive personal defense, Freshwig comes in many varieties, textures, and colors. But the one thing that all Fleshwig have in common is that they won't give YOUR head a bad hair day. Your remote-controlled weaponized wig will keep you safe anywhere! No more worries about papparazzi, aggressive fans, or kidnappers! The monofilaments of the Freshwig cap read your thoughts, making it easy to trigger a range of effects, from piercing locks of hair to tentacular grasping strands, to the release of toxins.  

•  0:  Spray-on-Face (TM), the Perfect Disguise (TM) for alien or human, living or dead. Sold in packets roughly the diameter of burrito wraps, each SoF is a 1 cm thick layer of programmable flesh. It can be shaped, textured, and colorized to make radical changes in facial features. Each application works for 24 hours - and more if you feed it. But don't wear one too long.

• +1: Animate (TM), roll-on depilatory jellies. You'll be scaly for a few days (all over), as body hair, horns, and scales just flake off. But they're gone forever. 

• +2: Reanimate (TM), programmable keratinizing jelly. Add a new layer of hair, horns, or scales in the colors and textures of your choice. 

• +3: Sign Vine (TM), the Living Extensions that keep you connected.**  These hair extensions look like dreads, but they are plants that form symbiotic relationships with hair follicles. They range in color from rust red to dark green to brown and sustain themselves through photosynthesis. No one with Sign Vine is ever truly alone, because via scalp induction, the vine connect the user to the local Signal. 

• +4: BounzTatz (TM). Popularized by spacers, these "living tattoos" range from animated flesh glyphs to three dimensional biological graft creatures.*** Want a parrot or a monkey on your shoulder - permanently? BounzTatz brings it.

*Iain M. Banks just keeps on giving.

**Inspired by Nnedi Okorafor's Zahrah the Windseeker.

***Inspired by Samuel R. Delaney's Nova and Babel-17.

Deck Of Fridays 23: Left In The Dark

Morlocks in George Pal's The Time Machine (1960)

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF! Each week (more or less) since the release of the Deck of Fate, we have made a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Left in the Dark. In English, that's a commonly used colloquial expression that denotes not knowing what's going on, often due to the conscious agency of someone who is in the know. But we're interpreting it more literally today.

At first I thought of poor Gollum.

Then I remembered the Morlocks.

***

For the Morlocks, being left in the dark is a rite of passage. Sooner or later, every Morlock youth is drugged, rendered unconscious, and then abandoned in the underworld. In the cold and the dark. They're alone, with no food or water. 

Those who survive, make their way back to their band.  They gain a true name, a mate, and the beginnings of social status: a key to a machine, locker, or room in the underworld. Morlocks who don't survive, well, sooner or later their bones get discovered when someone trips on them in the Dark Galleries. Those bones get kicked swiftly into a dark corner to be forgotten. Or they are quickly claimed, pocketed, and later carved into fetishes and weapons.

But there's another way that Morlocks get Left in the Dark. All Morlocks love the things below, but their kind are also driven by a deterritorializing impulse. Bands move on, seeking new living spaces and places to labor freely by crossing the narrow dark spaces between the worlds. New machines. New galleries and rooms to conquer and explore. 

Now-useless keys soon become charms and wards.

At first, the Morlocks moved about in time and space using the Visitor's time machine. Later, they found similar machines created by others. The Morlocks spread to still more worlds. The machine tenders thrived wherever they found galleries to explore and machinery to tend underground.

In time, the Morlocks found other ways to squeeze between the worlds. There are passages in the dark, gates that open onto branching tunnels walled by absolute darkness. Shamans take the lead; the rest of the clan follows. Morlocks traverse these tunnels by forming chains of hands. Some even use real chains to bind one to the next. No one wants to be lost forever, blind in the dark. 

But on every such journey, someone stumbles and loses hold of their fellows. Or a link in the chain breaks, as if of its own accord. Those whose chains break lose their way; they cannot see in this dark between worlds. They find themselves alone, in a pocket of darkness. 

They quail, brood, and curse that darkness.

And the darkness curses them back. 

Those left in these dark interstices grow strange. They grow strange: their bodies change in gross and subtle ways. Their minds change. They hunger and thirst, alone in the dark. 

They become perverse desiring engines, seeking to transform others.

Those left in the dark When others pass, they extend a foot to trip other feet. They bite and break the chain tying one traveler to the destiny of another. 

Misery loves company. Mutation abhors a vacuum. 

Deck of Fridays 22: Treacherous Terrain

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF! Each week (more or less) since the release of the Deck of Fate, we have made a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Treacherous Terrain. It calls to mind the hostile nature of The Green Worlds, planets where plants and insects have a mind of their own; a mind which is hostilely disposed toward humans. Here is a 4DF encounter table based on this treacherous terrain.

***
Green Worlds Encounter Table

You are in the jungle. What do you encounter?  Roll 4DF or draw a card from the Deck of Fate, and consult the encounter corresponding to the numerical result on the left.

