Death and Damnation - Star Master Log: The Scrapjack’s Finale

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Jeff yaps about Episode Twelve, “Death and Damnation”, where he touches about the chaos, character moments, and improvisation that shaped the story.

He covers:

• GMing when the players know more than you

• Haleyy's past, and the mysterious vision

• The cultists weird science antennae

• What's to come for the Adventurecast!

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

• Show Transcript

  [00:00:00] Hey everyone, star Master Jeff here, back with my very special bonus series where I talk about how I plan that Adventure Cast campaign available exclusively only for our very special Patreon listeners. Thanks so much for supporting in this debrief. I'm giving you a look at how I ran episode 12, death and Damn Nation.

  What was planned, what surprised me, and how much I'm actually improvising behind the screen. So if you're into GM ing world building, or you just wanna see how the sausage gets made, this episode is for you, episode 12, death and Damnation. This episode way more so than previous episodes I had very little to do with beforehand.

  The reason is at the end of episode 11, we find our quote unquote heroes in a sticky situation and finally reaching the point where they truly need to take back scrap jacks from the void cultists. [00:01:00] So we ended the session there, and between sessions, the players planned out exactly what they wanted to do to take back scrap jacks.

  I was not involved in this planning at all. I did hear a little bit here and there, and I got kind of the broad strokes. I knew that they wanted to start out with some wacky costuming a little bit, and they kind of told me what was up with that, and they told me in a very general way how they wanted to approach the episode.

  But besides that, I really had no idea what was going on. I didn't know what that toggle button that Robert had was actually going to do. I didn't know why they were traveling to these different areas of the station, and it was only as we were approaching the final scene that they told me how everything comes together and that was off pod.

  They caught me up on it. I was able to think about it and to make sure that the mechanics of it could be described appropriately and then we dove right back in and boy, what an interesting experience for me. Trying to GM when everyone at the table knows more than you. And [00:02:00] normally as, as a game master, you're trying to keep things from the players.

  You're trying to plan what's going on in the world around them and reveal it as they encounter it. But you know everything. The only thing you don't know is what's going on inside the players' heads. But in this particular situation, I knew what was happening in scrap jacks, but the players actually had a whole complex plan.

  They really locked things down. So difficulties weren't really cropping up for them very often. So I found myself in a very reactive mode. They do something and then I react. So normally it's a lot more of a dialogue. They would do something, the world would react. They would react to that, the world would react to that, so on so forth.

  But this feedback loop didn't really exist in this episode. It was more they do something. The world wasn't really reacting because they were sneaking around or being very quiet and making very good roles, and just enacting this secret plan in the background. Sometimes NPCs that were present, that would react, but the main driving force, the difficulties that are in scrap tracks [00:03:00] right now, namely the void cultists weren't reacting because they weren't aware of what was going on.

  So it was a very interesting way to Game Master and very fun to see their plan get enacted in real time as if I was a listener of the podcast. I really, really enjoyed that. So Robert, of course, goes out and he has this button and he's for some reason trying to lure the cultist back towards the utility room.

  That's because he wants to blow it up and he wants them to be back there when that happens. Hailey is scaling across the ceiling like Spider-Man on the pipes and makes her way to the shower where she encounters avoid cultus. This was a super fun scene for me. I knew the moment that they were finally gonna go investigate the showers, 'cause remember in the previous episode.

  They were getting a list of all of the void cultus that are in the station from Buddy, and he explicitly said there was a void cultus in the showers with a victim, and that there was a lot of screams going on, so Hailey was [00:04:00] following up on that after seeing it on the security monitors towards the end of episode 11.

  So going into the showers and being able to have a ritual scene in the steamy showers was just so fun to edit and post and add the sound effects and things like that I think really affect Hailey, and I think we're gonna start seeing why as we start to uncover more and more of her backstory. So, of course the plan is being enacted and it is eventually revealed that the utility room has abominate, and it's a small scale explosion that destroys the power conduit so that all of the lights turn off and a lot of different security features of the station switch off as well.

