Drawn from the Undertow

Heartbreaker2196 wrote (01:37a LST): I love Starcadia so much. Now there's a girl who knows what it takes to get out there and GET THINGS DONE. I knew she'd be able to swoop in and prove that Rembrandt's claim to the throne is real. What does it matter if some stupid old elves happened to be in this part of space thousands of years ago anyway. What matters is who is here NOW, not who USED to be here. And huh. No sign of Aurelia anywhere this week, Finny? It must be so difficult rooting for a sinking ship.

CREDITS:

Mike Painter as Hercule Heavensward
Lexi Waltner as Marci Campbell
Fabby Garza as Alpha AKA Anna
Molly Rhinebeck as L.E. Booktok
Max Knightley as Lavender Spadeheart & Flip.exe
Luke Varner as The GM
Additional Voices by Crystal Zaslavchik

MUSIC BY MAX KNIGHTLEY

EDITED BY LUKE VARNER AND MOLLY RHINEBECK

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains body horror, mind control, and bloody violence.

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We're doin' a cyberpunk season and that means Luke won't shut the fuck up about his favorite collectible card game! Luckily, Ty has immediately gotten deep into it and ALSO won't shut the fuck up about it! Iris would prefer we shut the fuck up about it and play Magic instead but we're not!

check out the Eidolon Netrunner League thread in the eidolon channel at bit.ly/aediscord to hang out and play with us!

Apologies for Ty's audio quality on this one, technical difficulties that unfortunately weren't discovered until after the episode was recorded.

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xXx[FinDom]xXx wrote (5:34a LST): once again i find myself enjoying an episode for entirely different reasons than most, because i am burdened to be one of the few who knows what subtext is. yeah, sure, your boy got his kiss. but here's the thing: for a genre that's usually notorious for dragging out the will-they-won't-they until the heat death of the universe, Courtship sure is pushing rembrandt really hard, huh? almost like it wants you to think that's what's "supposed" to happen, which is the same opinion held by Starcadia's parents? Aurelia's glance wasn't just generically "meaningful," it was asking Star a question: is this what you want? it clearly points to Starelia being endgame. rembrandt is just a pit stop along the way. also, goddammit, why is it always elves? "my unique and mysterious alien race looks exactly like if we put some modeling putty on a human's ear." wow how exciting i'm so intrigued. i bet they're gonna really strain the budget two episodes from now when we meet a new alien who's got nose ridges or some shit

CREDITS:
Iris Christianson as Trace Vector
Tyberius Wilson as Bridgerton Larch
Zoe Tunnell as Genevieve St. Cloud
Crystal Zaslavchik as Leila Marino, Lieutenant of Mare Cognitum
Luke Varner as The GM
Additional Voices by Max Knightley

MUSIC BY MAX KNIGHTLEY
EDITED BY LUKE VARNER

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains knife violence and body horror.

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Support us on Patreon!
Join the Discord!

Voiceover by Defrag Pandemonium

LUNA-1 has a capacity of 150,000 occupants. Do you know how many people currently live here? 210,000. And the number is rising every day. Have you noticed that our water tastes just a little bit like shit? It’s because the treatment facilities weren’t built to keep up with this much waste. 80 years ago, the oxygen concentration in our artificial atmosphere was on-par with Earth’s at sea-level. Year-over-year, they thin it out a little bit more, because there’s too many of us. If they don’t ration the oxygen we’ll consume it all faster than it can be replenished. Our diets are getting poorer, our public amenities are deteriorating, our living quarters are getting more cramped, alleviated only by the fact that the rich and powerful are gradually abandoning us, leaving their pleasurehouses and six-star resorts and luxury offices free to reclaim as housing. Well, “free.” I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how expensive rent is getting.

To the extent that the capitalist model of economics can be said to function at all, it functions on one core axiomatic assumption: that work is plentiful, and labor is proportionately scarce. That there is more work to do than there are hands to do it. And like any scarce resource, those that want it must pay a premium.

