As mentioned last time, I’ve recently discovered the delights of Core Space, which is a superb sci-fi ‘dungeon-crawl’-type game. I’ve already played a few games and started the basic ‘Perseus Arm’ campaign included in the core rulebook, but having spent a week painting the models, it’s time to get it on the blog.
As I have no friends, I’m playing this solo. One of the beauties of Core Space is that the main enemy to everyone, the evil cyborg ‘Purge’ are NPCs controlled by the game algorithm (along with civilians and other NPC factions, such as gangers and the Galactic Corps), so it can happily be played solo or cooperatively ‘against the game’. Even as a solo player, every game has tended to end with a desperate, nail-biting “Get to the chopper shuttle!!!” fighting retreat as we run out of ammo and the Purge threaten to overrun my crew.
It really is a bloody brilliant game! 🙂
In this thrilling episode, the crew of the good ship Saucy Sue, commanded by Captain Arianna Sabrine is docking with the local Hive station, planning to get some down-time at Chatsubo’s Bar and meet up with their old mate Gak, a blue-skinned Quell merc. Arianna’s ‘crew’ at this time consists of just her right-hand man, the venerable Roykirk Inskipp. With things getting busy as the Purge get more active, they really need to take on a third and preferably a fourth crewman, starting with Gak.
However, as they dock with the station, it’s clear that the Purge have already arrived and have boarded the station! With the situation going south, they need to board, get to Chatsubo’s Bar and extract Gak as soon as possible. With everyone fleeing the station as fast as they can, there might also be some opportunities to be made among carelessly-discarded property and panicked civilians willing to pay anything to get them off the station…
[This campaign mission is designed for two players, so I’ve also included Captain Jace Dolman of the Black Maria and his sidekick, the merc Eli Renton. By a strange coincidence, they’ve also just docked and are heading to Chatsubo’s to meet their tech specialist Jay ‘Lars’ Larsen.]
Above: The character dashboards for the crews of the Black Maria (top row) and the Saucy Sue (bottom row). The Saucy Sue has already seen a fair bit of action, so Arianna and Roykirk have already added a fair few career-points and skills. Renton of the Black Maria has also added a few skills, but Jace has thus far had a run of bad luck, each time falling in combat and forcing him to use the dreaded emergency teleport (the last time being teleported to the wrong ship, resulting in embarrassment and a ransom). This means that he has yet to collect any career-points or extra skills.
Lars and Gak are presently showing the ‘Civilian’ side of their character-boards, as they will act as civilians until one of their crew gets within line-of-sight and close range. Until then they will do random stuff like an NPC civilian. They are only armed with bargain-basement pistols, so Arianna has brought an extra good-quality pistol from the Saucy Sue‘s cargo bay; her skills enable her to use two pistols at once, but she intends to give one to Gak.
Above: The route from the airlocks to Chatsubo’s Bar is a very long and convoluted one! With the Purge threat rapidly increasing, both crews plan to get to the objective as fast as possible, with MINIMUM looting along the way! There’s a lot of distance to cover and not much time to do it in. When the Purge eventually arrive, there are six possible entry-points – two are at the top of the map, at the end of the large corridor and next to the entrance to Chatsubo’s Bar; that is going to be problematic. One more is at the bottom of the map and another is at the bottom-right corner of the map. Two more entry-points are on the left of the map, between the Saucy Sue and the Black Maria.
Above: One of the locals is still at work in his shop, wondering where all his customers have gone. He clearly hasn’t got the message.
Above: Similarly, Station Sanitary Orderly 3rd Class Treva Rimmer is completely oblivious to the Purge attack and is responding to a report of a suspected Quell-turd blocking the U-bend. “I’m too good for this. I could have been an officer…”
Above: Gak and Lars meanwhile, are at Chatsubo’s. The rest of the clientele have cleared out but they sit tight in Chatsubo’s, have a pint and wait for all this to blow over.