• -4: The earth suddenly opens up and down you go. This is a pit trap set by a giant arthropod. 

• -3: A clicking, a buzzing, a humming. An arthropod army is on the move. A human settlement is in danger.

• -2: That rustling sound. A flash of  bright color in the jungle. Stripes. You are being stalked by a feral orchid predator.

• -1:  The air smells sweet, redolent of one of the plant masters' toxic or hallucinogenic gases. A Peyotl on a litter borne by human slaves can't be far away from that smell.

•  0: A party of well-armed Saguaro and their human porter-slaves. 

• +1: The massive fronds of a giant carnivorous fern reach out to wrap up your limbs.

• +2: Vines guard the entrance to an ancient temple, cave, or ruin. There is no breeze, but that doesn't stop the vines from twitching.

• +3: You are suddenly surrounded by a band of hostile, ape-like creatures or anthropomorphs: humans who have degenerated into a bestial state.

• +4: It's a big thick beanstalk, and it goes up and up

Deck of Fridays 21: Neutral Zones

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Neutral_Zone_Incursion

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF! Each week (more or less) since the release of the Deck of Fate, we have made a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Neutral Discovery. It calls to mind the concept of Neutral Zones. So without further ado, we have a brief quote from the 17th Imperial Sovereign, who is known as the The Shadow Cast By All Suns.

***

Nature abhors a Neutral Zone. All Neutral Zones are semi-permeable, riddled with slipknots, and layered upon with the positive and negative enumerations of hyperspace. The most fleeting of political boundaries, all such zones of exclusion eventually collapse inward upon themselves. 

Each one is a potent symbol of Defeat, of a battle or war that has been lost: a "partial victory" in the parlance of today's generals and political consultants.

Indeed, the Neutral Zones are a plague upon the body politic of our Empire. Such zones are a hindrance to advance of the Imperial Extents, and to the march of justice and friendship among the worlds. Within Our Body, they are vacuoles formed to contain an irritant, sanctuaries for inimical species and rogue Minds. Such spaces invariably become havens for pirates, privateers, smugglers, and slavers, and places of unwitting and deadly discoveries. 

Beyond Our Body, they are the space of non-confrontation with greater enemies: a haven for espionage and covert fleet maneuvers, planetary bush wars, fraught discoveries, the birthplace of pocket empires and border kingdoms, and initiatives toward diplomacy and collaboration. 

Each Neutral Zone also gives us pause for reflection, even as it halts our Fleets and Legions. An ancient Earth philosopher once wrote that an Empire's advance necessitates a hollowing at its center. An Empire produces its own negation. As we incorporate the barbarians beyond our Neutral Zones, what indeed becomes of us?

Deck Of Fridays 20: Top Of The World

Welcome to the 20th episode of DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF! Each week since the release of the print edition of the Deck of Fate*, we have made a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Top of the World, a card with a +3 value. This seems appropriate for celebrating our 20th post in the series!

Top of the World makes me think of space elevators which are often colloquially referred to in SF as beanstalks. So today we have a table on Beanstalks that you can use to flesh out one or more details of a setting which includes one.

***
Jack's Table

Roll 4DF and consult the corresponding result below.

• -4: Monsters (Horta, Dholes, deviant Morlocks, rogue 'bots, etc.) are gnawing at the beanstalk's roots

• -3: The beanstalk is ruined and abandoned, and has fallen into a tangle planetside

• -2: A literal Tower of Babel, the beanstalk's populations are culturally and linguistically balkanized and frequently in conflict with each other 

• -1: Jim Crow to the stars - the beanstalk's amenities (transport tubes, hotel and dining spaces, etc.) are segregated according to some discriminatory scheme (humans vs. uplifts and robots, for example)

•  0: The beanstalk is ruined and abandoned, but still upright - and ready for exploration and plunder

• +1: A typical beanstalk: a spaceport at the apex, a commercial-industrial city at the base

• +2: The beanstalk is the hub of a thriving interplanetary or interstellar civilization 

• +3: The beanstalk has numerous zones/rings of habitation, baroquely stratified with ascending tech levels (low at the base, astonishingly high at the apex)**

• +4: Gods (Vorlonic aliens, transhumans, etc.) live at the apex, and lord over all below

*With some exceptions.

**As in Alastair Reynolds' Terminal City.

Deck of Fridays 19: Clear Path

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Clear Path, a card with a 0 value. A scenario seed comes to mind.

***

It was a tough punching through the orbital sentries around Piranesi VII. There were thousands of them orbiting this dead world, waiting for intruders. We used dropships loaded with green troops to get their attention, while the carrier and its three escorts picked off the satellites. 

Clear path. 

We were happy that the three dropships with veteran troops made it down there. Of course, each dropship was sent to different points planetside. The mission was simple: find out if this planet had any inhabitants - really, anything of worth.