Even on Earth, within the various megacities that bleed the planet’s resources dry, automation makes labor common. Down there this can be somewhat offset through expansion, through the creation of more work to do, and while the numbers still don’t add up, at least it’s a pressure valve that allows the decline to be slow; the cities will probably be destroyed by wasteland raiders before they reach a true crisis point of labor deflation.

But up here? What expansion is possible? Our glorious city is circumscribed; expanding its borders by a single inch is laughably expensive. Our mining operations already produce more Helium-3 than we can use, more than the occasional cargo shuttle can bring to Earth. There’s a finite cap to how much work can be done, and yet the populace keeps growing, keeps consuming more and more resources. Did you know that Eidolon predicts this dome will be uninhabitable within 20 years? That if things continue apace, we’ll suffocate each other simply by living here? You probably don’t know that; they keep things like that secret from us peasants. 

You could try to escape before then; a shuttle back to earth only costs 1.2 billion credits, after all. Of course that’s before you factor in the immigration costs, if you can find a nation-state down there that isn’t too busy dying its own slow death to naturalize a new citizen. There’s always the option to stow away, if you think you can avoid the Rat Hunters and you’re confident that your bodyweight won’t sabotage the precise fuel calculations that make space travel possible.

Or, if food and power expenses have kept you from pinching your pennies, if you don’t like your odds against terrestrial tyrannies or the vacuum of space… well then, my friend, there is one other option available to you.

You join me.

And you fight.

_________________________________

The dome of LUNA-1 has been soiled over the years. The rim at the ground-floor has been painted with layer after layer of graffiti, and above that the glass has been caked in grime and pollution. The city’s optimized efficiency is an unbelievable feat of engineering even eighty years after its construction, but no system is without waste, and that waste has accumulated layer-by-layer on the surface of the glass hemisphere that guards its inhabitants from the vicious emptiness of the lunar surface. There is budget only to clean the very top of the dome, preserving the awe-inspiring view of the earth for only the city’s elite. For everyone else, their homeworld has been reduced to a brown and blurry smear seen through filthy glass.

Under this soiled sky rises the STARSCAPE RESORT, a luxury hotel only a few blocks southeast of the Eidolon building. It might even have a true view of the untainted night sky, if not for the neverending streams of drones flying overhead. Once the single most expensive vacation spot in the known universe, the Starscape Resort was abandoned over 40 years ago, when even those rich and famous desperate for conspicuous displays of wealth could no longer justify the cost of spending their holiday on the moon. On Earth, it would’ve been demolished decades ago. Up here, that option is simply too expensive; importing the raw materials for the building cost over 10 trillion lunar credits in today’s money, and recycling them wasn’t feasible. Moreover, the city’s air filters wouldn’t be able to compensate for the amount of dust and debris that a demolition operation incurred; bulldozing a 10-story highrise would wreak havoc on LUNA-1’s already poor air quality for decades.

So, instead, the building sat empty for years, save for the occasional squatter chased off by the police. Until one day, bank accounts shifted, money slid through dark networks, and ownership was transferred to a shell corporation that could never possibly be traced back to its true owner, DEFRAG PANDEMONIUM, the anonymous leader of the GLITCH MOB, a growing movement of dissidents and hacktivists dedicated to sabotaging and overthrowing Eidolon, the de facto government of LUNA-1. The Glitch Mob’s recruitment materials present them as a group of ideological revolutionaries seeking to liberate the moon, and while many of the rank and file may be true believers in the cause, those higher up the chain know the truth: LUNA-1 is the single most expensive asset ever produced by the human race, and that makes seizing control of it the heist of the century.

GLITCH MOB has just launched its first open attack against Eidolon, sabotaging their Undrtow beta test by hacking their network and attacking their QA team. The Mob’s vanguard force is scheduled to meet now in the penthouse of the Starscape in order to review the progress of the current mission. 

Which one of you is running late to the meeting?

____________________________

Whoever is running late will need to deal with MONGREL MYXOLIDIAN, the man that’s guarding the door. He is a goofy Jason Statham send-up, an earthborn mercenary from The Great British Bakeoff, the slang term for now fully desertified Great Britain. He will demand a password for anyone to get by him. The password is “one small step for man.” He’ll have some snide commentary for whoever he has to interact with.