Above: The Saucy Sue‘s airlock cycles and the hatch opens with the traditional hiss*. Arianna bursts out and takes off at a sprint, leaving Roykirk puffing in her wake. Nevertheless, Arianna spots some low-value loot lying in the corner and makes a mental note to perhaps pick it up on her way back if she’s found nothing better by then.
* Starship airlock hatches haven’t actually hissed for over 400 years, but nowadays they play a recorded hiss-sound for tradition’s sake. Once mechanical hisses had been eliminated by modern technology, the doors were actually programmed to say greetings, compliments and cheery motivational sayings to those passing through… It was only after several tragedies where airlocks were punctured by gunfire, energy-blades and most notably a grenade, that they changed it to an artificial hiss.
[In game terms, Arianna’s career-path allows her to make three actions per turn, but only two of these may be a Move action. With no enemy in sight, she therefore uses her spare third action to make a quick search as she sprints through! 🙂 ]
Above: Jace and Renton similarly make their exit from the Black Maria.
Above: Treva suddenly gets panicked by all the people running past and asks Roykirk what’s happening. Having had the situation explained to him, Treva readily forgets all dreams of commissioning to the station leadership and agrees to hand over whatever credits he has to pay for his passage off the doomed station.
[In game terms, Treva rolled the Civilian Action die and came up with a ‘Join Crew’ result. This means that he immediately volunteers to join any crew that has a crew-member within short range (4 inches). There are however, dangers with recruiting civvies, as we shall see…]
Above: Treva makes straight for the Saucy Sue‘s airlock, which is a very short distance away. As an added bonus, he brings with him a case of ship parts, which will greatly reduce the costs of ship-repairs after the mission.
Above: But no sooner has Treva cleared off, than a Purge Harvester (the creepy beige skeletal robot-footsoldiers of the Purge), attracted by the sounds of Arianna frantically rummaging for loot, suddenly appears from an access hatch! Harvesters aren’t all that quick and don’t have ranged weaponry, but they are armoured, are pretty good in a close fight and often make up for their shortcomings with sheer numbers.
[This was the result of an Event Card, whereby a Harvester is placed at the most recently-placed Search marker.]
Above: Gunfire will attract more Purge, so Roykirk expertly throws his knife at the Harvester for the silent-kill! There’s a satisfying ‘thunk’, followed by a pause as the Harvester stands there, looking baffled and going cross-eyed as the knife sticks, shuddering in the centre of it’s armoured face-mask, having otherwise done no damage whatsoever… “Ah, well. Some you win…” Roykirk shrugs, pulls out his pistol and blows off the Harvester’s head.
Above: Arianna meanwhile, dives around the corner and bumps straight into Jace from the Black Maria. Arianna laughs, “You again…? I’m glad to see you survived our last meeting. Sorry we had to leave you behind in a pool of your own fluids. Did all of your bits get teleported to the same place this time?” Jace tries to ignore her and maintain his dignity as he hears Renton laughing behind him…
In the meantime, Gan’eek the shopkeeper, brightens up as potential customers approach. “Sorry about this mate, but you’d better cash up, as we’ve got bad news… Out of interest, how much cash is in the till and how much is getting out of here alive worth to you…?”
Above: Meanwhile, near Chatsubo’s Bar, more Purge Harvesters appear. Panicked civilians flee for their lives! With civilians in front of them, the Purge ignore the bar for now. Well, it’s not a Harvester bar, after all…
[Apologies to non-UK readers who won’t understand the very poor joke.]
Above: More Purge arrive at the same entrance; another Harvester and a new class of menace; a Devastator. Scanning to their left, they notice movement through the windows.
Above: In Chatsubo’s, Lars has unwisely chosen this moment to move out of cover and is spotted by the Devastator! The Devastator is designed for ranged combat and lets Lars have it with both barrels! Lars is seriously wounded, but not down and makes it to cover.
