Beyond the Furthest Stars
Session Zero
Avery: Hello and Welcome to the first official episode of Beyond the Furthest Stars. I am your host and GM for the show, Avery Fisher. The first episode is just our Session 0. Our cast briefly introduces themselves, their characters, we go over safety tools, build the crew's spaceship, and then end with a little bit of lore. and the episode also establishes some of our inside jokes and goofs that we'll probably be referencing throughout the show. So if you want to go into the series with at least a brief understanding of where we are starting in our show, then this episode and the lore episodes that follow will be helpful in getting your bearings. If you want to go into the show completely without knowing what's going on, then by all means feel free to skip this episode and dive right into the story with episode 1 in a few weeks. Alright, let's get to the action.
(Theme Music Plays)
Avery: Well welcome everybody to this extravaganza, whatever it is that we're doing. so I guess we can start with, introductions and then just kinda go down my little silly agenda here, and then you can tell me about all your wonderful characters that you're creating.
(laughter) (background music fades in)
So I guess I will start. So we've all kind of talked individually, but for the record, my name is Josh. I'm going to be going by Avery for the purposes of the show. He/they pronouns for sure. And yeah, I've been podcasting for,eight years now at this point. Anyway, I am super excited to have you all here. So I guess I'll just go down the list in order: Sherman!
Zach: Hi, I'm Sherman. Or I also go by Shermit here eventually going to start streaming on Twitch, with my V tuber avatar, Shermit D Frog. but I also go by Sherman. I've been podcasting with Josh for what? Thre or four years now?
Zach: three or four years now.
Avery: I think this is year three.
Zach: Year three.
Avery: Yeah. Cause we started the summer before the pandemic
Zach: Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that would be, that'd be three years now. And, he/him pronouns, not really sure what else to add.
Avery: whatever you want, man. If that's it. That's it. That's all good.
Zach: I suppose.That's it.
Avery: Okay. Bee, I think you're next.
Bee: All right. Howdy. My name is B. I use they/them pronouns. This is my first time podcasting and I'm mostly just a goblin that stays in my room. sorry, in advance for any chaotic shenanigans that come about from my actions in this campaign.
Zach: I look forward to them.
Avery: It'll be fine.
Jenine: Here for it. Let's go!
(laughter)
Bee: Sweet
Avery: Jenine. Did you want to go next?
Jenine: oh yeah, I can. Hello. I'm Jenine Florence. I use they/them pronouns. I am an actor. I'm attempting to be an actor. but I love tabletop RPGs with all of my heart. So here I am, this is my third go around with doing a streamed kind of a thing. My first one was during the pandemic. I'm currently in another one that's running on YouTube, also in a podcast form, and then I'm here and I love Sci-Fi. I'm very excited. yeah, I'm hyped. I'm very excited to be here. Play goofy characters, sometimes angsty characters. We don't know what's going to happen. Let’s Find out!
Zach: Heck Yeah.
Avery: Cool Chris.
Chris: So I'm Chris, he/him playing together for three years. still not very good though. Kind of a newbie getting my feet under me. I am also a room, a room goblin, and, I also make somewhat, somewhat wacky and nonsensical characters. So I look forward to having plenty.
Avery: Okay. And last but not least Caden.
Caden: Hi, I'm Caden. they/them pronouns mostly, but also trying out he/him never podcast, but total nerd, mostly playing D and D. So this is my first time outside of playing D and D. So that's going to be fun and exciting. Also like to play chaotic characters. It's great. It's fun. Very excited to play in a space setting. Don't know what else to say about. I cause play so complete nerd in that sense too. And that's about it.
Zach: Heck Yeah.
Avery: Now that everyone's introduced themselves. I just wanted to real quick talk about safety tools, topics to be avoided, stuff like that in this game. Just so that way we're all on the same level. That way, you know, we can all be cool. The off limits topics that everyone kind of actually was almost all in agreement with as far as the consent checklist were: explicit sex. Sexual assault, harm to children or animals, claustrophobia, cancer, and heat stroke.
So we're going to just not bring those things into the game at all. And so in roll 20, which is what we're going to mostly be using for like the virtual tabletop, I think I figured out how to use them. but there are decks for the, for different cards as far as like, if something's coming up and it's like, Hey, this might be a little touchy. There is an option to basically say, yes, this is fine, you know, slow down or, you know, stuff like that, or the X card, which is basically like, let's end the scene here and there.
Zach: Okay. I didn’t know roll20 had that. That's cool.
Avery: Yeah. I S I, to be fair, I am new to roll 20, so I still have to figure out exactly how to use it, but I will figure out how to use it before the game begins.Other than that if there's anything that anyone thinks of as far as like a, a pretty big topic, that would like to be avoided, just feel free to message me privately and I'll get you taken care of.
Avery: Cause I don't want anyone to feel like they have to like, you know, broadcast what they're uncomfortable with here in the recording. I will say that in my settings, children are magically invincible, so don't, don't try to blow up a kindergarten. It's not going to work.
Avery: so I wanted to real quick kind of get a feel from everyone as far as like what they kind of wanted to go for as far as like mood for this, for this game. Like, are, are you interested mostly in like the drama and the exchange of role-play? Are you mostly here to war game? Are you wanting to solve some cool mysteries?
Kind of like what what's sort of the main Thing that you get out of TTRPGs. So that way I can kind of cater the experience to each player a little bit.
Zach: so I'm, I'm big into combat stuff. I've never actually done like a sci-fi one though. So being in a shootout sounds really fun, but I am also big open into far more Role-playing opportunities, especially since I kind of built my character to be more of a skill base person where I'm using like the environment to my advantage and stuff like that. So, yeah, I'm big open for that.
Avery: Okay. I guess we'll just go in the order that we did introductions in. So Bee.
Bee: Okay. Cool. I'm glad you said my name. Cause I already forgot what the order was.(laughs) as far as like games go and stuff, I'm more of a roleplay heavy person. I don't mind combat. And, as long as like, we have the opportunity to be like a little creative when it comes to combat and stuff like that. Cause I know in D and D there's a lot of like rigid rules usually when it comes to combat But yeah, other than that like I'm a pretty role-play heavy person. So anything else is cool to me.
Avery: Jenine.
Jenine: Hey guess what the actor's going to say? I love some good combat, as this is going to be my first time doing a magic heavy quote unquote magic heavy thing in a hot bit. So we'll see how that goes. and I would like to be comfortable with that, but I do like role-play and I do like combat a little bit.
Jenine: I've mostly been a melee, so we're stepping out of my comfort zone. So we're learning that a little bit. but yeah, I love good. Role-play I love just interacting with other people and like uncovering their backstories. I love being this like cheer leader on the side for everyone else's characters. So like, If we’re like uncovering someone's backstory and I'm like, yes, yes.
Jenine: Just know I will be like in peanut gallery. Just typing. Yes. The entire time.
Zach: on the sidelines with a bag of popcorn.
Avery: Cool. Cool. IChris, what are you looking forward to in the game?
Chris: A bit of both. I like the you know, I do like combat a lot, but, but pretty much I'm you know, I'm for the you know, the character progression, the story the you know, characters advancing, whether it's combat or Roleplay
Avery: Cool. Cool. And then Caden,
Caden: , I'm very much the same as everyone else. I love to RP and I like, I don't hate combat. I quite enjoy combat as long as it again, means something, it leads into the story somehow, like you can have random people shooting at you. That is cool, but it's also cool if those random people also like aren't just randomly shooting at you. There's a reason behind said thing. Even if they're just wanting to try steal our ship. the random hoard of zombies give me that backlog, right? Like, , very much, you know,
Avery: why are they zombies?
