Faith Arch II, Adventure 1 'Whispers in the Darkness'

6 months have passed since the last adventure. The 27h a day news cycles have buried all the information about the previous events (Including the fact that the head of special research for the Nations Solution Megacorp was a Skinchanger, a shape shifting Ravager) so deep in the Net that it'll probably never be seen again.

Bit T made some profits and changed business model. He now resides in Tian Tang, and his organisation, the Cibolas deals in art and precious artefacts. He's still small enough that the Tongs let him be.

And here the story begins. Some of the Tong families approach Big T. Someone is preying on ships on approach to Tian Tang. Lightening raids, in and out. Total destruction, total death. Nothing is stolen.

A cursory look shows that every megacorp and Tong family is being hit at the same time. No one seems to be suspect.

The Tongs reach out to Big T, as an independent adjudicator, who then calls the players.

Big T put out some feelers, who were answered by Ka, a minor Megacorp data analyst. He says he's spent months crunching the numbers of attacked ships, and has a suspect.

The players meet with Ka in a small restaurant. Ka is a nervous wreck. He gives the players a data cube, in exchange for money, and says that the cube only has half the data, for security......

.....as a small, thrown, poison covered blade ends his pathetic life.

The players give chase to the assassin, who twists and turns, missing shots and obstacles.

Before it disappears out of an airlock, it turns around. Its a Whisperer, an Iz'kal assassin (think ninja) who simply says: 'Leave it or die.'

The Ravagers

Imagine if you will, a race as interconnected as the cells of your body. Trillions of beings, their shapes as different as you could imagine in your wildest, feverish dreams, all striving for one purpose. Millions can (and will) sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

What said purpose or greater good are, we can only guess at.

The Ravagers came out of nowhere a few decades ago, and almost at a whim, destroyed two planets without much hassle.

No. Not destroyed. Consumed. Ate.

These cosmic locusts descended upon Izuan Tai and Persaius and reduced all organic material to goo. And then fed this goo to their ships in orbit.

The Corvo and Iz'kal navies managed to get some revenge on these dead worlds, and that, was assumed, was that. The Ravagers retreated into the depths of the Labyrinth, usually reduced to minor skirmishes or strategic attacks.

The truth, however....

The Ravagers are evolving. They are probing the defences of Known Space. Their Harvesters are absorbing victims and learning about them. Their Ironskins are eating the Known Races' metals and instinctively understanding their alloys, their weaknesses.

Soon, the Queens will know much more about Known Space than they did. Information is ammunition, they say. Soon, they will make a move.

And may The Five Gods help us when they do, because there will be no one left.

BERRY IS ALIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!

So the fantastic folk at Burning Games liked (and helped, 'cos v1.0 was atrociously bad) with my Berry/Robot rules, and THEY ARE NOW ACCEPTED HOUSE RULES, YAY!

ROBOT RULES v 2.0

• Generalist robots have basic (ROOT) abilities. They are a little good at everything but excel at nothing. ATHLETICS, SURVIVAL, INITIATIVE are at 3, all others at 1.

• At level one, you take the ALPHA software package, giving you the ability to raise 3 Skills of your choice to 4. If you have another ALPHA package, and enough time to reprogram the core chip, you can choose to drop any of these three 4-level Skills down to their original level, and raise as many others up to 4 (Effectively changing the speciality of the robot). BETA packages (at higher levels) allow for higher upgrades (5,4,4), and GAMMA higher still (5,5,4).

• A regular robotic frame has the following ATTRIBUTES: AGI 2, CON 2, DEX 1, FAITH 1, LINK 2, MIND 1. (Faith is capped at 1) Frames (i.e. ATTR numbers) can be upgraded by buying a higher-grade one, and downloading the robots’ current core chip to the new one. This will take at least 24 standard hours and requires a skilled technician or engineer.

• Unless otherwise stated, all robots have ARMOUR 1

• They are intelligent, sentient beings, and able to believe in a higher power (Hence Faith)

• The cannot have Bio Upgrades

• They can have LINK + ½ (rounded up) TECH upgrades

What do you think? Let me know on Twitter @Atomic_RPG

'Berry, meet everyone. Everyone, meet Berry.'

You need robots. Otherwise you'd not have sci fi.

If some player can't make my game, I came up with this guy. Meet Berry! What do you think of his stats?