  Captain Thorn and Yana have made their way into Janna's office where the refueling arms can be overridden and controlled. Felix has made his way to the Med Bay once again so that he can interact with Buddy and he has buddy help him activate the perimeter defenses, and then the pieces sort of come together.

  Robert blows up the utility room, turning off the lights, deactivating. A lot of different security protocols buddy [00:05:00] activates the perimeter defenses. Captain Thorn and Yana use the refueling arms to grab onto the turret gun that makes up the perimeter defenses. And twisted off of its base back towards scrap tracks itself.

  Firing through the windows eviscerating all of the cultus on the inside, peppering the secure glass with dozens of bullet holes, which Janna seven, then hurriedly duct tapes so that they don't lose too much. Atmo and con continue to breathe and life support quickly. We pressurizes everything. I thought that was a really cool plan.

  The way they were able to make that plan is I actually drew out an entire map of scrap jacks. I shared it in the last star master log. I'll share it again on this post so you can take a look at it and reference it. But looking at that, they asked me a lot of questions. A lot of them didn't lead anywhere, so I really didn't understand what they were doing.

  But asking about perimeter defenses and they actually wanted to know a lot about the airlock that they previously didn't wanna know anything about. The, uh, the comms array airlock. And for a while I thought they might be trying to sneak out, find some vac suits and sneak [00:06:00] out because of course, in the maintenance area and near the different airlocks, there are vac suits that they could have gotten a hold of.

  Really, this could have gone a lot of different ways. And I am extremely surprised at what happened. And I think that they did a really cool job. So with that plan, the void cultus were wiped out. Of course, they are not just a faction of 12 or 15 void cultus. They are a larger organization with many sects and, uh, splinter cells all across the sector.

  So they're still active, and we will definitely be seeing them again someday. So towards the end of the episode, Haley goes to destroy the. Weird Science fiction fork, which is a amalgamation of all sorts of different technologies from different eras patched together, doing something very strange. We're not exactly sure what it's doing.

  Is it opening a portal? Is it creating an illusion? Is it summoning something completely new into existence? And deep within the portal, we see the [00:07:00] strange, slippery, slimy tentacles of something definitely organic, just beyond the veil. We don't know exactly what that is just yet, but Haley, when she gets near it and brushes up against it, is brought to another place briefly.

  She's in some sort of surgical theater and some operation is being performed upon her. Was this a memory, an alternate reality, a complete fabrication? We don't know yet, but I promise you we are getting to that storyline soon. And we also have some other questions such as, what was that tendril? What was that portal?

  What does that weird science antenna actually do? And all of those questions will be answered. This season on the Dark Star Venture cast, everything has a purpose. In fact, Haley's Focus episode will be diving into and answering some of those questions. But first, now that the Scrap Jack Saga is done, you may be wondering where our heroes are headed off to next.

  They're continuing their journey now that the scapegoat is [00:08:00] refueled repaired and they've got enough food to take them into the block for quite a while, they're continuing their journey off towards the hidden Promethean base. But along the way, we are first going to hear a thorn's story. So in the next episode, we will be going back with Captain Thorn to the surface of PolyPhen and hearing the story of what exactly caused him to end up on the scapegoat and what his own personal stakes are in the adventure, and what his short and long-term goals are as a person.

  And we are very excited for that one. I love all the focus episodes so much. And after that, we will be taking the crew to Slan, which is the first place that the alien artifacts were once found. That is the planet where the first exo site was discovered, and true evidence of past alien life was discovered and propagated throughout the galaxy.

  There we will meet a very special someone that means quite a bit to someone that's [00:09:00] on the scapegoat right now. So that's a little glimpse of what's happening in the future of the Dark Star adventure cast. We are so, so happy to have you along with us. Thanks so much for listening. Love you all. Bye for now.