The Grand Solar Rush - Asteroid colony management quest

[Karf]

The year 2052 would have been an unremarkable one, the biggest event being the XL Summer Olympiad games held in Moscow, were it not for a chance discovery of a rogue planet in the field of astronomy.

The rocky body was likely ejected from an early star system and left to rotate the galactic core on a slow exit trajectory. At first, the discovery was unremarkable, as a new generation of telescopes was finding more and more protoplanets in the Oort cloud by the day. The first published mention of object VP-1031F3R lists its proximity, around 4000 AU, as the only notable thing about it. It wasn't until five years later when a follow-up observation placed the object 200 units closer to us that some heads started turning. Naturally, there was some excitement – an old rocky planet with about two thirds of Venus' mass would be passing by the proverbial neighborhood. Simulations were ran to determine the best observation times and potential launch windows for any landers.

The results of the first of such simulations were sent back to the undergrads with firm instructions to check the math and come up with a better answer than 'Year 2152, distance zero'.

Yet there was no error in programming, no mistake in the math, no inaccuracy of parameters. A quiet panic started to grow in the scientific community. The idea that Earth would be involved in a massive impact event wasn't anything new, but the usual answer was that it wouldn't happen anytime soon and once it did, we'd have the tech to deal with it. Suddenly, it was happening in less than a century and we didn't have the tech.

The first commercial orbital station, an extreme vacation hotel and casino, had been open for business since 2047. The first viable asteroid mining missions were still optimistically 20 years away. To divert a planet was theoretically doable, but the engineering and logistical challenges combined with sheer lack of time were daunting indeed. When faced with a date of extinction almost down to the second, humanity had either the choice to lay down and accept its end, or pour its full might and knowledge into doing what all life does best: survive.

At first effectively every theory was given a green light and the race against the now named planet Lucifer began. The first wave of rockets was little more than a venting of Earth's nuclear arsenal, the first launches kicking things off in 2059 and continuing the barrage as fast as fuel could be sourced for the carriers. Ultimately a minuscule nudge, but every Newton might help. There was no elegant solution, no reality defying technological leap, just a mad scramble to do anything, each day precious.

Other projects originally left on the drawing board were pulled back out and granted virtually unlimited funding. Everything from space elevators and skyhooks to orbital rings and habitats to colonization projects for other solar bodies. The first permanent human settlement on Mars, Olympus, was officially founded exactly a century after man first set foot on the Moon. The first mere handful of ships, holding barely a dozen people each, landed to start life in the lava tunnels of the volcano the colony was named after.

Innumerable advancements were made in the first quarter-century when no single solid plan had been accepted as the ultimate solution. But as the efforts ramped up, with each successive launch, with each asteroid planted where it would have just the right effect, with each reflective satellite sending concentrated laser rays, it became clearer and clearer that success was not just possible, but almost tangible. The second biggest threat to people on Earth, global climate change, was likewise slowed or even halted by those very same satellites shielding the earth from a fraction of the Suns energy. The global population which had remained stagnant since the fifties at around 10 billion experienced a boom unlike anything before. Even as Earth was packed to capacity, colonies on the Moon and Mars exploded and as transport to orbit became cheaper, more reliable and just more convenient, living and working aboard spaceships or habitats became commonplace.

By 2150, Earth would hold 14 billion, the lunar colonies another 2, cities on Mars 4 billion and a further 6 billion would be living in space on a permanent basis.

Slowly but steadily life returned to normal, or whatever would pass for it given the giant leap forward in space technology. Over a yottajoule of energy had been blasted into Lucifer to buy Earth barely half a million kilometers of clearance. As the fated date drew nearer and nearer and all possible models were refined to perfection, it became clear that mankind had evaded its doom. By 2152, amateur astronomers could pick up the planet in the night sky and feel excitement, not dread at its approach. For a brief period in December anyone looking into the sky could see a second moon, more than double the size of Luna, as the rogue planet passed by Earth and then receded again, falling towards the sun.

Less than a week later, on Christmas Eve, 2152, Venus was hit by Lucifer.

The optimal diversion distance versus risk versus available means had been one of the first things calculated and agreed upon. Perhaps it had been done too hastily, perhaps there simply was no other way left after deliberating for too long. By the time anyone thought to check what would happen afterwards it was too late. After missing Earth by a cosmic hairs breath, the planet's course had been set decades in advance, and Earth's nearest neighbor, its little sister Venus would be the one to take the hit.

Even after decades of research, nobody could definitively say what would happen after the Venusian Impact, but a bittersweet optimism remained. Even if Earth's orbit was significantly perturbed, humanity now had the tools to deal with any aftermath. The most commonly accepted theory, and the one that did become reality, was that the collision would be devastating enough to overcome the gravitational binding energy of both planets, leaving behind a new asteroid belt in the inner solar system. For years afterwards, meteor showers were a common sight on Earth. Some of the material was ejected once more from the solar system while another chunk would fall into the sun, but a majority of it spread out over the old orbit of Venus.

The Main Asteroid Belt beyond Mars had not been a lucrative place for colonization or mining. Solar panels would get less energy, the distance was too big to be viable, there simply wasn't much mass to extract. The New Asteroid Belt was closer than Mars, had more energy exposure from the Sun and contained more mass than Earth while lacking the drawbacks of a significant gravity well. By the centennial anniversary of Olympus in 2169 a new gold rush had truly begun.

The year 2169 is almost over. You are just about as busy as any person can be, existing on caffeine and high energy protein bars to skip sleep and eating as you put the finishing touches on your greatest venture: a colony of your own. The papers are signed, transports are arranged and your affairs are in order. Still, you glance over the documents laying on your desk one last time. The top page is a brief docket about yourself.

Everybody grew up somewhere, where did you start?

Origin location:

[ ] ORIGIN: Earth

Entrenched politics​

Bureaucratic ensnarement​

Heavy competition​

​

You're from the blue marble herself. The only place this side of the galaxy where death isn't 20 meters away and you can see the sky without a pane of clear plastic or glass separating you from the vastness. Occasionally you still long for the feeling of gravity and no matter what experts say, it's just not the same when it's provided by spin.​

​

That aside, Earth is the place to be and everybody wants a piece of the pie. Competition for jobs, contracts, living space and everything else is fierce and only the smartest, most ruthless or the best connected can expect success. For each position secured, another ten people were passed over. How or for which quality is impossible to say, with many centuries worth of tradition and a web of laws and regulations that take teams of lawyers a collective lifetime to chew through, every decision is made with agonizing slowness and the process is entirely opaque.​

[ ] ORIGIN: Mars

Far edge of space​

Isolationist​

Internal tension​

​

The red planet was your home growing up. Despite being the first to truly become colonized, further efforts have stagnated as Mars just doesn't have much going for it. It's easier to get valuable resources from asteroids and living space is produced by the second where it's necessary, so the planet has become something of a backwater for humanity. Still, it is a planet and there's a certain rugged frontier feel to knowing that if you pack some solar panels, tanks of water and air and a well shielded container, you can drive for a day and found a new fief all to yourself.​

​

Something every Martian gets used to is a particular feeling of loneliness, a quiet that can't be found anywhere else. A self-assuredness that you might need to fend for yourself and a silent personality to match that. Patrons and the larger powers are far away and often uninterested, so any issues that rise up are usually dealt with… silently. Rule of law is tenuous and each group, whether state sponsored, corporate or wholly independent, stands on their own.​

[ ] ORIGIN: Moon

Little to no military capability​

Colonial treatment​

Brain drain​

​

La Luna is where you spent your childhood. Close enough to Earth that launches back and forth are an hourly occurrence and the trip doesn't take weeks of time, lunar governments are very closely tied to their Earth counterparts. For the same reason, treaties and international pressure has left the Moon a demilitarized zone. Even if legally and nominally the various states on the planetoid are independent, in truth the governmental mansions are effectively summer vacation homes for the elites of Earth.​

​

What the Moon does have is factories. Acres and acres of facilities to produce pretty much any lightweight product. It's relatively easy to get a plot of land that's conveniently near Earth and her vast markets, without any of the environmental regulations, set up a huge site and send a handful of engineers to oversee the process on a rotating schedule. As such, many people on the Moon are effectively commuting from Earth, not actually living there on a permanent basis. Likewise, the talented ones get poached by companies and offered better deals and the smart ones go to academies on Earth, with few returning home.​

[ ] ORIGIN: Space

Fragmented​

Often and easily dismissed​

Lacking traditions​

​

What planet, you're from the L5 society. Which, by the way, is much better than the L4, because clearly the schools have better test results and your team is the Near Earth Football League champions. There are as many such boasts and claims as there are inhabited satellites. Varying orbits and trajectories mean that neighbors change often and each little colony has its own customs and laws with varying capability to enforce them. There is of course the United Space Command to bring such habitats together and give them a proper forum, but the issue is that there's also the Satellite Committee, the Unified Space Alliance and dozens more acronymizable and interchangeable bodies that claim to be the best, guaranteeing that none of them actually are.​

​

One thing however still connects all spacers. The artificial environments of a space construction are home to you. The low hum of engines and fans, the halogen lights and tight hallways, the perfectly fresh but still stale air, that little metallic scent of burning near every airlock. All those and a thousand other little shared memories bind the people who live on space stations together. Everybody knows how to restart the common air scrubbers when another blackout hits the section, skill in welding is as ubiquitous as being able to swim back on Earth; what spacers lack in political capital, they make up for with skills.​

Regardless of your home's current status, it too had roots and origins, little social norms and expectations that came from its sponsors and forefathers. What was the dominant culture of your home?

Origin culture:

[ ] CULTURE: European

Significant cultural exports​

Highly advanced and specialized tech base​

Low military power projection​

High taxation and cost of living​

​

Ah, the old world, where mankind is closest to utopia, or so the propaganda posters would have you believe. With lush green fields and verdant valleys, cities not touched by warfare in centuries and public well-being backed by the government. You're practically guaranteed a quality education and a solid safety net should something happen to you. Art in all its myriad forms is highly appreciated and individualism is a strong core tenant.​

​

Industries tend to be quite specialized and production is extremely streamlined, as a result the major trade agreements are focused on the exportation of finished goods and specific luxuries. Because of this, people without a degree from higher education are usually looked down upon, leading to a perpetual draught of soldiers, laborers and service personnel. Thanks to the existence of a rather large wealthy elite things cost a lot of money and low paying jobs rarely attract people to work them.​

[ ] CULTURE: American

Excellent power projection​

Expansive space industry​

Divided society​

Stretched thin​

​

The American dream is alive and well in the XXII century, where the sweat of your brow can earn you a place and secure your family for generations to come. Respect is given to those who are successful, be it in forming and growing a profitable company or leading a distinguished military career. People are friendly and newcomers are welcomed with trust, provided that the mixing pot that this culture is hasn't been stirred too vigorously. There's plenty of subcultures that value different, opposed viewpoints, often leading to clashes and arguments even amongst close friends and family.​

​

Places ascribing to this sphere of influence can expect a strong security guarantee and at least thus far, the aegis has not faltered in defense of her allies. Of course, as more and more little colonies buy into the supposed protection, as more and more space habitats are pumped out of the biggest industrial complex in the world, said protection is getting stretched thinner and thinner, and many whispers claim that the perceived security is naught but a paper tiger.​

[ ] CULTURE: Chinese

Leader in resource production​

Massive population​

State control​

Corruption​

​

The new world order, by the people for the people and well learned from the mistakes of her predecessors. The state needs to be strong in order to provide the best outcome for her people. Excess and vice will lead to stagnation and decadence whereas trust in the government and delivering results are the pillars of community. And communities are large, with large family units and extensive generational support networks moving together, young adults face pressure not just from the government but their own parents to settle down and start their own families.​

​

Aggressive expansion tactics and disregard for safety has left the Chinese state in control of the biggest chunk of inexpensive raw resources. Things get done swiftly and cheaply and you'll get a job done well enough, if you know how to grease the wheels that is. You can also expect well-kept census data and thorough statistics on the citizenry, again accessible with the right contacts. What some may see as an immoral invasion of privacy is instead a calculated risk, individual data is gathered and processed regardless, it may as well be the government that legitimizes and optimizes it for the good of the people instead of for profit.​

​

​

Following that is a brief appendix of subdocuments, the headings detailing your efforts so far. How did you become a de facto dictator of an asteroid colony?

Claim:

[ ] CLAIM: A public grant by your original governing body, looking to populate new ventures with friendly governors.

Resupply for the first four years guaranteed​

Diplomatic relations with your origin and culture start friendly​

Cannot choose your head diplomat (diplomatic advisor) or engineer (stewardship advisor)​

​

You filled out the application forms, you presented your case and you shook the right hands and probably just got lucky that your application was on top of the pile. Ultimately what matters is that you now have a deed to give you some legitimacy in relations, a preset trade route and some guarantee of political backing should you need it. Of course it also comes at the cost of your independence if some bureaucrat decides to force your hand, a really poor margin on said trade contract and a general expectation that you'll fall in line when the motherland comes calling.​

[ ] CLAIM: Investment saving dumped to finance your dream.

Low starting capital​

Complete control over all institutions​

Completely unknown in politics​

​

So you managed to scrape together enough money to buy the bare necessities of prefab habitat modules and a freighter to take you and your plucky crew to an unclaimed space rock. That sum was not a particularly small one, and if you could do it once then surely you can do so again. Likewise, there's plenty of other asteroids, so until you're significant enough to turn heads, nobody should question you just taking an asteroid for yourself. Your success is in your own hands.​

[ ] CLAIM: This will be your contribution to the business, a vast enterprise of firms and corporate politics.

Occasional tasks or quotas from the main office​

Bonuses to forming trade contracts​

Must stay profitable​

​

Hooray for nepotism and cronyism, you've been told in no uncertain terms (checked by an army of lawyers) that you'll no longer be leeching off the company and that you'll be earning your keep. Chances are that they just want you to fall in line and maybe let the latest scandal die down with you out of the way until you come back begging in a few years. Well you'll show them – this is going to be the best damn branch office there is in the whole solar system.​

[ ] CLAIM: Took over after an unfortunate chain of events

Loyal advisors​

Increased personal diplomacy and intrigue​

Distrusted by outside factions​

​

You… didn't exactly get the claim per-say. You set out because of a job offer on the asteroid and everything seemed normal on arrival, if a little tense on the management side. Until there was a bit of a mutiny in the fresh colony. Something or another was said and done, tensions snapped and in the end, your boss was spaced alongside the agitators. By virtue of being a competent person and having kept your nose clean of the whole shebang, you and your staff suddenly found yourselves in charge when the dust settled.​

You can't say it's been an easy road, nor that it'll get easier now, far from it. What was it that pushed you to these heights? (You start with 1 action in each of the five categories, inspired by a bevy of CK2 style quests, this choice gives you 1 extra in that category.)

Background motivation:

[ ] MOTIVATION: Family

The people closest to you have stood by you in every situation unquestionably and you'll be damned before you turn your back on them. As they have helped you, so too shall you do your utmost to provide for them a worry-free life. You'll cure any ills, shelter them from any storm and stick silver spoons in every little mouth.​

​

+ 1 Diplomacy action​

[ ] MOTIVATION: Glory

You've always been prideful and with a deep and simmering anger. Too many times have people questioned you, too many times have you been passed over. It's not easy to leave your mark on the world when there's billions of people trying to do the same. You want your name remembered by a nation and if you have to build that nation with your own hands, then so be it.​

​

+ 1 Martial action​

[ ] MOTIVATION: Poverty

You were poor once, the kind of poor where bills are always paid two month late, you can't really afford to wash the single set of clothes you do have and food is rationed on a weekly basis. The kind of poor where you can't list a phone number for your employer because you don't have a contract. The kind that eats at your soul and becomes both the motivation for every action and a constant sapping on your will to do anything at all. You will take any chance to avoid that and this will be your way out.​

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+ 1 Stewardship action​

[ ] MOTIVATION: Threat

You've got enemies. The powerful type who don't play nice and don't tolerate slights. You did something to earn their ire, perhaps it was even justified. Whatever the cause, your previous situation became… untenable. So you called in whatever favors you had left and stepped on more toes, because what did you have to lose anyway, and skedaddled. Your currently final layer of defense against them is pure distance and a foolish hope that they'll leave you alone.​

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+ 1 Intrigue action​

[ ] MOTIVATION: Curiosity

A burning desire to explore, to push boundaries and bring light to mysteries. Alas, the bleeding edge of technology is not cheap and often comes with unnecessary (in your opinion) regulations and enough red tape to wrap the sun. So you'll finance your own research, build your labs to your exacting specifications and show the doddering fools what heights mankind can reach with a bit of risk.​

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+ 1 Learning action​

On the bottom of the page is a dotted line with your signature over it, repeated dozens if not hundreds of times inside the folder as well. What is your name?

[ ] NAME: write-in
[ ] GENDER: write-in

So, here's a start to your journey.

As far as quest mechanics go, the original plan was influenced by CK2 style stuff, but as more and more systems kept piling up, I realized I'd never get to actually post this if I didn't drastically simplify things. Thus, pretty much all numeric stats are gone. What remains is the core action economy of an advisor council sectioning up your available tasks per turn. You'll have 5 advisors (diplo, martial, steward, intrigue, learning or diplomatic envoy, security chief, head of engineering, human resources and R&D respectively) who give you options at the start of turns, which last for a year. Advisor selection is up after this turn.

Each such action will have a DC associated with it. Think of it as a combination of your advisors competency, your available funds or other means and sheer dumb luck. Want to figure out faster than light travel by the end of year 2? Better roll d100 on a DC 200 check. Set up dark matter refineries, contact aliens and stabilize a wormhole and you might only need to beat a 90. This means that the odds of your success for a given task fluctuate as you spend or aquire resources, fail or succeed in related tasks, barely miss the check but still make some progress, etc.