The atmosphere appeared to be breathable, but we kept our helmets on. We're not Omega House for sure, but we're not just stupid grunts either. Well-armed, we disembarked, and started our surveys and sweeps.

The entire planetary surface was a built environment. Ruins everywhere. Below that surface were galleries, stairways, more layers of structure. Lots of open space. Clear paths in all directions. 

Too many of them, in fact. The pings on deep radar show that this is a shellworld. Some of the deeper layers are still pressurized. They have exotic atmospheres, and things down there are moving.

We're going to be here for a while. 

Deck of Fridays 18: Are You Kidding Me

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Are You Kidding Me, a card with a -2 value. Perhaps a situation with an unexpectedly bad outcome.

In this case, something is wrong with your starship. Really wrong.

***
Starship Mishaps Table

Roll 4DF and consult the corresponding result below.

• -4: The stardrive ejected - too bad you're still in hyperspace

• -3: The stardrive imploded - welcome to your own personal singularity

• -2: Out of phase - that's right, your ship is partly here, and partly, well, elsethere. Pick the alien dimension of your choice.

• -1: Misjump, misjump, misjump - there's one happening about every 33 minutes

•  0: Radiation leaks. Water leaks. Atmosphere leaks. Take your pick. It may be more than one

• +1: No shields, no deflectors, no sensors

• +2: KACHANG! - Crashlanding below decks. Or crashlaunch. Take your pick, and choose a location such as a fighter bay, shuttle bay, or drone retrieval system.

• +3: Thunk-thunk-thunk. Did all the escape pods just launch?

• +4: Your ship's computer didn't have an attitude before, but it sure does now. And it just tried to kill someone

Deck Of Fridays 17: Didn't See You Coming

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Didn't See You Coming Point, a card with a +1 value. So, an element of surprise or distraction creates mildly favorable circumstances for someone who seeks to act first and/or evade detection.

Perhaps the PCs are approaching a checkpoint, roadblock, or security station. Here is a 4DF table of reasons why the person responsible for spotting your approach failed to do so!

***

Didn't See You Coming, the Table

Roll 4DF and consult the corresponding result below.

• -4: I am so not high
• -3: Sooooo sleepy
• -2: Kinda busy flirting right now
• -1: Distracted by communications (e.g., texting, VR, comms, phone, etc.)
•  0: Oh, I'm just too busy noticing everything to have noticed you
• +1: Wow, that person over there is really attractive
• +2: You were not the person (droid, alien, etc.) I was looking for
• +3: Busy with a real emergency
• +4: You have a sympathizer or secret admirer*

*They really DID see you coming but they are on your side!

Deck Of Fridays 16: On Point

The Terrible Lords of Xibalba

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: On Point. Today we're casting a deadly spell, a sharp-edged mirror knife made of the darkest glass: Call Knife Point.

***

Call Knife Point (Evocation/Planar, Cost, Per Scene, Persistent, Corrupting): Deep within the Underworld of Xibalba lies the place known as the House of Knives. It's where the Hero Twins were tested, a place where obsidian knives hurl through the air in all directions. Demonic knives tear the living into ribbons of bloody flesh. 

The Lords of Xibalba teach the spell Call Knife Point to priests or sorcerers who please them in some way. Lord Tezcatlipoca also knows this spell; Lord Smoking Mirror teaches this spell to mortals who strike the right bargain. Both the Lords of Xibalba and Lord Tezcatlipoca favor those who sow the kind of chaos and terror which the House of Knives brings to its guests. 

The spell Call Knife Point summons forth into our world one of the obsidian flying daggers from the House of Knives. This spell can only be cast at night, or when the caster is in the Underworld. (It can also be cast in the depths of space, as long as the summoner does not face a nearby sun.)  A living demonic shard of volcanic glass from the Underworld, the Knife Point does the bidding of its summoner for one Scene. The dagger obeys the conscious thoughts of its caster. It can fly across up to three Zones per turn to strike a target of the caster's choice.

The summoner rolls CHA to call the Knife Point. If they Succeed with Style on the roll, two Knife Points appear rather than one.

Each turn, the Knife Point may attack a target of the caster's choice. The Knife Point Attacks using the caster's CHA vs. the target's DEX; shifts scored cause Physical Stress.

If a Knife Point Takes Out at least one individual, or inflicts at least one Consequence on a target during the Scene, the caster may dispel it no later than the end of that Scene.

However, should a Knife Point fail to draw blood in the Scene, the GM should draw a card from the Deck of Fate, and select the most appropriate aspect on the card to determine what the Knife Point does next.

Unquenched Knife Points frequently turn on their summoners, as the Lords of Xibalba enjoy the irony inherent in such predicaments. Such blades may also seek to escape the location where they were summoned in order to explore, and search for new prey.

Loved ones of the summoner are particularly choice targets for Knife Points. Such a loose blade remains an active threat until the sun rises - or indefinitely in a dark place such as the Underworld or the lower decks of a space hulk.