Caden: why are there zombies?
Caden: Why are there a cannibals on this planet that are trying to eat us? Question mark?
Bee: Good callback to the cannibals.
Caden: Yep. Right.
Avery: Cool. So it sounds like kind of everyone is looking for a good mix of both, but definitely wants combat to be something that impacts a story. And isn't just there for fighting, fighting, fighting something for the sake of fighting
Zach: Fighting for Fighting’s Sake.
Chris: Yeah.
Chris: I don't want to have to like grind XP or anything like that.
Avery: Go out and grind some skeletons for five levels.
Chris: Yeah, Those.
Zach: I got to find a good farming spot. Yeah,
Avery: Yeah, exactly. Okay.
Bee: sit in a high traffic area and just steal everyone's spaceships.
Zach: get experience points equal to the credit amount of each ship sold.
Avery: so speaking of that actually kind of feeds into my next thing of like, And no one has to have an answer for this now, but, think about whether you're wanting to play like some kind of like grand heroic quest, which isn't really what I had in mind, but I can do, or if you want to play, like, you know, just like a band of like people who come together and end up maybe being like smugglers or pirates or just, you know, freelancers or something.
Zach: simple sandbox kind of situation here.
Chris: Same.
Bee: yeah, I kinda thought we were just going to be a bunch of space goons that like came together in unfortunate circumstances and then got roped into something. And we're like, well, I guess we'll have to do this now.
Avery: Okay. Yeah. That's
Jenine: here for the vibes.
Avery: yeah. That's how I kinda what I that's, I mean, that's, that's how I kind of pitched the idea to everyone. And so I just wanted to make sure that that was still cool. So just making sure
Jenine: vibes
Avery: hashtag Vibes.
Zach: hashtag space vibes.
Avery: Oh, okay. I think we found our social media hashtag,
Avery: who wants to start with introducing their character. It can be in any order. It doesn't have to be in the order. We originally went in if someone's really excited.
Zach: Cool. I'll jump in Then. my character is Zahn Howard. He is heavily inspired by Isaac Clark from dead space as is his backstory in that he is a troubled individual. He's a engineer in his late thirties with a troubled past, I don't know how deep into the actual backstory we're wanting to share.
Avery: So for this, let's just do like, kind of like the 10,000 foot level, just like a bird's eye view kind of, of who Zahn is.
Zach: Okay. Yeah. Troubled past, grew up on a space station that was supposed to be a Terraform planet and that didn't go right. , So he ran after shit, hit the fan and
he lost the only person that ever really meant anything to him, which was his mother, which is where he got his inspiration for engineering. And yeah, for the past like 12 years, , he's been just kinda floating from system to system, working odd jobs, just to expand his engineering expertise. He tries to keep as much self-contained as possible for both efficiency. And like, he doesn't want to just vent all of his problems on people and he likes enclosed spaces. So no worry about claustrophobia, cause , he's going to be all up in there.
Bee: So we just get him a box and we set it down to the ship and it's his box. And that is where he sits.
Avery: And we put a little heart on it and we call it the companion cube.
(laughter)
Avery: Okay. Who wants to introduce kind of a general concept of their character? Next, you can be as deep or as general as you want, but go for it.
Bee: I can go next. Okay. So my cancer is named, , Polaris, full name, being Catalyst Designation, Polaris. He was raised by robots, which is very apparent in his mannerisms, which I'll try to stick to, but it's going to be a little difficult. , he's obviously a pilot, that's his main deal. but he is also capable when it comes to like fixing things or like tinkering things.
Bee: he also did learn how to sew from one of the robots. So that's pretty useful. So if we need team jackets, I got you. yeah, I don't, I don't know if I'm going to go into too much more because I feel like it'd be better to discover in the story.
Avery: Totally.
Zach: So your character is human?
Bee: Yes?
Jenine: I love the question, mark.
Bee: Yes, asterix.
Zach: appears human?
Bee: going to go with a solid yes. Asterisk smiley face.
Zach: I guess for clarity, my character is human and he's got a bad hunch. Like he doesn't have, , like Igor hunch, but he's got a really bad slouch just from being in tight spaces.
Bee: Hm.
Avery: doesn't practice. Good posture stretching. I see how it is.
Zach: Yep.
Bee: He sits like a shrimp.
(laughter)
Zach: a lot of, a lot of leaning forward. Yeah.
Bee: I see. I see.
Avery: Cool. Cool. Cool. Who wants to go next?
Jenine: I can go next.
Avery: Yeah.
Jenine: so my character's name is Marty Domingo. Human. and, and she's a fresh outta, out of med school kid in space. She she's fresh out of med school, top of her class doing her best.
Zach: Heck. Yeah, we've got a medic.
Jenine: yeah, We do. This is my first time doing doing medicine. I also fun fact I really wanted to do some stuff based off of my culture, if I'm Filipino and lots of us go into med school. as I was like doing more deep dives of this character, I realized like, it falls a lot with my grandmother who I, who I lost last year. , but like, I was like, oh, this is really cool. And like, this is me, like kind of honoring her in a fun Sci-Fi way. Cause she did medicine.
Jenine: So I'm very hyped.
Avery: Cool.
Bee: sweet.
Avery: That's awesome.
Jenine: this is going to be her and if she was in a space… space, the final frontier.
Avery: Oh, Janine Are you still doing the psionic aspect of the character or did you want to do space magic or?
Jenine: I'm going to do this ionic one. I am trying to wrap my brain around this again, cause I went through the book. Got confused again. , so I'll have it and I'll get you a straight answer as straight as it can be for me on how…
Zach: I’ve been reading over the hacking rules and the mod maintenance rules, which are kind of a pain in the ass. Because you have to, the rules stay that you have to like to maintain them every day.
Bee: Yeah.
Zach: I'm like, that's
Bee: Yeah. I read that.
Zach: would work.
Bee: Not worth it.
Avery: We'll make the rules kind of fit what makes sense for a, for a show. So I'm not, I'm not going to be too worried about in the weeds of like, oh, you have to get 50,000 credits to keep your ship running, you know, like,
Bee: We're just poor all the time.
Zach: Oh, God, those like having to pay for space fuel and stuff makes sense. Or doing, doing regular maintenance, but like maintenance. Cause you know, it makes sense. If you just ignore taking care of your ship, it's going to fall apart. But like
Chris: but not to the point where like, yeah, we're constantly forced to look after the ship
Zach: I put magnets in my boots.
Zach: Okay. I've got a tune, the magnets in my boots every single day to make sure that they continue to magnetize
Avery: yeah.
Bee: Wake up, brush your teeth, magnetize your boots.
Avery: Yeah,
Jenine: Love it
Avery: cool. Chris or Caden who wants to go next?
Caden: , I can go next. I am not human. I am alien. I am. Yes, I have created Who I quite love, Bruce, his name Is Bruce.
Bee: Is he shark?
Zach: Oh my God. I was going to say that.
Caden: but his but is,
Jenine: on that wavelength.
Caden: but it's very much based off of finding Nemo's Bruce, where he is. is, he is big. He is scary, but he is also a friend.
