Thorne’s Story - Star Master Log: Secrets, Betrayal, and Project Redwing

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 dives deeps on “Nexus of Betrayal: Thorne's Story”, where he talks about the chaos, character moments, and improvisation that shaped the story.

He covers:

• The world of Polyphn

• Thorne's past, and Project Redwing

• The Shintech Spirituality

• The connections that are forming between all the seemingly disparate plot points

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

Click here to check out NET 432, my short story I released a couple years ago!

• Show Transcript

  [00:00:00] Hey everyone, star Master Jeff here back with my special bonus series where I talk about how I plan that good old adventure cast campaign available exclusively for our Patreon listeners. In this debrief, I'm giving you a look at how I ran Nexus of betrayal, thorn's flashback story. I go over what was planned, what surprised me, and exactly how much I'm improvising behind the screen.

  If you're into GM ing world building, or just curious about how the story takes shape, this one is for you. So first of all, merry Christmas everyone. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. My wife Casey, and I drove down to North Carolina to spend the holidays with her family. We were there for.

  Over a week. It was a super fun time and we drove the whole way. So it was a 16 hour drive down, a 16 hour drive back. We stopped in Philly at the midway point each time, and it was super fun. Had a great [00:01:00] meal in Philly each way. One thing though is that we did a lot of car karaoke. And I think I went a little too hard.

  You can hear it in my voice 'cause it is shredded and we just got back last night and I realized I had to record this today and I was gonna sound very weird and very different. So apologies for the quality of my voice. So this adventure takes place on PolyPhen, which is one of my favorite planets in the sector, even though the characters really haven't gone to it in the normal present day plot line.

  But we did visit it once before we were in orbit around PolyPhen for Felix's story when they went and heisted the orbital data vault. And we of course, dealt with the death of PD and everything that happened there that was orbiting around the planet PolyPhen, which is a ultra urbanized night world.

  Essentially every square inch is covered with city skate. Really not a lot of nature left. [00:02:00] And it's completely dark all of the time. There is a sun. Obviously the planet is orbiting around the sun, but due to pollution and towering buildings and sky platforms and all kinds of stuff like that, casting shadows or blocking direct sunlight, there's very little actual sun that reaches down into the depths of the streets where most people live.

  And that sets the scene for PolyPhen, which is sort of a cyberpunk inspired world based on the world in Blade Runner, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I really am happy to explore it a bit more here in Thorn's story. So Thorn's backstory is that he was in jail for 10 years and now he's on work release.

  Because Omnitech has bought out his contract and when he arrives on PolyPhen, he's waiting to go and join up with Project Red Wing, which may sound familiar to you as well. That is also addressed in Felix's Backstory Project. Red Wing is the Omnitech [00:03:00] experimental research to. Copy people's brains into artificial intelligence, which obviously kills the person, and then they use that AI to participate in tests.

  What they're actually trying to accomplish is still a mystery, but they did get pd. They tried to get Felix, they've gotten hundreds of other people, and Thorn was on the chopping block without even realizing it. Of course. As we learned earlier in the season, Dr. Voss went in and it took a bunch of people with certain skills that she didn't think would be missed and redirected them from their current orders and projects, including Thorn and Project Red Wing, and shipped them on off to Kaari for to steal an Omnitech, ship the scapegoat, and make their way over to Afia to pick her up.

  So if it wasn't for her, doom would've been spelled out for Thorn. But here on PolyPhen. Just a few months after Felix's orbital data vault adventure, thorn finds himself with the ability to track down and kill [00:04:00] Sist, which is the man who he thinks is the person that betrayed him and landed him in jail.

  Also, the man who stole the family's company out beneath him and his mother. So there's a lot of world building here and there's a lot of stuff going on, especially around religion. We haven't really touched on that before. Shintech is what his friend Kano follows, and Shintech is based on Shinto, the Japanese spiritual practice and tech.

  So Shinto plus tech is Shintech and it's not a new idea that I've had. It's actually a reuse of an idea from a short story that I wrote. Uh, if you're interested in it, it's my only short story that I decided to publish. It's called net NET 4 32, and you can find net 4 32 on Amazon. And you know what? I'll put a link in this post if you're interested in checking it out.

  It deals somewhat with Syntech and rebirth and blurring the lines between humanity and artificial or robotic [00:05:00] intelligence. And it also has really strong th themes of, of family and regret. So if you wanna be a little bit depressed and read a cool tech story, check out that link. So some of those themes are also present in this adventure because we have Mara and Brick.

  They are from block six. It's not directly spelled that in the adventure, but there's a lot of information about it said through multiple points. But Mara and Brick were in block six when the grab Lev crashed into it killing Salus and killing everyone in her family, as well as a lot of other people in block six and everyone else on board the grav love.