Deck of Fridays 15: Charged Up

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Charged Up. Today we're sharing a Nexialist spell, designed for all those times when, well, something's Out of Juice.

***

Blasters, beamswords, tablets, personal shields: it's terrible when our handheld devices lose charge, flicker out, and die. It always happens at the most inopportune times. This is why the Nexialists believe in always being prepared. Back-up weapons, extra battery packs, charging cords. 

But there are always those times when you are just plain Out of Juice: there's no nearby power source. Or it's one of those interminable Yangs vs. Kohms battles, and you've exhausted every weapon and battery on the advancing hordes. 

Time for a recharge the Nexialist way:

Nexial's Living Battery (Evocation, Cost, Per Scene, Persistent): This Nexialist formula is used to sacrifice some of the caster's life energy as fuel for a small technological device. The caster rolls CHA to Create an Advantage by replacing an existing temporary aspect on a device such as Out of Juice with a new temporary aspect such as Temporarily Charged. This aspect lasts for one Scene. 

While most commonly used in battle, the formula has other applications. For example, archaeologists often use it to infuse energy into long powered-down ancient devices in order to awaken them. This often has unforeseen consequences as many of the devices of the ancients were self-aware, and can be distrustful or even vindictive toward those who disturb their dreams...

Deck Of Fridays 14: Just Plain Cursed

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Just Plain Cursed. So, another random draw from the deck with a pretty negative (-3) result!

***

Bottled trouble, so to speak. It's hiding right there in plain sight. The sign by the door says simply "Botanica." They say it used to be an apothecary's shop. But now it sells mundane magical supplies: herbs, folk medicines, candles, incense, holy cards, figurines of saints, a few self-help books on the power of prayer - and bottled waters.

There are several little displays of water-filled bottles around the store. The displays catch they eye; they're colorful. Each bottle has a label with the name of the natural source of water from which its contents were collected. Most of the labels are still legible, although several are quite old and rather indecipherable. Some are smeared, blurred. A few are written in a script that seems alive with quick motion, like a centipede's legs.

None of the bottles has a price tag. The owner says: "They're all special. Make me an offer."

Expect to haggle. It's a high stakes game.

Because these water bottles aren't the kind you drink.

Oh, no. You use this water to make a space sacred. Put a bottle in a window and let the sun will shine through the water. Sprinkle it on friends as a blessing.

The waters come from different sources. Local rivers, streams, ponds, lakes. Some come from farther afield: the Finger Lakes. The Amazon. The Nile. The Ganges. Lake Nyos. Places you've never heard of.

Most are completely innocuous. But mixed in with the safe ones are bottled waters that are just pain cursed.

Frackwater. Medusa's tears. Devil's bongwater. Snake well water. Roaches' spit. Ice water from cannibal glaciers. Plasma squeezed from pus-filled wounds. Water from a baptismal font where someone took a bloody leak. Farm creek runoff. One of the colored theosophical bottles of General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez.

You'll pay dearly for one of these bottles. Their owner went to a lot of effort to collect them. She promises they'll put a hurt on someone. You'll see.

OGL MECHANICS

Each water bottle is a one-use potion. The potion's target is affected by drinking some or all of the water in the bottle. Even a drop or two is sufficient to produce an effect. 

The potion causes a Moderate or Severe Consequence depending on the nature of the potion. Consequences may be either Physical or Mental, and can only be removed through magical healing. A Heal or Purify spell may remove any of these Consequences. 

(N.B., some of the lesser Healing spells (Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds), only remove a Physical Consequence, or reduce its severity.)  

Deck Of Fridays 13: No Way Out

http://sepha.deviantart.com/art/The-Lament-Configuration-39597789

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: No Way Out. That is a pretty negative sounding Aspect (and the card it's on is valued as a -3 on a 4DF roll), but we have something special in mind for it. Anime fans may recall a certain maze trap spell used in Doomed Megalopolis. That anime was one of the first ones I ever watched, and the spell has stuck with me for almost 20 years. So it's time to put it on paper.

The spell is called a Kimon Tonkou, and its historical inspiration is described in detail here. We'll provide a brief overview. The Kimon Tonkou is derived from the Chinese Taoist divination practice called Qimen Dunjia, or Strange Demon Gate Escaping Technique. Although the spell has had different attributes and effects at different times, for our purposes, it is a spell which traps a demon in a pattern-trap, allowing the caster to escape via teleportation.

It's a very useful spell. There's No Way Out for the demon, while the spell is in effect. But the caster has a ready means of escape.

What follows is a version of the Kimon Tonkou for FATE SF's Galactic Grimoire using the Fate Freeport Companion's excellent mechanics for creating discrete spells.

***

Strange Demon Gate Escaping Technique (Divination/Planes, Cost, Scene, Once Per Scenario, Requires one Divination or Planar spell, and one Evocation spell): This spell is used to trap a demon. It is most useful when the caster is aware of the demon's imminent arrival. Strange Demon Gate Escaping Technique is frequently used to interrupt rituals used to summon demons, diverting they into a prearranged pattern-trap. 