Bee: Oh, my favorite type of character.
Caden: yeah. I mean, there might be a fair amount of quippy run liners. I'm I'm thinking more friendly space, dad vibes, terrible puns,
Jenine: Yes.
Bee: Yay. We have a medic and a space dad..
Caden: intimidating as all else, but Bruce's actual employment. Well, You guys will find out, so I'm not going to spoil that. , but yeah, he's he's he is a good, good bean and I am Very excited to play him and hopefully not die right away.
Zach: That's the hope.
Avery: You all will be fine. As long as you don't get sucked out into space. I think you'll be fine.
Bee: I think I'll be refined regardless of being sucked out into
Zach: Nat 20 is always a thing.
Bee: Oh, do Nat 20s count in this game.
Avery: we'll, we'll we'll come up with something, if not, so no worries. We're all still learning this game anyway. So if we, if we have to fall back on some old, you know, some other systems, mechanics or something for something like nat twenties, no big deal.
Caden: It does say in the books that not twenties are complete successes and that ones are complete failures, but I guess that only really counts for saving throws. So I don't.
Bee: Yeah.
Zach: Well, it's one of those combat is still determined by D20 also.
Avery: I think hitting, yeah.
Zach: yeah. To hit. Yeah.
Bee: Yeah.
Caden: yeah.
Avery: It's all good. Okay, Chris, let's see what you came up with.
Chris: , yeah, I'm going for a robotic character. And go totally. Non-organic he's , was originally going to be like a sentient vending machine, but, , there's, there's too many, just too many like problems, like, oh, well he doesn't have arms, but then if he, if he had like a cart that he ride around on, then it's like, how does he sit and like, get in places, go up and downstairs. Like, I don't know if we just want to like, gloss over that. So
Zach: He coil;d have the clap trap problem: Stairs!? Why did it have to be stairs?
Chris: my mortal enemy.
Bee: Or we can like make a hard light, like kind of force you, it around you. That acts like a lightsaber and you just cut your way through everything.
Zach: see, I was going to go opposite direction of anti-gravity where he just like floats over it.
Bee: Okay.
Jenine: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Chris: So the exact form he takes is kind of a work in progress. And actually looking at the robot rules, that's something that, , like the chassis is something that's interchangeable and something that Josh might have to work out for. You know what, I'm starting with
Avery: Yeah.
Chris: the essentially, , at some point he is a, a, you know, service kind of Android and he's accidentally uploaded with a combat AI.
Zach: Oops.
Chris: Yeah.
Chris: Oops, oops. All bullets. I'm not sure exactly how that the, you know, the lore and the AI happens, but pretty much, you know, he was shocked into, , sentience. Right. Or the red eye out of the assembly line and he didn't have anything, but his programming. So he started going on a killing spree, , got captured. But since he was now sentient they couldn't just deactivate them.
Zach: Not Morally anyways.
Chris: yeah, not morally. And he was also fine for theft of his own body. So, they locked him up on the, on the prison ship. And for personality wise, he's kind of a kind of jaded kind of benderish on the outside, but, , on the inside, he's actually, he's actually kind of like at a, got a soft center, kind of like as Sundari kind of guy,
Bee: Oh,
Avery: Okay. Have you come up with a name for it yet? Or?
Chris: not yet a working name is Ollie.
Zach: I really like the balance of characters here.
Bee: Yeah, it sounds like we got a lot of ingredients to make a good soup, you know,
Jenine: The space soup.
Avery: So I posted in the discord under the character ideas, , channel, which I probably need to rename to something else. sort of the list of like different stuff that y'all can, pick for your ship. , so essentially what, what this first ship that y'all will probably end up getting. if you get off the Eos at all, I mean, you might, you know, blow up with it.
Avery: Who knows? , but
Bee: steal it. No, I'm kidding.
Avery: steal the Capitol worship. Sure.
Jenine: we would never,
Caden: It's ours now.
Bee: I mean…
Zach: guys, guys, guys, just for 10 K. All right. 10 K. We can have luxury cabins.
Bee: You know what? I like the idea of luxury. That would Be nice. I hear you on the luxury cabins, but what if we just had cold sleep pods?
Avery: so essentially
Zach: Or why don't we just all have drop pods, just sleep in the drop pod.
Chris: Just sleep in the drop pod. It's the ultimate safety. If we get attacked, I mean, we don't even have to go anywhere. We just dip.
Zach: just dip.
Bee: I mean, Zahn just needs a box, right? We established that earlier.
Zach: We would definitely, probably want atmospheric configuration so we can land.
Bee: Oh, I got it. don't even worry about it.
Jenine: I guess we can.
Bee: Don't even worry about it. I got you.
Zach: Otherwise we would need like an extended ship as part of our ship.
Avery: It'll be fine. So essentially we're going to be starting with a free merchant hull, which comes with 10 power, 15 mass, and two hard points to spend on these different fittings. So hard points is basically spots for weapons. So, and then I basically on this ship options sheet, I basically went through and picked anything that was like anything that could fit on either a fighter or Frigate cause those are the two, the frigate is the class of ship of free merchant is. And so they can take anything frigate or below or at least that was my reading of the rule. I could be wrong. so yeah. y'all can split that up evenly or collaborate. I won't really interject too much into this though, so I'm going to shut up.
Bee: Uh I do have a question.
Avery: Okay. I won't shut up.
Bee: Yeah. Please don't I have a question. I have many questions, because I already have a ship. Well, I have to, I don't know if the ship is the free merchant ship is going to be big enough to like, like have a hanger for where my ship will be. So will I have to just like fly side by side
Chris: You can probably tow it.
Bee: come over for lunch
Zach: You can tow it.
Avery: no, I don't think that so there is so there's a couple options.
Zach: where is it? I just saw it on this list.
Avery: So, yeah. So there's the ship tender mount, which allows another ship to hitch on to the basically you can attach a smaller ship to your ship basically, and then both ships can jump to warp or whatever. So that wouldn't really be an issue.
Bee: Okay.
Zach: Oh, it's I thought though I saw like actually having a landing bay in here.
Bee: Yeah. The reason I ask is because if I'm going to be flying big ship. I like my ship. So we would either have to drop it off at home or I yeah I don't Cause I don't know if my star fairer stuff will apply if my chip is tied to baker ship, you know?
Caden: There's the vehicle transport fittings. Is that like, could we classify your ship as a shuttle?
Avery: it's smaller than a shuttle, so yes, easily.
Bee: Oh, well, sick.
Avery: Yeah, sorry. That's the one I was actually looking for. Sorry. Yes.
Bee: Okay, cool. Cool, cool.
Avery: In fact, in fact, since Polaris, you already have a ship and I'm not going to take that away from the available mass of, of the current ship.
Bee: Okay, cool. Yeah, that was my big worry. That was going to be my next question.
Avery: no worries.
Bee: Cause that seemed a little unfair to take that away from the crew because I have my own ship.
Avery: You're totally fine. I meant to do that earlier and, yeah, sorry.
Bee: You're good. Sweet.
Zach: We should definitely get a fuel. I know it takes two power and one mass, but a ship can scoop fuel from a gas giant or star.
Jenine: Ooh,
Bee: that'd be nice. Is it… wasn't there a solar thing or am I thinking of something else? I might be thinking of something else.