The encounter could theoretically escalate, but ostensibly he’s on the party’s team. Still, I need at least some brief combat info handy.

MONGREL MYXOLIDIAN & RAY OF SOLAR

CRASH 0: Mongrel will threaten their opponent with his bowie knife; this must be proven ineffective.

CRASH 1: His bowie knife is actually RAY OF SOLAR, his Eidolon. A thin layer of a special film  on the knife’s surface can catch the light in such a way that when it’s reflected at a target, it flashes subliminal messages to hack their cybernetics and begin inducing an intense sunburn. To the target, this feels like being blasted with a powerful UV ray; the target must disarm Mongrel.

CRASH 2: Defeat.

Upstairs in the penthouse, the rest of the party is waiting, along with Defrag Pandemonium, who’s video-conferencing in. Caligula Magnesium, the member of the team who was assigned to carry out this attack, is currently at the Moonshot, a cyber-cafe across town. When the party has had sufficient time to introduce themselves to the audience and build some initial rapport, he’ll call in, reporting that the operation has flamed out; his USB device was located and destroyed. Too late, he will realize that by calling back to base, he has provided a network line straight to them, allowing them to be attacked by

DARYL BRONY & TENSION RISING

CRASH 0: TENSION RISING can make anything it hacks more dangerous, pushing electronics out of their safe tolerances. Anything electrical will begin to short out, arcs of electricity attacking the party. The party must find a way to isolate Brony’s eidolon from their local network.

CRASH 1: Daryl will begin infecting the party, much like Magnesium infected the VGM team. Their Eidolons will go haywire and react in violent and uncontrollable ways; TENSION RISING must be expelled from their personal cybernetics.

CRASH 2: Daryl finds his way into RAY OF SOLAR. The simulated blasts of UV rays cause every networked device to overheat itself, doing its best impression of melting under the heat of the sun. RAY OF SOLAR must be disconnected or disposed of, TENSION RISING must be destroyed, or Daryl Brony must be neutralized.

CRASH 3: Defeat.

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Heartbreaker2196 wrote (03:52a LST):

GREAT episode of The Courtship this week for TRUE BELIEVERS in REAL ROMANCE. It's so obvious that Starcadia and Rembrandt are made for each other! I don't know why anyone even brings up Aurelia anymore. So WHAT if they shared another “meaningful glance” at each other! I don't care that it happened right as Remby went in to kiss her! As you can see on the scoreboard, Aurelia has been kissed zero times. Let's keep track of that as the season goes on. Anyway, what did everyone think about this new kingdom of space-faring elves that just showed up? I wouldn't be surprised if that Thorniforous gentleman tries to work his way between Stari and Remby… Not that it will matter!

CREDITS:

Molly Rhinebeck as L.E. Booktok
Maxie Knightley as Lavender Spadeheart and Flip.exe
Lexi Waltner as Marci Campbell
Fabby Garza as Alpha AKA Anna
Mike Painter as Hercule Heavensward
Luke Varner as The GM
Additional Voices by Tyberius Wilson and Crystal Zaslavchik

MUSIC BY MAXIE KNIGHTLEY
EDITED BY LUKE VARNER

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains mind control and gun violence.

Buy our book!
Support us on Patreon!
Join the Discord!

xXx[FinDom]xXx wrote (5:34a LST): once again i find myself enjoying an episode for entirely different reasons than most, because i am burdened to be one of the few who knows what subtext is. yeah, sure, your boy got his kiss. but here's the thing: for a genre that's usually notorious for dragging out the will-they-won't-they until the heat death of the universe, Courtship sure is pushing rembrandt really hard, huh? almost like it wants you to think that's what's "supposed" to happen, which is the same opinion held by Starcadia's parents? Aurelia's glance wasn't just generically "meaningful," it was asking Star a question: is this what you want? it clearly points to Starelia being endgame. rembrandt is just a pit stop along the way. also, goddammit, why is it always elves? "my unique and mysterious alien race looks exactly like if we put some modeling putty on a human's ear." wow how exciting i'm so intrigued. i bet they're gonna really strain the budget two episodes from now when we meet a new alien who's got nose ridges or some shit

CREDITS:
Iris Christianson as Trace Vector
Tyberius Wilson as Bridgerton Larch
Zoe Tunnell as Genevieve St. Cloud
Crystal Zaslavchik as Leila Marino, Lietunant of Mare Cognitum
Luke Varner as The GM
Additional Voices by Max Knightley

MUSIC BY MAX KNIGHTLEY
EDITED BY LUKE VARNER

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains knife violence and body horror.

