Contractually Yours - Star Master Log: Closing the Wafisa Arc

Star Master Log

Oct 21

This Star Master’s Log was originally a Patreon exclusive! To get these logs two weeks early, bonus world-building posts, and behind-the-scenes secrets, join the inner circle at: patreon.com/DarkStarAdventurecast

Jeff pontificates on Episode Eight, “Contractually Yours, Scapegoats Forever”, rambling on about chaos, character moments, and improvisation that shaped the story.

He covers:

The hidden motivations of Dr Voss, now brought to light
Alien artifacts, and how their discovery has shaped the sector
The umbrella of companies under Virodyne Laboratories, and the roles they play in the story

New Star Master's Logs drop every other Tuesday, bridging the gap between our main adventure episodes.

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, star Master Jeff here back with my very special bonus series where I talk about how I plan the Dark Stard venture cast campaign available exclusively only for our Patreon listeners in today's debrief, I'm pulling back the curtain on episode eight. Contractually. Yours, scapegoats forever.
I'll be talking about what was planned, what surprised me, and exactly how much improvising is going on behind the screen. If you're into GM ing world building, or just curious how the story takes shape, this one is for you. So this one's a little bit of a lore heavy episode. In some ways it's a bit of an info dump, which is generally not the way that I like to do it.
However, AARA Voss was hiding quite a bit from the crew, and I found myself in a position where they weren't gonna trust her unless all was revealed. So. Once the main adventure was done and they were back on the ship, they had questions [00:01:00] and rightfully so, and I had already ridden out a lot of the backstory and motives of Dr.
Voss. I knew since episode one that all of this was a farce and she was just trying to get to that Promethean base. I know that I was gonna have to reveal that to them at some point. What I didn't know is that it was gonna necessarily be in episode eight, or that things were gonna go in this direction.
They could have been kidnapped or captured. They could have not lost their ship. They could have not completed the switching station task. They could have convinced Voss, they didn't have to do that. Any number of things could have happened from episode one, leading all the way up to them actually coming into contact with Dr.
Voss. That would maybe change the outcome of this episode, but where we found ourselves is that Dr. Voss finds herself needing to reveal to the characters that she's actually a virtual intelligence trapped inside of an alien artifact. And not an artificial intelligence, an actual human consciousness that's been transferred into a machine, because she can't [00:02:00] keep her duplicity going any longer, and she needs to reveal that to them.
She needs to reveal a lot more, like, how did she get into the orb? What are her motivations for calling the group to her? Because obviously Omnitech came and tried to take back the ship and arrest them, so obviously they're not doing a legal mission, so why did she call them? All of these questions just had to be answered.
And there's really no path forward for the group continuing on with Dr. Voss until she gives them all of those answers. So that's the position I found myself in. So this ended up being a very lore heavy episode, which honestly, I kind of like lore and I enjoy tinkering with lore and creating lore and interacting with lore.
I really like when the characters jump in and give their own lore, not only about their characters, but about their home worlds or anything that's connected to their character. And I fully encourage that if they are in a situation where they're talking about their character. Yeah, make up anything you want about your world.
It is now canon. If you want something in your carriage, just history, [00:03:00] just say it. Any sort of events or anything else, hell, you can even make up other completely random planets and just be like, oh yeah, far fifth nine far. Fifth nine is a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and make up whatever you want. And now they have a thing they can go to later on.
Far fifth nine, they made it up. I'll just GM it when they get there. And that's the really cool thing about building a collaborative story with your friends, is it's not just you writing something and everyone else playing in it. It's everyone contributing to the story. But the GM deciding what the outcome of actions are, it takes a lot of the pressure off of the GM to have to create everything all of the time, and the players actually get really excited to be able to create things themselves as well.
So I really highly encourage all of my players to do that, which has sort of led us to this situation where they all have pretty expansive backstories with very strong motivations to continue on with Dr. Larva, which she exploits. She didn't just choose them because they were available. She chose them because she knew someday she might have to explain to them.[00:04:00]
And when she did, she would have some good reasons and motivations for them to stick with her and bring her to the hidden Promethean base that she can get her own revenge. So of course, this is all a big setup for the next act in the season. A crew is gonna continue on towards that hidden Promethean star base with all this additional information that Voss gave them.
And in some cases, much higher personal stakes that kind of marry them to the mission in their own right. So I wanna talk about some of the lore a little bit. One of the things that I touched on was alien artifacts, and I am pretty sure I went over this in the star master log for the season overview.
But this is one of the first times that we actually talk about it in the podcast itself, and it's kind of almost like a throwaway line tucked into the middle of the lore. 'cause it's so common knowledge in the universe. There are alien artifacts. There was an alien civilization in this sector at some point.
So she just says, we study alien artifacts. I am trapped inside of an alien artifact. And then we kind of move on. Of course, as we move [00:05:00] on in the season, we will see more alien artifacts, there'll be more mentions of aliens and there ancient civilization. And we will spend some time exploring bits of that.