Avery: , let's see
Bee: I think that's to charge batteries actually.
Zach: I am only in the ship fitting section. Let's see. Then the ship defenses. I should be looking at that as well. Damn.
Bee: do you guys, should I tell you guys. My ship has just so that we can roll that out if necessary, because it is a, it is a strike fighter.
Avery: Oh yeah.
Bee: Okay. Okay. , well on, let me pull it up, sorry. yeah.
Bee: I just built my ship today, so,
Zach: Heck. Yeah.
Bee: okay. , for weapons, my ship has a Reaver battery and then I have fuel bunkers, so that takes less fuel.
Bee: And then I have one free power, but I don't really know what to do with it. So it's just sitting there.
Zach: Added in later… the fuck nuclear missiles,
Chris: yes.
Avery: Yeah. That's I think those are only for capital ships though, to be fair.
Zach: actually it says class: forget. It's the last thing on the class frigatet lists.
Avery: Oh, right. So, so I also, I also took out anything that was deemed a special,
Bee: Okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah. I was about to say rip that kindergarten. No, no, I'm
Chris: Yeah,
Avery: Yeah, no. , no, , yeah, sorry. I also, I, yeah, I didn't want to start y'all off with, with nukes right away either.
Jenine: Well
Zach: the chaos we can.
Jenine: RIP
Bee: Hey, don't worry guys. I think I might have a hookup. I'm kidding. Okay. I'm going to try not spoil, but I do have a question. Should I text it to you or should I just
Avery: Ah, yeah. Drop it in your, in your private channel.
Bee: Cool. Cool.
Avery: That's fine.
Avery: Sorry. I may have overloaded y'all with a tyranny of choice, so I apologize.
Zach: a tyranny of choice.
Chris: Oh, no, I'm just trying to figure out like, cause if we're taking it from a merchant, it should probably have more like, you know, cargo bay and, and fuel efficiency stuff.
Bee: Yeah, That's what I was thinking.
Caden: Well, the ship lockers are free if I'm reading that right. Get that good, good storage ship lockers. Yes. General equipment storage for crew. Get that. Good. Good crews space.
Bee: Oh my gosh.
Chris: Nah we we'll just leave it on the floor.
Bee: Yeah, we just, we just throw everything on the floor.
Zach: on the floor
Chris: Actually, we don't even have zero or artificial gravity. So it just floats this floating everywhere. Pile… cloud of junk
Bee: and the stuff is just everywhere.
Zach: Oh, geez. definitely need me to workshop.
Bee: Fair fair. I was going to say, we should probably get like a workshop in a med bay, right?
Jenine: Yes,
Caden: yeah,
Jenine: I was going to throw med bay,
Bee: I do also like workshop because I do work things too as well.
Chris: I think it's only extended med bay. I think that like their standard. Yeah. It's like a.
Zach: I think it might be just a given.
Avery: Yeah, I think, I think there's probably like a spot like to, to patch people up, but I think extended med bay is more like, this is an actual room that's clean and sanitary and not.
Zach: extended med bay can provide medical care to more patients. So instead of being like a one room thing, you can have the whole crew in it.
Caden: It's the same way that we don't have to pay for like the actual pilots area navigation room, because it was just a ship would have one. You would hope.
Bee: Just a ship without a cockpit.
Caden: Yeah, no controls. It just goes, it's a drone ship. Yup.
Zach: Ooh, Boarding Tube.
Jenine: control it with one of those RC things, you know, like the RC remote
Zach: boarding tube, sound fun.
Caden: I was thinking that
Bee: Well,
Jenine: Yeah.
Caden: Allows Boarding of a ship in Space.
Bee: I mean, we can just throw our crew at the ship. Okay.
Zach: I mean, I don't have the sh I don't have the suit that, I want
Chris: think that's how the boarding tubes work instead of a torpedo.
Zach: No.
Bee: I feel like that's a two way, cause it's a tube.
Avery: yeah, I mean, it'd probably be a tube or a two-way street for sure. granted, if you're in the position of being able to board a ship, they're usually not in the position to board the ship. So, you know,
Bee: True fair. I mean, I do also have, well, I guess, nevermind, you guys would have to have like Vacc suits.
Zach: I have my character already wants one. So
Bee: Okay. Sweet, sweet. Okay. Yeah. Cause I was going to say, I could literally just like you guys could just tie yourself to my ship, I’ll fly us over.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, I think as a robot, I might just be immune to the vaccuum.
Bee: Someone get a skateboard and I'll just whip you onto the other shifts
Bee: okay. So what do we have so far
Avery: As far as I've heard, I've added the, transport fittings with, and that's no cost at all. The extended med bay, which is one mass, one power and the workshops, which is one mass and one power. So I didn't hear anything else definitive after that, but I can totally, if I missed something, let me know.
Chris: should probably get a smuggler hold, just in case.
Zach: Definitely smugglers hold.
Bee: already committing us to a life of crime? I'm in, I'm on board.
Jenine: Well, it doesn't have to be crime.
Zach: sensor, sensor mask sounds good.
Avery: A sensor mask?
Bee: oh, should we get an armory? That's free.
Caden: I think both armory and ship locker.
Bee: We could also just have-
Caden: Just get the free stuff as well.
Avery: Sure.
Bee: I mean, we could, just have weapons floating around miscellaneously on the ship.
Jenine: We could, well, that makes battle on the ship. Easier. Cause its like oh no-
Bee: Yeah. You could just grab something out of the air,
Jenine: you gotta roll for what weapon you’re grabbing.
Chris: You never have to reload. You just-
Zach: I suppose it should be noted that we have cargo space as well.
Chris: It’s gun game.
Bee: enemies get onboard and we're like quick press the button to release the weapons. Just from the air ducts. Just weapons begin to float around.
Avery: Instead of, yeah like, like on an airplane instead of the oxygen masks, it's laser pistols.
Zach: I was thinking like, straight out of like Punisher or something where you just hit a, like a panel on the wall and just stuff flights, flips over to access.
Bee: Yeah.
Zach: I mean, I'm down for that! Condensing, you know? Save space.
Bee: I mean we could just have an armory, but have everything floating around so we just open the door.
Zach: So we definitely, I'm definitely pro fuel scoops.
Jenine: Scoops!
Bee: Okay. Yeah. I'm also pro fuel scoops.
Jenine: ye! same.
Bee: gas is expensive even in space, so
Avery: ok, six power and 10 mass remaining.
Chris: hydroponic production. You, fleshy beings might have problems if we run out of food.
Jenine: oh.
Zach: That's, for me, that's listed under cruiser.
Chris: Oh, is it? It is! oh, my bad.
Bee: dang. We need to get a cruiser at some point.
Zach: Cruisers require a lot more people to operate though.
Bee: Nah, we can have a robot crew.
Avery: You could have a robot crew. This is true.
Zach: definitely. I feel we should get atmosphere configuration. so we can actually land
Bee: nah, I got us. Don't even worry. Yeah. Yeah. We should probably get that.
Zach: and then possibly amphibious operation. Yeah?
Bee: That would be fun. Flying the plane in the ocean!
Zach: and operate underwater.
Jenine: That seems super fun.
Zach: That seems so cool.
Bee: Actually, it does seem fun. However, comma, I will let slip this a little bit of lore of my character has never set foot on a planet. So, that may make things a little difficult.
Chris: May make things a little, a little fun.