As for tracking things like wealth/money, prestige, oxygen, power production, extracted tonnage of minerals, refined minerals and a thousand other things, I've decided to not do any of that and instead try a more narrative spin on things, aka the above described fluctuating difficulty. Want to attract more and more colonists without ever increasing food production - dc to get new people goes up. Not addressed soon enough as your advisors tell you that it'll be a problem down the line, eventually all things get harder as the people are unhappy and you might be this close to an airlock with your name on it.

Anyways, I hope that makes sense and is a system we can all work with, discussion and feedback makes me happy. Gonna reserve two posts down below as a colony overview and dramatis personae, but other than that the voting is open.

 

[Karf]

Spoiler: WINNER

Origin: space
Culture: American
Claim: investment saving dumped to finance your dream
Motivation: poverty
Name: William O'Rielly
Gender: male

"Mr. O'Rielly, your shuttle is leaving in 15 minutes," the androgynous voice of your wristwatch breaks you out of your musings.

With a sharp slap you get yourself going once more, grabbing the dossier with both your own documents as well as the list of candidates you had narrowed your inner circle down to. You'll have another chance to go over the briefs from the people you chose while the ship gets fueled. The ship that'll deliver you and your hard earned goods over to the coordinates you've painstakingly mapped and verified to be an empty asteroid. It still makes you feel a bit weird inside. An Earther once described giddiness to you as a feeling of floating nestled in your belly. You're quite used to floating, but now you think you can see what he meant.

You leave the cheap motel with both relief and a certain finality. It hurt, still does if you're honest with yourself, to sell your first apartment for food to take with you on the final stretch. Something about having your own place, where no one can tell you to leave set you at ease, and you hated staying in hotels for the last few months, but needs must. And you assure yourself that where you're going, the only one doing any evicting is you. All the same, it's barely morning as you arrive at the docking port, the captain of the hauler giving you a gruff greeting from aboard the ship, then going back to his coffee.

You know you still have weeks to actually reach your destination, but the hours from now until liftoff feel so much longer. Alas, you're here far too early for any of your crew to have arrived, so you steel your nerves and force yourself to sit, then start paging through the dossier once more. In your rush, you grabbed not only the people you have chosen but the alternatives as well, their names crossed out in red. All told, a staff of five people directly below you, each with a budget for people under them and so on, a dream of their own alongside yours and, you hope, personalities that'll mesh well.

Which people did you choose to go with you to start off your journey?

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Ambassador – diplomacy and foreign relations

When you're running your colony and everybody else is running theirs, someone needs to be the bridge between. Where two people exist, there's job for a third, the pen is mightier than the sword, speak softly and so on. These are the people who manage your relations, agreements and contracts with other outposts, colonies and nations. Project that power!

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Name: Roman Leonov

Age: 44

Origin: Spacer

Bio:

Leonov was born on a near-Earth satellite that was jointly managed by Russia and France as an attempt to foster goodwill between the nations. A bright child who grew up with politicians and diplomats, Roman was granted a scholarship to attend a university in Saint Petersburg as a diplomatic envoy. While his grades were middling, he made up for it by belonging to nearly every possible organization and committee.

After graduation, he signed on to the administrative staff of a new habitat module. Leonov quickly rose through the ranks to become the sole representative in the locally relevant assembly of satellites, effectively speaking with hundreds of thousands of voices. After two terms as the ambassador, his time was up and he disappeared from public view, leaving the station on a private job offer.

His application does not mention anything but 'under contract as a diplomatic liaison for DSS-Atlas-3 from 2160 to 2168, probably some form of corporate talk for a comfortable paper pushing job. All the same, he's now forwarded his documents to you, looking to attach himself to your new crew.

Expertise: Local sphere politics; diplomacy with neighboring outposts.

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Name: Hailey Maria Perez

Age: 32

Origin: Earth

Bio:

Born in Dallas, Texas, USA, Hailey has an expansive family with four brothers and two sisters. Due to the financial situation of her parents, she entered the workforce at age 14 as a door-to-door salesclerk for Texas Instruments. Eventually gaining a marketing degree from the University of Texas and continuing to work for the company, she rose to be the assistant head of marketing for the Dallas area, where her career hit a ceiling, perhaps even a ceiling fan.

After several occasions where her subordinates were promoted above her and a subsequent brief shuffle to the robotics division, Hailey parted terms with TI, and you note that she hasn't included any personal references. Still, she seems to be looking for further opportunities and to explore the world beyond her hometown and you can't dig up any deficiencies in her record. Indeed she seems to have done a stellar job as far as any public records are concerned.

Expertise: sales; propaganda.

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Name: Arthur Lee

Age: 25

Origin: Earth

Bio:

A Chinese national who grew up in the slums of Beijing. Lee never knew his father and his mother is missing, presumed dead, since he was 8. Public communal housing and switching schools several times didn't keep Arthur down and he went on to study law in a Beijing university. After four years of study and another two in post-graduate work, the man has forwarded his admittedly thin resume to your desk, alongside a letter of motivation, which essentially boils down to him wanting to spread his wings. Likewise, he has glowing letters of recommendation from his professors, praising a strong work ethic.

His only notable professional achievement is his thesis, which has been published by some pretty bigtime journals. Evidently his arguments on the stifling nature, unfair enforcement and inhumanity of the Tokyo Autonomous Intelligence Convention, which bans research into creative and emotionally driven AI, are well presented and compelling.

Expertise: civil law; diplomacy with Earth.

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Captain of Security – military and law enforcement

This is the Wild West, life on the belt is rife with more than just natural danger. If the neighbors start wondering why your rocks aren't their rocks, you need sufficiently big boomsticks to explain the matter to them. Likewise if your subordinates start to question why you're in charge and not them. Just remember that out here, you are the law.

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Name: Amanda Carpenter

Age: 31

Origin: Moon

Bio:

Hailing from Tranquility, the biggest lunar city, Amanda always knew she wanted to be a police officer. Thus, it's no surprise that she graduated the Tranquility Police Academy and worked her way up from street patrol to district chief in record time. What makes her ascent even more impressive is the rumor that she did so without taking any bribes or bending any rules.

Alas, that's where Carpenter plateaued, as the people above and below her started working around her, instead of with her. In just a few years she went from an enthusiastic up-and-comer to a jaded social pariah as everybody who's somebody found out that they couldn't do business with her. The final straw to break the woman was the Ping-Lin incident.

During a party hosted by the nominal heir of the Ping-Lin Production Group, two service personnel were ejected from an airlock. The official version cites personal negligence and failure to adhere to security standards. Miss Carpenter disagreed, very publicly. She organized a press conference where she laid out a series of accusations ranging from callous disregard of human life to sadistic torture, then resigned on the spot.

Thoroughly unemployable anywhere on the Moon, she now looks to get away from her previous home and your expedition seemed like as good a place as any.

Expertise: anti-corruption measures; law enforcement.

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Name: Jean-Paul Morel

Age: 33

Origin: Earth

Bio:

Head of on-site security for the biggest solar farm on Earth, owned by Helios Industries and located in Algeria. Jean believes in a hands-on approach to management. He joined a private security firm when he was 16 as a straightforward way to make a living. Big, strong and all-round intimidating, Morel has been a part of mercenary outfits disguised as security in one of the hottest conflict zones for the entire human race and came out on top more often than not. As his expertise and reputation grew he was forced to exercise his brain more than his body, and was not found wanting, managing squads under his command with great efficiency. For the last three years, Morel has kept Helios' farm operational with minimal fuss and disruption against everything from sandstorms to terrorist cells.

From what you can gather, his operations have been clean and concise and his men respect him, if perhaps with just a smidge of fear. A competent leader who seems interested in the more lucrative and free experience that you offer after his previous contract expired.

Expertise: small unit tactics; security systems.

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Name: Carlos Wraith

Age: 59

Origin: Mars

Bio:

Martian Air Force general, retired. The MAF of Solis, a colony of the United States cum independent state, was the only one of its kind on Mars, where saying that aviation is difficult is like saying that water is wet. While being a general of the biggest military force in the world might seem impressive, in truth he would have been in charge of single digits of close air support fighters and a handful of tactical bombers, none of which would need to fly more than once in a blue moon. Thus, his command was more of a millstone around the neck of the new nation's budget and the unit was disbanded some years ago.

Apparently retirement doesn't agree with general Wraith and after the death of his wife, he saw no reason to stay on the red planet, instead offering his services and expertise in command and military mechanical engineering to your expedition. The man has an impressive résumé and in addition to years of solid military discipline he has two practical degrees in mechanical and electric engineering, both gained as part of his command.

Expertise: strike-craft; strategic operations.

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Head Engineer – development and construction

There is one thing that all space stations definitely need: energy and mass. Well, two things for all practical purposes you suppose. However you want to count them, you'll need someone with at least some experience in deep space construction. Pre-fab modules are nice and all, but you won't get far if you sell your raw materials and buy back finished products. Can we build it? Yes we can!

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Name: Gabriela Filep

Age: 29

Origin: Earth

Bio:

Born in Romania to prominent managers of a Helios Industries' lunar facility, Gabriela, or Gabby as she insists, was a frequent flyer from the Black Sea launch site by her fifth birthday. Most of her youth was spent either in transit or in various lunar colonies. In her teens, when she could be left alone back on Earth, she'd spend much of her time in the spaceport, often secretly going to visit her childhood friends on the Moon during the weekends.

Still, equipped with a keen mind, she followed in her oft absent parents footsteps to study electrical engineering and has since been involved in two habitat cylinder projects, helping to set up power supply lines. Evidently, she's decided to settle down in a sense, her starlust showing through as she seeks to leave Earth behind and live amongst the asteroids, doing what she knows best.

Expertise: solar power; electrical engineering.

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Name: Li Choi

Age: 32

Origin: Mars

Bio:

Originally from rural Mars, Li's parents were miners for the Ping-Lin Production Group, for whom part of the contract was an education for their children. Because of this, Choi spent most of her youth in boarding schools far from home, first for general education, but progressively more her lessons slanted towards the company's specialty. Thus perhaps naturally she rose to be the head of production for the local branch, the very same her parents worked at.

This might have been it for her, but by some combination of backroom deals, hostile takeovers and confounding bureaucracy, said branch office was forced to close. With a generous severance package and plentiful contacts in the community, she chose not to pick up another position at the company, seeing instead an opportunity to stretch her wings. Li has decided to strike out on her own, looking to attach herself to your expedition. She promises to bring to bear both her expertise in the mineral industry as well as her knowledge of supply lines and business opportunities.

Expertise: mining; geology.

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Name: Ken Hiragi

Age: 45

Origin: Space

Bio:

Ken Hiragi lived on the L4 Earth-Moon space station, known as Troy, the biggest inhabited station of mankind. An unremarkable childhood: two parents, no siblings, no trauma and middling income left Ken thoroughly directionless. After general education he went on to study water engineering before swapping to agriculture after two years. The man's true hobby however, was farming. Yet life aboard a space station does not lend itself well to private fields. Thus nearly accepting his lot, his fate would have been unremarkable indeed, were it not for a fortuitous marriage and sets of inheritance letting Ken claim enough neighboring living quarters to tear down the walls and start up his own hydroponics company. Providing cheap and locally produced produce, various beans and bell pepper, proved that Ken had a keen mind for business and a thumb as green as chlorophyll.

Alas, good things don't always last, and Ken's marriage has come to an unhappy ending, with his wife Natasha receiving most of the business and rooms in the settlement. Still, it seems the man is no longer content to languish aimlessly; instead he has taken what savings he has and applied to join up with your venture, promising to make sure that no colonist of yours goes hungry.

Expertise: agriculture; hydroponics.

​

Chief of Staff – internal affairs and human resources

The person in charge of all the other powerful people, except you of course. Your spymaster, information broker, black market exterminator (or contact) and advisor in all things pertaining to your other subordinates. Better make sure they're not plotting against you…

​

Name: Megan Crawford

Age: 37

Origin: Space

Bio:

A military brat born aboard what was originally a US zero-g combat training satellite that had grown to a full habitat over time, Megan was a deeply empathic child. Her childhood peers would remember her as someone with a kind word and a ready ear to listen to any troubles. As is common in a mil-sat, many of her friends would come and go over her schooling, but Crawford doggedly kept in contact with them and developed a wide social circle. Upon reaching adulthood, she moved to obtain a counseling psychology degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, on Earth.

After a successful graduation Megan returned to space based life, becoming a psychologist both for the serving military personnel as well as working with the children on various bases. From here, much of her file is classified, either as a doctor to protect the privacy of her patients or as a civilian working closely with the military. What is clear, however, is that she's either tired of the constant travel or working for the establishment, reaching out to attach herself to your crew.

Expertise: interpersonal relations; psychology.

​

Name: Ragnar Erikson

Age: 27

Origin: Earth

Bio:

Ragnar grew up in Norway, brushing shoulders with the wealthy elite just by proximity during his school years. A carefree child, his down-to-earth attitude made him genuine friends with several important people, regardless of his own normal social standing. He would go on to marry his high school sweetheart and to gain a bachelors in accounting, landing a great starting position in hiring in his new wife's family business, Ironbond LLC. The couple would go on to have a child in 2166 and Ragnar's dedicated work ethic saw him rise in the company as well.

Were this the whole story, he'd hardly be seeking to join your expedition. Last year, after another promotion, he began to notice discrepancies in the paperwork. After some digging and careful surveillance, the man uncovered a brutal practice of indentured servitude paramount to slavery in the Lunar factories of Ironbond. A messy, personal and public court case saw the corporation lose several key members, significant profit and one Ragnar Erikson.

As a man with deep personal ties to his previous job, the Erikson family is currently on a rather rocky foundation, mired in scandal and accusations in the aftermath of a trial. Ragnar has put forward a surprisingly emotional appeal to join up with your venture. He is clearly quite immune to corruption and a man with strong principles and upstanding morals.

Expertise: financial audits; covert surveillance.

​

Name: James Daniel O'Neill

Age: 49

Origin: Moon

Bio:

Born and raised in close proximity to one of the busiest ports in Tranquility and indeed the whole solar system, O'Neill joined the dockworkers after high school. Quickly spotted for his ability to solve explosive situations and placate grumpy hauler captains, the man received an offer to join the administrative side of things, where his charismatic personality could shine.

As expected, James performed with aplomb, keeping ships moving despite catching more contraband than any other office. As officials above him made the wrong people angry, O'Neill kept climbing the governmental ladder, eventually coming to lead the whole port and keeping said position for a record length of time.

Yet it seems his record is now set, as James has been fired. The official reason given was 'abuse of sick days', but the real explanation is much simpler. After a change in governors, cost cutting measures were implemented, among them a ridiculous cut to the docks administrative staff budget. Cutting his pay by not one third, but two thirds was an insult to the man, and after an angry meeting with district officials, he was fired before he could resign, his position filled by a succession of underqualified migrant labor. Thus out of a job and having the satisfaction of seeing the dock essentially collapse without his expertise, the man has decided to sign up for a position with your expedition instead.

Expertise: background vetting; smuggling.

​

Lead Scientist – experimental concerns

Somewhat of a catch-all position, where concerns range from power plant optimization to production facility prototyping to bleeding edge communications to modelling disease risks to any number of other concerns. The candidates can't and won't be experts in every field, but they can be expected to competently lead teams suborned to them. In the name of science!

​

Name: Sena Demir

Age: 26

Origin: Earth

Bio:

Born on the outskirts of Istanbul, Sena built her first radio with her older brother Amir from salvaged scrap. The following police arrest when their broadcast took over local stations did nothing to dampen her enthusiasm for telecommunications. Neither was she scared off years later, when the deep space station her brother was contracted on experienced a solar flare that disrupted all contact for eight months. A harrowing experience, with dwindling supplies and no guarantee of rescue to be sure; Sena vowed to come up with lines of communication that wouldn't be broken down so easily.

A fresh graduate with lofty ideas, Demir is looking for places to set up a lab sufficiently far away from background noise and various band restrictions common on Earth to test her projects. While not the most experienced candidate, sometimes a fresh perspective is just what's needed to drive innovation. Further, she's always enjoyed a more hands-on approach and her hobbies include astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial life. Both are things she believes she can better work on from an asteroid rather than from Earth.

Expertise: communication technology; theoretical physics.

​

Name: Lena Weissmeier

Age: 24

Origin: Mars

Bio:

The Weissmeier Foundation on Mars is a leading producer of pharmaceuticals in Olympus. A privately led company, directorship is hereditary and sure to leave one set for life. The founder, Martin Weissmeier, was a traditionalist and declared that his oldest child would be taking over the company. Except that his first children were twins, Lena and Anna. A brilliant businessman and scientist, but not the kindest father, Martin gave the girls until they turned seven to choose which would be his successor.

Despite the potential for embitterment or a divide between the two, the sisters simply came to the conclusion that Anna would take the company and all the responsibility therein while Lena would make her own way. The two remain close to this day, even as busy schedules let them meet less and less.

Still a part of the family where blood ties run deep, Lena got an extensive education in medical engineering, pharmacology and chemistry. Luckily it seems that whether by happenstance or nurture, the young woman took to the sciences like fish to water, consuming textbooks and journals at a rapid pace. Now, after years of study, she feels ready to step away from the family business and make her own way, as was decided years ago.

Expertise: virology; biochemistry.

​

Name: Alex Thiago Castillo

Age: 24

Origin: Space

Bio:

Born amid gruff engineers aboard a spaceship production station in deep space, Alex was surrounded by machinery and robots from birth. Alas, life aboard a factory station is not safe – a depressurization accident caused his father significant nerve damage in all of his extremities. The settlement, while not massive, was enough to cover the cost of decent quality prosthetic limbs and still send the young Castillo to a prominent off-site university studying robotics.

