Annihilation Bots - Star Master Log: Self-Replicating Nightmares

Star Master Log

Feb 24

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Jeff breaks down the lethal combat encounter within the Sibylen Exosite, where the crew faced off against a squid-crab hybrid designed to ensure no one leaves alive. He explores the "rule of cool" mechanics behind nano-fluid hacking and reveals the grim truth behind the calcified beaks left in the vats.

He covers:

(00:00) - Introduction: "Laser Beams for Eyes"
(00:59) - The Crew Logs: Encrypted reports from the players
(05:12) - Star Master Perspective: Planning for deadly combat
(06:31) - Mechanics: Felix, "Goo Cakes," and the secret +1 Brain Graft bonus
(08:15) - OSR Philosophy: Why creativity beats the statistics on the page
(09:15) - Deep Dive: Designing the Annihilation Bot. Starfish, self-replication, and error-based terror
(12:23) - The Quarantine: Why a "medical facility" needs lethal guard bots
(15:05) - Subspace Signals: Hands-off Gming and the slowly building the weirdness.
(18:18) - Star Master Spec: Edge of Tomorrow and All You Need Is Kill

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

[00:00:00] Star Master Jeff: Hey everyone, star Master Jeff here and welcome back to the Star Master Log. Today we're discussing the third episode of the s an ARC entitled Laser Beams for Eyes. In this episode, the crew faces a lethal security system within the powered alien exo site, following their previous discovery of a virtual ocean and nano fluid pool.
[00:00:26] The crew enters a long hallway filled with vats. Each containing a mysterious calcified beak. Their progress is halted by a mechanical whirring noise leading to the discovery of an annihilation bot, a squid crab hybrid robot, designed to ensure that no one leaves the facility. So we're gonna break down this episode in just a moment, but first, let's check in with the crew and hear their latest encrypted reports.
[00:00:55] Now I'll catch you on the other side.
[00:00:59] Felix: Felix's [00:01:00] here. You know, I can't believe it. My first encounter with Alien Robotics and they try to kill me. That was amazing. Oh, my mind is spinning right now. Generating endless possibilities and theories that practically making me dizzy. I mean, are these robots in the traditional mechanical sense?
[00:01:20] Probably not as they seem to be built or maybe grown from some kind of nano fluid, and as we saw, they have a kind of self-replicating functionality. Oh, I cannot wait to get back to the goat and take this one apart. Who knows what kind of discoveries that can make? I just have to make sure Vera doesn't try to keep it.
[00:01:38] For herself, you know, she has a really unappealing obsession with funding that I simply find grotesque in someone who professes To be a scientist, it slow down. First things first. Felix, we have to get out of here. I thought I felt some fresh air down this hole. So hopefully there is a way out. But first, who [00:02:00] knows what other amazing discoveries might await us on the way?
[00:02:04] Robert: Robert Ross's log, I felt it the moment we clocked this alien sludge factory, that tension in the air before impending violence. We went full extermination on this Daric looking squiddy and his Robo Spawn textbook scorched earth. I burnt worse nest than this. Not the first time I've been on cleanup crew, and ah, there's a lot more shit to shovel in this heap.
[00:02:29] Why a medical facility has a robo tenal monster? I don't think I want to know, but this feels less like perimeter defense and more like a containment. That thing wasn't Garden Patience. It was Garden Secrets. Ru stayed frosty though weapons, hot heads on swivels. Thorn caught up small through and through Nothing vital.
[00:02:50] Walked it off and got a fresh set of nails to boot. Hmm, man, it's been a minute since I've got a Mani pe. Robert v [00:03:00] Gu Ross loves a mani penny.
[00:03:03] Haleyy: Okay, so it got worse. But in a new way. The variety of alien tech here is impressive to say the least. I'll insert a description from Vera. If we ever get out of here, I'm sure she'll have to come up with something good for the auction, although CoreOS are definitely gonna buy up.
[00:03:21] Self replicating Annihilation bots. You know, I think Vera would throw us in with the site too, if she could. Just really wanting to make a lot of money here, and I don't think she even understands what she's selling. But to do that, we gotta get outta here first. This started with us opening a door. What was this place used for anyways, and why would someone wanting to be making these Onlin of all places, but Felix gets one of these guys back to the ship.
[00:03:55] I wonder if I can turn it into a sparring partner. It is self-replicating, so it [00:04:00] can heal itself. That'll work, right?
[00:04:04] Thorne: It's official. We finally found some powered alien tech. This is great. Now we just have to get outta here with it and our lives. I guess it's a shame I had to use that pre-text stuff. I know it's super rare, but damn, if it didn't do the trick, I can't even see a mark from that laser burn anymore.