Buy our book!

Commercial

As a mother of three, I take my duty to raise the next generation of New Indianapolis citizens seriously. When I’m not hovering them to soccer practice or monitoring their brainlink activity, I’m thinking about what I’m putting into their bodies. And no, I don’t mean cybernetics!

That’s why I trust Babel Brooks bottled water, from Eidolon. Recent studies show that it sports up to 70% fewer mutagens and heavy metals than NI municipal tapwater! It’s the same pure, clear water Eidolon uses to cool its server farms, and it’s available now at your local grocer! 

At first I was skeptical; as a loyal citizen of the eternal provisional government, I of course distrust anything from outside of the greater polity. But Eidolon has my back: Babel Brooks comes directly from the White River, the same water source used by Indianapolis prior to the Dark Decade! So you’re not just drinking refreshment, you’re drinking history! Thanks Babel Brook! And thanks, Eidolon!

Interview

Narrator: Eidolon is proud to present a new holoseries, Talks with Horace Babylon. Our interviewers were granted an unmanaged 24 hours of time to speak with the world’s greatest scientific and business mind in his stately LUNA-1 office. Selected clips will be made available every week, or the entire interview series can be enjoyed now through Eidolon Premium. Speak with your local currency office to determine the appropriate subscription price.

Horace: You know, when my father, Isaiah Babylon, when he first founded Eidolon, we were, were in a very dark place, as, as, as a species. The sense of hope and optimism that we had in the 2020s was a distant memory by the 2080s. Water was becoming scarce, major hubs of Western civilization and, and, of course other… other civilization, it was desertifying, faster than many of even the less skeptical climate forecasts. There were, riots, food shortages, disease, it, it was, you know, by all accounts looking back it was a very bleak time in human history. And the, and the normal reaction, to that sort of environment, the normal reaction is despair, right? It was a very common, very prevailing sort of outlook at the time, and you even frequently see it now, you see it in all these discussions about, about water rights, and which American government, which, you know, local polity has the, is the true successor to the United States, and all these things. Mineral rights, fuel, there’s always this intense sense of panic. And, but, what you need, what has been proven time and time again when you look at history, and my father demonstrated this very directly, what you need in these moments is optimism. It is not a time to cut your losses, it’s not a time to lower your standards. No, no, you raise them. You shoot the moon, literally.

And, you know, even, even he had to be reminded of that lesson at times. I remember being, you know being a very young boy, when the initial plans for LUNA-1 were being drawn up, and it was this very utilitarian design, you know. Very… if you’ve ever seen pictures of those old 20th century space shuttles and satellites and space stations, it was very much in line with that. Small, only supporting say, a few dozen people at most, essentially just a building. And I remember, I couldn’t have been more than what, than 12 at the time, but I remember saying to him dad, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong. That’s not what you’ve taught me. Eidolon is about going big, humanity is about going big. And I drew him a picture, you know, a whole little city in a bubble, like a snowglobe, and, bless him, you know, I think I really told him exactly what he needed to hear in that moment because he took those sketches, you know the weren’t bad but they didn’t have the technical specifications, they were just mock-ups, but he took them to his engineers and, by God, he, he made a city. And 80 years later, here we are.

Opening Narration

THE YEAR IS 2222, THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF LUNA-1. Originally conceived as the world’s first permanent lunar station, a massive collaborative undertaking by a union of world governments in the 22nd century, the already ambitious project was vastly expanded when EIDOLON, the world’s largest technology corporation, signed on as a major financial backer. EIDOLON’s founder, Isaac Babylon, reimagined the project as not merely a research outpost, but a city, the first proper human settlement created offworld. It was to be located on the dark side of the moon, where it would be a center of research into space travel, becoming a launching point for humans to colonize the stars.