Fascinated with the idea of providing better and more affordable artificial replacements to the human body, Alex took to the subject matter with gusto. However, no companies would accept his high-flying ideas either because of low profit margins or high risk factors. Thus, after graduation he has decided to take matters into his own hands. Starting capital requirement for a robotics facility is truly massive, but the costs are much cheaper in the New Belt and the man hopes to prove his prototypes and promises to let you in on the ground floor if you support him even a little.

Expertise: robotics; computer science.

[ ] Ambassador
-[ ] Roman Leonov
-[ ] Hailey Maria Perez
-[ ] Arthur Lee
[ ] Security
-[ ] Amanda Carpenter
-[ ] Jean-Paul Morel
-[ ] Carlos Wraith
[ ] Engineering
-[ ] Gabriela Filep
-[ ] Li Choi
-[ ] Ken Hiragi
[ ] HR
-[ ] Megan Crawford
-[ ] Ragnar Erikson
-[ ] James Daniel O'Neill
[ ] Scientist
-[ ] Sena Demir
-[ ] Lena Weissmeier
-[ ] Alex Thiago Castillo

If there's some particular synergy you think you've spotted, feel free to vote by plan. The previous winning vote ended up being a mishmash of peoples posts, but I hope that just means there's something for everybody...

 

[Karf]

Spoiler: Winner

[X] Plan: New opportunities in the frontier
-[X] Ambassador
--[X] Hailey Maria Perez
-[X] Security
--[X] Amanda Carpenter
-[X] Engineering
--[X] Ken Hiragi
-[X] HR
--[X] Ragnar Erikson
-[X] Scientist
--[X] Lena Weissmeier

The trip over to your rock is just as dreadfully long and alarmingly short as you feared. Around halfway to your destination you receive confirmation that the material packages and shelters that launched ahead of you and accelerated for much more on account of being unmanned have arrived on time. You hold bi-weekly meetings with your top staff and mingle with the various crews for much of the rest of the time. The time-honored tradition of killing time by playing cards sees you humbled more than not, but at least you assure yourself that you've made the right choice when it comes to your diplomat's people skills, as somewhat surprisingly it's Hailey that ends up winning most nights.

When you aren't getting to know the approximately one hundred first settlers of your venture, eating or sleeping, you spend time mapping out the growth of your industry with Ken. As long as you coax his choices out of him first, the discussion is fruitful, but as a sounding board he basically always just agrees with you, even the one time you intentionally argued for an inferior installation, one he himself had brought up a week earlier as an example of deficient transformer performance. Still, over long days spent pouring over various design documents and available patents, he more often than not reaches the same conclusion you had, and if you differ it's usually in things you simply lack info on.

Eventually however, the captain of the hauler you chartered calls you to the bridge, where the forward viewport is no longer shut nor showing the empty void. For the first time you're able to directly lay your eyes on the asteroid you've decided shall be yours. Truth be told, it's not much – the usual brownish regolith covers the shard of planet corpse. Slightly oblong in shape, it's about a hundred kilometers for a round trip the short way, less than an hour's drive on Earth, but when the escape velocity is half again as many kilometers an hour, going too fast is a legitimate concern. You've read the technical data, you'll have a weird microgravity environment of neither the weightlessness you're used to nor the full force of a planet that most people associate with a down direction. The shard in front of you came from the crust of a planet, kept together by a vein of denser material in its core, leaving you with a third of a percent of regular Earth gravity. Barely enough that there is a down, but you needn't worry about not being able to catch a spilled coffee cup that'll fall for eight seconds.

It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

About an hour from drop off you can make out the preconstructed modules and the solar array of your home. The hauler won't be coming to a complete stop this time, as there's nothing to pick up; instead you and your people get aboard shuttles and prepare to break hard. Strapped in next to Hailey you hear her mumble a quiet prayer. When the thrusters flare and you're all pressed into the seats, a detached calmness overtakes you, as the very last leg of your journey and as the very first step in your new life becomes reality.

Exiting onto the flat plain of rock and regolith, an unfiltered sun casting everything in stark shadows, you waste no time in getting inside, out of the crash suit and down to business.


Hailey Perez, or just Hailey, as she insists, is an energetic and empathic woman. Prone to some daydreaming and perhaps not with the most intense attention span, she nonetheless has an uncanny insight into what people are feeling around her. A masterful poker player and a great shoulder to cry on, the latter by her own words at least, she's probably best suited to face-to-face meetings and positive contacts. Choose 1 task to send her on.

[ ] Diplomacy

-[ ] Meet the neighbors​

You're not alone out here and you know it, even if looking up at any given window shows nothing but the void. Hailey can send for various registries, maps and charters to determine who's around. She'll also work together with Erikson to find out what the tugboat traders know about local stops and perils. DC 10​

​

-[ ] Advertise your colony​

You'll pretty much always have room and jobs for people willing to put in the effort, but you won't get all that many colonists if no one knows of you. Place ads, make unreasonable and vague promises and put up flyers, whatever works. You'll probably get people to come, but they won't be… overqualified, to put it optimistically. On the other hand, maybe a bit of grunt work is exactly what you need right now, and occasionally you might – might – find rough diamonds with the slop. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Establish relations with…​

Subtly put out feelers for a patron, someone to legitimize your claim. Nothing overt, just find out who might be interested in your little rock and see what they might offer you in return. Nothing permanent or committal of course, your first partner will always be special and just the act of choosing will make you enemies as well as allies, even if they won't show it. Geez, this is like high school all over again, except now you need to worry about nuclear warheads instead of hurt feelings. DC 50​

​

-[ ] Seek corporate deals​

You can sell your output on the open market as it gets launched out, but the prices will fluctuate and rarely in your favor. Likewise for supplies of food, air and water, all of which can be scarce this close to the sun. After all, you can't very well not buy the food if deliveries come by once a year. Instead, you could find one of the many middle-man businesses that exist just to prevent that from happening. See what they'll offer you and make sure you can fulfill your part of the deal. DC 30​

​

-[ ] Laws​

While a 'what you say goes' policy is fine for now, you'll need to set up some standards eventually. How high is the tax rate, what to do with criminals, what about education, a jury of peers or professional judges, how (if) you'll pay your people. There's a countless amount of possible problems and an even more immeasurable amount of solutions. You and your staff won't be able to deal with everything, but that's no excuse for not making plans about anything. Begin work on a set of laws. DC 40​

Miss Carpenter projects an air of confidence and her no nonsense attitude backs up her demeanor. Perhaps a bit headstrong and stubborn, but as long as you don't act against her she'll likely be quite competent. The slightly more militarized situation you currently face might technically be outside her expertise, but watching her conducting training exercises out on the rocks certainly assuages such doubts. Choose 1 security action to focus her on.

[ ] Security

-[ ] Armor​

As it currently stands, you're using stock exo-suits. They're bulky and hard to move in because of internal pressurization and rigid supports. They're fine for maintenance work, but not for casual strolls or anything more action packed. However, you could get a small unit kitted out in reinforced body suits that could be comfortably worn indoors and outdoors alike. Just send in the measurements and receive the merchandise. DC 20​

​

-[ ] Weapons​

At the moment, your weapons stockpiles are measured in individual weapons. You have one portable railgun, five gas-harpoon launchers and five Tasers… Oh, and Luke from Miss Carpenter's staff has a personal handgun and 10 bullets rated for space fire capability. You should probably take it away, but he's an alright bloke… Anyways, this situation has to change. Order something to help with keeping order or deterring unwelcome visitors. DC 20​

​

-[ ] Squads​

Your colony has what might generously be called a citizen militia. Have Miss Carpenter organize a recruitment drive slash trials from amongst the populace to fill up the ranks of your security forces. The five people under her will each be getting a temporary partner to train up another squad. Lack of facilities and weapons notwithstanding, they can shoot soda cans or go through some training videos for de-escalation. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Vehicles​

You have in your possession a single heavy hauler and two electric buggies. None of them are fast enough to qualify as a response vehicle yet your rock is big enough that various mines should be spaced out across the surface, solar farms can be built out wide enough and enemies might land on your proverbial backside. Order two single-track astrobikes to deliver your emergency responders to the scene in a reasonable amount of time. DC 60​

​

-[ ] Ships​

Buying anything better than a tugboat attached to a fuel tanker is expensive. Really, really expensive. But you need to be able to project your power beyond your immediate colony. Whether as a statement to accompany your diplomats or as strike craft against asteroids or pirates, you'll be on the market for a proper spacecraft. DC 80​

You and Ken have been planning things all throughout the trip; engineering as an honest means of work is something you're both intimately familiar with. Likewise you both know that a space station's engineers are her lifeblood, so you've hit it off quite well with the man. Far from being a simple farmer, he does have a solid base in nearly all things mechanical and you shore up the electric side of things. Now if only he wasn't such a scaredy-cat. Choose 2 projects to start building.

[ ] Engineering

-[ ] Power Generation​

You have no redundancies. You can run a single arc furnace at a time and then the lights flicker. Fuel refining and oxygen production are mutually exclusive. This is not viable as it stands, even if you might like the rustic feel. Doubling your solar arrays should do for a start. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Mines​

Whatever you think you're here for, this is what everybody else expects from you: raw resources. The most basic way to make money available to you is extracting mineral rich ore and sending it away with the annual supply barge. Indeed, if some firm or another is trying to bankrupt their competition then the raw stuff might even go for more than processed goods, you just need to be able to capitalize. And right now you can't do that, so strike the rocks. DC 30​

​

-[ ] Refineries​

No matter how much rock you sell off, eventually you'd have to be a fool to give up your mass when you can turn it into more valuable mass first. A proper oxygen extraction centrifuge is costly, but will serve double duty as safeguarding your own vital supply and providing fuel to arriving tankers. If they can refuel here, they can make the trip for less cost and so more of them will look your way. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Living space​

At the moment, you're all living in a perfectly egalitarian society where everyone gets a single bed and eight square meters. You also have a smattering of storage rooms you could convert to living space as necessary. However, most people don't like living in what basically amounts to a tin can prison. Get to work on more space that's properly sealed and shielded. The only thing you have in abundance at first glance is regolith, which will do as insulation in a pinch. DC 20​

​

-[ ] Docks​

Your launch facilities are in a word pathetic. Refueling takes ages and is wasteful, you need to cart the supplies way too far and there's still a very real risk of something crashing directly into your domes. Set up something resembling a dock, instead of having a nice flat patch of rock some half a kilometer away serve as a launch site. DC 70​

​

-[ ] Transportation​

Moving to and from any installation on the surface is perilous. Low G walks under the blackness are scary and slow and you have almost no redundant cars. Ken pointed out that while you're small now, a robust metro network is never set up soon enough. The lack of available mining equipment is but a minor concern they assure you. DC 60​

​

-[ ] Farms​

The sooner you can set up your own hydroponics, the sooner you can stop importing the exuberantly expensive stuff that literally grows on trees. This is currently about a third of your total budget, so freeing that up would provide you with a nice boost. Not to mention that if the next barge captain decided to make a little profit on the side by raising prices in orbit you'd just have to grit your teeth and take the deal. DC 30​

Erikson has been keeping to himself, so much so that you completely missed him coming aboard and only see him during your preliminary meetings, the ones that you've made clear are mandatory. Still, when he does contribute to the conversation, it's usually a well thought out response or an insightful comment and his action plans are clear and concise. Perhaps this is just his way of separating his occasionally thankless job and his private life, as he seems to get along with Hailey at least. Choose 1 action.

[ ] Human Resources

-[ ] Background checks​

Sure, you've vetted everybody important on board to some extent, but can you spot the lies on their resumes? Didn't think they had any? Maybe, but now you're thinking about it. Also look into their staff, maybe they let someone accidentally slip through. If you intend to maintain control of your colony you'll need all the info you can get. Sic your spymas- set human resources to finding out about the people here, see what they'll dig up. DC 30​

​

-[ ] Port info gathering​

When various ships stop by your colony, they bring more than just material goods. They also bring a wealth of info, either from back home or locally. Also they have money they might spend elsewhere if you don't give them any reason to come out of their ships. A bar or two is bound to pop up sooner or later, but if you had a hand in the game from the start, you'll have a good source of rumors under your control. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Surveillance​

As of three hours ago, nobody had left any airlocks open or stolen extra rations, but you can't be sure that's still the case. To start with, a comprehensive set of motion sensors and fire alarms, pressure indicators and air purity measurers should be installed. It'll make the job of any future police that much easier and the first steps are just common sense on a rock without atmosphere. DC 30​

​

-[ ] Audits​

Right now you still have a good idea of how much stuff you have. But as time goes on and you hopefully continue to grow, these numbers will become muddier and muddier and the longer it's been since the last time someone checked, the harder it becomes. Better get ahead of the game and set up a system now. DC 20​

​

-[ ] Monetary system​

At the moment you have no economy beyond the essentials of rationing out food and water. People are paid by contract from the banks of Troy Station with essentially your own money. At the very least you should set up a local encryption safe to not be cut off whenever the sun is in the way of radio transmission. Beyond that you might want to consider adopting a unified currency or a local chit, backed by yours truly. DC 30​

Miss Weissmeier is a younger, more conventionally beautiful and feminine version of Miss Carpenter. Even in zero G she wears a dark business skirt and heels, her reports are thorough and drier than a vacuum, but you can't fault her data or methods. She might be the youngest on your council, but it definitely doesn't show and you're quite glad to have someone with medical expertise on standby at all times. Choose one subject.

[ ] Research

-[ ] Healthcare​

You have a cleanroom, a vague promise that if someone falls ill or is injured you'll break out the medical rations and the doctor on staff will do their best. Have documents drawn up about how and when to triage cases, see which areas are the most crucial, whether there's profit to be made or can a comprehensive plan raise morale. DC 10​

​

-[ ] Mineral surveys​

The general readings claim that your rock should have a good balance of light and heavy metals, silicates and oxygen rich rock, and who knows what else. Some basic calculation based on spin and spectral analysis is well and good, but nowhere near enough for your purposes, send out survey teams to measure the hills and valleys, find where the deposits are and take proper samples. DC 30​

​

-[ ] R&D labs​

As it stands, your science corps is working out of two offices and a single room with tables, chairs, a whiteboard and a projector which they'll eventually move out of when there's kids to school. Set up a room that has proper computers, a holodeck, some centrifuges and spectrometers at least. You'll leave the specifics to Miss Weissmeier, but impress on them that this is to be both multifunctional and cheap. Got to start somewhere after all. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Communications​

Right now your best bet at transmitting data is to pack some drives on a resupply shuttle and send them off. Expand your reception arrays by building more and shielding them better to reduce loss. You'll still have periods of blackout when the Sun is in the way, but bouncing your signal around just has to wait for the moment, none of the existing deep space arrays are interested in your traffic and to change that is either the work of a diplomat or you'll need to design, manufacture and launch your own mirrors. DC 50​

 

[Karf]

[X] Diplomacy
-[X] Meet the neighbors
You're not alone out here and you know it, even if looking up at any given window shows nothing but the void. Hailey can send for various registries, maps and charters to determine who's around. She'll also work together with Erikson to find out what the tugboat traders know about local stops and perils. DC 10

[X] Security
-[X] Squads
Your colony has what might generously be called a citizen militia. Have Miss Carpenter organize a recruitment drive slash trials from amongst the populace to fill up the ranks of your security forces. The five people under her will each be getting a temporary partner to train up another squad. Lack of facilities and weapons notwithstanding, they can shoot soda cans or go through some training videos for de-escalation. DC 40

[X] Engineering
-[X] Power Generation
You have no redundancies. You can run a single arc furnace at a time and then the lights flicker. Fuel refining and oxygen production are mutually exclusive. This is not viable as it stands, even if you might like the rustic feel. Doubling your solar arrays should do for a start. DC 40
-[X] Farms
The sooner you can set up your own hydroponics, the sooner you can stop importing the exuberantly expensive stuff that literally grows on trees. This is currently about a third of your total budget, so freeing that up would provide you with a nice boost. Not to mention that if the next barge captain decided to make a little profit on the side by raising prices in orbit you'd just have to grit your teeth and take the deal. DC 30

[X] Human Resources
-[X] Monetary system
At the moment you have no economy beyond the essentials of rationing out food and water. People are paid by contract from the banks of Troy Station with essentially your own money. At the very least you should set up a local encryption safe to not be cut off whenever the sun is in the way of radio transmission. Beyond that you might want to consider adopting a unified currency or a local chit, backed by yours truly. DC 30

[X] Research
-[X] Healthcare
You have a cleanroom, a vague promise that if someone falls ill or is injured you'll break out the medical rations and the doctor on staff will do their best. Have documents drawn up about how and when to triage cases, see which areas are the most crucial, whether there's profit to be made or can a comprehensive plan raise morale. DC 10

Click to shrink...

(Roll meet the neighbors, required 10: 5)

You knew even when first making your plans that you'd need to skimp out on something. As sensory equipment is in demand everywhere and their production is a highly specialized process, they're accordingly really expensive. Compounding with the fact that the gear is truly delicate so a big investment might fail or break entirely either on route or shortly after, it was proper telescopes that you decided not to buy. Right now, you're feeling a bit silly about that.

"… and the charts that are publicly available don't even list the destination of the barge we came here on. I knew it was strange when the captain told me that he goes by coordinates alone." Hailey has been venting her frustrations for a solid ten minutes now.

"New Ireland, prolific fuel refinery and ice mine, right?"

"Yes. I know it's about two weeks behind us. Ragnar and I even cobbled together some basic radio antennas, but all their transmissions are tightbeam. We've triangulated their ambient noise and heat signature, so I approximately know where they are, but neither of us is exactly an expert on this, so our error margin is an order of magnitude bigger than our target." She finally stops pacing, which looks more like prancing around, and sits down opposite you, her eyes glazing over as she lets out a slow sigh.

