Act 1: Joyeuse, Introduction to Paradise Lua

In this act, players are introduced to Paradise Lua and allowed to roam Joyeuse Division.

Act Goals:

  • The players should try out their skills.
  • The players should learn to fight.
  • This act is about learning and gaining confidence.
  • At the end of Act 1, Players should be aware of and prepared for their Act 2 mission: Hunting down an assortment of important people on Paradise Lua and psychically breaking their connection to distant True Horrors.

Quest 1. Get to the Daybreak Institute

  • Players touch down in the Passenger Concourse, along with some NPC teenagers to fill out the crowd a little bit.
  • X0XI's voice greets them and instructs them to proceed, through customs, to the Daybreak Institute as quickly as possible.
  • Some Eddies offer to help with luggage. The players do not have luggage: it was deemed too heavy and expensive.

1.1 Customs

  • An unpleasant experience with some proto-fascist unpleasant security folks.
  • Here, we introduce a key ally for the players: either...
    • The Hermit: Herman Ito, of Itophonics Industries, trying to negotiate a shipment of supplies with the Executare
    • Strength: Julianna Forza, of the Executare, with her German Shepherd, Snagga - the "good" cop, if such a thing can be said to exist.
    • Temperance: Fernet Branca, local bartender, bribing the Executare to try and get one of their friends released.
  • A mentor archetype. Wise, powerful, knowledgeable, and they will very obviously die mid-second act after getting the ball rolling somewhat.
  • Each one of these three has been investigating Paradise Lua and gives you their card: nobody has been allowed in to the Daybreak Institute in some time and they would like your help with some intelligence gathering.

1.2 Initiation

  • Next, Daybreak Institute.
  • The First Combat.
  • Food and Sleep, The Stipend System
    • (players are given a stipend for expenses and lodging, but it was established decades ago and uncontrolled for inflation, so it's worthless)
    • (the Daybreak Institute dorms are unsuitable for human habitation, and the Cafeteria does not produce edible food)
  • X0XI invites the player to get settled in and return the next day at 800 hours for their first lesson.
    • It's possible players will wake up and argue about whether or not they should go to the First Lesson.
    • If the players are too busy getting into the weeds on Paradise Lua, that's fine: they miss the First Lesson.
    • But: this will begin to introduce the players to Daybreak Disciplinary Options.
  • Curfew? Players must be back in the dorms by 20:00, although the enforcement there is quite poor.

Quest 2: Players Need to Find Food and a Place to Sleep, and they Need to Stay out of Trouble

  • The Dormitories are uninhabitable. The temperature control is extremely broken, and the rooms are kept at a frosty 0C, which would give any players who attempted to sleep there hypothermia.
  • The Cafeteria is unusable. It's an Automat-style delivery system, but most of the food has been sitting for years and is rotten, dessicated, or otherwise inedible. The cooking robot has been quite broken for some time.
  • The players are going to need to figure out where they can sleep and find something to eat.
  • They aren't authorized to leave Joyeuse yet. This doesn't mean that they can't leave Joyeuse, merely that it's harder because they can't trivially get to the other sectors of Paradise Lua.
  • Some obvious places to point the players if they're looking for a place to stay:
    • The Colada Hotel Pods. Long disused after tourism collapsed, here, and repurposed as an event space: there's one of a few different large events running here:
      • The Anti-Ouro are throwing a multi-day "convention" to try and get to the bottom of the Ouroborous conspiracy, amongst other conspiracies.
      • Paradise Lua's LGBT+ community, under fire from an increasingly conservative government, are throwing clandestine dance parties that also conceal a lightly organized resistance movement.
      • A wedding: there aren't a lot of places to hold weddings in Paradise Lua and this is one of the cheapest.
    • Holding Cells: it's a place to sleep and eat and it's free! Negative side effect: you're imprisoned, though.
    • The Warehouses. Warehouse workers sleep in the stacks all the time, and if players can make friends with a Warehouse worker or Dockworker they can help the players find a sleeping nook.
    • Rapier Broadcasting. This office-space is fluorescent lit, but surprisingly ill-guarded at night.

2.1 Curfew Problems

  • It's impractical for players to check in to the dorms at 20:00 and stay there for the night.
  • They either need to not show up for curfew (and face the Disciplinary Options) or fool the Curfew system somehow.

2.2 Disciplinary Options

  • Curfew Problems and Skipping Class can both lead to Disciplinary Options
  • Disciplinary Escalation:
  • A sternly worded note in the players' Disciplinary File
  • No access to the Dessert cart in the cafeteria (not actually meaningful, it doesn't work anyways)
  • Detention (Daybreak's Detention Hall is pretty trivial to escape)
  • Detention + A Hasty Security Patch over whatever method they used to escape last time (do this a few times)
  • Half-rations in the cafeteria.
  • The Paddle (A fight with a robot that makes everyone uncomfortable)
  • Invoking the Actual Executare (Criminal Charges)

2.2 Lesson Plan

  • In order to effectively torture the players, the curricula is largely:
  • automated fight training
  • fights with other students
  • weird game show stuff
  • incredibly boring lesson plans
  • actually useful information
  • Lessons do not last very long and the players are allowed the rest of the day to themselves

Quest 2: Raising The Stakes

  • Remind players to follow up with their Mentor
    • or: have the Mentor show up and help the players out of a jam
    • it's not cheating to indicate to your players that this is the main quest-line of the game.
  • Their Mentor asks the players to retrieve some important files from the Administrative Offices in Daybreak.
  • If this goes well: great!
    • If they get caught by X0XI, or this goes very badly: TODO
  • Players must learn, somehow, that their master quest is to sever the psychic links between the station's various psychic touchpoints and the distant True Horrors.
  • 3 ways for them to discover this:
    • An invitation from The Hermit
    • Temperance's bar
    • Hacking the Daybreak Master Boot Record

Refusing the Call to Action

  • The stakes must be spelled out: The Hanged Man seeks nothing less than total annihilation of all humans, everywhere.

What's Really Happening, Here?

  • X0XI is trying to manipulate the players into leaning in to their corruption powers by putting them under stress.
  • X0XI is doing this because if the players' True Horrors form a strong enough psychic link, Judgement can crawl back up the link overtake the True Horrors themselves.
  • The Hermit knows about this plan and is trying to sever links to the True Horrors by bumping off their Avatars

Act Break

  • A "boss fight"
  • The players get access to Krater Valley.

Act 1 Factions

  • Executare
  • Journos
  • The Anti-Ouro
  • Anonymous