  So Mara, as the sole survivor from that floor of block six. Wants to Aven family. She believes that Salus is still alive, as does Thorn's mother, obviously, as we find out, and Thorn's very excited to find that out. Block six is just one of many, many different buildings here on PolyPhen. Obviously there's blocks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, [00:06:00] 6, on and on and on.

  But those numbers loop around again and start back at block one as you move from one section of the city to another. PolyPhen is also not just completely one company that owns it. It's split up into multiple regions and multiple different companies own those regions. So we are in the Nexus portion of the Raddy section on PolyPhen.

  So Raddy owns essentially a whole country. And Nexus owns like a state in that country. And then within that state there's a section with a bunch of blocks in it and we are hanging around in Hock Bay Prefecture, which is that section, and in Hock Bay Prefecture. Is block six. So that's how you can kind of zoom down on that.

  You have the country, which is Vene, the state, which is Nexus, the city, which is Hock ma. And then block six is like a little section of that, of that city, and that repeats across an entire world. Vene has that country, but [00:07:00] some other major corporations own smaller. Countries or land masses here on PolyPhen, and that's how they've colonized an entire planet from sea to shining sea.

  No nature to be seen anywhere, just simply dirt, cement, twisted steel grates. And in some sections of the world, the infinite, slightly toxic acidic rain constantly crashing down on them. It's a mood to be sure, and I would love to visit it myself someday, and that kind of appeals to me wanting to hang out in an ultra urbanized, neon blasted blade runner environment.

  Obviously, I don't wanna live there, but it'd be very cool to visit. So the adventure also touches on bio mods for the first time, which is very cool. There are bio mods in this universe, being able to swap out an eye for a robot eye, or obviously Felix's leg, which he lost was swapped out for a mechanical leg.

  But his is really, really shitty and he cannot wait to [00:08:00] change it out for something better. It's quite a long procedure, quite an expensive procedure, and there's no insurance. So it's whatever version of it he could afford and was given to him. When he lost it, he when he was under company contract, obviously.

  So we visit a bio mater and we get a little taste of what that might look like, that when they get money, if they want to, what could they do to their bodies to make themselves more powerful? But every time you do that, you lose a little bit of your own humanity. It's kind of fun to play with that concept, and I'm excited for them to explore it on their own as well when they have access to a bio mater.

  I know I spent most of this talking about world building and the different pieces of PolyPhen and how much I really love PolyPhen. But I did want to also just take a moment and focus directly on Thorn's backstory. I know a lot of it's already explained in the podcast, but I wanted to address the twist at the end where Thorn's mother comes out of the woodwork and says that she's the one that betrayed him.

  That was very surprising to [00:09:00] Brian who plays Thorn and people around the table were like, what? And I really loved having that twist. And then Thorn's mother kind of like dressed like a ninja with a flowing cloak around her tight black leotard disappears back up the relay instead of going down. So when she went up to the top of the relay and simply vanishes, where did she go?

  What mode of transportation does she have that could get her away? Especially with the Nexus skimmer circling the data tower, and then of course, thorn coming back down the relay and finding that Cano and Bricker dead. All the Nexus goons are gone, but Mara is nowhere to be seen. She was taken by the Nexus goons and under the assumption of Thorn is dead.

  It seems like Nexus didn't care about Thorn at all. They just wanted to find Mara and cover up the crash at Block six, it seems that Salus is alive. The Mag love crash and to block six needed to be fully covered up to prove that he's [00:10:00] dead. There can't be any loose ends. Project Red Wing is still hanging out in the background.

  This data vault has left orbit around PolyPhen and gone elsewhere. The hidden Promethean base is calling to them with this data cache that they want to be able to access for all of their own individual reasons and to then destroy it to avenge Dr. VA's own planet and family. It seems like a lot of different plot lines are starting to slowly converge and they're becoming laser focused on making their way to Promethean.

  But obviously that's a little bit in the future because in the next episode, we are not reaching Promethean. We are actually taking a pit stop. They are stopping at a planet called Silan, which is where the first alien artifacts were discovered seven years ago. We're finally gonna get a chance to.

  Interact with some alien goodness and dive into the lower surrounding that aspect of this sector's history, because of course, the alien artifacts are relatively new in the sector and we've been [00:11:00] discovered. You know, less than a decade ago, but have really accelerated certain technologies and really caused a lot of corporations to completely focus on uncovering alien tech.

  'cause whoever can figure out how to activate it and use it will become the richest and most powerful company in the sector, hands down. So we'll go and we'll interact with that lore a little bit, and we'll learn a little bit about the aliens and a little bit about their technology, and it'll be a blast.

  And in addition, someone on the ship has a connection to someone on Slan, and we will get a little bit of an interesting backstory and personal connection for that character. So that's what's coming out next week for you all. Stay tuned for that first s Sibil and episode. But for today, that's all I have.

  I'm gonna have to go rest this voice now because I can feel it failing. Hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. Love you all and bye for now.