"We could probably punt out a comms buoy, but even I think it's coin flip odds at best. Plus it'd be a dummy one, drifting off to be picked up by God knows what on its way into the sun with no way to control it from here."

"I'll keep that in mind," you make a note on your computer, then turn back to her. "Did your antenna pick up anything else?"

"Most of it will be in the report. If I had to take a guess, there's another three to six inhabited bodies in the vicinity. The clearest signal was probably a fluke, it came outside the regular orbits and sunward. Ragnar thought it might be interference from our own signals, so the rest of the stuff is also suspect. We did beam some weak signals to the most promising candidates, but either there's no one there, they don't have the equipment like us or they don't want to answer."

(No contacts made. You know of a single nearby colony and you can expect that there are others. Found out about issues with the local maps or lack thereof)

(Unlocked options to contact New Ireland, survey the skies)

(Roll squads, required 40: 99)

A near constant fixture to your work on the solar arrays has been your security officer and a squad of four dashing out from the main base airlock, splitting into two teams and ducking behind hills and into valleys, running mock war games. They've printed out replica rifles and fitted those with office laser pointers, then strapped on a harness of soldered together light detectors. Basically, you're paying them to play laser tag. At first the sight is more comic than professional, as grown adults soar over the plains, flapping arms and waiting to get back to the ground from an overeager run rocketing them too far up. But after a few months of training you only spot them in short, controlled dashes, when you all go out or if you happen to come back in at the same time.

The larger half of Carpenters squad meanwhile seem to be working community outreach. They're in charge of handing out rations, going door to door and chatting with the people on their route to make sure no one is running low on the essentials. There's always at least one of them in the community center where the handful of kids on your base gather for lessons, assisting the teacher on Weissmeier's staff. You're told that they've all signed up for advanced first aid under her as well and once the blood drive got started they were all first in line to volunteer. It's also no coincidence that they do all that in their navy blue security overalls with a small print of 'police' over the suspenders, tasers carefully concealed from the public by the baggy pants.

You've been keeping up with your head of security's weekly reports, but a face to face approach has always served you best, so you drop by the canteen-by-day, bar-by-night just as the field team and Miss Carpenter usually come in. As expected, a few minutes later the group arrives, hair still wet from the shower, laughing over a shared joke. The place is mostly empty and you raise your glass in greeting, catching Carpenter's eye and beckoning her over. After a final few quick words to her team, followed by a louder, "See you later, sheriff!" she comes over.

"Something to drink, sheriff?" you offer her with a smirk.

"Just a silly moniker I can't seem to get rid of, and no thank you, I'm not much of a drinker, sir," she replies, remaining standing with her arms behind her back, feet shoulder width apart.

"It's orange juice," you tell her, swilling the clear liquid in your glass, "or a cocktail of citric acids and sugars at any rate. Tastes near enough the same even without the food coloring. Sit, there's no need to be so formal."

She hesitates for a second, then signals the barkeep to mix another glass and sits opposite you, "I've found that protocol exists for a reason, sir."

Baby steps, you think to yourself, at least she sat down. As the bartender brings the drink over and you take a sip of your own, you take a moment to observe the woman. Her bleached hair is usually kept in a bun, but currently hangs a bit past her shoulder blades, the roots revealing her natural dark blonde color. Her eyes are a light olive bordering on gray, skin likewise clear and pale, with a bit of sunburn from the constant exercise on the rocks.

"So how are you and your squad, or squads, settling in?" you start the conversation again.

Her eyes light up and she leans forward a bit, "It's been a great change of pace. I've never considered a military career before, not much opportunity on Luna for it, but I think I'd have really liked it, sir. Luke and Matthew, one of mine and one of the new recruits, have a service history back on Earth and they've been a great help with the QRF."

"QRF?" you cut in.

"Quick reaction force, sir. The group you've seen me with out and about. When we were coming here and the plan to expand was set, I thought I'd be giving lectures on proper procedure to complete amateurs, and I have been, but they've taken to it like fish to water. After the first month I just left the new recruits paired with my old colleagues and frankly, they've built the foundation for something great, sir."

She takes a probing taste of her own drink, then gulps it all down, evidently pleased with the taste, "Speaking freely, I think a separation between a tactically trained force and one integrated with the community has been a great outcome, sir."

"Glad to hear it, Miss Carpenter. So long as the two don't drift too far apart, at least not accidentally."

"Of course, sir."

(You have a semi-professional force that knows the local landscape for dealing with outside threats. Meanwhile, the locals consider security trustworthy and the police personnel is well liked. Both forces are still tiny and comparatively underequipped, but either could be the start of something great.)

(Unlocked options to further develop a professional militia)

(Roll power generation, required 40: 87)

Aside from coordinating meetings and making public appearances in your community, most of your time is spent installing or printing additional solar panels. You fall into a comfortable rhythm of setting your meager manufactories to print, melt and weld the components overnight, when many other systems can be shut down. In the morning after breakfast you and Ken meet up in the workshop, going over the night's results, checking the more delicate parts and packing up the modules for transport, followed by an early lunch for you. You stick around as people come and go around noon, chatting and listening to the goings of your colony, then hit the garage where the hauler is loaded with the panels and supports. Afternoon and evening is spent with a team of engineers carefully getting things in place and finishing the installation, then it's a late meal in the lab setting up the next patch to be made.

The first freighter ship flies by, dropping you fresh supplies and some of the precious elements you were running low on, but doesn't touch down on account of you not having anything to sell back just yet. While you're starting to feel the burn on your bank account, you'd accounted for this and still have some reserves left. As the regular blackouts come to a stop, you see the people truly settling in, no longer considering this an exiting adventure but something stable and long term. You're sure having dependable infrastructure played a large role in the shift, so not only do you now have an excess of energy to use, but the people are happy and motivated.

(Power output is slightly greater than peak consumption)

(Unlocked more solar arrays, alternate means of power generation, power storage)

(Roll farms, required 30: 73)

While Ken Hiragi is usually a quiet person with a meek demeanor, if you so much as mention plants, the man seemingly pops out of nowhere to regale you with tales of cornucopias and dirt substrates. For most of the first half of the year, he and his crews are working on a cubic building that dwarfs any of your existing infrastructure. The inside is all one room covered in a complex web of pipes, lamps and shelving units with the occasional fan to circulate CO2 and intake valves to filter out pure oxygen. The walls are thicker and while the outside is the usual heatsinks, steel and rock, the inside is carefully insulated with ceramic plates to avoid rust in the much more humid conditions.

"The first harvest will mostly be beans and some tomatoes," Ken explains as you tour the facilities just before the hauler is set to arrive, "I have some plans regarding more luxurious foods as well as true novelties, but you need a good test run first."

"Bland but reliable. Will we be able to survive off this in an emergency?"

"To a point. Correctly rationed, this facility will just about triple our backup stock. There's still a few vitamins and acids missing for proper nutrition, but as I said, it's a good start."

"And is there any excess to sell?" your entrepreneurial mind can't help but ask.

"Afraid not," he taps one of the fans for sucking up fresh air, "however, in the worst case scenario… There's roughly enough plant matter that if we lose base pressure and the oxygen stores, twenty people can live here for about a year when it's sealed up. Give or take."

A grim remainder, but one with a small silver lining.

Work continues apace as the freighter drops off fertilizer and nutrient paste, by far the largest by volume of the deliveries, and seeds are planted in the farm as you dip into the sun's shadow or the 'quiet season' as some folks have taken to calling it. It's a time when you're cut off from direct communication with Earth due to a giant ball of plasma rendering any radio signals between you inaudible for about two months. Never one to miss a good opportunity for festivities, you time the reestablishing of contact with the first proper harvest.

"A harvest festival, if you will," you said when pitching the idea to your council.

"Like Easter after lent! What a wonderful idea," Hailey was all aboard and that's basically all it took, the rest of the crew mostly indifferent. When you brought up that Ken should be the one to eat the first locally made meal, his stance shifted to negative, but two on one you ganged up on him with Hailey and got him to agree.

Thus when you broadcast the message received ding and a dressed up waiter lifts up the fancy metal covering a plate of boiled beans and tomato sauce, Ken is about as red in the face as his tomatoes when people cheer his first bite. The cafeteria is packed and you've emptied out the nearest few rooms, leaving the doors open, but still there's people who just don't fit into the space. The biggest room you technically have is the farm itself, but the price for your head engineer's cooperation was that his farm was off limits. Something to consider in the future perhaps.

(Proof of concept farms set up, can skip a shipment of food without fear of starvation.)

(Unlocked new construction options, possibilities to branch into different foods.)

(Roll monetary system, required 30: 74)

The physical work for a secure server is mostly trivial. Dig out a room, reinforce the walls, shield the contents, install the secure server, lock it up and recycle the atmosphere to vacuum gap any access.

The much more important work is setting up a trusted node with the IMF, which leads to Erikson hogging most of your comm arrays for the first few months. In effect, he programmed in the framework that you require, then sent it to be verified, getting back heavily encrypted packages which serve as confirmation that the content and data isn't tampered with. After a few months of programming, the all clear message is received and with it, the core of the whole contraption: a data packet that both holds your wealth in bits and isn't rendered invalid if it drops out of contact. Just before the silent season hits, you issue your first credit cards linked to your colonies own financial node.

Effectively this means that every salary you pay, every purchase made in your colony is tied to the local node, cutting out middlemen and currency exchanges until one of your colonists makes a purchase outside your local sphere. Then your server is checked and the appropriate transactions made. You're still nowhere near issuing your own currency, or at least one that would be accepted anywhere but your rock, but having a system that works year round and is seen as legitimate by the people raises trust for you both internally as well as with any trade partners.

For the latter half of the year, Hailey taps the man to help her out and you often see the two at lunch, discussing math over star charts. It's during one such meeting that a gaggle of children, ranging from perhaps four to nine years old, is herded into the cafeteria for lunch. One of the smaller girls perks up on seeing the two councilors and launches herself forward.

"Daddy!" she yells, majestically floating over your lunch and towards Erikson who catches her, spinning her around to arrest her momentum.

"What's this now, dear? Daddy's busy."

"No you're not. Auntie Ha'ly doesn't mind," is her rebuttal as she climbs into his lap and grabs the cookie from the ration plate.

"You shouldn't put words in other peoples' mouths, Kari," Erikson admonishes her, but Hailey is visibly holding back giggles.

The girl turns contrite, half-eaten cookie held to her chest as she turns to the woman, "I'm sorry."

Suddenly serious, your head diplomat's ability to switch tracks on a dime impressive even to you, Hailey leans over and pats the child's shoulder, "Apology accepted."

The trio share the meal before the girl is sent back to her group of daycare and class rolled into one and you walk up to them.

"Mr. Erikson, I feel I owe you an apology for never even noticing you were a father."

"It's nothing, just hasn't come up. If anything, I keep to myself far too much, the fault is mine," the man waves you off.

"Well, I accept both of your apologies," Hailey crosses her arms, offering handshakes to both of you… at the same time. Well used to her antics, you just shake the offered hand.

"Good luck with the antenna, Hailey, Erikson," you nod to the pair and prepare to get back to work.

"We'll need it, boss."

"Thanks, O'Rielly."

(Local branch of banking set up, integrity of said server is internationally recognized.)

(Roll healthcare, required 10: 32)

The medical emergency procedures are set. It's not a very revolutionary idea nor is there much room for improvised improvement. As it stands, everybody agrees that with your already limited supplies withholding any of it for money would be inhumane. There's a respectable store of antibiotics and antiseptics, depressants and stimulants, a cache of vaccines and some anesthetics.

After a few months of living in recycled environments and no sickness you can quite confidently say that no airborne pathogens are going to spread. Thus Miss Weissmeier reports that the most likely health risks are either psychological or traumas. As there's little she can do for the former, other than a commendation for keeping a high morale and suggesting counselling sessions for key personnel, she has focused her efforts on the latter. The three most common types of injury she predicts are electric shocks, depressurization and lacerations from machinery.

The first initiative is spearheaded by herself in setting up a blood bank. Although you can refrigerate it quite well, the shelf life of blood is the same one month and a bit that it's ever been. Even just having the blood types of people on file could be a massive help, she tells you during one of your meetings, and you can certainly agree to that much at least. The scientist works out a rotating schedule of different groups and dates that should mean a fresh supply is constantly available.

The second work is taken in conjunction with Miss Carpenter: giving lectures on field medicine. How to transport unresponsive people in spacesuits, how to act with victims of shock or panic in low G, as well as indoors aid such as chest compressions without just lifting up yourself, lung inflation when dealing with pressure accidents and so on.

Neither measure is massively successful, but she assures you that it's a matter of small things adding up. Still, as she's busy with the lectures or her own private concerns, you find little opportunity to get to know her better. Then again, perhaps she just prefers staying distant and professional. Either way, you can't fault her for not exceeding your expectations and merely doing her job.

(Stock of medical situation taken, vulnerabilities located and some measures taken to mitigate them.)

(Unlocked mandatory medical training, trauma room setup and port entrance scanning.)



The first year has come and gone in a blink of an eye for you. It truly feels like you touched down for the first time just yesterday, but the sense of community and belonging speaks magnitudes otherwise. You're confident that you know everybody here by face and most people by name too.

"… while I'm not privy to Mr. O'Rielly's finances, most things I'd like to pursue require a significant influx of initial capital," Weissmeier is finishing up her situation assessment, "We'll need to balance our budget and potentially seek backers for more investments to jumpstart our economy." She casts a questioning glance towards Erikson and Carpenter.

"I am quite happy with my present situation," Erikson picks up her unspoken question, "but as far as I know we are not being financed by any prominent corporations or governments." Carpenter merely nods her assent.

They're not wrong, for the most part. You knew what you were getting into and prepared accordingly, but the numbers in your bank account are decreasing. That said, there are multiple avenues awaiting you, and you only get to build a single foundation for the rest of your days. There's also the possibility of leveraging your assets as a mortgage, should it be necessary, though it would gall you to do that.

"Ladies and gentlemen, here's what we're committing to…"



Hailey Perez, or just Hailey, as she insists, is an energetic and empathic woman. Prone to some daydreaming and perhaps not with the most intense attention span, she nonetheless has an uncanny insight into what people are feeling around her. A masterful poker player and a great shoulder to cry on, the latter by her own words at least, she's probably best suited to face-to-face meetings and positive contacts. Choose 1 task to send her on.

[ ] Diplomacy

-[ ] Meet the neighbors​

You're not alone out here and you know it, even if looking up at any given window shows nothing but the void. Hailey has sent for various registries, maps and charters to determine who's around, only to turn up empty handed so far. She'll also work together with Erikson to find out what the tugboat traders know about local stops and perils. DC 30

-[ ] Advertise your colony
You'll pretty much always have room and jobs for people willing to put in the effort, but you won't get all that many colonists if no one knows of you. Place ads, make unreasonable and vague promises and put up flyers, whatever works. You'll probably get people to come, but they won't be… overqualified, to put it optimistically. On the other hand, maybe a bit of grunt work is exactly what you need right now, and occasionally you might – might – find rough diamonds with the slop. DC 30

-[ ] Establish relations with…
Subtly put out feelers for a patron, someone to legitimize your claim. Nothing overt, just find out who might be interested in your little rock and see what they might offer you in return. Nothing permanent or committal of course, your first partner will always be special and just the act of choosing will make you enemies as well as allies, even if they won't show it. Geez, this is like high school all over again, except now you need to worry about nuclear warheads instead of hurt feelings. DC 40

-[ ] Seek corporate deals
You can sell your output on the open market as it gets launched out, but the prices will fluctuate and rarely in your favor. Likewise for supplies of food, air and water, all of which can be scarce this close to the sun. After all, you can't very well not buy the food if deliveries come by once a year. Instead, you could find one of the many middle-man businesses that exist just to prevent that from happening. See what they'll offer you and make sure you can fulfill your part of the deal. DC 30

-[ ] Laws
While a 'what you say goes' policy is fine for now, you'll need to set up some standards eventually. How high is the tax rate, what to do with criminals, what about education, a jury of peers or professional judges, how (if) you'll pay your people. There's a countless amount of possible problems and an even more immeasurable amount of solutions. You and your staff won't be able to deal with everything, but that's no excuse for not making plans about anything. Begin work on a set of laws. DC 40

-[ ] Send a probe to New Ireland
The only colony in a month's radius that you know for sure exists. It's mainly a refueling station, located on a chunk of ice from the rogue planet Lucifer. They process the ice into hydrogen and oxygen, selling the products as fuel for haulers on a round trip. While you don't have the tools to pick them out precisely, you can send a robust rocket drone to say "hi" and trade contact protocols. DC 40​

Miss Carpenter projects an air of confidence and her no nonsense attitude backs up her demeanor. Perhaps a bit headstrong and stubborn, but as long as you don't act against her she'll likely be quite competent. The slightly more militarized situation you currently face might technically be outside her expertise, but watching her conducting training exercises out on the rocks certainly assuages such doubts. Choose 1 security action to focus her on.