Above: Hearing the unmistakable sound of a Devastator’s energy-beams, Arianna and Jace race to save their friends. Renton follows behind, having briefly stopped to persuade Gan’eek to get to the airlock.
Above: Spotting Gak through the window of the bar, Arianna runs over and manages to attract his attention [in scenario terms, Gak now becomes active as one of the crew]. She throws him her spare pistol and Gak quickly rummages through a nearby crate, successfully recovering some more useful kit, including an ammo magazine and a med-stim. However, Arianna can’t stop to chat, as two Harvesters have just appeared at the doorway, pursuing the orange-haired civilian!
Above: In the meantime, the shopkeeper Gan’eek, who had been persuaded by Renton to make his way to the Black Maria, suddenly realises that he hasn’t personally seen any Purge… The MSM have been trying to make everyone worried about this thing called the ‘Purge’, but he’s never seen one and it’s probably all a hoax. All those supposed exterminated worlds, such as the Quell homeworld, are probably just paid crisis-actors… Muttering about ‘shills’ and ‘sheeple’, he wanders back to his shop.
Above: With Arianna and Jace engaging Harvesters and panicked civilians to their front, another Harvester appears behind them!
Above: Renton takes the shot, but misses. His weapon then jams with the second shot! He’s going to have to find himself a better gun…
Above: Yet another civilian appears; this one belonging to the reptilian Pon race. However, Renton doesn’t have time to make friends!
Above: With the Harvester almost upon Renton, who has still not cleared his jammed weapon, the Pon calmly calls across to ask if he might be of assistance… “Yes! F@&£ing shoot that thing!” The alien pulls out a small pistol, calmly takes aim and blows the Harvester apart. “Greetings Human. My name is Ooma. May I ask a small favour? I would very much appreciate passage off this station, which appears to be about to be Purged and which would be most disagreeable.” “Er, yeah mate. No prob. The airlock’s that way. Go in and get a brew on.”
Above: Meanwhile, at the main corridor leading to Chatsubo’s, Roykirk has managed to shoot down one of the Harvesters through a side-window. However, two are still coming and have their beady little red eyes fixed on the fleeing civilian. Arianna shouts to the orange-haired civilian and tells him to get to the airlock. He nods in acknowledgement, but doesn’t say anything as he runs on down the corridor.
Above: Jace is unable to fire with Arianna and the civilian in the way, but Arianna just charges in, cutting down one Harvester with her sword. In an effort to save ammo, she throws the sword at the second Harvester who folds up with the sword embedded in its torso.
Above: Having retrieved Arianna’s pistol and some more gear from a handy crate, Gak heads for the bar’s main entrance, only to encounter a bunch of Purge coming in! One Devastator is already up close and personal, so Gak lets fly with his fists. Perhaps Gak has broken a nail or something, but his attack has absolutely no effect! The Devastator, trying to use his beam-projectors as clubs, similarly has little effect on Gak, but this pathetic display of unarmed combat is cut short by the second Devastator, who lets Gak have it at point-blank range! Gak falls to the floor in a smoking heap (and not for the first time in Chatsubo’s).
Above: Gan’eek’s conspiracy theories have a cold, hard clash with reality as a Harvester rounds the corner and immediately attacks him! Astonishingly, the Harvester completely fluffs his attack and Gan’eek runs off screaming.
Above: With Arianna and Roykirk having dealt with the Harvesters in the corridor, Jace sprints to Chatsubo’s!
Above: Rounding the corner into the bar, Jace immediately spots Lars cowering in a corner and shouts at him to take down one of the Devastators as he brings an axe down onto the back of the first Devastator’s head.
[In scenario terms, Lars is now activated and part of Jace’s crew.]
Above: Roykirk meanwhile, responding to Gan’eek’s screams, again tries his hand at knife-throwing, this time with better luck as he takes down the Harvester.