Bee: Could be more fun. You're right. You're right.
Zach: You know, in hindsight, it could be possible that my character has also never set foot on a planet.
Bee: Let's go space space, buddies.
Zach: That would just be interesting. Yeah. Going for space station to space station, never, actually just winding up on a planet.
Bee: Yeah.
Zach: I like that idea.
Bee: I mean, my character has broken atmosphere cause he has to know how to get in and out of orbit, but he's never actually like set foot on a planet.
Zach: On dirt.
Bee: Yeah. He doesn't know what dirt is
Jenine: What is earth? What is this?
Bee: E-orth?
Zach: What is earth lowercase? E
Avery: Why won't this brown stuff come off of my boots. I have stepped in mud. Oh no.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, it's like, what is this stuff? It's coarse and rough and gets everywhere.
Avery: I hate it.
Bee: Oh my gosh. Having to discover sand for the first time. Sounds awful.
Jenine: Oh no.
Caden: was going to say, is sand, the glitter of earth, like.
Bee: Yeah, nature's glitter
Chris: Oh my god!
Zach: It can be. Yeah.
Zach: So what are we, what have we got so far?
Avery: I, I, I wasn't sure if amphibious operation was a settled thing or not. So I have not included that yet.
Chris: No, probably not.
Jenine: Probably not, yeah.
Bee: yeah. I mean, these are things that we can get later too, no?
Zach: indeed.
Avery: totally. Yeah.
Jenine: We’ll put a pin in that for the future.
Avery: Sure. so-
Bee: I mean we could also just steal other ships.
Jenine: Wha- we would never do something like that!
Avery: there, there-
Jenine: Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Avery: There is a lot of, a lot of potential theft going on here. I'm I'm, I'm a fan.
Bee: I don't know, I feel like the cheapest and easiest way to get a better ship is theft.
Jenine: So should we, should, should we do the, there's the, there's something about detection. There's a
Bee: Oh, right, right, right.
Jenine: stealthy boy. Should we go for one of those?
Avery: sensor mask, right?
Zach: Oh. I think I said that a sensor mask, a long distance, disguises a ship as another?
Chris: Yeah.
Bee: ye- oh!
Caden: Ooh.
Jenine: Oh, I was looking at the, we did the emission dampers. Yes, no.
Bee: We did the emission dampers.
Zach: yeah. Adds plus two to checks to avoid detection.
Bee: That'd be nice.
Chris: How much of a drive upgrade do we want?
Bee: Oh yeah. I was. So when I was making my ship, I was looking at the drive upgrades and what they exactly do, and it just makes you, makes it so that you can travel further, faster, like with one jump.
Chris: Okay.
Bee: So I don't know.
Chris: Less fuel, I guess.
Avery: And honestly, I still haven't decided how like, How much I'm going to stay married to the idea of like, oh, you have to do seven jumps to get to this system.
Bee: ok, cool, cool, cool.
Avery: I kind of liked the idea.
Zach: Like Star Wars?
Avery: I kind of like the Star Trek idea.
Zach: Yeah.
Avery: Yeah. Of like no jumping is like, to get to a commercial break, you know, like you, you go to warp.
Avery: So that way the sponsors can get their advertisements in, that kind of thing.
Jenine: Mood mood mood.
Avery: which I might end up doing like fun little, like fake like space sponsors, kind of like,
Jenine: yes!
Bee: Oh my god, I was literally about to ask if we could like make, if everyone could, like, if we can have a channel in the discord where we can make up, like fake products-
Zach: Totally!
Bee: to do like little ads for it, that'd be so fun.
Avery: Yeah.
Jenine: Let me use my graphic design skills for marketing,
Avery: Please, feel free. Feel free. I, yeah, I mean, I I've, I would love other people to help create this silly project.
Bee: heck yeah.
Avery: So yeah, I'm all for it.
Bee: I cant graphic design but I can draw.
Chris: Ollie's advertising suburb, teens may or may not still be active.
Zach: graphic design is my passion.
Jenine: I cannot draw, but I liked, I liked the textology stuff. Typography stuff.
Bee: high five!
Jenine: woo-hoo!
Avery: What were you saying, Chris?
Chris: Ollie’s advertising sub routines may or may not still be active, so be prepared for random advertisements at time to time.
Avery: I love it. Yeah. Like, well, part of that's because like I was playing like outer worlds the other day and it's just like, oh, the corporation is your friend. I'm like, oh yeah, that's great. Thanks.
Zach: Would you like to know more
Avery: Yeah, exactly.
Zach: Straight out of Starship troopers?
Avery: Yeah, stuff like that. Exactly. So I honestly wouldn't worry too much about drive upgrades.
Bee: Okay. Sweet. There was something I was looking at that I completely lost.
Zach: I've, I've moved on to looking at ship defenses.
Bee: Probably good. Probably good. Oh yeah. For like stealth. Could we just like, paint or ship black and add little white dots?
Jenine: Yes, I vote. Yes. chaos!
Avery: I mean,
Jenine: But what if we’re on a planet?
Bee: Oh, right. I mean,
Bee: we can do like the shark thing where like the bottom of our ship is like painted like the stars. And then the top of our
Chris: And the top is-
Bee: is painted. Like the ocean
Avery: oh my gosh.
Bee: Question. Can we drift a, a spaceship?
Avery: uh.
Jenine: asking the real questions.
Bee: I have to know.
Zach: Can we hit the E brake.
Avery: Probably.
Chris: I mean, it all depends on the piloting skill.
Avery: yeah.
Bee: I got us. Don't even worry about it.
Jenine: That sounds so good. So trusting.
Bee: I mean to be fair Polaris probably does know how to drift a spaceship based off of his teacher.
Jenine: Mood.
Avery: Mood. Okay.
Chris: You can technically drift anything, whether it's, whether it remains in one piece, has to be seen.
Bee: I dont know, Good.
Chris: I mean, when you steal it, it's free.
Avery: Yeah.
Bee: The five finger discount.
Avery: So based on everything I've heard so far? No, it's all good. It's all good. ,
Zach: that's going to be the name of the game here.
Avery: you got four power and six mass left. You've got the transport fittings, the med bay, the workshop smugglers hold, armory, locker, fuel scoop, atmospheric configuration and emission stampers.
Caden: So, so one more time, how much, how much money do we have on both of these things? We have six power and two mass, or am I getting those backwards?
Avery: , you have four power and six mass left to spend.
Caden: Yeah I was completely off on, on math. Nice, nice, nice
Zach: May I request that we take out the, extended med bay as I don't think all of us are going to be getting hurt at once. Having just a normal
Jenine: That's fine. We got, I got this. I'll be a great healer. I got this.
Bee: Yeah, again, we could always-
Chris: will be in and out.
Bee: steal. No. Okay. I'm done with the joke. Yeah.
Jenine: One specific ship just for healing
Zach: Thats going to give us one power and one mass back. So we should be at five power and seven mass.
Bee: Okay. We do need weapons and also defenses
Avery: So your, your, your base AC is 14,
Zach: Okay.
Avery: and your base armor is two. And so basically AC is what's to hit, armor is damage reduction. So, so if some, if, if someone attacks your ship and hits you for two, it'll do zero.
Bee: Ah!
Zach: Gotcha.
Caden: I really like the defense lasers.
Avery: just to help clarify for any like, cause like some of these armor options say, add to AC, you know, stuff like that.