[ ] Security

-[ ] Armor​

As it currently stands, you're using stock exo-suits. They're bulky and hard to move in because of internal pressurization and rigid supports. They're fine for maintenance work, but not for casual strolls or anything more action packed. However, you could get a small unit kitted out in reinforced body suits that could be comfortably worn indoors and outdoors alike. Just send in the measurements and receive the merchandise. DC 25

-[ ] Weapons
At the moment, your weapons stockpiles are measured in individual weapons. You have one portable railgun, five gas-harpoon launchers and five Tasers… Oh, and Luke from Miss Carpenter's staff has a personal handgun and 10 bullets rated for space fire capability. You should probably take it away, but he's an alright bloke… Anyways, this situation has to change. Order something to help with keeping order or deterring unwelcome visitors. DC 25

-[ ] Squads
Your colony has a surprisingly professional and well liked police force, but that might be due to the fact that every officer is on first name basis with most residents. While you probably don't need more right this instant, looking ahead can't hurt. See if more people might be interested in joining the forces. DC 60

-[ ] Vehicles
You have in your possession a single heavy hauler and two electric buggies. None of them are fast enough to qualify as a response vehicle yet your rock is big enough that various mines should be spaced out across the surface, solar farms can be built out wide enough and enemies might land on your proverbial backside. Order two single-track astrobikes to deliver your emergency responders to the scene in a reasonable amount of time. DC 65

-[ ] Ships
Buying anything better than a tugboat attached to a fuel tanker is expensive. Really, really expensive. But you need to be able to project your power beyond your immediate colony. Whether as a statement to accompany your diplomats or as strike craft against asteroids or pirates, you'll be on the market for a proper spacecraft. DC 90

-[ ] Professional army
So it might be a bit presumptuous to call half a squad of enthusiasts an army, but it's a start. Lacking weapons, you can still focus on fitness, team tactics, leadership exercises, rules of engagement and the like, setting a very early basis for an officer corps. Ultimately you have dreams both of statehood and of mercenary groups you can rent out for sweet, sweet profit. DC 50​

You and Ken often find yourselves working together; engineering as an honest means of work is something you're both intimately familiar with. Likewise you both know that a space station's engineers are her lifeblood, so you've hit it off quite well with the man. Far from being a simple farmer, he does have a solid base in nearly all things mechanical and you shore up the electric side of things. Now if only he wasn't such a scaredy-cat. Choose 2 projects to start building.

[ ] Engineering

-[ ] Mines​

Whatever you think you're here for, this is what everybody else expects from you: raw resources. The most basic way to make money available to you is extracting mineral rich ore and sending it away with the annual supply barge. Indeed, if some firm or another is trying to bankrupt their competition then the raw stuff might even go for more than processed goods, you just need to be able to capitalize. And right now you can't do that, so strike the rocks. DC 30

-[ ] Refineries
No matter how much rock you sell off, eventually you'd have to be a fool to give up your mass when you can turn it into more valuable mass first. A proper oxygen extraction centrifuge is costly, but will serve double duty as safeguarding your own vital supply and providing fuel to arriving tankers. If they can refuel here, they can make the trip for less cost and so more of them will look your way. DC 40

-[ ] Living space
At the moment, you're all living in a perfectly egalitarian society where everyone gets a single bed and eight square meters. You also have a smattering of storage rooms you could convert to living space as necessary. However, most people don't like living in what basically amounts to a tin can prison. Get to work on more space that's properly sealed and shielded. The only thing you have in abundance at first glance is regolith, which will do as insulation in a pinch. DC 25

-[ ] Docks
Your launch facilities are in a word pathetic. Refueling takes ages and is wasteful, you need to cart the supplies way too far and there's still a very real risk of something crashing directly into your domes. Set up something resembling a dock, instead of having a nice flat patch of rock some half a kilometer away serve as a launch site. DC 75

-[ ] Transportation
Moving to and from any installation on the surface is perilous. Low G walks under the blackness are scary and slow and you have almost no redundant cars. Ken pointed out that while you're small now, a robust metro network is never set up soon enough. The lack of available mining equipment is but a minor concern they assure you. DC 65

-[ ] Solar field expansion
You are producing enough for your present needs, but what about the you of tomorrow? Another expansion of the solar fields is in order. Storing the extra for the future might require some creative timing or another power-hungry project taken on concurrently, but complex undertakings have never daunted you before. DC 50

-[ ] Industrial capacitor bank
A massive array of capacitors that can be used to fully charge a spaceship's batteries in a few hours. While bigger vessels have means of generating their own power, they can occasionally carry empty cells to reload and sell. Smaller ships meanwhile need a recharge almost as often as a refueling. Also, there are other possible uses for massive and sudden energy releasing, namely railguns and mass drivers. Alas, this stuff is really, really, expensive. DC 90

-[ ] Industrial battery bank
A marginally cheaper alternative to capacitors, an oversized battery bank means that even if some disaster wipes out your energy farms, you'll have a month or so to do repairs before the air cyclers stop running. And you won't be wasting energy most of the time if you have a good reservoir to pump it into. DC 70

-[ ] Farms expansion: grain
A test run of your engineers and supply chains was successful, now it's time to branch out. Ken tells you that you should focus on variety over quantity next, both from a physiological as well as mental perspective. It does get quite dull to eat beans and rations on alternating days. Set up a second, smaller facility for a variety of grains: barley, wheat, rye, rice. DC 40

-[ ] Farms expansion: fruit
A test run of your engineers and supply chains was successful, now it's time to branch out. Ken tells you that you should focus on variety over quantity next, both from a physiological as well as mental perspective. It does get quite dull to eat beans and rations on alternating days. Set up a second, smaller facility for a plantation of fruits: grapes, watermelon, pineapple, lemons. DC 40

-[ ] Communal space
How's a dictator supposed to give rousing speeches to their people without a wide plaza and a balcony. Jokes aside, the harvest festival brought to your attention the fact that people don't have a sufficiently large area for gathering. Fostering a strong sense of community is something Hailey is constantly on your case about, and a space should be set aside for it. DC 40​

A quiet individual, it took you months to find out that one of the children in your colony was the daughter of your personnel manager. When Ragnar Erikson does contribute to the conversation, it's usually a well thought out response or an insightful comment and his action plans are clear and concise. Perhaps this is just his way of separating his occasionally thankless job and his private life, as he seems to get along with Hailey at least. Choose 1 action.

[ ] Human Resources

-[ ] Background checks​

Sure, you've vetted everybody important on board to some extent, but can you spot the lies on their resumes? Didn't think they had any? Maybe, but now you're thinking about it. Also look into their staff, maybe they let someone accidentally slip through. If you intend to maintain control of your colony you'll need all the info you can get. Sic your spymas- set human resources to finding out about the people here, see what they'll dig up. DC 30

-[ ] Port info gathering
When various ships stop by your colony, they bring more than just material goods. They also bring a wealth of info, either from back home or locally. Also they have money they might spend elsewhere if you don't give them any reason to come out of their ships. A bar or two is bound to pop up sooner or later, but if you had a hand in the game from the start, you'll have a good source of rumors under your control. DC 40

-[ ] Surveillance
As of three hours ago, nobody had left any airlocks open or stolen extra rations, but you can't be sure that's still the case. To start with, a comprehensive set of motion sensors and fire alarms, pressure indicators and air purity measurers should be installed. It'll make the job of any future police that much easier and the first steps are just common sense on a rock without atmosphere. DC 30

-[ ] Audits
Right now you still have a good idea of how much stuff you have. But as time goes on and you hopefully continue to grow, these numbers will become muddier and muddier and the longer it's been since the last time someone checked, the harder it becomes. Better get ahead of the game and set up a system now. DC 20

-[ ] Sterile entry
The fact that you have no diseases loose among your population is a blessing easily overlooked. Although you've not had anyone new come in for a while, if and when that changes you intend to keep your base pox free. Set up medical scanners and a cleanroom by the main entrance, along with protocols for tracing, isolation and surveillance of newcomers, perhaps even medical background checks. It is a bit cumbersome and proper equipment is expensive, but it's the kind of thing you can only appreciate when it's far too late. DC 60​

Miss Weissmeier is a younger, more conventionally beautiful and feminine version of Miss Carpenter. Even in zero G she wears a dark business skirt and heels, her reports are thorough and drier than a vacuum, but you can't fault her data or methods. She might be the youngest on your council, but it definitely doesn't show and you're quite glad to have someone with medical expertise on standby at all times. Choose 1 subject.

[ ] Research

-[ ] Mineral surveys​

The general readings claim that your rock should have a good balance of light and heavy metals, silicates and oxygen rich rock, and who knows what else. Some basic calculation based on spin and spectral analysis is well and good, but nowhere near enough for your purposes, send out survey teams to measure the hills and valleys, find where the deposits are and take proper samples. DC 30

-[ ] R&D labs
As it stands, your science corps is working out of two offices and a single room with tables, chairs, a whiteboard and a projector which they'll eventually move out of when there's kids to school. Set up a room that has proper computers, a holodeck, some centrifuges and spectrometers at least. You'll leave the specifics to Miss Weissmeier, but impress on them that this is to be both multifunctional and cheap. Got to start somewhere after all. DC 40

-[ ] Communications
Right now your best bet at transmitting data is to pack some drives on a resupply shuttle and send them off. Expand your reception arrays by building more and shielding them better to reduce loss. You'll still have periods of blackout when the Sun is in the way, but bouncing your signal around just has to wait for the moment, none of the existing deep space arrays are interested in your traffic and to change that is either the work of a diplomat or you'll need to design, manufacture and launch your own mirrors. DC 50

-[ ] Medic Training
The people in your colony come from various backgrounds and educations, but lifesaving knowledge is something everyone should have. Expand the rudimentary programs currently set up and make it a mandatory part of life on this rock. It will cut into productivity a bit but it'll be worth it to literally save lives. DC 20

-[ ] Trauma ward
Invest in a proper medical bed, some monitors and a respirator. Set up an x-ray machine. If you're particularly lucky, attract an actual surgeon. All things that might well save your own life one day. Alas, money is the one force that makes the planets orbit and you are feeling the lack of it. DC 65​

 

[Karf]

[X] Diplomacy
-[X] Meet the neighbors
You're not alone out here and you know it, even if looking up at any given window shows nothing but the void. Hailey has sent for various registries, maps and charters to determine who's around, only to turn up empty handed so far. She'll also work together with Erikson to find out what the tugboat traders know about local stops and perils. DC 30

[X] Security
-[X] Weapons
At the moment, your weapons stockpiles are measured in individual weapons. You have one portable railgun, five gas-harpoon launchers and five Tasers… Oh, and Luke from Miss Carpenter's staff has a personal handgun and 10 bullets rated for space fire capability. You should probably take it away, but he's an alright bloke… Anyways, this situation has to change. Order something to help with keeping order or deterring unwelcome visitors. DC 25

[X] Engineering
-[X] Mines
Whatever you think you're here for, this is what everybody else expects from you: raw resources. The most basic way to make money available to you is extracting mineral rich ore and sending it away with the annual supply barge. Indeed, if some firm or another is trying to bankrupt their competition then the raw stuff might even go for more than processed goods, you just need to be able to capitalize. And right now you can't do that, so strike the rocks. DC 30
-[X] Living space
At the moment, you're all living in a perfectly egalitarian society where everyone gets a single bed and eight square meters. You also have a smattering of storage rooms you could convert to living space as necessary. However, most people don't like living in what basically amounts to a tin can prison. Get to work on more space that's properly sealed and shielded. The only thing you have in abundance at first glance is regolith, which will do as insulation in a pinch. DC 25

[X] Human Resources
-[X] Background checks
Sure, you've vetted everybody important on board to some extent, but can you spot the lies on their resumes? Didn't think they had any? Maybe, but now you're thinking about it. Also look into their staff, maybe they let someone accidentally slip through. If you intend to maintain control of your colony you'll need all the info you can get. Sic your spymas- set human resources to finding out about the people here, see what they'll dig up. DC 30

[X] Research
-[X] Mineral surveys
The general readings claim that your rock should have a good balance of light and heavy metals, silicates and oxygen rich rock, and who knows what else. Some basic calculation based on spin and spectral analysis is well and good, but nowhere near enough for your purposes, send out survey teams to measure the hills and valleys, find where the deposits are and take proper samples. DC 30

Click to shrink...

(Roll meet the neighbors, required 30: 92)

"Ha! Never let it be said that Hailey Maria Perez does things half-way," said woman slams down a data pad on your office table.

For a significant chunk of the year, you've seen her with her nose in her tablet or listening to something that she often rewinds, face scrunched up. Then you're pretty sure she scared off the freighter captain from ever coming to your section of space again by nearly interrogating him with Erikson on everything the man remembered about all his flights here. The quiet season she spent with Ken, fiddling with her amateur radio telescope while the comms were down. The last few months she's been sharing computer simulation time with Weissmeier.

"I'm sure no one ever said that. What's this?" you point to the display.

"This is orbital mechanics 201, a plot of a spy mystery novel and far too many gray hairs."

You tap open the display and flick through the images of star maps littered with annotations and trajectories.

"I've painstakingly mapped and backtracked every rock near us massing more than a kiloton. I've cross-referenced ship logs and transport manifests, some of which are technically illegally leaked, but you didn't hear that from me. This is my magnum opus. I'm done with math for a century, let me at them boss, I want people not numbers."

You continue to thumb through the massive info dump in front of you, "This is amazing Hailey, I thought you studied marketing, not astrophysics."

"I did, but I guess you never stop learning. So now I've got a certificate in radio astronomy."

"I'll go over this in detail tonight, but why don't you give me the short of it," you prompt her, setting the tablet aside for now.

She pulls up her own device and after a few seconds casts an image to the white-board on your wall that you keep around for just this purpose.

Spoiler: Local map, image

"We knew about New Ireland already, but it bears repeating that it's the biggest on the block, for now. It's entirely ice and melting fast though, so the owners are in a race against time if they want to stick around here. I've given them a decade, but it's a rough guess, they'll probably last a bit longer."

She zooms from the big marker to another one a bit closer to you and Earth-ward, "This is Deckard Station, a darn hard one to reference because most of its supplies come straight from NI. They're sitting on a regular old iron asteroid and pumping out steel that mostly goes to their patron. My guess is that once the ice runs out the fuel money will have gone into a spin station that'll keep buying up local fuel and selling it forward to tankers as a familiar rest stop."

With barely a breath she continues, pointing to a smaller rock roughly directly Earth-ward from you, "That is the compound for the Children of Dreamers. They picked the name, they have a website and everything, very professional."

She stands up, places her hands in a Buddhist mudra and intones in a deep voice, "Thus is our purpose to carry forward that which should have met with us in the void of space, but whose embrace we forsook. In the lives now lost we seek salvation by work."

"They're cultists?"

"They think Lucifer had intelligent life and worship that as godlike," she sums it up, her conclusion evident in her derisive tone.

"Moving on," she continues after a meaningful pause, "ahead of us by about a week is an unnamed research outpost from a Martian company that works in the nuclear energy sector, called Prismdust. No concrete evidence, but I'd bet to great odds that there's a uranium or plutonium deposit there."

Even when you know that there's no reason for them to be a threat to you, you still feel goosebumps on your arms, "Any chance they're making weapons?"

"Unless they're specifically researching new methods of enrichment, no. Not enough power for it. If they were though, this is where I'd do it," she gives you one of her winning smiles.

"Thanks..."

"Finally there's a tiny thing sunward of Deckard Station. It's a luxury resort, apparently very private and exclusive, the owner comes in on a personal craft with no flight path, maybe once or twice a year. The place is manned by a mercenary or private security crew."

"Alright, don't poke directly, but luxury means money, so all told, not a bad neighbor to have. You said finally, but isn't there another marker off up there?" you ask, pointing to the lone symbol outside the common orbits, nearer to the Sun than any other object by a wide margin.

"That's kind of scary, boss," Hailey leans forwards and drops her voice to a whisper, "You know how there's no such thing as government black sites?"

"Sure, just as everybody knows that any big government has black sites in deep space. Is that what that is?" you ask, mimicking her conspiratorial tone.

"All I know is that there's a signal that I can't pick up with properly calibrated equipment, only the incredibly inefficient one Ragnar and I made last year. There's nothing there as far as visuals go, but the scariest part is that it shouldn't have a stable orbit without burning fuel to keep it's position, and a candle like that could be picked up by just about anything."

Both of you take a minute to digest that info before Hailey continues.

"If we're gonna publish these charts, then I'm not including that dot, but it's there."

(Local star chart produced, can be sold for a minor income boost or saved as a negotiating chip. Hailey can now help with astronomy related tasks.)

(Unlocked new diplomatic options, unlocked new espionage actions)

(Roll weapons, required 25: 31)

The people in your tactical squad have done enough dry training, it's time to get them weapons, especially when you intend to advertise that you have ore for sale. In the interest of saving money, you order a set of rifles and several coffers of ammo, but not the significantly more expensive production patents or bullet forging kits, which proves to be both a blessing and a curse.

The bad news is that the weapons you get from the freighter are quickly found to be of subpar quality. They're prone to jamming in the fine powdery dust of the asteroid that lingers in the air after every move, there's an alarming misfire where a round ignites too fast in the chamber, leading to a chain reaction and a ruined magazine. Thankfully there weren't many rounds left, so the trooper didn't get injured.

At least the optics seem to be fine and the weapon profile is ergonomic.

The good news is that you've not spent a lot for the set and there's no need to try and recoup losses by producing more to use or sell, risking a reputation hit. On the first chance you get, the batch is getting decommissioned from active use into training gear. Still, they do work in a pinch and your men get to put their coordination to a proper test with live fire.

Although there is some hesitation to iron out, no one was hurt and the mock objectives were achieved within tolerances. At least that's what Miss Carpenter tells you, to the QRF, she's not nearly as kind.

(Your squads can be armed with basic weapons that they have some experience with.)

(Unlocked better armaments, weapon patents)

(Roll mines, required 30: 42)

You knew that you'd need to do some mining when you came here, so some of the tools you'd need you already have.

The hauler you used last year to get the solar field going is finally converted to a proper ore harvester. The drill bits are taken out of storage and checked over. While waiting for the results of the mineral surveys you have the team of miners go over maintenance and operation manuals.

When the first results come in, you rush to harvest the most you can before the freighter comes, gathering up a modest load of cuprite. It's not a huge amount, but it is enough to get the captain to land and pick it up at market rates.