Once the demon is within the trap: 

• A Banish spell may be used to dispel the demon, and/or
• The caster may teleport away to safety to a location of their choice

The spell's ritual begins with the preparation and placement of a pattern-trap. The trap is created by forming a pattern of stones, gems, tiles, or other materials. It must be placed within a few zones of where the demon is likely to materialize. The caster traces a particular path through the pattern; this action "charges" the labyrinth with a pattern of energy with many confusing eddies and flows. The shifting currents of energy constrain the demon's attempts to escape the pattern-trap. 

Once the demon materializes, it is diverted into the pattern-trap and must puzzle its way through to the trap's exit. As soon as the demon materializes in the trap, the caster may either teleport away to a specific location of their choice, or tarry a bit to first cast Banish.

When the caster teleports away, the demon will not be able to perceive the location to which they have teleported. The demon is thereafter unable to perceive the caster or divine their location until the two are again within physical proximity of each other (i.e., within the same zone). Observers outside the pattern-trap have no such restrictions. 

Pattern-traps can also be placed near an interdimensional gate or Nexus Point to capture a creature as it exits the portal. With this use of the spell, any creature passing through the portal is captured by the pattern-trap and must similarly figure its way out.

The spell is discharged at the end of the scene; in most cases, the demon will then be able to exit the pattern-trap.

There are potent variants of Strange Demon Gate Escaping Technique which use Evocation to manifest a pattern-trap at the moment the demon materializes. These traps take the form of three-dimensional puzzles with moving segments. Because of their uncanny similarity to the much smaller Lemarchand's Box, some scholars believe that these manifested pattern-traps are the inverse form or negative image of Lemarchand's demon-gate key puzzle boxes.  

Deck of Fridays 12: Betrayed

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate,RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Betrayed. This is a pretty good fit thematically with one of the novels I am reading right now, Cherie Priest's Boneshaker. It's the book that kicked off the second wave of steampunk back in 2009. It's a very gritty novel, not particularly "light" or giddy steampunk - not the good clean fun divorced from the hierarchy and mayhem of 19th Century capitalism that so many steampunk aficionados are content with today.

The world of Boneshaker is filled with the consequences of betrayal: the lingering war with the traitorous South, racism and nativism in the supposedly free North and Northwest, women's oppression, and environmental destruction wrought by careless and callous inventors and industrialists.

So, a scenario seed on the theme of betrayal, inspired by Boneshaker.

***

Your husband the genius inventor was responsible for thousands of deaths; thank God he's dead. He left you to raise a kid on your own: a good kid, but one who's looking for answers. Too bad the answers he wants are all about his father. 

You had to change your last name to get away from your husband's horrible reputation. Not everyone gets to destroy a city with one of their inventions. Not everyone turns thousands of people into zombies in an industrial accident. 

The kid's taken off looking for answers. He headed right for the ruins of the city. Right on the other side of that Wall. You know, the Wall that keeps the zombies and the poison gas inside the ruins and away from the living city.

So you followed him in. You want to find him and save him before the gas or the zombies get him. Or cannibals. Or slavers. There are lots of possibilities in the ruins. There are people still living there, and a lot of them are worse than the zombies.

Although now that your over the Wall you've found some people who aren't too bad. They're helping you try to find your son. But the rumors! Everyone thinks the mysterious ever-masked Doctor who lives in the ruins is one and the same person as your deceased husband.

Supposedly deceased. Because if he were still alive, and had just abandoned you and the kid - well, that would be a betrayal.  Better that the zombies get their hands on him than you do.   

Deck of Fridays 11: LB 1968117-G

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week, we are continuing a planet generation project we began yesterday. We made a series of rolls using the Planet Generator rules in Chapter 26 of Starblazer Adventures.  Then we asked readers to contribute their speculations and help interpret the rolls.

Today, we are putting those comments together, and drawing a card from the Deck of Fate to help further flesh out the world. From the card we drew, we'll be using the Aspect Uninspired.  

*** 

Part of the Linebarger survey series, the dwarf planet LB 1968117-G is the seventh planet in orbit around a red giant star. It is the outermost planet before the large asteroid belt surrounding the system. The planet, ironically known as Deep Gee, only has a gravity of about .35G. It's a metal-rich planetoid covered by a thinning layer of ice.

The planet's three small moons, which are actually ancient terraforming machines of unknown origin, concentrate and augment the distant sun's radiation, focusing it on the planet's ice layer. The ice sublimes and chemically degrades under the radiation lens effect of the moons, releasing a thin layer of oxygen which steadily bleeds into space. Current projections are that the remaining planetary surface ice will be gone within a few decades.