Above: At Chatsubo’s Bar, Lars uses his tech skills to jam the remaining Devastator’s systems, preventing it from making any more attacks for the time being. He then runs over to a nearby crate and is overjoyed to find a good gun, a magazine and a med-stim, which he immediately uses to patch up his wounds.
Above: Renton meanwhile, had been firing through the window into the bar, trying unsuccessfully to take down the Devastators attacking Gak. As Jace and Lars now have the situation in hand, he pauses to rummage through a crate, finding a very nice pistol and an enormous pile of cash. His pockets are already pretty full, so he takes the greater part of it and drops the rest for someone to hopefully pick up later. However, a Devastator appears from nowhere and immediately opens fire! The shields on his fancy coat take some of the hits before shutting down and the underlying armour absorbs some more damage, but Renton is seriously wounded. Nevertheless, he calmly takes aim with his nice new pistol and blows the Devastator away before injecting a med-stim to take the edge off. “‘Wanker…”
Above: Before he’s had a chance to retrieve his thrown knife, Roykirk encounters yet another Harvester! His ammo is running low, but having thrown his knife away, he’s got no option but to open fire. Thankfully his rifle is designed for close-range ‘spray & pray’ and is therefore rather effective at such close-quarters, so the Harvester is blown to pieces. With the Harvester down, Roykirk quickly advances to retrieve his knife and a previously-dropped magazine.
Above: In the main corridor outside Chatsubo’s, a deadly new threat appears, chasing a civilian. This is a whole new order of Nasty; a Purge Assassin!
Above: Assassins are programmed to identify and home in on enemy leaders first and having spotted Arianna, the Assassin quickly switches its attention from the fleeing girl to the Captain of the Saucy Sue! Quickly covering the distance to Arianna, the Assassin goes straight in for the kill with its energy-blade. Arianna is severely wounded, but refuses to die this way and strikes back with her sword, watching with satisfaction as the red lights go out in the thing’s three eye-lenses.
Above: Renton meanwhile, down to only one round, heads back to Gan’eek’s shop, where he’d stashed a magazine. However, two Devastators appear and immediately open fire! Renton seems to have the luck of the Gods. His coat’s shield-generator might have gone down during his previous encounter, but it still has armour which manages to stop some of the damage and this saves his life. He now has four choices; dive for cover, open fire with his last round, heal one of his wounds or having dived for cover, grab the magazine and reload… But he can only pick two… He decides to heal one of his wounds and and with his last round, opens fire and drops one of the Devastators. The surviving Devastator lines up the shot on the defiant Renton… “Come on then, ya c@&£!”
Above: Meanwhile, in a corridor on the exfil route back to the Saucy Sue, the orange-haired civilian suddenly stops, contorts into various bizarre poses, then flickers out, revealing a ‘Live One’! These are the most dangerous of the Purge; they initially infiltrate using holo-emitters to disguise themselves as locals before then commanding the Purge assault. There is a piercing scream in the corridor as the civilian girl runs past the window and is instantly vapourised by a blast from the Live One!
Above: Having defeated the Assassin, Arianna manages to heal some of her wounds with a med-stim, but is then attacked by yet another Harvester. Jace, Lars and the heavily-wounded Gak are now finally exfiltrating from the bar and Gak manages to drop the Harvester with a well-aimed burst, but not before Arianna suffers further wounds. It’s still a very long way back to the airlocks and they still have a Live One to get past…
Above: Back at Gan’eek’s shop, the Devastator opens fire for a second time on Renton, but astonishingly misses! Then, even more bizarrely, a panicked orange-haired civilian (presumably the one that had been cloned by the Live One’s holo-emitter) suddenly appears and attacks the Devastator from behind, taking it down! “Well f@&% me sideways…” Renton breathes a sigh of relief, runs to pick up the magazine and reloads his weapon, wondering what in Wolfgang’s name* is going to happen next.