After the ship leaves, the operation picks up steam. Instead of a quarry you get to set up a proper shaft, you complete the conveyor lines with the new engines you bought and you get adequate storage for the product. For now it amounts to little more than a separate hole in the ground close to the clearing you use as a landing pad, but it's not like you have to worry about rust.

(You are now exporting cuprite, a copper-oxygen crystal, the vein is promising and further improvements to the mines can be made)

(Unlocked mine expansion options)

(Roll living space, required 25: 28)

While you're not overseeing trade negotiations or the mines, you and Ken work on designing housing upgrades. It's a delicate process of shuffling people around while you break down walls and attach new modules to the base. Perhaps feeling a bit stretched out, you can tell in hindsight that some of the stuff isn't very well thought out, you could have made more efficient use of space here, routed piping better there and so on. Alas, what's done is done for now and the new units are still a definite improvement over the old ones. Most of the rooms can now be called as such. There's a bathroom attached to each unit and every third one is a double-decker, fit for a couple or a small family, affording some privacy to the residents.

The average apartment is not much different from a mid-class hotel room and you still simply assign them as people need them instead of renting them out or letting people buy permanent property. Kitchens are still not included due to open flame being a carefully controlled commodity, but the complex as a whole remains small enough to walk to the canteens for food. In total, you could probably fit half again as many people now and the overall living quality has risen, however marginally.

You've also remodeled some of the hallways, including as many clear glass windows as possible to reduce the claustrophobic feel of the place. Spacers like yourself are mostly used to the tunnel-like connector paths, but once the view-ports are installed, you have to admit that it does feel good to see the landscape, desolate though it may be.

(Living conditions improved, may see more family units forming. You have a good amount of quarters available to not feel too empty or too packed.)

(Unlocked further apartment enhancements)

(Roll background checks, required 30: 9)

"As far as I can tell, Hailey and Amanda are precisely what they claim to be," Erikson is delivering a private report to you in your new office, staring out the window overlooking the currently empty launch location and an engineer doing maintenance on the final bit of the conveyor. "A Texan with latino roots, probably just didn't get along with a superior at TI, got fed up with the firm and came here."

You nod and prompt him to continue. "Much the same with Amanda: both parents are from the States but she grew up in Tranquility. I assume you hired her because of the press scandal, not despite it. I did some digging and to be honest, I completely believe her version of events."

"Don't do business with the Ping-Lin Group, got it."

"At least run it by her first, could be an isolated incident or a bad branch firm thing." Erikson turns to you and cracks a wry grin, "Next up is me. As a show of trust I threw in some of the less known details of my divorce. I'd appreciate you keeping the exact settlement to yourself, but Hailey has badgered most of it out of me anyway."

Flipping through the files, you parse the final court summary, "So that's where my money is going. How about custody rights?"

"That's why the numbers are so big. I ended up settling for their demands if I got to keep her. Probably could have fought for it, it's not like she actually wanted to keep her for any other reason than the lawyers orders to use leverage, but when Kari is old enough to get the full details, she can know that some things are priceless," Erikson and you share a meaningful look as he stares you down.

"I've no children of my own, so I won't lie and give you empty platitudes about knowing what you feel, but for what it's worth, I think you made the right choice, Erikson."

He gives you a nod, then turns back to the window, "Moving on, Ken Hiragi."

"I'm listening."

"There's a few strange coincidences surrounding his first business getting started, but nothing that can't feasibly be explained by luck or random chance. In addition, there's an open missing person case on Troy matching his name and description. He's an adult, so someone must have filed it and either he doesn't know about it or he hasn't bothered to correct them. There's no legal trouble it could bring you, but it is a little strange."

"Any misinformed relatives looking for him?"

"His parents are in a retirement home, I imagine he's supporting them. No siblings and he's divorced from his wife, no kids either."

"Alright, maybe I'll just ask him about it," you try to imagine the mellow engineer as someone sinister and fail horribly.

"Which brings us to Lena Weissmeier," Erikson continues. "As far as potential influence goes, she's probably got more than the rest of us combined. The Weissmeier Group is big and the family could probably support her in luxury indefinitely."

"I was under the impression she voluntarily stepped away from it."

"Yes, but it is still something to keep in mind," the man leans forward onto your desk. "Money and assets should be of no import to her. Just as the file you gave me stated, she's in regular contact with the new head, her sister. But the messages she sends her are encrypted heavily enough that it's probably better than what went into that safenode we set up last year. Perhaps it's just how the ultrarich do things or some family proprietary software, but it does give me pause."

"I see," you sigh, "anything else?"

"This is probably more Hailey than me, but I'm worried that she's feeling left out. Hailey gets along with you and me, you tie Ken and Amanda into things, but Lena spends very little time with any of us. Not that I have a good solution, just something to consider."

"I'll try to keep it in mind. How about a more general system for going forward?"

Erikson shrugs, "Sorry boss, maybe if we weren't constantly bandwidth capped as is."

(Unlocked espionage actions to follow up on Ragnar's report)

(Roll mineral surveys, required 30: 61)

The first measurements and samples are taken based on proximity and the hazy images you obtained on your initial approach. The distinct reddish color of copper rich ore shines through with the right tools and a ground sample confirms the presence of cuprite - a copper oxygen crystal. Miss Weissmeier's report says that there's likely another vein of copper sulfides beneath this one and the likelyhood of finding some iron has gone up significantly.

The actual mineral itself is a rather pleasant ruby red, but crystals big enough to land on the carat scale and have the clearness of proper gemstone are exceedingly rare. Thus, while you won't be making jewelery out of your find, the copper is useful for heat conduction and basic wiring while the oxygen can be captured and used in a staggering number of processes, not to mention the most basic need to breathe. All in all, a valuable if common cache of resources for you to exploit.

Work on surveying the proximity of the base continues after that of course. It's late in the year when Weissmeier comes to your office, still in her field gear, requesting a meeting.

"Miss Weissmeier, to what do I owe the pleasure?" you offer her a drink that she quickly gulps down before opening a pouch on her belt and laying a few glittery nuggets on your desk.

"I've some excellent news, Mr. O'Rielly. About half an hour by rover north of here, there's a significant node of argentite, with veins of pure silver running throughout."

Before you can get a word in to congratulate her on the find, she continues, "I'm sure you're aware of it's value both as a rare metal as well as uses in electronics that you likely know more about than me, but I'd like to requisition a supply for medical research as well."

Again, before you have a chance to agree, she's caught her breath and keeps going, "Silver has many antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties when properly ministered, but the real groundbreaking application is in silver nanites and nanoparticles. The research is not necessarily expensive and doesn't require much material, a kilo of silver will easily last for months. And I don't need too many tools for it, just a few strong EM emitters and some diffusion vats."

This time you don't even try to get a word in, letting her build her case herself. For a solid ten minutes she details what must surely be all possible uses of medicinal silver, you finally intervene when she's about to pull up one of her by now infamous 3d animated graphs, "Miss Weissmeier, I'd be delighted to gift you first pick of any silver we pull up."

"...and the potential for prion disease treatment... Oh!" a pink dusting covers her cheeks when she processes what you just said. "That's... great. Thank you sir."

"Further, you're welcome to pursue whatever avenues of research you so desire, provided that your duties are properly managed. From what I understand, you're essentially ready to begin this research now, but I'm sure a proper lab would help. We'll discuss it at the next meeting in depth and set the yearly plan from there. Was there anything else I could do for you?"

"Yes, that is to say, no. Thank you. Of course, sir," she stammers out and forcibly shifts her tablet behind her. "I'll tell Ken the good news about the argentite vein. See you at the next meeting, sir."

(Full results of the survey indicate a good quality silver vein a bit further out than your existing copper mine.)

(Unlocked mines expansion - silver, more surveying, research into silver nanites)

Soon enough you call to order your annual planning meeting. Twice, because Hailey keeps muttering something under her breath.

"Miss Perez, a moment of your time please?"

She jerks upright, then waves her arms in front of her, "Sorry, boss, just, uhh... Going through some names. Yeah."

"Names?" you raise an eyebrow.

"Yeah, names. We can keep calling this place the rock or colony or asteroid or home or what-have-you, but it'll get mighty confusing if we do that in official diplomatic conversation."

She does raise a good point, "Any suggestions?"

"Tons, but none of them seem to fit. As much as this has become home to us, it's still your baby, you should be the one to name it."

"Hmm..."

[ ] Name
-[ ] Write-in

(This vote will remain open until we reach say... 4 votes for the most popular one, also please leave this line outside any plans.)

"Alright," Ken intersects, "by my understanding, our books are no longer red, but they're not quite green either. We've a way to go towards true self sufficiency as well."

"Our defenses might be quite important if we keep growing. Unfortunately we can't serve as a deterrent right now, merely a counterstrike. That'll change after the first engagement, I hope, but growth should be tempered with caution, sir."

The rest of the crew remain silent, agreeing with the assessment and awaiting your decision.

Hailey Perez, or just Hailey, as she insists, is an energetic and empathic woman. Prone to some daydreaming and perhaps not with the most intense attention span, she nonetheless has an uncanny insight into what people are feeling around her. A masterful poker player and a great shoulder to cry on, the latter by her own words at least, she's probably best suited to face-to-face meetings and positive contacts. Also recently gained a proficiency in astrology. Choose 1 task to send her on.

[ ] Diplomacy

-[ ] Advertise your colony​

You'll pretty much always have room and jobs for people willing to put in the effort, but you won't get all that many colonists if no one knows of you. Place ads, make unreasonable and vague promises and put up flyers, whatever works. You'll probably get people to come, but they won't be… overqualified, to put it optimistically. On the other hand, maybe a bit of grunt work is exactly what you need right now, and occasionally you might – might – find rough diamonds with the slop. DC 20​

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-[ ] Establish relations with…​

Subtly put out feelers for a patron, someone to legitimize your claim. Nothing overt, just find out who might be interested in your little rock and see what they might offer you in return. Nothing permanent or committal of course, your first partner will always be special and just the act of choosing will make you enemies as well as allies, even if they won't show it. Geez, this is like high school all over again, except now you need to worry about nuclear warheads instead of hurt feelings. DC 35​

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-[ ] Seek corporate deals​

You can sell your output on the open market as it gets launched out, but the prices will fluctuate and rarely in your favor. Likewise for supplies of food, air and water, all of which can be scarce this close to the sun. After all, you can't very well not buy the food if deliveries come by once a year. Instead, you could find one of the many middle-man businesses that exist just to prevent that from happening. See what they'll offer you and make sure you can fulfill your part of the deal. DC 25​

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-[ ] Laws​

While a 'what you say goes' policy is fine for now, you'll need to set up some standards eventually. How high is the tax rate, what to do with criminals, what about education, a jury of peers or professional judges, how (if) you'll pay your people. There's a countless amount of possible problems and an even more immeasurable amount of solutions. You and your staff won't be able to deal with everything, but that's no excuse for not making plans about anything. Begin work on a set of laws. DC 40​

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-[ ] Send a probe to New Ireland​

New Ireland is mainly a refueling station, located on a chunk of ice from the rogue planet Lucifer. They process the ice into hydrogen and oxygen, selling the products as fuel for haulers on a round trip. A simple self-destructing probe can get in radio range of them and exchange your tightbeam comms protocols. DC 15​

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-[ ] Send a probe to Deckard Station​

Maybe you should just go through New Ireland, but you can't well be faulted for trying if no one technically told you their political situation. And who knows, maybe you can get a better deal by talking with them directly. DC 25​

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-[ ] Send a probe to the Children of Dreamers​

People with strange beliefs are nothing new and these ones are your closest neighbors. Surely they have some needs that you could fulfill or vice versa. DC 30​

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-[ ] Send a probe to the Prismdust research base​

A research colony is usually well supplied by their patron, but they might have interesting patents to sell you and collaborative research, while a logistical nightmare, might produce some revolutionary results. DC 20​

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-[ ] Send a probe to the private resort​

If it's some trillionaires party house, then something as exotic as locally sourced fruits and vegetables might very well fetch a price that would be ridiculous elsewhere. And the security staff have needs too, maybe you can undercut their current supplier. DC 25​

Miss Carpenter projects an air of confidence and her no nonsense attitude backs up her demeanor. Perhaps a bit headstrong and stubborn, but as long as you don't act against her she'll likely be quite competent. The slightly more militarized situation you currently face might technically be outside her expertise, but watching her conducting training exercises out on the rocks certainly assuages such doubts. Choose 1 security action to focus her on.

[ ] Security

-[ ] Armor​

As it currently stands, you're using stock exo-suits. They're bulky and hard to move in because of internal pressurization and rigid supports. They're fine for maintenance work, but not for casual strolls or anything more action packed. However, you could get a small unit kitted out in reinforced body suits that could be comfortably worn indoors and outdoors alike. Just send in the measurements and receive the merchandise. DC 25​

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-[ ] Squads​

Your colony has a surprisingly professional and well liked police force, but that might be due to the fact that every officer is on first name basis with most residents. While you probably don't need more right this instant, looking ahead can't hurt. See if more people might be interested in joining the forces. DC 60​

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-[ ] Vehicles​

You have in your possession a single heavy hauler and two electric buggies. None of them are fast enough to qualify as a response vehicle yet your rock is big enough that various mines should be spaced out across the surface, solar farms can be built out wide enough and enemies might land on your proverbial backside. Order two single-track astrobikes to deliver your emergency responders to the scene in a reasonable amount of time. DC 50​

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-[ ] Ships​

Buying anything better than a tugboat attached to a fuel tanker is expensive. Really, really expensive. But you need to be able to project your power beyond your immediate colony. Whether as a statement to accompany your diplomats or as strike craft against asteroids or pirates, you'll be on the market for a proper spacecraft. DC 85​

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-[ ] Professional army​

So it might be a bit presumptuous to call half a squad of enthusiasts an army, but it's a start. Fitness, team tactics, leadership exercises, rules of engagement and the like, alongside some live fire exercises to develop team cohesion is a good early basis for an officer corps. Ultimately you have dreams both of statehood and of mercenary groups you can rent out for sweet, sweet profit. DC 50​

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-[ ] Weapon patents​

The guns you have are still in limited supply, no one wants to arm every random space rock after all. Do some shopping and convince a manufacturer to grant you access to their design specs so that you could start producing your own ammo and weapons. DC 60​

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-[ ] Better armaments​

Turns out you nor anyone on your immediate staff is a trained soldier, so the weapons you got were probably more flash than bang. Not that they are completely useless, just that they could be so much better. Hunker down with your sheriff and find a better set of offensive equipment for your troops. DC 40​

You and Ken often find yourselves working together; engineering as an honest means of work is something you're both intimately familiar with. Likewise you both know that a space station's engineers are her lifeblood, so you've hit it off quite well with the man. Far from being a simple farmer, he does have a solid base in nearly all things mechanical and you shore up the electric side of things. Now if only he wasn't such a scaredy-cat. Choose 2 projects to start building.

[ ] Engineering

-[ ] Mines - copper​

Your first mines are up and running, providing you with a steady trickle of sellable ore. Expand that operation: widen shafts, open new ones, speed up transport, order new equipment. DC 40​

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-[ ] Mines - silver​

Your science officer was quite enamored with the shiny metal and so are you. The veins are a bit further away than the copper is, but a little work has never stopped you from seeing the big picture: money. DC 40​

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-[ ] Refineries​

No matter how much rock you sell off, eventually you'd have to be a fool to give up your mass when you can turn it into more valuable mass first. A proper oxygen extraction centrifuge is costly, but will serve double duty as safeguarding your own vital supply and providing fuel to arriving tankers. If they can refuel here, they can make the trip for less cost and so more of them will look your way. DC 30​

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-[ ] Luxury living space​

The current apartments are adequate, but not luxurious. Expand the existing ones by including more floors and extra amenities. DC 40, can be taken with More living space for DC 70, counts as 1 action​

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-[ ] More living space​

Now that actual money is rolling in and you're firmly established, more and more people will be coming. It's a good idea to stay ahead of the curve and start up a second complex of living space. DC 40, can be taken with Luxury living space for DC 70, counts as 1 action​

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-[ ] Docks​

Your launch facilities are in a word pathetic. Refueling takes ages and is wasteful, you need to cart the supplies way too far and there's still a very real risk of something crashing directly into your domes. Set up something resembling a dock, instead of having a nice flat patch of rock some half a kilometer away serve as a launch site. DC 70​

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-[ ] Transportation​

Moving to and from any installation on the surface is perilous. Low G walks under the blackness are scary and slow and you have almost no redundant cars. Ken pointed out that while you're small now, a robust metro network is never set up soon enough. The lack of unoccupied mining equipment is but a minor concern they assure you. DC 60​

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-[ ] Solar field expansion​

You are producing enough for your present needs, but what about the you of tomorrow? Another expansion of the solar fields is in order. Storing the extra for the future might require some creative timing or another power-hungry project taken on concurrently, but complex undertakings have never daunted you before. DC 50​

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-[ ] Industrial capacitor bank​

A massive array of capacitors that can be used to fully charge a spaceship's batteries in a few hours. While bigger vessels have means of generating their own power, they can occasionally carry empty cells to reload and sell. Smaller ships meanwhile need a recharge almost as often as a refueling. Also, there are other possible uses for massive and sudden energy releasing, namely railguns and mass drivers. Alas, this stuff is really, really, expensive. DC 80​

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-[ ] Industrial battery bank​

A marginally cheaper alternative to capacitors, an oversized battery bank means that even if some disaster wipes out your energy farms, you'll have a month or so to do repairs before the air cyclers stop running. And you won't be wasting energy most of the time if you have a good reservoir to pump it into. DC 65​

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-[ ] Farms expansion: grain​

A test run of your engineers and supply chains was successful, now it's time to branch out. Ken tells you that you should focus on variety over quantity next, both from a physiological as well as mental perspective. It does get quite dull to eat beans and rations on alternating days. Set up a second, smaller facility for a variety of grains: barley, wheat, rye, rice. DC 40​

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-[ ] Farms expansion: fruit​

A test run of your engineers and supply chains was successful, now it's time to branch out. Ken tells you that you should focus on variety over quantity next, both from a physiological as well as mental perspective. It does get quite dull to eat beans and rations on alternating days. Set up a second, smaller facility for a plantation of fruits: grapes, watermelon, pineapple, lemons. DC 40​

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-[ ] Communal space​

How's a dictator supposed to give rousing speeches to their people without a wide plaza and a balcony. Jokes aside, the harvest festival brought to your attention the fact that people don't have a sufficiently large area for gathering. Fostering a strong sense of community is something Hailey is constantly on your case about, and a space should be set aside for it. DC 40​

A quiet individual, it took you months to find out that one of the children in your colony was the daughter of your personnel manager. When Ragnar Erikson does contribute to the conversation, it's usually a well thought out response or an insightful comment and his action plans are clear and concise. Perhaps this is just his way of separating his occasionally thankless job and his private life, as he seems to get along with Hailey at least. Choose 1 action.