These plans, however, had to be adapted as the project dragged on and budgets ballooned. Other members of the global wealthy elite signed on as investors, and LUNA-1 soon pivoted away from a place of scientific research, becoming instead the single most highly-speculated upon real estate development project in centuries. As concerns shifted toward furnishing its future inhabitants with all the luxuries of space, the planned building site was relocated to the Sea of Tranquility, where the original lunar landing could be viewed for tourism and the Earth hung beautifully overhead at all hours of the day.

LUNA-1 completed construction in 2142. With a capacity of over 150,000 occupants, it is the largest space station ever constructed by multiple orders of magnitude. The main city consists of 64 city blocks arranged in an 8x8 pattern, encased under a geodesic dome composed of massive triangular glass panels supported by a steel frame. The city features luxury apartments, world-class dining, and a central plaza of office high-rises, which stand as the single most expensive properties in human history. Below the surface the city continues for hundreds of feet, a complex labyrinth of life-support systems and maintenance stations that keep the city above functioning. Hydroponic gardens and laboratory farms provide food while water treatment recycles waste into potable water, and miles-long tanks of genetically-engineered algae provide the colony with a self-sustaining oxygen supply.

To put it simply, you live within humanity’s greatest achievement, the crown jewel of mankind. Millions upon millions of words have been written dreaming of standing where you now stand, trillions upon trillions of credits expended to bring hundreds of thousands of tons of infrastructure to build the city that you now call home. And within that city, on the 32nd floor of the Eidolon building, we now join Lavender Spadehart, in the middle of a job interview.

_________________

In a matter of hours, Eidolon will be launching the first public beta of Undrtow, a new mixed-reality social media all-in-one platform. The beta is expected to be rocky, especially to begin with, so employees from all across the company are being re-assigned to QA, which is pulling double-duty as community management because this is an extremely well-run company. Lavender is currently being interviewed by the manager of QA, Adam Sandler (a name which means absolutely nothing to anybody in this setting, the only weird thing is why you’re being weird about it), alongside L.E. Booktok, the team lead of the pod Lavender is potentially being assigned to. This interview is largely a formality, since the company needs all hands on deck, but it is an opportunity for Booktok to potentially weed out any undesirable employees, and for Sandler to ask a question drafted by Horace Babylon himself:

What is the most common currency across all humanity?

A lot of this episode will be given over to just letting the team introduce themselves and settle into their dynamics. Booktok’s team has a single open office between them that looks not all that different from a modern-day Apple store. Lavender will have a new workstation ready to go… but it can’t properly boot into the OS until a 128-character product key is entered, and IT is so busy with the Undrtow launch that they’re unresponsive for requests to deal with the issue. Lavender will be unable to log into Undrtow unless she can activate her computer.

For the hell of it let’s generate an actual product key, I can’t imagine it will matter but who knows!

ZGcUOKkWoGhcpIFn8O47EJJgl1OT01jZ

IuCONI4ltEbF64OtgvuvYT8mau1O6J9o

guoKFZCiUuqhN4qLCd0JlwVRFD9VItiu

ycRBYwKnqEja3wgFTxSksdxgbzpYABZM

Undrtow interfaces with all networked audio-visual devices, including cybernetics (which are relatively standard, at least for the professional tech class that our team is members of), in order to create a 3-dimensional holographic overlay of the real world, allowing users to intuitively see visualizations of various pieces of technology, and even project themselves through the network across various servers and network connections. It is designed to interface directly with the human brain in order to unite all technology into one simple, universal interface; imagine something like the current Internet of Things crossed with an Apple Vision. It’s the Metaverse, finally made real just 200 years past due.

By default, users see other users as avatars that reflect their real-world selves. As moderators of this new platform, however, the VGM team has access to debug tools, which change how their avatars look and grant them certain powers within Undrtow. Nominally, they have full access to the complete suite of debug tools, but those tools are filtered through the way their minds interface with the tech, severely limiting the scope of what exactly they can do with them, manifesting as their individual Eidolon Powers.