* The patron saint of soldiers. Nobody now remembers who Saint Wolfgang was, but he vaguely had something to do with beer and more than one sausage, so he was definitely a soldier’s saint.
Above: The Live One is going to be a very tough opponent to take on, but Jace has a laser-sight attached to his pistol which should even the odds, while Roykirk has a very effective close-quarter machine gun. Should all this fail. Arianna has a grenade ready to lob through the window…
Above: Jace opens fire with his pistol and to everyone’s astonishment, the Live One is obliterated in an explosion of organic and mechanical body-parts! “The exfil route is clear! Get to the airlocks!”
[In game terms, Jace’s pistol rolled three dice at close range, so had to roll the absolute maximum (4 hits) in order to beat the Live One’s armour of 3. He scored 3 hits with the first two dice, but the third dice missed completely. However, his laser-sight allows the re-rolling of one die, which then scored the required fourth hit! Killing a Live One earns the character an automatic Career Point, which considering that he’s not yet made it to the end of a mission, is a definite boost for Jace’s reputation!]
Above: However, the exfil route is not clear… Attracted by Gan’eek’s terrified shrieking (having your conspiracy theories run into the cold hard wall of reality is a terrible thing), the Purge are now swarming near the airlocks. Gan’eek runs, but is not fast enough to out-run a Purge Assassin…
Above: At last, the two crews are almost reunified, as Roykirk covers the wide space of Gan’eek’s shop and Renton rummages through a crate for med-stims.
Above: Arianna, Jace, Gak and Lars run as fast as they can for the airlocks, but the sounds of approaching Purge are now all around them! An orange-haired civilian runs past in the opposite direction… “Hey, didn’t we send that bloke to the ship earlier?”
Above: Having purged the poor Gan’eek, the Assassin homes in on new targets and quickly locks on to Roykirk, who had spotted a previously-ignored crate. The Assassin manages to wound Roykirk, but fails to land the fatal blow. Roykirk attempts to fight back with his knife, but has no effect on the armoured Assassin. Staring into the three red eyes of the Assassin, Roykirk now accepts his fate… However, Lars suddenly appears at the window and with his newly-acquired rifle, puts a long burst into the Assassin at close range, blowing the thing to atoms. “Thanks mate… Er, who are you…?”
Above: The crews successfully pass through the late Gan’eek’s shop without any more Purge appearing (there is however, a group of Purge chasing them from the main corridor and another group near the airlocks). However, Gak is suddenly subjected to an unprovoked attack from behind by the shrieking orange-haired civvy, which thankfully has no effect. “What the f@&£ are you doing, you idiot?!” Gak just looks at him with contempt and continues on his way.
Above: The two crews are now concentrated, except for Jace, who is lagging behind at Gan’eek’s shop, with the orange-haired civilian troublemaker. But not for long, as the civvy is instantly vapourised by a pursuing Devastator! “We are leaving! Get to the chopper!” “Get to the what, Boss?!” “The airlock! I meant the airlock… What’s a chopper…?”
Above: Suddenly, yet another Assassin appears in Gan’eek’s shop and sprints after Jace, plunging its energy-blade into the captain’s back! Jace is seriously wounded but still standing. However, he doesn’t have any med-stims left and is unlikely to survive another attack. By some miracle, the Assassin suddenly stops its attack, runs back to the hatchway and disappears!
[In game terms, an event card ordered the Purge to move toward their nearest entry point and if they reached it, they would be removed from play.]
Above: Other Purge across the station, suddenly withdraw, as if they’ve received conflicting orders.
Above: This breathing-space doesn’t last long however, as more Purge soon appear and the assault resumes. One Harvester again attacks poor Roykirk, but is cut down by fire from Gak.