In deep crevices and fissures on the surface of Deep Gee, the oxygen is concentrated enough to be thin-but-breathable - with many impurities, some of which are organic. The planet has a faint ring system with this same water-oxygen-organic mix, albeit once again frozen.  Most settlements on the planet are built in these fissures in order to harvest, filter, and purify the available atmosphere.

While located far coreward of the Empire (and indeed coreward of the R.U.R.), the planet has a fairly sizable human population of 6,310 miners, prospectors, and scientists. They live in cliffside/subterranean settlements built within the gloomy fissures, which provide protection from the radiation emitted by the moons.

Human settlements are highly functional but entirely uninspired in their design. No one would come here for a holiday, or work here if they had better employment or research prospects. The suicide rate is between 3 and 5% per year in the different settlements; no one is doing anything about this, and bringing the matter up just results in indignant muttering about "Ghost Wolves." The locals are obsessive about never being alone, which has caused some odd variations in privacy norms and resulting "personal" accommodations - double beds only, double restroom stalls, and no one-person vehicles. All private spaces are designed for a minimum of two persons only.

Many of the settlements were built on top of more ancient settlements constructed hundreds of years ago by others - presumably by other species. There are a few variations in the paleo-settlements' designs, which has led xenoarchaeologists at the Nexialist Institute in G-Port (the largest fissure-settlement) to conclude that up to four distinct races may have explored this planetoid in the past.

The planet's only industry is mining, which gives the Deep Gee its Good (0) rating in Resources (industrial). The overall Technology Level of this world is Poor (-1), meaning that trade is a necessity in order to keep mining and life support equipment functioning. Tunnels and mines run below the surface in many directions. Miners extract metals, as well as interesting and sometimes dangerous alien junk from vast subsurface vaults that the locals call "Shrines." Most Shrine locations are jealously guarded secrets held by an individual prospector and a small team of miners. Several stasis boxes have been recovered from these Shrines.

In a few settlements, including G-Port, all subsurface extraction is done by the Autonomous Subsurface Assemblies (ASAs): collectives of ancient R.U.R. mining robots who were on the planet before humans arrived. The ASAs are known to be hostile to intruders mining or prospecting in the deep areas that the collectives claim for themselves. Instead, the robots bring ore to the surface (but only very rarely alien artifacts), and trade allotments of ore for items that either interest them (e.g., data crystals on various subjects including a variety of texts in extinct alien languages) or for replacement parts, tools, and equipment that the collectives require for self-repair and the maintenance/expansion of their own habitats.

Deck of Fridays 10: Flimsy

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Flimsy. Since I traveled to DC this week, it occurred to me that a Damaged Luggage Table might be a fun thing to do today. After all, luggage ccan be pretty flimsy. And so are the excuses people sometimes offer for the illicit items they pack.

Like modern day airports, the spaceports of tomorrow will have plenty of damaged and unclaimed or confiscated luggage. In the Alwyn Campaign, one episode dealt with the luggage accumulated in the lower levels of the John M. Ford Interstellar Starport, a colossal wreck sandwiched between the ruins of Minneapolis and St. Paul. They found that the luggage had been thoroughly sorted through and reorganized into groups by contents (i.e., a pile of suitcases filled with underwear, another with projectile and energy weapons, one with evening gowns, another pile with drugs, etc.).

So what might players find in the damaged, confiscated, or unclaimed luggage in your game's starport?

Damaged Luggage Table

Roll 4DF and consult the results below.

Result:

• -4: An antimatter bomb with detonator; countdown underway!

• -3: A severed head or other body part. Missing ambassador found! 
• Roll 1DF: on a (-) face, it's from a human; on a blank face, from a robot, replicant, or android; on a (+) face, from an alien (yowzah, the stink!). 

• -2: The luggage was custom-built to hide a stasis box. 
• Roll on the "What's Inside the Stasis Box?" table to determine its contents.

• -1: Biological samples with cryptic notations in an alien language. The samples are small bugs, worms, and eggs. 

• 0: Drugs of some kind. 
• Roll 1DF: on a (-) face, they're powders; on a blank face, bottled liquids or gases; on a (+) face, pills.

Molecular Disruptor

• +1: A recent model, highly concealable molecular disrupter: the favorite weapon of assassins and hijackers.

• +2: The luggage is full of information.
• Roll 1D6, and consult the according result below: 
1. Books, scrolls, or maps
2. E-books on a tablet-like device
3. Data crystals, unmarked pastel colored microtapes, or data spools
4. Psychic sutras recorded on small bits of folded or rolled spacetime. Call in the professionals.
5. A sentient jewel, possibly the "egg" from which a Spindle might coalesce
6. An Autodidacta, Plasmate, or Laminate

• +3: At first glance, there's nothing too unusual among the items in this piece of luggage. The clothes look pretty nice, but some of them feel rather weird and tingly. And the tips of your fingers seem to disappear when you touch them...  