[00:04:25] Not to mention these nails. If we can convince the buyers that all the stuff in here is working, this site is going to go for an astronomical price. The crew seems like they're pretty nervous that Vera is gonna try to screw us over somehow in all this, but I'm really confident in the deal we made. I just hope whatever else is working down here doesn't kill us all before we get out with it.
[00:04:48] It is too bad I didn't spend more time practicing with firearms. I don't mind relying on the others, but I'm starting to feel like dead weight sometimes. Maybe Robert can gimme some shooting tips sometime or [00:05:00] something. Or maybe I can get Felix to install some kind of aim assist on this thing. I wonder if Hailey can show me how to rip a guy's head off.
[00:05:12] Star Master Jeff: Well, that was the crew's take on this episode, but let's take a step back and talk about what I saw. This is Star Master Jeff, and you are listening to the Star Master Log. Let's talk about how that session went for me. What was planned, what I found surprising, and how much I'm actually improvising behind the screen.
[00:05:29] If you're into GM ing world building, or just curious about how the story takes shape, this segment is for you. So this episode dealt with a pretty deadly combat that the characters came out of relatively unscathed from thanks to a few surprising twists that I really hadn't quite anticipated. When I say relatively unscathed, obviously Thorn got shot, but he's been shot before.
[00:05:51] I think at this point we kind of expect that when they get into a firefight, thorn's gonna get hit, and I'm not, I'm not picking on him. I'm rolling randomly [00:06:00] most of the time about who's gonna be hit when there's lots of targets, unless there's a obvious super threatening target or a target that's really close to the enemy.
[00:06:09] But you know, when he is getting shot, it's probably because he shot first. So beyond Thorn getting shot, which is not a surprise at all. I think that the biggest surprise to me was Felix having a reckless sprint to the back of the room to find the source of a mysterious signal that he had picked up on his data pad, hoping its hope that there was something back there he could use.
[00:06:31] Thankfully for him, his assumptions about the signal were correct and he found a goo cake on the wall back there. Of course, we know now that goo cakes are really nano fluid and they can do a whole host of things. So running back there past the squid crab and deciding to just shove his hand into the goo to then make a generic programming rule to see if he could try to shut down the bots or what sort of control he could take over the bots.
[00:06:54] I thought that was super cool. I did not anticipate that the goo cake is in there, not [00:07:00] because I wanted them to use it during the battle, but because it's the control panel for the VATS and for the goo tube that leads downward to the next level. But of course, anything with nano fluid is connected to the network.
[00:07:13] So with a proficient enough programming role, I don't see why Felix couldn't try to shut down or take control of an annihilation bot. Of course he didn't roll as well as he could have. But if you remember from my last star master log, I actually gave him a secret plus one to this role because completely enveloping himself into the goo pool, and using the virtual ocean connected him to the network.
[00:07:35] And anytime anyone sort of uses the goo, it's akin to getting a, a light brain graft so that they can access that network. And every time you use it, it gets easier for you to use. Hence, the secret plus one that he received. 'cause he is now a known quantity to the Alien network, so the Goo is a bit easier to use.
[00:07:55] Even with the role that wasn't fantastic, he manages to seize control of a single annihilation [00:08:00] bot completely removing that combatant from the fight and holding it still while the rest of the crew just burned it to the ground. It's decisions like that are why I love gaming, especially OSR gaming. Uh, for anyone that's not familiar with the term, it's old school Renaissance or old school revival.
[00:08:15] It's a kickback to a type of gaming that I grew up with, like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons back in the day, which is what I grew up playing, uh, from 10 years old onward. And it's less about the statistics on the page and more about using your creativity and the environment that was explained to you as a Game Master of OSR games.
[00:08:36] I don't like to limit creativity by saying, well, as per the rule on page 3 32, I don't really think you can blah, blah, blah. I like to take the spirit of what they're trying to do and figure out how to make it work. And sometimes it's gonna boil down to a role. Other times a failed role still means a partial success.
[00:08:54] Uh, it's all about balancing that rule of cool with that OSR feel, and it's [00:09:00] moments like Felix had in this episode that really strike that balance really well. And it's one of the reasons I absolutely love gaming. So I wanted to go back to the Annihilation bot real quick because I actually took quite a long time to come up with the design of those enemies.
[00:09:15] I knew that their purpose was to keep captives inside the facility and that they were part of the larger goo network. But I also wanted to make sure that I left hints in their design as to the intent of the inventors behind them. So first off, I landed on a squid crab like robot that could not only regenerate, but self-replicate as well.