Above: With everyone running pell-mell for their exfil, Jace lags behind and becomes isolated. A Harvester suddenly appears in front of him, followed by another! At this point, he could simply outrun them and get to the airlock, but no, he’s a meathead idiot, so decides to fight it out… Because this went SO well on the two previous occasions…
Above: Jace drops the first Harvester with a shot from his pistol, but is now out of ammo. He whips out his trusty axe and wielding it double-handed, brings it down on the Harvester’s skull… There’s a sickening crunch as the axe breaks in his hands…
“ohshit”
Above: The Harvester strikes back, grievously wounding Jace! But worse is to come, as a Devastator now appears in the doorway, followed by yet another Assassin!
Above: “Some help in here?!” “Sorry Boss, but I’ve got my own f@$£ing problems! Ooo, ya c@#£! Have some of that!”
Above: Lars has almost made it to the airlock, but behind him Jace is about to be overrun by the Purge! Although he’s desperate to dive into that hatch, he instead dives into cover and uses his tech skills once again to jam the Devastator’s systems. The red monster judders to a halt in the doorway, unable to fire and blocking the route for the following Assassin. Jace at last has a chance of escape!
Above: “Bugger…” Lars had forgotten about the window that he himself had used to blast an Assassin just a few minutes previously… Unable to get past the Devastator in the doorway, the Assassin spots Jace through the window, levels its weapon and fires. Jace drops to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Renton shrugs, “Sorry Boss, but we tried… See you on the flip-side… Again…”
Above: Mission successful, Arianna and Roykirk successfully manage to extract Gak and get him safely back to the Saucy Sue, along with the refugee Treva who pays what he can, including a most welcome case of ship-parts. They also manage to get away with a decent amount of loot, which enables them to upgrade the Saucy Sue with some airlock auto-defences. They’ve got sufficient weaponry, so they put the rest of their credits aside for the time being to hire another crew-member for future missions.
Above: Renton successfully manages to extract Lars back to the Black Maria by the skin of their teeth, but they had to leave their captain behind for the third time in a row! Ooma was also most grateful for being rescued and rewarded them handsomely. They’d also made it out with a decent haul of loot, enabling all the necessary repairs to be made to the Black Maria and some new airlock auto-defences to be fitted. Jace should be pleased when he sees the new upgrades to the old girl… If he ever does… The emergency teleport didn’t bring him back to the Maria, so they hope he made it out ok…
.
.
.
Activating his emergency teleport for the third time in as many missions, Jace experiences a flash of blinding light and then finds himself lying on a hard ship’s deck. The pain is unbearable and he rolls over to cough up blood, but he’s alive. He still seems to have all his own body-parts and memories, so it actually seems to have worked as advertised! Then he passes out…
Some unknown time later, Jace wakes up. He’s no longer on a hard floor and can sense that he’s in a bed. Despite the crushing headache, he opens his crusted eyes and once the stars clear he looks around…
“When did we get pink velour upholstery? What’s Renton done with the Black Maria while I’ve been unconscious? Why is the bedspread made of faux leopardskin and why do we have lacy curtains in a starship…?! And why is he playing classical music?! He knows I can’t stand it and “Mama Mia” is the absolute worst!”
Jace rolls over and suddenly realises that he is being watched by the most hideous creature he has ever seen, even in Purge Space…
“Hello Sweetie,” growls a stupendously over-made-up human… female…? “Welcome aboard the Priscilla. I’m Evangelista. Gloriana is doing the driving and ‘The Madonna’ is presently in the rear-gunner’s position, but she’ll be along in a moment to say ‘Hi’; she’s very friendly. You’re lucky that your emergency teleport managed to lock onto our signal and didn’t dump you into space. Now don’t worry, we’ll be arriving at Eroticon VI for Pride Week in about a month and we’ll be able to drop you off there. There will of course be a small charge for bed and passage…” Evangelista’s ‘Mercury-style’ moustache twitches hopefully… “Or we could perhaps work out some other arrangement…?”
In Space, no-one can hear you scream.
Most entertaining!!! Too bad it had to be done solo…
Cheers Ed! You can call me ‘Han’… 😉