[ ] Human Resources

-[ ] Background checks​

Sure, you've vetted everybody important on board, but can they spot the lies on their underlings' resumes? Didn't think they had any? Maybe, but now you're thinking about it. Look into the staff of your staff, maybe they let someone accidentally slip through. If you intend to maintain control of your colony you'll need all the info you can get. Sic your spymas- set human resources to finding out about the people here, see what they'll dig up. DC 30​

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-[ ] Port info gathering​

When various ships stop by your colony, they bring more than just material goods. They also bring a wealth of info, either from back home or locally. Also they have money they might spend elsewhere if you don't give them any reason to come out of their ships. A bar or two is bound to pop up sooner or later, but if you had a hand in the game from the start, you'll have a good source of rumors under your control. DC 35​

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-[ ] Surveillance​

As of three hours ago, nobody had left any airlocks open or stolen extra rations, but you can't be sure that's still the case. To start with, a comprehensive set of motion sensors and fire alarms, pressure indicators and air purity measurers should be installed. It'll make the job of any future police that much easier and the first steps are just common sense on a rock without atmosphere. DC 30​

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-[ ] Audits​

Right now you still have a good idea of how much stuff you have. But as time goes on and you hopefully continue to grow, these numbers will become muddier and muddier and the longer it's been since the last time someone checked, the harder it becomes. Better get ahead of the game and set up a system now. DC 30​

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-[ ] Sterile entry​

The fact that you have no diseases loose among your population is a blessing easily overlooked. Although you've not had anyone new come in for a while, if and when that changes you intend to keep your base pox free. Set up medical scanners and a cleanroom by the main entrance, along with protocols for tracing, isolation and surveillance of newcomers, perhaps even medical background checks. It is a bit cumbersome and proper equipment is expensive, but it's the kind of thing you can only appreciate when it's far too late. DC 50​

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-[ ] Thorough check - Ken Hiragi​

There's something about the nice, quiet ones. Erikson brought to your attention the barest of possibilites, but you should still follow up and reassure yourself. DC 50​

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-[ ] Thorough check - Lena Weissmeier​

Why is she so secretive, what sinister motives could she have? Remember, it's only rude to pry if you get caught doing it. And no, this does not count as stalking or harassment, you're doing this for security reasons. DC 60​

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-[ ] Poke the black site​

Alright, so you're not going to launch a probe to knock on their front door, but if a casual solar wind analyzer happens to pass by, they'd surely have more to lose by reacting to it. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it gave man the stars and if you've built a house next to a wolf den then you should make sure to guard your sheep. Err, bad analogy, you definitely don't think of your people as sheep. Anyways, try to find out anything about your secret neighbor. DC 75​

Miss Weissmeier is a younger, more conventionally beautiful and feminine version of Miss Carpenter. Even in zero G she wears a dark business skirt and heels, her reports are thorough and drier than a vacuum, but you can't fault her data or methods. She might be the youngest on your council, and in rare moments her lack of life experience shows, but you're quite glad to have someone with medical expertise on standby at all times. Choose 1 subject.

[ ] Research

-[ ] Mineral surveys​

The general readings claim that your rock should have a good balance of light and heavy metals, silicates and oxygen rich rock, and who knows what else. You've gone over the surrounding top soil, for lack of a better term, but there's more to the asteroid both in depth as well as further out, keep looking for more minerals. DC 40​

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-[ ] R&D labs​

As it stands, your science corps is working out of two offices and a single room with tables, chairs, a whiteboard and a projector which they'll eventually move out of when there's more kids to school. Set up a room that has proper computers, a holodeck, some centrifuges and spectrometers at least. You'll leave the specifics to Miss Weissmeier. Got to start somewhere after all. DC 35​

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-[ ] Communications​

Right now your best bet at transmitting data is to pack some drives on a resupply shuttle and send them off. Expand your reception arrays by building more and shielding them better to reduce loss. You'll still have periods of blackout when the Sun is in the way, but bouncing your signal around just has to wait for the moment, none of the existing deep space arrays are interested in your traffic and to change that is either the work of a diplomat or you'll need to design, manufacture and launch your own mirrors. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Medic Training​

The people in your colony come from various backgrounds and educations, but lifesaving knowledge is something everyone should have. Expand the rudimentary programs currently set up and make it a mandatory part of life on this rock. It will cut into productivity a bit but it'll be worth it to literally save lives. DC 20​

​

-[ ] Trauma ward​

Invest in a proper medical bed, some monitors and a respirator. Set up an x-ray machine. If you're particularly lucky, attract an actual surgeon. All things that might well save your own life one day. Alas, money is the one force that makes the planets orbit and you are feeling the lack of it. DC 55​

​

-[ ] Silver nanites​

Miss Weissmeier has charmed you into supporting her research on silver nanomachines for medical purposes. It'd be easier if you had proper mining set up for the silver, if your refining options were of better quality and quantity, if you actually had a lab, but she assures you that she can still start her work now, if you give her the green light. DC 75​

Just in case it's not obvious, the characters in the story are very much unreliably narrators and they definitely don't know that their success is quantized to a dice roll. This warning is provided only once, as this is the first time an action failed when its failure isn't necessarily obvious to the people at hand.

It's been brought to my attention that just leaving the vote format unspecified can cause some confusion. Upon further reflection I think the quest will work best with a plan format, as options can have logical synergies with one another.

It'll also help me write and understand what people are looking to achieve if you provide a reasoning for your choices and how they interact with one-another. I hope this doesn't deter anyone from voting or active discussion, as much like the colony, our thread can only benefit from growing.

Also, apologies for any spelling mistakes, I'm currently away from home and much of the chapter was written on a laptop too old to run Word.

 

[Karf]

[X] Diplomacy
-[X] Advertise your colony
You'll pretty much always have room and jobs for people willing to put in the effort, but you won't get all that many colonists if no one knows of you. Place ads, make unreasonable and vague promises and put up flyers, whatever works. You'll probably get people to come, but they won't be… overqualified, to put it optimistically. On the other hand, maybe a bit of grunt work is exactly what you need right now, and occasionally you might – might – find rough diamonds with the slop. DC 20

[X] Security
-[X] Armor
As it currently stands, you're using stock exo-suits. They're bulky and hard to move in because of internal pressurization and rigid supports. They're fine for maintenance work, but not for casual strolls or anything more action packed. However, you could get a small unit kitted out in reinforced body suits that could be comfortably worn indoors and outdoors alike. Just send in the measurements and receive the merchandise. DC 25

[X] Engineering
-[X] Mines – silver
Your science officer was quite enamored with the shiny metal and so are you. The veins are a bit further away than the copper is, but a little work has never stopped you from seeing the big picture: money. DC 40
-[X] Farms expansion: grain
A test run of your engineers and supply chains was successful, now it's time to branch out. Ken tells you that you should focus on variety over quantity next, both from a physiological as well as mental perspective. It does get quite dull to eat beans and rations on alternating days. Set up a second, smaller facility for a variety of grains: barley, wheat, rye, rice. DC 40

[X] Human Resources
-[X] Sterile entry
The fact that you have no diseases loose among your population is a blessing easily overlooked. Although you've not had anyone new come in for a while, if and when that changes you intend to keep your base pox free. Set up medical scanners and a cleanroom by the main entrance, along with protocols for tracing, isolation and surveillance of newcomers, perhaps even medical background checks. It is a bit cumbersome and proper equipment is expensive, but it's the kind of thing you can only appreciate when it's far too late. DC 50

[X] Research
-[X] Trauma ward
Invest in a proper medical bed, some monitors and a respirator. Set up an x-ray machine. If you're particularly lucky, attract an actual surgeon. All things that might well save your own life one day. Alas, money is the one force that makes the planets orbit and you are feeling the lack of it. DC 55

Click to shrink...

(Roll advertise your colony, required 20: 73)

You've never had a problem with public speaking, but talking to a camera feels wholly different and weird. You're going through the hydroponic gardens with Hailey expertly walking backwards in front of you, a shoulder mounted lens pointed towards your face.

"As you can see, even in the furthest reaches of space we have a corner of greenery, reminding us…" Hailey just sighs and the little red light blinks off.

"No, boss. First, don't make it sound like we're a backwater rock," she mimics your voice far too well, "in the furthest reaches of space. We're exciting new opportunities, not a deathtrap cut off from civilization. I like the greenery angle, but frame it as something pleasant here, not something that reminds people of where they come from. If they're thinking 'hey yeah, it sure is nice to have some greenery here at home' they're not thinking about leaving it behind and coming here. Let's go again."

This is not the first or second take, each sentence of your normal cadence and mannerisms chopped up and fed through the PR engine that is Hailey Perez. You've grown used to the drill.

"As you can see, our gardens are a perfect place for a relaxing stroll, and the food we grow here tastes great," your camera operator gives you a thumbs up and motions to keep going, "Soon, we'll also be expanding our production to grains, so the halls will be filled with the scent of freshly baked bread and the evening drinks will be locally sourced."

"Nice one, you do listen to what I say. I might cut the last part in post, references to alcohol can end up driving people off, but I'll have to see how it flows before I can be sure. Do you want to do the entry or the trauma ward next?"

"I'd say the ward as I have a meeting with Miss Weissmeier in half an hour, but the builders are currently in there doing wiring. Let's pack up here for now and pick up tomorrow?"

"Works for me, I'll see if I can't get the QRF coming in on camera. I'd wager most of the people we're attracting will at least be interested in military work, so it should be good shots."

The first of your recruitment videos is out just before the freighter leaves a low orbit Earth station, and a handful of people get to serve as a test case for your new immigration protocols, thankfully taking it in stride. Over the course of the year you shoot another three clips, waving the flag, as Hailey calls it.

Even if people probably won't be coming here on their own ships or chartering extras, keeping your name out there and in peoples' minds is important. Your resident expert claims that any push for publicity will work in one of two ways. Either there will be an explosive start and a quick drop-off or a slow ramping of interest until people get sick of it and after a plateau you'd have a steady drop-off. She advises you that it'll be easier to attract more people the longer you keep working on the campaign, each wave of releases having a cumulative effect.

(Some people have arrived on station, more are expected to come next year)

(Roll armor, required 25: 11)

You always knew it would happen eventually. In truth, you're surprised it took this long. What is quite the blessing certainly feels more like a curse now.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to pay our respects to Felix Holst," you start the ceremony standing next to a closed metal coffin. Amanda is half a step behind you, even more stonefaced than usual.

"A beloved member of our community, Felix was always quick to crack a joke and tease out a smile. As part of our burgeoning defense force, he knew that what we are doing is worth doing, despite the risks. Alas, he will not be here to lend his wits and dedication to our cause in the flesh."

A catastrophic servo malfunction in the upper left thigh motor caused the whole limb to spin uncontrollably. Normally the power armor is meant to assist with moving the pressurized suits, but somehow the safeties failed and ripped the leg first out of the socket, then threshed the thigh bone, severing the femoral artery.

"Sometimes, the sacrifices we make aren't grand gestures or noble last stands. All too often a life is lost in a seemingly mundane accident, even more so here, near the sun and away from the safety net of Earth. But make no mistake, while Felix isn't here as a soldier, a friend, a son, he is here still. His memory will live with us all and our triumphs shall be his triumphs."

It took him four minutes to bleed out, screaming, pleading and rasping on the open intercom, Amanda confided in you while Weissmeier was going over the suit to find the fault and the body was prepared for cremation.

"I shut it down for the others, but I wouldn't turn if off for myself," she said, uncharacteristically hunched over as she sat in your office. "The motor just kept going and we couldn't even get close to him. Not that it would've done any good, we were too far out anyways. Just a regular training run. I'd forgotten just how perilous it is out here, too stuck in a routine."

You walk over to her and place a hand on her shoulder, "It's not your fault."

"Yeah, but I should have done something. He was suffering and all I could do was watch. Should I have shot him? I knew we couldn't save him."

"And that is not your responsibility. He knew the risks, we'll get through this."

The picture of a smiling young man is draped in black cloth above the coffin behind you, "Mister Holst is survived by loving parents and a younger sister in Tranquility. Our hearts go out to them."

You didn't really know the man. Sure you had some basic facts and you'd talked to him plenty of times, but always of meaningless things, so your short and impersonal eulogy is the best you could come up with. After a short pause with your head bowed, you continue, "Let us take today to reflect on the people around us, talk and grieve. It's a brutal remainder that life is precious and fleeting. If anyone wants to talk, my door is open and if you want to spend some time in silence, this room will remain as is until 8 AM tomorrow. Thank you."

You step away from the lectern and move through the crowd of thirty or so people, all of them silent. Amanda remains by the casket, standing vigil over her fallen comrade.

(Roll mines – silver, required 40: 7)

Between the media campaign, the tragic death and Ken's infectious enthusiasm for the farms, you keep putting off organizing the mining complex over the silver vein. The main proponent, Weissmeier, is likewise swept up in Erikson's cleanroom work and so you find yourself just never having enough time to work out a good plan for the silver.

The sequence of delays doesn't just stop with your own shortcomings – the second drill bit you ordered faced delays in the production phase, something about tax disputes between the US and Europe. While you're granted partial compensation when the freighter doesn't deliver your machine, you still want the thing, so you don't ask for a full refund. All told, you can optimistically say that you've laid some ground work, but this year, no silver is extracted in your colony.

(Roll farms expansion: grain, required 40: 100)

While your mine ventures languish, Ken's work on the farms is a resounding success.

"The barley strain is special, William," he tells you when the first harvest rolls in, "It's something I was working on before coming here even."

As far as you can tell the grain looks maybe a bit bigger than you expected, but nothing beyond that.

"It's a two-row crop with almost all allergens removed, while the sugar yield is greatly increased. Also note the full heads: the stalk is duplicated, producing double the amount of grain. Genetically identical to the two-row, but it grows in four, saving space and reducing water consumption."

"I'll be honest Ken, none of what you just said means anything to me. I'm just glad it's a good harvest."

"Oh it's excellent," the man runs his hand over the multi-ton bin, "I never expected it to do so well. The samples I grew on Troy suffered from the lack of gravity, the spikes on the seeds shattering far too soon for convenient gathering, but here it's just fine, the microgravity environment seems to be enough to bring the gene back to the expected configuration."

"Again, I'm glad it's good. How much of it is there? The extension was supposed to be smaller and more diverse as I understood the plans."

Ken grins at you, "Nutritionally we've just about doubled our output, the seeds we got have an extraordinarily high yield. We might run into some complications with fertilizers in a few years' time, but it's a minor problem and easy to fix by keeping track of samples and acting accordingly. Nothing for you to worry about."

You have enough time for a second harvest late in the year, but this time, Ken instead invites you to his private quarters.

"Step in, Will," he greets you, "I have something of a surprise for you."

Interest piqued, you follow him to his table while he goes for the fridge, "What is it?"

Instead of answering he pulls out two aluminum cans, covering the color print on them with his hands, "The first microbrew, made of local ingredients. I know you've been beating yourself up and running yourself ragged this year, figured you might want to relax to a cold one for a change."

"Thanks, did you brew enough for the rest of the crew too? We've all been working hard."

"Well, about that… I'll need to ask you to requisition me a new office room. I've kind of made my old one into a brewery. Here, first drinks, I'll get them bottled later, the cans will do for now."

He hands you the chilled container and you see the logo on it as Ken pulls the tab on his own and says, "I've called it Felix."

You simply tap yours to his and take a swig.

It tastes divine.

(Farms expanded: you have no risk of running into food shortages even after population growth, brewery established: luxury goods available for export. Ken Hiragi is has discovered a nearly supernatural talent for the creation of various alcohols.)

(Unlocked aquaculture project, unlocked bakery)

(Roll sterile entry, required 50: 95)

The main worry and bottleneck to making sure people who get into your environment are healthy is the long quarantine and no matter how you and Erikson try to section movement and cleaning protocols, the best you can do is a two-week stay in a sealed off part of the base that would need its own air supply and waste management.

That is, until Lena Weissmeier joins your planning committee.

"The procedure is a bit experimental, but it's shown promise so far. A biometric scan and some clever machine intelligence work can detect potential malignant sources for targeted blood analysis with two sigma for true positives and five sigma for false negatives."

You're doing your best to keep up and struggling, but Erikson seems to be on the same page as her.

"Combined with the rapid spectroscopy for the bloodwork, we can let most people out in hours, a day at most provided they're healthy, minutes if there's only a few incoming. Not to mention that both procedures are vital tools for population statistics."

Weissmeier's smirk is little more than a shifting of her lips, but for her it's the equivalent of a giggle, "You mean surveillance. I'm well used to internal monitoring and acknowledge its necessity."