[00:09:37] I base these abilities on how some species of starfish, uh, specifically the Lin Kia, can form a completely new starfish from a single detached arm. So if you cut off the arm of this starfish, you may even end up with two starfish, kind of like an earthworm. And I wanted a combat where a single guard bot could hold down the fort of the facility, but could [00:10:00] quickly call in reinforcements if needed.
[00:10:02] I didn't want an army of bots patrolling the facility because that just doesn't make sense to me. But a single bot that can split self-replicate and auto heal, thus calling an army of reinforcements when attacked automatically. That makes a lot more sense to me. So I created the bot to be mostly comprised of nano fluid so that splitting and growing is no problem for it, especially after the Go Vats start shattering.
[00:10:32] It simply had to suck up nano fluid from the floor and start forming helpers. Now, I thought this was a really cool idea when I was writing it down, but it turned out that I also really liked the idea in practice when I was actually running the game. It made every hit feel like a mistake every time a character would shoot the annihilation bot.
[00:10:51] It came with the fear that a baby annihilation bot would be forming soon. It wasn't until they landed a few extremely hard hitting shots, [00:11:00] and Felix took control of one of the bots that things started to turn around for our heroes. If the battle had gone slightly differently, it could have easily been a new annihilation bot generated every round, or perhaps even faster.
[00:11:14] For every annihilation bot that's created, it can create another annihilation bot, and with the amount of nano fluid available on the floor due to multiple cracked vats, each bot could have produced another bot doubling the number of enemies every few rounds. It's a very scary thought, the very dangerous combat, but once again, the luck of the crew won out.
[00:11:34] And they squeaked by this encounter with only a few wounds. Once again, showing that some creativity and carefulness in combat, borrowed strips, anything that could be written down on a character sheet, the adeptness and inventiveness of the players always wins. When I was creating the Annihilation bot, I wanted to make sure I picked something that made sense as a guard of this facility, something that's unobtrusive and not too large.
[00:11:58] It's gonna be able to climb [00:12:00] and use all of the different pieces of the facility and make its way around without any sort of problems, because this is not a normal medical facility. It's a medical facility that needs a guard bot. Now, why is that? In today's deep dive, I just wanna explore that question and speak a little to what may have been happening in the sector back when this alien race was the dominant species.
[00:12:23] So the room that this entire episode takes place in is full of large vats arranged in tidy rows. Each vat is filled with nano fluid with a single calcified beak resting at the bottom. In the previous episode, we learned that this facility was medical in nature, and in fact was a quarantine for some terrible disease that was sweeping the sector.
[00:12:46] As Dr. Voss said in the last episode, this facility was likely one of many, and in this facility alone can be counted over a hundred vats, each of which can be assumed once contained an alien being likely in quarantine due [00:13:00] to whatever disease was plaguing their society. The being would be suspended in nano fluid, allowing them access to the virtual ocean, or Thorn said like a more advanced version of virtual reality as a quarantine facility, keeping the patient safe and comfortable would be just as important as keeping them inside the facility.
[00:13:18] Although each had their own personal VR and likely the best medical treatment available at the time, they were still captives. Nonetheless, the annihilation bot would've patrolled the facility to protect the patients, but also quite clearly. To keep them in whatever this plague was, no infected being would be allowed to leave.
[00:13:40] And if we take one step out from that, we know from the last episode that the alien beings had some sort of colonies on PolyPhen and wa FISA as well, because in the virtual ocean, Dr. Voss was able to see that they were aware of those planets. But only on S did we [00:14:00] find these medical facilities and this, this was not the only one.
[00:14:04] She said that there were many of them. This whole planet could have possibly been rife with these types of facilities. An entire planet of alien beings infected with some mysterious plague that they did not know how to cure. And so simply ship them off to the edges of the sector to live the remainder of their lives in virtual reality.
[00:14:26] And where exactly have their bodies gone? Leaving behind only these odd calcified beaks, they simply melted into the goo becoming part of the nano fluid. It seems as though this facility may actually raise more questions than it answers, but what else can you expect from the first powered alien exo site in human history?