Avery: So just wanted to clarify what, what does, what.
Chris: Hard points are taken up only by weapons. Right?
Avery: Correct.
Bee: Yeah.
Zach: Hardened poly ceramic overlay sounds good. It takes up no power and only two mass and its AP quality of attacking weapons reduce by five.
Chris: That is for fighters only.
Zach: But the pound, if you upgraded to frigate, because it's a one with a pound, these costs are multiplied by two for frigates. So you may get two mass.
Avery: Yeah, it can, it can get put onto a, a frigate. Unless I misread that, but I'm pretty sure.
Bee: Mhmm, it can.
Avery: Yeah.
Zach: It's just, I think it's so the, the class is the like lowest thing that it can be put on. So the hull compartments can only be put on a capital ship or bigger
Chris: then. Yeah.
Zach: Instead of, you cant put-
Chris: that sounds really useful.
Zach: Hull compartments on a fighter. So you can, you can upgrade from there. So, yeah I think that's, that's my understanding of the rules.
Bee: Mhmm. what was it, the, which one was is that, that you were looking at?
Zach: hardened, poly ceramic overlay.
Bee: Is that a fitting or is what is which,
Avery: That's in the ship defenses, ship armor, the fighter. Yeah. Fighter armor.
Bee: Okay. I was looking at frigate.
Zach: And then we upgrade that to frigate. It takes up two mass, but no power, which means we'd have five power, five mass?
Avery: That sounds about right.
Zach: In which case we, that would be our only defense, but, you know, giving them a minus five is pretty nice. And then we get, I don't know. Let's look here.
Bee: I mean, there's, there's quite a bit of decent weapons. I do also have the, Riper battery so I can go out and, you know mess with them.
Avery: Sand thrower just throw pocket sand.
Bee: please don't hit me!
Zach: I was looking at that. I'm like,
Bee: -If you doooo!
Chris: Yeah, these, these weapons are pretty beefy on power cost.
Zach: Yeah, I was looking at the plasma beam
Bee: plasma beams are always good.
Zach: 3d six. It takes the, the remaining five power.
Bee: Yeah. Yeah.
Zach: I don't know what the AP is though. So is that for them to hit?
Avery: AP, this weapon ignores, the weapon ignores this many points of the targets armor? ,
Zach: oh! Armor penetration, AP. Okay.
Bee: Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Bee: I dont know if-
Zach: So between it or the multifocal laser, which no, no the multifocal laser is 1d four, but it ignores AP 20. But I liked the Plaza beam where it's, 3d six. That's a nice,
Bee: Question, is it too late to change my ship options for Polaris’ ship?
Avery: of course not,
Bee: Okay.
Avery: not until, not until we actually start playing.
Bee: sweet. Okay. And then also how would, is the ship costs and maintenance thing going to be a big part of what we do? Cause we-
Avery: no, I, I find no joy in accounting.
Bee: Sweet. Neither do I.
Jenine: Oh thank God. Math is so hard.
Bee: ok cause-
Zach: We already have to do rock math. I don't want to have to do money math. I didn't go into accounting.
Avery: like, like if your ship gets like, really badly damaged, like a laser beam shoots through it or something. Yeah. We'll probably have to have a discussion with a mechanic about-
Zach: About fixing it.
Avery: -repair costs.
Chris: Yeah,
Bee: Just bring a ship with like two big holes in it. Hey, can you fix this?
Avery: yeah. You know?
Chris: We'll be back tomorrow. Thanks.
Bee: Okay. Because when I was building my ship for weapons, I really wanted to get the poly spectral mess beam, but I saw the cost for maintenance and I was like, ah, never mind.
Avery: Yeah. I'm not-
Zach: Oh, two mil. Holy crap.
Bee: Yeah. Yeah. So if that's not going to be a huge, huge issue, then I'll probably take that.
Bee: because it also ignores 25 points of armor instead of the-
Zach: I don't know if TL is going to be a factor for Josh either. And that's technology level, which that's a five instead of a four.
Avery: it's fine. Not worried about
Bee: cool. I mean, I don't know how.
Bee: advanced the custodians are, but I feel like that may be a non-issue for them. I don't know.
Avery: they’re, they're perfectly comfortable with technology. I think you'll be fine.
Bee: Ok, cool, cool, cool.
Chris: That sound, they sound pretty, pretty up there.
Chris: And the plasma beam, I support that choice, absolutely.
Zach: So we've got a little bit of mass leftover, but I think, I think we've gotten pretty much everything we can, as far as we can fit in that-
Chris: We could fit one more, augmented plating on
Caden: I was going to say, if we have two more plasma or, sorry two more mass, we could fit the augmented plating and that would be more armor.
Zach: Oh, hell yeah.
Jenine: I like that.
Bee: let's not be squishy.
Zach: a little slower, but I like, I like having higher AC yeah, let's do it.
Avery: Okay.
Caden: and leave us with anything else or is that us, done now?
Zach: I think that
Chris: well, we have one,
Avery: Nope. One free
Chris: have one mass.
Caden: Oh! can, can I argue lifeboats
Bee: Probably for the best.
Caden: like we're going to, I feel like we're going to put ourselves into a theft, theft situations. A lifeboat might not be a bad idea.
Bee: Theft, theft, theft!
Chris: Nope. We're straight up, ride or die.
Zach: I support.
Jenine: So lifeboats, plural, that means enough for crew to leave.
Bee: Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Zach: Yeah. it says emergency escape craft for a ship's crew. So I'm assuming it might be like, especially with it being, you know, a crew of what, five or six of us one craft would be enough for us.
Avery: Yeah.
Avery: I'm assuming that, that,
Zach: Star Trek size, space craft.
Avery: yeah. So I'm assuming that when you get the lifeboat, if you get the lifeboat, see the free merchant can have a crew of up to six. So that's going to have at least enough room for six people. So
Zach: Perfect. Then yet a lifeboat. Should it be the last bit of mass that we can use?
Avery: Okay.
Caden: I imagine it like a ship's lifeboat where it's just like, in those one of those like tiny little boxes and you look at it and you're like, no way that could fit, like however many people it should. But then, like as soon as you release it just like expands and you're like, Yes.
Jenine: ah, like an air mattress or when they ship those mattresses and you have to wait forever for it to expand.
Bee: Or you make the mistake. I did and cut into the bag immediately and it blew, it just explodes.
Chris: Yeah,
Bee: Yeah.
Jenine: I did that with a bean bag
Zach: Oops.
Avery: Oopsie doodle. okay. Now the moment of truth, and you can wait, you can put it off until session one or session two, if you want, but do you want to name your ship?
Zach: ooo.
Bee: The SS theft. I'm just kidding.
Jenine: snatched.
Zach: The SS battle royal.
Avery: The SS five finger discount.
Bee: for the emblem of the ship is just a big hand print that’s painted on the side.
Jenine: Hm.
Bee: I don't know.
Zach: We could, We can all just start pitching ideas in the, in the discord
Avery: Yeah, feel free. I mean, that's totally fine.
Zach: til one sticks.
Caden: Yeah.
Avery: Yeah. I don't, I don’t want to-
Bee: feel like, I mean, it could also be something that we do in game, like after we've come together as a crew,
Chris: that's exactly what-
Avery: totally fine
Chris: Like it could have a, the name of whatever it is when we steal it and then, you know, whatever we decide to call it just comes about naturally.