Pep talk from Adam Sandler:

I want to tell all of you a story about the late 20th century, the ancient strands of the old Web aught-point-oh. When these digital frontiers were first discovered and settled by the original techno-pilgrims, it immediately created a new class of human being, a kind of cyber-samurai who surfed the information super-byway, nomads with the noble goal of upholding justice and enforcing order on this chaotic new world wherever they went. The people called them web forum moderators, and here today, I am asking all of you to take up their legacy.

Approximately sixty seconds after going live, Undrtow is going to be immediately hacked by a member of GLITCH MOB, who is immediately trying to sabotage Booktok’s team.

CALIGULA MAGNESIUM

EIDOLON: I CAN BE ANYONE

“My Eidolon can corrupt anything it touches, infecting it with my essence and causing it to become my puppet.”

Resonant Card: The Fool

Dissonant Card: 

CRASH 0: Caligula hacks into Adam Sandler’s cybernetics, puppeteering his body and attacking the team; Adam needs to be restrained or neutralized, or Caligula needs to be “exorcized.”

CRASH 1: Caligula begins rapidly jumping from user to user, diving out of one body the moment he’s compromised and diving into another; Caligula needs to be either critically wounded or fully locked out of the network.

CRASH 2: Caligula retreats, using his ability to instead possess a massive drill from a Helium-3 mining site just outside of the city. It immediately begins attempting to breath the city’s dome, which will cause untold casualties; the drill needs to be stopped, and Caligula needs to be fully neutralized.

CRASH 3: Defeat.

______________________________________________________

We ended up not having time to do the final Crash here. That makes sense, since it's an episode 1 and we had lots of groundwork we needed to lay, but since it's a Crash suggested by the EDM players I do feel a little bad that it got scrapped. Can't really be helped though!

It's very funny to me that it did not occur to me to think of the fact that they'd want to try and find the source of the network infection and that I had to come up with something for that on the spot. Pretty obvious way to start trying to deal with this problem!

Heartbreaker2196 wrote (03:52a LST):

GREAT episode of The Courtship this week for TRUE BELIEVERS in REAL ROMANCE. It's so obvious that Starcadia and Rembrandt are made for each other! I don't know why anyone even brings up Aurelia anymore. So WHAT if they shared another “meaningful glance” at each other! I don't care that it happened right as Remby went in to kiss her! As you can see on the scoreboard, Aurelia has been kissed zero times. Let's keep track of that as the season goes on. Anyway, what did everyone think about this new kingdom of space-faring elves that just showed up? I wouldn't be surprised if that Thorniforous gentleman tries to work his way between Stari and Remby… Not that it will matter!

CREDITS:

Molly Rhinebeck as L.E. Booktok
Maxie Knightley as Lavender Spadeheart and Flip.exe
Lexi Waltner as Marci Campbell
Fabby Garza as Alpha AKA Anna
Mike Painter as Hercule Heavensward
Luke Varner as The GM
Additional Voices by Tyberius Wilson and Crystal Zaslavchik

MUSIC BY MAXIE KNIGHTLEY
EDITED BY LUKE VARNER

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains mind control and gun violence.

Buy our book!

patreon.com/eidolonplaytest

This week, the second half of Eidolon Playtest sits down to create their characters! Why is everyone so horny?? And boy, is The Conspiracy a remotely good idea? The answers to these questions may or may not be answered in the season to come!

Buy Eidolon 2E here!

We've been letting our email inbox pile up for months now, so it's time to finally clean it out!... mostly! You all (griefninja) sent in so

We've been letting our email inbox pile up for months now, so it's time to finally clean it out!... mostly! You all (griefninja) sent in so many emails that we couldn't get to them all in one recording session! Look out for a follow-up next week where we get to the remaining questions!

We tease, but we do appreciate all the feedback and enthusiasm! Feel free to keep sending emails to [email protected].... but maybe give us a week or two to catch our breath first :p