[00:14:48] We'll be exploring the answers to those questions as the season develops further. But in the meantime, I'd like to shift over to the Subspace signals where I answer a question from one of our listeners. Make sure [00:15:00] you listen to the end of the segment if you'd like to have a question here on the star master log.
[00:15:05] This week's question is from an anonymous listener who actually listens to us through our weekly blog entries, which you can find on darkstar adventures.com. This anonymous questioner asks, what guidance did the players have for picking a backstory? Was stars without numbers, a psychic class forbidden for world building reasons or scenario design reasons?
[00:15:28] Or did everyone just happen to collectively pick two experts and two warriors? Oh, okay. We got our first crunchy question this week, so a little bit on GM ing style. I'm a notoriously hands-off gm. I don't really like to prescribe anything to the players unless they come to me for advice. I tend to give background and guidance as to the campaign and the sector, but beyond that, I'm not really a fan of being involved in character creation for this game.
[00:15:59] I [00:16:00] wanted to keep the story grounded and then grow into something weirder as the story took shape. But I didn't wanna pre decide what that weirdness would be. I wanted it to organically come from the characters in the story that was developing. So yes, I did ask the players to ignore this ionic class and anything having to do with heavy body modifications to start, but that doesn't mean we won't have some developments in those areas as the game progresses.
[00:16:26] I didn't want something like psychic powers to feel common. I want them to feel special and and earned. I want them to have a strong story impact. Perhaps it's even a goal of one of the players like Felix wanting to transcend human flesh. If I just allowed everyone to have a ton of body modifications right at the beginning, he would already be well on his journey.
[00:16:45] But instead, it's a goal that he must scrap and save and earn for. He must find the, the bio mods, he must find the doctors. That is the only way he will accomplish his goal. So that's a little bit of a a GM design decision. But as for the [00:17:00] classes that they chose, it actually happened purely by happenstance.
[00:17:04] We got two experts, which would be Felix and Thorn and two Warriors, which is Robert and Haley. Each of the four players came up with an idea of what they wanted to play, and then when we got together for Session Zero, they worked through those ideas as a group to make sure they had all the important roles covered.
[00:17:19] But one thing I did actually ask is I, I asked 'em to come up with bonds with other characters and a personal flaw for their characters, which is an idea that we lifted wholesale from Dungeon World, a fantastic T-T-R-P-G. That's how you end up with Haley and Robert being old squad mates, Felix's, drug addiction and, uh, thorn's, high ideals of quote unquote fairness in the face of late stage capitalism.
[00:17:44] Well, anonymous person that listens to us on our blog entries. Thanks so much for submitting your question. If you other listeners want to send in a signal for our next log. Head on over to Patreon at patreon.com/darkstar Venture [00:18:00] cast because our patrons always have top priority in the queue. But I do pay close attention to our socials, such as our blog entries and on Blue Sky.
[00:18:08] So drop us a line there and your question just might be the next one we intercept. Before we close the log for this week, I wanna leave you with another star master spec. In this section I give you a quick recommendation of some piece of media that I really enjoyed. It has something to do with this week's episode.
[00:18:25] So the Annihilation Bot, which was the focus of this week, was partially based on a slew of science fiction media that's wormed its way into my head over the course of my life, but none more so than the movie Edge of Tomorrow. It stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt fighting grotesque amounts of annihilation bot looking beings called mimics.
[00:18:45] It's crazy. It's weird, and it's a fun action film with a seriously great time looping mechanic. And I love a time travel film. I highly recommend it. If you want a fun popcorn film that'll give you that annihilation bot feel. [00:19:00] Also, if you're a reader, check out the light novel. All you need is kill by Hiroshi Sako, aka.
[00:19:07] It was the basis for the Edge of Tomorrow movie. It's very fun as well. It's sort of like what if your life was a video game and you could just keep trying the level over and over again, which is what we see in the movie, but it's much more spelled out in the book. It sort of feels like full metal jacket meets alien with a bit of Dungeon Crawl or Carl mixed in, and I absolutely loved it.
[00:19:31] In the next episode, our crew descends the Go Tube they found to the basement level of the facility and find a hidden piece of technology that is both startlingly familiar and decidedly alien. The crew remembers their fight with the void Cultists. A surgical theater is found, and Hailey and Robert begin to face their past all this and more on the next episode of The Dark Star Adventure Cast.
[00:19:54] Thanks so much for listening, and I'll catch you on the next [00:20:00] one.