Bee: yeah
Jenine: And then we paint over it.
Chris: Yeah. Just a big, big painted crossed out name.
Avery: little, a little, a friendship montage of y'all becoming close friends.
Jenine: Craft bonding!
Bee: we. Yes. Bonding through theft. My favorite. it sounds like we've, we're pretty set on not being friends with the person that has the ship and just stealing their ship.
Jenine: We don't know!
Zach: We dont know!
Chris: I mean, it depends on how open he is to just giving it.
Bee: Will they be cool with us, like painting over their existing ship name?
Jenine: Well, I mean-
Avery: Oh, to be clear, the person who has the keys is also not the original ship owner.
Bee: Oh, okay. Sweet.
Jenine: I was about to say, if this person is trying to run with their own ship from a place, I think they would want to rename their ship.
Bee: hm, yeah. Got me there!
Jenine: I've been watching a lot of the star struck Odyssey, from Dimension 20. So that's chaos all in itself.
Bee: I can only imagine. Yeah, alright, What-
Zach: The bogus journey.
Bee: What did you say?
Zach: The bogus journey. I just happened to look over and I saw my bill and Ted movie. Like- bogus movie.
Jenine: Oh, good movie. Good movie.
Bee: Okay. Question.
Avery: Bee, you had a question?
Bee: Oh yeah. It's a nonsensical question.
Bee: If we, okay. If we're planning on stealing multiple ships, I'm not sure how married to this idea everyone is, but, does that mean we're going to have to rename every ship? or are we just gonna have the ship name that we're currently on and just put 1, 2, 3-
Zach: oh my gosh
Jenine: So, hear me, hear me out. We do it Bridgerton style, which is we name all of them in alphabetical order.
Bee: Ooh,
Jenine: So the first ship we steal starts with an A, and then it goes B, but then again, we are in space. So there's so many different languages.
Bee: true.
Avery: This is true.
Chris: Truth.
Jenine: Another thing I was binging, Bridgerton.
Avery: Oh, this is going to be, this is going to be fun. I'm so excited.
Bee: I too am excited.
Bee: I want to know, I'm really curious how many ships we can steal before the end of season one.
Avery: The galaxy is your oyster.
Bee: yeeees!
Chris: We have to have a full blown Armada going. Like we ha- we've got to just get a massive crew. Start our own faction, take over the galaxy. It's the, it's the only outcome.
Avery: No, y'all, you'll become the straw hat pirates of the, of space. Just have a massive fleet.
Bee: Yeah, can we make, a like, a car sales, like, like a dealership with all of our stolen ships?
Jenine: We would never!
Chris: Yeah. a used ship salesman
Jenine: but what
Avery: retire at the end of season one as like-
Chris: offload all the merch.
Avery: like, like scamming car salespeople. Just yeah, I can get you into a battleship. No problem. Come on. Let's look at the inventory. Oh, you know, my boss, he's saying he can't go any lower than four mil. Sorry.
Chris: Yo just don't ask where it came from.
Bee: I- and, okay. Another question. If we do start stealing ships, will it increase in like, can we increase in size up to a space station?
Zach: Oh God. How do you steal a space station? You just, you just take over a space station. like-
Bee: Well, what I'm saying is, okay, well, if we're, if we're upgrading the size of the vessels we steal, we could probably get a couple carriers to attach to the station to take it elsewhere. We take the station and we push it somewhere else!
Jenine: Yeah. It's like a circus.
Chris: Yeah. I mean,
Jenine: It's a traveling circus.
Chris: We just get a bunch of carriers, with tractor beams.
Bee: it's like in Monty Python, the pigeons and the coconut.
Avery: I do. I do like the idea of y'all stealing a spaceship, a space station though. And I could think of a few ways that you could probably do it with a little fudging of the rules. I think it could be done. Cause by default-
Bee: I’m sorry that-
Avery: by default that comes with no spike drive, but I mean, a clever, clever mechanic, a clever engineer could probably Hotwire one onto it somewhere.
Zach: Hypothetically speaking. Yes.
Bee: I'm sorry that I'm shoe-horned us, with my silly, silly little joke. Into stealing shit.
Avery: No, what it's going to be is, it's this, this podcast is slowly going to devolve into fast and the furious in space.
Jenine: Never!
Bee: We drift the space station.
Avery: It's all about family.
Chris: We’re family here.
Zach: We become two fast, two furious
Avery: Yep. And there'll be some bald character who just always talks about family all the time.
Zach: family, family, family, family.
Bee: Yes, can we drift a space station?
Jenine: Yeah, The real questions here.
Avery: The real questions for sure. Yeah. Well, we'll try
Bee: I wanna, I wanna know-
Zach: Can we use nitrous on a space station?
Avery: nitrous.
Chris: I mean, you're the engineer.
Bee:You are the engineer.
Zach: I am the engineer here!
Bee: Could you put nitrous in a space station?
Zach: I suppose. I'll, we'll have to find out. We need a copious amount of nitrous.
Bee: so much nitrous. Is there a gas giant that's just nitrous?
Avery: Oh, well, cool. Well, that little team building exercise I think is done as far as creating your ship. Congratulations.
Bee: We did it.
Zach: yeet!
Chris: We are now the proud owner of a shiny new ship.
Bee: Nice. I'm going to drift it.
Bee: We'll break it in- You know how like, people like christen ships with like a bottle, I'm going to christen it by drifting it.
Chris: The ship is the bottle.
Zach: The ship is the bottle!
Avery: Wait.
Zach: Hopefully you don't smash it on a rock trying to drift it.
Bee: Well. Okay. Well, if we get enough ships, we can use one of them to have just like really good armor and then I can drift it into an enemy, bigger ship, then just eject myself out of it.
Chris: Initiate operation battering Ram.
Bee: Yes, exactly.
Chris: Oh my God. I mean, Yeah, when we have enough ships, they'll just be expendable though. Like we can scrap ‘em for fun.
Bee: We can just use them as trebuchets.
Avery: just, just do the whole don't maneuver a bunch of times. Just go to warp right in front of another ship and just blow it to smithereens. Well, I don't think there's anything else really to cover. , I could talk about kind of what's going on in the universe when y'all start, if you want, or we can save that for next session.
Avery: Cause I'm probably gonna record a bunch of that stuff anyway, either way.
Bee: I like lore.
Avery: Okay, I'll talk a little bit about it. So essentially the way I've, I've built this, this universe is, through playing a game. Cause I like, I like games. So I played this game called alone on a galactic map and it basically,
Avery: Had me roll some dice, draw some cards out of a deck and flip a coin. And it gave me like a little prompt for like what this thing is in space. So I have a bunch of these different prompts that I then kind of fleshed out. So, you know, for example, there is an artificial wormhole that's near a civilization.
Avery: And so I was like, okay, what would that look like? So this artificial wormhole, [01:03:00] no one knows where it came from or who created it, but there's three planets that orbit around it. And each of the planets, each of the planets societies, Revere this, wormhole as like the place that their gods reside in.
Avery: And so, the civilizations, when someone passes away, they just launched the coffin into the wormhole as like that's where they go. Basically anyone who's alive and tries to enter the wormhole is like stopped. Right, and it's like forbidden for living creatures to go through. So that's like one of the, the cool hip places you might encounter, in this galaxy.