• +4: A variety of extremely high-value goods reported to the Port Authority as stolen from several different passengers on-board a luxury starliner. Unfortunately, the passengers have long gone their separate ways. Many of the items are insured and the underwriters would like the items returned to their rightful owners - that's always better than making a series of big payouts. 

Deck of Fridays 9: The Wrong Tools

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: The Wrong Tools. Today's Deck of Fridays is a scenario seed.

The Wrong Tools

Your tools and engineering manuals are state of the art - for 1906, that is. That's usually a good thing; it's when you're living, after all. You're good enough that the Baltimore Gun Club often hires you and your mates as the first set of hands and eyes to examine their strange treasures. Enigmatic machines harvested from the still unmapped corners of the globe, and even, reportedly, from inside the Hollow Earth itself.

But today you face a truly strange enigma. Inside the airship hanger lurks the largest land ironclad you have ever seen. It has enormous treads. Some are broken. It has as many main guns as a dreadnought. A few are clearly damaged.

How did the Gun Club even get it here? And where did they get it?

The thing seems excessively hot.

And it talks.

The ironclad seems quite cagey.  It keeps asking if you belong to something called the "North American Combine."

That sounds like a motorized tractor factory to you.

And it won't tell you anything more about itself than its name: Mark Four. So it must be some kind of robot. But it seems way too big to be a robot. Perhaps there are pilots inside and this is all some kind of trick?

The machine has only one demand: to be repaired. Fix its treads. Clear the jam in something it calls its "missile bay."

Then let it go on its way.

The machine says you have 24 hours. If you refuse to help it, the leviathan says it will be forced to "self-destruct". There will be something it calls "fallout", which it promises will wipe out the Eastern Seaboard.

That doesn't sound too good...

Deck Of Fridays 8: Opposing Forces

http://bi-radialmatrixtutorial.weebly.com/

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Opposing Forces. The card has a zero value - truly balanced. Today's post for Deck of Fridays is a spell that creates this condition.


The Mirrored Nexus of Opposing Forces (The Planes, Cost, Persistent/Permanent): A favorite combat and assassination formula of the Nexialists, The Mirrored Nexus of Opposing Forces summons a living being from a mirror dimension who is in all respects but one identical a targeted person within three Zones of the summoner. The essential difference is that the being summoned follows an ethical alignment opposed to that of the target. Except for this difference, the summoned double will have the same (or very similar) appearance, personality, dress, aspects, skills, stunts, and equipment as the spell's target.

The summoner must have a sample of the target's DNA or a digital record of their genetic code in order for the formula to acquire the proper target. The target's genetic material must be actively being scanned by the summoner. For this reason, Nexialist casters often wear a heads-up display while casting the formula.

Without this DNA sample, the being summoned will invariably be a double of the summoner. The records of Nexialist formulae always exclude this important detail; it is one of the many unpleasant surprises left for those who would steal their secrets.

The summoned double will immediately attempt to kill the target. If the double fails, it is returned at the end of the Scene to its mirror dimension of origin. On the other hand, if the target is Taken Out, it is shifted to the mirror dimension from which its double came. (Concessions should create very interesting ongoing complications for the target.) The double will take the place of the target, and remains on the summoner's plane indefinitely.

The summoned double has no particular disposition with respect to its summoner. Its immediate focus is the elimination of the target. The GM may secretly roll 4DF to determine the double's disposition toward the summoner. The more negative the roll, the more negative the disposition; the more favorable the roll, the more favorable the disposition.

Deck of Fridays 7: A Solid Blow

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: A Solid Blow. 

We're using it today to create a location for +trey causey's Weird Adventures RPG, a pulp setting based in The City, a more fantastic D&Dified version of our beloved Gotha-, er, I mean New York City. I'll be running a Weird Adventures FAE game at Con of the North in February 2014. This location may just feature in the game...

The Monster Hall of Maxwell Geat

Every neighborhood in The City has its boxing halls. Some are private gentlemen's clubs with fine booze, betting, and cigars. Others are street corner neighborhood establishments with a Turkish bath next door. Still others are run by settlement houses as places to keep kids off the street and out of trouble. Of course, most of these joints still attract trouble. Lots of it: gangsters, nosy cops, gangs, and much worse.

But not all halls are created equal. Some are larger than life, special. There's the Starvation Army Boxing Hall where it's Salvation Street Soldiers get their training. There's Mama Mawl's Boxing Club, the only place in The City where girls and women are trained to box and face off in the ring against each other - a favorite destination for bohemians and aesthetes. 

And then there's Monster Hall. Its proprietor, Maxwell "Monster" Geat is a huge meat-slab of a man of Northern Ealderish stock - although he's rumored to have some Hillbilly Giant blood running in his veins... or something worse. He opened the Club several years after he returned home to The City from the Great War. 

How a giant like him could have survived in the trenches is anyone's guess. Geat is so that tall he should have presented a target that would be impossible to miss. But survive he did, and after a few years making a name (and a bundle) for himself fighting in the ring, he opened his own boxing club in the tough Hardluck neighborhood, just a few blocks from City Police Headquarters, at the junction of Hardluck, Yiantown, and Dead End. 