So I'm really excited for that, and I'm excited to flesh out that part of the sector's history and culture in lore, because it's not just about the corporations and the people and their struggles. There's a whole different civilization that used to live here. Aliens, were they humanoid? Were they crustaceans?
What were they? Bags of gas. Why did their civilization crumble? Why did it look the way it looked? Why are we having so much trouble actually deducing what these alien artifacts do? Or activating them in some way or interacting with them because of course, they're all inert. So we have access to these buildings and this technology, but we can't understand it and we can't use it.
Voss inside of an alien artifact might be the only active alien artifact in the entire sector. We should have some very interesting consequences downstream from this episode. So of [00:06:00] course with the discovery of alien artifacts, something like seven or eight years ago, there's been a huge boom in trying to uncover them and find new ones and what they do, and really just try to figure them out.
Really very little headway has been made in the sector of activating or figuring out what different alien artifacts do, even though hundreds, if not thousands of alien artifacts have been found, spread across many different worlds. The first world where alien artifacts were discovered was, was slan, which maybe the crew will visit Slan sometime in the future.
It's a like slightly lower gravity, very hot deserty type of planet, but more towards the inner sector where there's a lot more population. Alien artifacts were found on Waa, which is why Dr. Voss is there, and there was a pretty good commercial interest in them there. Then also on PolyPhen, which we will definitely see in episode nine.
PolyPhen is a night world that's actually very [00:07:00] highly populated by humans and alien artifacts and pieces of alien civilization were found deep under the surface. So there's actually a very thriving economy in PolyPhen centered around discovering alien artifacts, and that is why Omnitech is based on PolyPhen.
So speaking of Omnitech, they primarily do planetary mining and some, you know, research based tasks. They are underneath Raddy Laboratories. They do genetic modification. They experiment with weird things like cloning and controlling disease and, and weaponizing viruses. Under the Raddy umbrella are many other companies, not just Omnitech, but Raddy is the very top of that chain.
Uh, we then have Promethean, it's under them. They do a lot of dark energy and anti-matter research. That's the company whose base we are now trying to get to. Their main base is completely hidden because what they are doing there is so secretive and perhaps in [00:08:00] violation of the compact between the different companies, but most likely all the different companies are doing something illegal behind the other company's backs.
But this is where Promethean is doing that. As a side note, Promethean owns Nexus Trading. You might recognize the name Nexus Trading as the company that went to Thorn's world and made a deal with him and then crushed him under their boot, framing him for all kinds of illegal things that they were doing, and they set him up and removed him from power and took over his business.
This is an MO of Nexus trading and many corporations all across the sector. It's a dirty deed, but it's not uncommon. But that doesn't mean Thorn has to take it lying down. So when he hears that Nexus trading is still at existence and answers to Promethean, this is one small way which he can fight back, and Dr.
Voss has a plan and he is willing to help her execute on it. And then underneath the umbrella of Raddy, we also have, you know, weapons technology firms like Connectica. We have, uh, [00:09:00] stellar mining and, you know, we have Androids that are being created for replacing the labor force on and on and on. And, and a lot of these companies will come into play.
So we'll introduce them slowly as the story requires. Just know that there is a, a large network of companies that spiderweb out from Raddy Laboratories. Then there are other very large companies that have their own spiderweb, such as Nova Crypt Solutions, and they do a lot of spacecraft manufacturing.
The companies try not to step on each other's toes, but it's inevitable, especially when it comes to the alien artifacts. There was no industry to collect the alien artifacts seven or eight years ago when the first one was discovered, and now it's a booming industry, and we have companies like Omnitech who normally do planetary mining, all of a sudden mining for alien artifacts.
We have Promethean who normally does dark energy and antimatter research, getting into the alien artifact game, trying to figure out how they can possibly activate them, figure out what they do, and perhaps even weaponize them against their [00:10:00] enemies. Alien artifacts seem to be the answer to every question anyone could ever have, much like how people are treating artificial intelligence.
In our day and age, we're all scrambling trying to figure out a use for it. We have a hammer in search of a nail, and that's exactly how these companies feel. They have these alien artifacts. Some of them look like weapons or a way to gather information on their competitors or or to do something that humanity hasn't ever imagined.
These alien artifacts are truly seen as an opportunity to unlock infinite possibilities. They're willing to do whatever it takes to learn what they do and learn how to activate them. And the fact that Voss is out there and is an active alien artifact with the human consciousness inside, sort of hints at the direction that the alien technology may or may not go in the future and would be an incredibly valuable asset for these companies to take control of.
Well, I went on a little bit of a tangent talking about lore and the different companies and stuff like [00:11:00] that. I really love talking about that, but we're coming up on time. Wanted to give you a quick teaser of what's coming up. In episode nine, we are finally getting to focus episodes. Now that we have closed out the Waa Saga, we are gonna spend some time learning about our characters in a deeper way.
Next episode is Felix's story, where we'll spend time with Felix learning about his past and a pivotal moment in his own history that Led, led him to exactly where he is today. Well, that's all for me today. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for supporting us on Patreon. Love you all. Bye for now.