Avery: So, but the main players in this galaxy are the independent systems, which basically just kind of govern themselves. So this wormhole would be an example of one of the systems that acts as sort of an independent system. Like they don't, they don't answer to either the hegemony or to the Republic. They just kind of do their own thing and are kind of left alone by the rest of the galaxy.
Avery: But there's also the hegemony, which has been kind of an isolated power for a long time. And they've just started kind of expanding and. Taking over independent systems, but not with like force, like they show up in the system, they quote unquote negotiate. And then all of a sudden that system is part of the hegemony.
Avery: And it's kind of weird,
Bee: Sounds like they're manifesting their destiny.
Avery: a little bit it's on their it's on their, their vision board.
Jenine: Thanks U.S history.
Zach: yaaaaay.
Avery: Yeah. So it's on their, it's on their vision board take over other systems
Bee: Interesting.
Avery: and then you've got the Republic, which is sort of this kind of aloof, kind of corrupt body of, of planets that more or less are like, Like they think they're invincible.
Avery: So they're not really worried about what happens to the independent systems or what the hegemony is doing as long as they can kind of maintain their comfort, their cool. yeah. I didn't pull that from recent history at all. Did I?
Bee: Sounds like we have to unionize the Republic.
Jenine: Oh, goodness
Zach: We got to overthrow, security head Bezos.
Avery: space pays us.
Bee: mean one star cruiser to the, to the Capitol is, you know, take a right. That'll take care of that right away.
Avery: Yeah. So those are sort of the major players in the galaxy though, but there's lots of like small little factions. There's, you know, you've got your run of the mill space pirates who just want to board ships and take what's theirs or what, what they see as theirs. You've got smugglers who are always looking to. You know,
Avery: Make a quick buck or quick credit, there's asteroid belts with casinos and racing and all kinds of cool stuff. There's a Dyson sphere, which I don't know if any of y'all are nerd, nerds enough to know what a Dyson sphere is, but
Chris: That's pretty dope.
Bee: I love Dyson spheres.
Zach: Mhmm.
Avery: yeah, I've, I've made that into a creepy little, house of house of mirrors kind of thing or something like that.
Bee: Heck yeah.
Avery: Hall of mirrors. I dunno. There's, anti-matter anomalies all kinds of fun stuff. So this, this game is a lot of, a lot of fun in,in how it goes about world building. So
Zach: I was gunna say, it's world building is extremely open.
Bee: yeah. I saw that too. It's really cool.
Avery: Yeah. , and it was a good way to like, kind of like get the creative juices flowing, you know? Cause like, yeah, it just gives you a very basic prompt and
then it's like, it was on me to like, think of, okay, what would be an adventure hook for this? You know, why, why would this location matter? So,
Zach: That's a, that's how I kinda came up with my, my backstory. Was alright, Where did I come from? Alright. Let's world build.
Avery: yeah,
Bee: Heck yeah.
Avery: but I'm all for, you know, you all making parts of this galaxy your own. If there's an idea you have for a world or a star or something, feel free to. Come to me and bring it up. There'll probably be moments in the campaign where like something will get introduced. And I might say, you know, Chris, give me a name for a planet, you know, or something like that.
Avery: So if you want to come up with your own like quick little reference sheet or something, feel free, but if not, don't worry about it. I don't want to give you guys like homework or anything, but, you know, I, I want to make sure that it's not just me dictating a story, to y'all I want this to be as collaborative as possible.
Avery: So
Zach: Cool.
Bee: Sounds fun.
Avery: yeah, just, this is your galaxy too.
Bee: universe is our proverbial mollusk.
Avery:Yes, it's mollusk, It's mollusk shaped. How about that? I don't know what that looks like, but sure.
Zach: Is that mollusk shape on the back of an even bigger space turtle?
Bee: Wow. The possibilities are endless.
Zach: Are we going to have to fight Lord Xenu? At some point
Avery: Lord Xenu.
Chris: I guess that depends on us.
Bee: I mean, even bigger question. Are we going to have to fight flat earthers.? or not earth, I guess, but like people that believe their planet is flat. Well, I guess in this university planet could be flat.
Zach: A planet could be flat.
Chris: Yes. We have to come across flat earthers.
Bee: Do we have to fight round globers?
Chris: Yes. We have to fight the round globers on a flat planet.
Avery: There's, there's a contentious war on this planet. Some of them believe that it's flat some believe that it's round it's, it's really just sort of, a swirl.
Zach: It's more of a hexagon.
Bee: One get a person gets up in front of the crowd and is just like, guys, we have space travel. We can figure this out.
Avery: No, it's all a conspiracy.
Chris: It's a hologram man.
Zach: Hologram!
Avery: cool. This is going to be great. I can already tell.
Bee: Yes.
Chris: Yeah.
Avery: well, if, is there anything else anyone wanted to talk about? before I let y'all go back to your lives?
Caden: I have a question.
Avery: I hopefully have an answer.
Caden: well, it's more on just, this is PG 13 rating. How much, swearing is allowed. Question mark.
Bee: Yes. That was the first thing I asked.
Avery: So PG 13, as far as like, I'm not going to go into like graphic detail of like blood guts and gore and all that stuff. That's too much. But, I do not care about
cussing. I do not. So if anyone has a problem with it, we can totally tamp it down, but I'm not worried about, about that at all.
Zach: By the, by the film association, we'd still be where we'd be an R rating, but, it'd be like,
Avery: R for language PG 13 for everything else,
Zach: yeah.
Jenine: Cool.
Bee: We only get one. Fuck.
Zach: Oh God.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Bee: We can only say it once.
Chris: one fuck per episode.
Zach: and then from there, we have to be bleeped
Bee: Yeah, exactly.
Jenine: Rip to post
Zach: it's up to post to choose, which fuck is the, is the
Avery: is the most impactful.
Bee: the one to be said
Jenine: the most important one of the episode.
Avery: Yeah. Yeah. So,
Bee: the fuck of the day.
Avery: so yeah. So if anyone has a problem with that, let me know privately publicly, it doesn't matter. but yeah, we can. Yeah. But if, if I, if I don't hear any objections, then I'm not going to care. That being said also like, If someone's character is literally F this F that every single sentence I might say, like, Hey, let's chill.
Bee: I don't think we got any New Yorkers in here. So I think we're good.
Zach: I was going to say, I don't think anyone, any of us here are going to be Eric Cartman.
Avery: No, I don't think so. But yeah. Cool. Yeah. So I guess two weeks from now is when we'll start our official journey.
Bee: Very excited.
Jenine: hehehehe!
Zach: Heck. Yeah.
Avery: Yeah. I'm gonna save this,
Chris: Our voyage amongst the stars.
Avery: ship character sheet. cool. Well, This was fun. And I'm so glad y'all are here.
(Music Fades in)
Avery: Thank you for listening to Beyond the Furthest Stars! Our cover art was created by Xander Riley of the Heart Beats podcast. Be sure to check out his work at XanderDRiley.com. Our intro and outro music was produced by Dustin Carpenter. You can find him on Instagram at ZodiacGallery. Check out their most recent Twin Peaks inspired Project: Wusteria Lodge, whereever you stream your music. Background music provided by tabletopaudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Be sure to follow us on twitter and tumblr under the handle @FurthestPod. Our episodes release on the first and fifteenth of every month. Thank you so much for listening.