The club draws all types: off-duty (and sometimes on-duty) cops from Headquarters, people with Hell Syndicate connections, people in the trades, kids from the local gangs - and even upscale types from the Fate Exchange. Even with such an ecumenical crowd, there is a noticeable stir in the place when members of the Municipal Department of Animal and Pest Control (the so-called "Exterminators", the only City employees who dare enter The City's endless warren of sewers and tunnels) show up for a fight.  But show up the do, often parking their trucks in the alley behind Monster Hall.

There are a few rumors in circulation about Monster Hall:

• The fights are unpredictable here. Scrawny teenagers have won fights against burly, veteran boxers. This attracts gamblers - especially the sort who enjoy placing very risky bets.

• If he thinks you have moxie, Maxwell Geat may offer to train you in a special boxing technique: The Solid Blow. It's something he learned in the trenches. The Solid Blow doesn't knock people out. It breaks bones, and makes opponents bleed... inside.  

• If you have enough money, you may be able to buy your way into special fights in the basement. The Exterminators often show up just for these. 

• Maxwell Geat has a special water cooler in his locked back office. No one who has taken a drink there before a fight has ever lost that fight in the main ring.

• He also has a habit. Geat injects himself with a potent alchemical substance called The Cane. It causes bruising, but it also makes the user feel invulnerable. A lot of the fighters in his stable - Geat's so-called Monsters - have started to dabble with it from time to time. Look for the skinny ones with the scabby arms. 

• After every big fight, a kid leaves Monster Hall with a bundle. He gets a police escort up to Mama Mawl's Boxing Club, where the package gets delivered.

Monster Hall Aspects

• High Concept: A boxing club that's a bookie's nightmare
• Trouble: Cops and Hell Syndicate come together here
• Fights above, fights below
• A water cooler with a secret
• Home of "The Solid Blow"

Deck Of Fridays 6: Horrifying Incompetence

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Horrifying Incompetence. 

There aren't too many situations where horrifying incompetence is more deadly, or more common, than in the practice of summoning demons. So here is a summoners' mishaps table for those botched, incompetent demon summonings.

Horrifying Incompetence: 

A Table of Summoners' Mishaps

Roll 4DF and consult the results below.

• -4: Why didn't you cleanse and secure the ritual space properly before the summoning occurred? A fly, a mouse, a mosquito, or a cat - or worse still, a beetle, spider, or insolent slave walked-in and interrupted the ritual. It has now been incorporated into the summoned demon. This is a game-changer, as all of your protections were based on what you thought would be summoned!

• -3: The summoning templates you drew before the casting were a mirror image of what was in the book. How did you not notice that until just now? Oddly enough, this demon you've summoned could be your twin. Now it's smiling at you. This is not what you were expecting at all. You think it plans to replace you.

• -2: You figured that if one sacrifice is good, two, three... maybe ten - that should be even better. A little more study would have shown you that sacrifices have subtle, symbolic meanings; they're not just food for demons. Now you are dealing with multiple, angry, identical copies of the particular demon you intended to summon. 

• -1: Your sacrifice has insulted the demon. Warrior Demons don't want child sacrifices; that's dishonorable. Demons of Sorcerous Might want literate, psychically potent sacrifices such as other sorcerers - not illiterate, psychically-null field hands. You'd better think fast. Maybe a part of you would be a sufficient sacrifice to placate the demon?

• 0: Fumbled words, botched gestures. The wrong incense, sloppily drawn summoning templates. The wrong sacrifices. Did you even learn the language properly before you started attempting to summon demons using it? Do you even know what the words mean? The gestural language, which has been used for thousands of years? The demon's not interested in materializing, and departs with a blast of pure, malevolent contempt. The blast leaves you with a Moderate Consequence. This Aspect should be interesting, memorable, and something that makes others avoid you. 

• +1: You definitely got the demon's attention. Several demons' attention, in fact. All these long, jibbery names sound the same to an ignoramus like you. From your shitty pronunciation, the demons aren't too sure which of them you really want. Roll 1d6. That's how many answer your summoning.

• +2: You blew it; you entirely botched the binding and limiting elements of the summoning ritual. No one will ever summon this demon again. It is now a permanent resident of this plane.

• +3: The ritual went perfectly. Or so it seemed. Summoning the demon was as easy as opening a door. You're obviously a more puissant sorcerer than you realize; unfortunately, you're just not subtle. You tore the "door" off its hinges. There is now a permanent portal between your world and the demon's home plane. It's always open, both ways. Hopefully it doesn't grow more than a meter or two per day...

• +4: Psychic energy has to be managed carefully during rituals. Too bad you are psychically incontinent. You invested so much psychic energy into the ritual that it seems fitting, nay, inevitable, that you should join the demon on its home plane. Right now. Just step through the portal.