"Glad we see eye to eye on the subject, miss," Erikson continues without batting an eye, "Alright O'Rielly, neither of us has the necessary bioinformatics background to set up the system, so if you want this thing done properly, I'll need to drag Lena away from the hospital for some time. For what it's worth, I think it'll be worth it; getting this set up will let us do more than screen arrivals for disease. Smugglers won't stand a chance without inside help, we can react that much faster to health issues in our own people, a DNA profile on file is helpful for Carpenter's work and those background checks we've discussed will be that much more thorough."

"I concur," Weissmeier steps in, "work on the trauma ward continues apace regardless, sir, it's mostly out of my hands for the moment. We're just missing some special equipment and a qualified surgeon, neither of which I can do much about."

(Wait times for the airlock are almost trivially small)

(Roll trauma ward, required 55: 41)

Said trauma ward has run into the same issues as your drill bit for the silver mine. Parts of the robot meant for surgery assistance have been delayed, leaving the machine effectively without hands – a state not conductive to successful surgery. Likewise, none of the people who arrived this year are doctors. A lot of surgeries can be taken care of by machines, but there's still something to be said for a professional's quick improvisational abilities.

Weissmeier said she forwarded her recommendation for the hire to Erikson, who said he went over the people and sent them to Hailey. She said that the invites have been sent, but it's not like they'd get here before the next shuttle and that they'd likely take quite a bit of time to think your offer over either way.

Still, most of the work on the project is done. The beds are set, the rooms are built and medicine is stocked.

-.-

"Ken, why don't you kick us off today?" you're all sitting in your office for another end of year review and planning meeting.

"Our food stores are in a great spot, all we need for nutritional independence is some acids. In addition to the copper exports we could potentially sell our produce on the local scale. Obviously we can't compete with Earth's prices on the wider solar market, but we can carve out a niche for some choice goods."

Erikson continues with the good news, "The port airlock system is a tentative success, while we've not had a big sample size for stress testing, all simulations point to a truly great and innovative system. My thanks to Lena for making it possible."

The woman nods her head, then purses her lips, "The trauma ward is waiting for the next freighter, provided we maintain our focus on it. The facilities are as ready as I can get them, but the equipment should be checked over by a true professional and they'll need to acclimatize to our colony before the unit can be declared open, sir."

"The armored suits have been dismantled," Carpenter briefly states, "I don't think anyone would be willing to get in those suits after that."

Hailey remains unusually quiet, but you're quite aware of the media blitz she's been orchestrating with your face. The less said about your own personal efforts the better.

"So, now that everyone is up to speed, let's get down to business."

-.-

Hailey Perez, or just Hailey, as she insists, is an energetic and empathic woman. Prone to some daydreaming and perhaps not with the most intense attention span, she nonetheless has an uncanny insight into what people are feeling around her. A masterful poker player and a great shoulder to cry on, the latter by her own words at least, she's probably best suited to face-to-face meetings and positive contacts. Also proficient in astrology. Choose 1 task to send her on.

[ ] Diplomacy

-[ ] Advertise your colony
You'll pretty much always have room and jobs for people willing to put in the effort, but you won't get all that many colonists if no one knows of you. Place ads, make unreasonable and vague promises and put up flyers, whatever works. You'll probably get people to come, but they won't be… overqualified, to put it optimistically. On the other hand, maybe a bit of grunt work is exactly what you need right now, and occasionally you might – might – find rough diamonds with the slop. DC 25

-[ ] Establish relations with…
Subtly put out feelers for a patron, someone to legitimize your claim. Nothing overt, just find out who might be interested in your little rock and see what they might offer you in return. Nothing permanent or committal of course, your first partner will always be special and just the act of choosing will make you enemies as well as allies, even if they won't show it. Geez, this is like high school all over again, except now you need to worry about nuclear warheads instead of hurt feelings. DC 35

-[ ] Seek corporate deals
You can sell your output on the open market as it gets launched out, but the prices will fluctuate and rarely in your favor. Likewise for supplies of food, air and water, all of which can be scarce this close to the sun. After all, you can't very well not buy the food if deliveries come by once a year. Instead, you could find one of the many middle-man businesses that exist just to prevent that from happening. See what they'll offer you and make sure you can fulfill your part of the deal. DC 25

-[ ] Laws
While a 'what you say goes' policy is fine for now, you'll need to set up some standards eventually. How high is the tax rate, what to do with criminals, what about education, a jury of peers or professional judges, how (if) you'll pay your people. There's a countless amount of possible problems and an even more immeasurable amount of solutions. You and your staff won't be able to deal with everything, but that's no excuse for not making plans about anything. Begin work on a set of laws. DC 40

-[ ] Send a probe to New Ireland
New Ireland is mainly a refueling station, located on a chunk of ice from the rogue planet Lucifer. They process the ice into hydrogen and oxygen, selling the products as fuel for haulers on a round trip. A simple self-destructing probe can get in radio range of them and exchange your tightbeam comms protocols. DC 15

-[ ] Send a probe to Deckard Station
Maybe you should just go through New Ireland, but you can't well be faulted for trying if no one technically told you their political situation. And who knows, maybe you can get a better deal by talking with them directly. DC 25

-[ ] Send a probe to the Children of Dreamers
People with strange beliefs are nothing new and these ones are your closest neighbors. Surely they have some needs that you could fulfill or vice versa. DC 30

-[ ] Send a probe to the Prismdust research base
A research colony is usually well supplied by their patron, but they might have interesting patents to sell you and collaborative research, while a logistical nightmare, might produce some revolutionary results. DC 20

-[ ] Send a probe to the private resort
If it's some trillionaires party house, then something as exotic as locally sourced fruits and vegetables might very well fetch a price that would be ridiculous elsewhere. And the security staff have needs too, maybe you can undercut their current supplier. DC 25​

Miss Carpenter projects an air of confidence and her no nonsense attitude backs up her demeanor. Perhaps a bit headstrong and stubborn, but as long as you don't act against her she'll likely be quite competent. The slightly more militarized situation you currently face might technically be outside her expertise, but watching her conducting training exercises out on the rocks certainly assuages such doubts. Choose 1 security action to focus her on.

[ ] Security

-[ ] Armor
As it currently stands, you're using stock exo-suits. They're bulky and hard to move in because of internal pressurization and rigid supports. They're fine for maintenance work, but not for casual strolls or anything more action packed. However, you could get a small unit kitted out in reinforced body suits that could be comfortably worn indoors and outdoors alike. Just send in the measurements and receive the merchandise. And make damn sure that what you're getting is up to snuff. DC 30

-[ ] Squads
Your colony has a surprisingly professional and well liked police force, but that might be due to the fact that every officer is on first name basis with most residents. While you probably don't need more right this instant, looking ahead can't hurt. See if more people might be interested in joining the forces. DC 50

-[ ] Vehicles
You have in your possession a single heavy hauler and two electric buggies. None of them are fast enough to qualify as a response vehicle yet your rock is big enough that various mines should be spaced out across the surface, solar farms can be built out wide enough and enemies might land on your proverbial backside. Order two single-track astrobikes to deliver your emergency responders to the scene in a reasonable amount of time. DC 50

-[ ] Ships
Buying anything better than a tugboat attached to a fuel tanker is expensive. Really, really expensive. But you need to be able to project your power beyond your immediate colony. Whether as a statement to accompany your diplomats or as strike craft against asteroids or pirates, you'll be on the market for a proper spacecraft. DC 85

-[ ] Professional army
So it might be a bit presumptuous to call half a squad of enthusiasts an army, but it's a start. Fitness, team tactics, leadership exercises, rules of engagement and the like, alongside some live fire exercises to develop team cohesion is a good early basis for an officer corps. Ultimately you have dreams both of statehood and of mercenary groups you can rent out for sweet, sweet profit. DC 45

-[ ] Weapon patents
The guns you have are still in limited supply, no one wants to arm every random space rock after all. Do some shopping and convince a manufacturer to grant you access to their design specs so that you could start producing your own ammo and weapons. DC 55

-[ ] Better armaments
Turns out you nor anyone on your immediate staff is a trained soldier, so the weapons you got were probably more flash than bang. Not that they are completely useless, just that they could be so much better. Hunker down with your sheriff and find a better set of offensive equipment for your troops. DC 40​

You and Ken often find yourselves working together; engineering as an honest means of work is something you're both intimately familiar with. Likewise you both know that a space station's engineers are her lifeblood, so you've hit it off quite well with the man. Far from being a simple farmer, he does have a solid base in nearly all things mechanical and you shore up the electric side of things. While he's still shy, his beer is to die for. Choose 2 projects to start building.

[ ] Engineering

-[ ] Mines – copper
Your first mines are up and running, providing you with a steady trickle of sellable ore. Expand that operation: widen shafts, open new ones, speed up transport, order new equipment. DC 40

-[ ] Mines – silver
Your science officer was quite enamored with the shiny metal and so are you. The veins are a bit further away than the copper is, but a little work has never stopped you from seeing the big picture: money. An extra drill head is arriving regardless. DC 35

-[ ] Refineries
No matter how much rock you sell off, eventually you'd have to be a fool to give up your mass when you can turn it into more valuable mass first. A proper oxygen extraction centrifuge is costly, but will serve double duty as safeguarding your own vital supply and providing fuel to arriving tankers. If they can refuel here, they can make the trip for less cost and so more of them will look your way. DC 30

-[ ] Luxury living space
The current apartments are adequate, but not luxurious. Expand the existing ones by including more floors and extra amenities. DC 40, can be taken with More living space for DC 70, counts as 1 action

-[ ] More living space
Now that actual money is rolling in and you're firmly established, more and more people will be coming. It's a good idea to stay ahead of the curve and start up a second complex of living space. DC 40, can be taken with Luxury living space for DC 70, counts as 1 action

-[ ] Docks
Your launch facilities are in a word pathetic. Refueling takes ages and is wasteful, you need to cart the supplies way too far and there's still a very real risk of something crashing directly into your domes. Set up something resembling a dock, instead of having a nice flat patch of rock some half a kilometer away serve as a launch site. DC 70

-[ ] Transportation
Moving to and from any installation on the surface is perilous. Low G walks under the blackness are scary and slow and you have almost no redundant cars. Ken pointed out that while you're small now, a robust metro network is never set up soon enough. This could be a chance while you have unused mining equipment laying around. DC 40

-[ ] Solar field expansion
You are producing enough for your present needs, but what about the you of tomorrow? Another expansion of the solar fields is in order. Storing the extra for the future might require some creative timing or another power-hungry project taken on concurrently, but complex undertakings have never daunted you before. DC 50

-[ ] Industrial capacitor bank
A massive array of capacitors that can be used to fully charge a spaceship's batteries in a few hours. While bigger vessels have means of generating their own power, they can occasionally carry empty cells to reload and sell. Smaller ships meanwhile need a recharge almost as often as a refueling. Also, there are other possible uses for massive and sudden energy releasing, namely railguns and mass drivers. Alas, this stuff is really, really, expensive. DC 80

-[ ] Industrial battery bank
A marginally cheaper alternative to capacitors, an oversized battery bank means that even if some disaster wipes out your energy farms, you'll have a month or so to do repairs before the air cyclers stop running. And you won't be wasting energy most of the time if you have a good reservoir to pump it into. DC 65

-[ ] Farms expansion: fruit
A test run of your engineers and supply chains was successful, now it's time to branch out. Ken tells you that you should focus on variety over quantity next, both from a physiological as well as mental perspective. It does get quite dull to eat beans and rations on alternating days. Set up a second, smaller facility for a plantation of fruits: grapes, watermelon, pineapple, lemons. DC 40

-[ ] Communal space
How's a dictator supposed to give rousing speeches to their people without a wide plaza and a balcony. Jokes aside, the harvest festival brought to your attention the fact that people don't have a sufficiently large area for gathering. Fostering a strong sense of community is something Hailey is constantly on your case about, and a space should be set aside for it. DC 40

-[ ] Aquaculture
Ken has come to you with a rather strange idea. The water cisterns you currently have are filled with distilled, pure H2O and you regularly add mineral content to it between the tank and a tap. What if you instead switched the injectors for filters and opened up the tanks. And then, he tells you, put fish in them. Most mammals and birds fare poorly in the super-low gravity, but supposedly fish mostly do fine and the stuff humans like to drink is an ideal environment to grow them. DC 60

-[ ] Bakery
The closest thing to fresh bread you've had in years are the dry crackers from the ration packs that, rumors say, expand when you apply moisture. You now have a variety of grains, things like rye bread and rice cookies would definitely sell like hot cakes. Also, muffins, 'nuff said. DC 30​

A quiet individual, it took you months to find out that one of the children in your colony was the daughter of your personnel manager. When Ragnar Erikson does contribute to the conversation, it's usually a well thought out response or an insightful comment and his action plans are clear and concise. Perhaps this is just his way of separating his occasionally thankless job and his private life, as he seems to get along with Hailey at least. Choose 1 action.

[ ] Human Resources

-[ ] Background checks
Sure, you've vetted everybody important on board, but can they spot the lies on their underlings' resumes? Didn't think they had any? Maybe, but now you're thinking about it. Look into the staff of your staff, maybe they let someone accidentally slip through. If you intend to maintain control of your colony you'll need all the info you can get. Sic your spymas- set human resources to finding out about the people here, see what they'll dig up. DC 25

-[ ] Port info gathering
When various ships stop by your colony, they bring more than just material goods. They also bring a wealth of info, either from back home or locally. Also they have money they might spend elsewhere if you don't give them any reason to come out of their ships. A bar or two is bound to pop up sooner or later, but if you had a hand in the game from the start, you'll have a good source of rumors under your control. DC 20

-[ ] Surveillance
As of three hours ago, nobody had left any airlocks open or stolen extra rations, but you can't be sure that's still the case. To start with, a comprehensive set of motion sensors and fire alarms, pressure indicators and air purity measurers should be installed. It'll make the job of any future police that much easier and the first steps are just common sense on a rock without atmosphere. DC 30

-[ ] Audits
Right now you still have a good idea of how much stuff you have. But as time goes on and you hopefully continue to grow, these numbers will become muddier and muddier and the longer it's been since the last time someone checked, the harder it becomes. Better get ahead of the game and set up a system now. DC 30

-[ ] Thorough check - Ken Hiragi
There's something about the nice, quiet ones. Erikson brought to your attention the barest of possibilites, but you should still follow up and reassure yourself. DC 50

-[ ] Thorough check - Lena Weissmeier
Why is she so secretive, what sinister motives could she have? Remember, it's only rude to pry if you get caught doing it. And no, this does not count as stalking or harassment, you're doing this for security reasons. DC 60​

Miss Weissmeier is a younger, more conventionally beautiful and feminine version of Miss Carpenter. Even in zero G she wears a dark business skirt and heels, her reports are thorough and drier than a vacuum, but you can't fault her data or methods. She might be the youngest on your council, and in rare moments her lack of life experience shows, but you're quite glad to have someone with medical expertise on standby at all times. Choose 1 subject.

[ ] Research

-[ ] Mineral surveys
The general readings claim that your rock should have a good balance of light and heavy metals, silicates and oxygen rich rock, and who knows what else. You've gone over the surrounding top soil, for lack of a better term, but there's more to the asteroid both in depth as well as further out, keep looking for more minerals. DC 40

-[ ] R&D labs
As it stands, your science corps is working out of two offices and a single room with tables, chairs, a whiteboard and a projector which they'll eventually move out of when there's more kids to school. Set up a room that has proper computers, a holodeck, some centrifuges and spectrometers at least. You'll leave the specifics to Miss Weissmeier. Got to start somewhere after all. DC 35

-[ ] Communications
Right now your best bet at transmitting data is to pack some drives on a resupply shuttle and send them off. Expand your reception arrays by building more and shielding them better to reduce loss. You'll still have periods of blackout when the Sun is in the way, but bouncing your signal around just has to wait for the moment, none of the existing deep space arrays are interested in your traffic and to change that is either the work of a diplomat or you'll need to design, manufacture and launch your own mirrors. DC 40

-[ ] Medic Training
The people in your colony come from various backgrounds and educations, but lifesaving knowledge is something everyone should have. Expand the rudimentary programs currently set up and make it a mandatory part of life on this rock. It will cut into productivity a bit but it'll be worth it to literally save lives. DC 20

-[ ] Trauma ward
Invest in a proper medical bed, some monitors and a respirator. Set up an x-ray machine. If you're particularly lucky, attract an actual surgeon. All things that might well save your own life one day. Most of the work is done, you just need some finishing touches. DC 20

-[ ] Silver nanites
Miss Weissmeier has charmed you into supporting her research on silver nanomachines for medical purposes. It'd be easier if you had proper mining set up for the silver, if your refining options were of better quality and quantity, if you actually had a lab, but she assures you that she can still start her work now, if you give her the green light. DC 75​

Dice please, it's hard to make up interesting failure states for relatively straightforward stuff. On the other hand, congratulations on the first natural 100. I tried to figure something special out for it, but after bashing my head against a wall for half a day I had to admit to myself that I don't actually know anything about farming grain. So have some beer instead.

The name voting remains open, first to 4 wins. Currently we have:

2 votes for "Little Klondike"

1 vote for "New Home"

 

[Karf]

[X] Diplomacy
-[X] Laws
While a 'what you say goes' policy is fine for now, you'll need to set up some standards eventually. How high is the tax rate, what to do with criminals, what about education, a jury of peers or professional judges, how (if) you'll pay your people. There's a countless amount of possible problems and an even more immeasurable amount of solutions. You and your staff won't be able to deal with everything, but that's no excuse for not making plans about anything. Begin work on a set of laws. DC 40

[X] Security
-[X] Armor
As it currently stands, you're using stock exo-suits. They're bulky and hard to move in because of internal pressurization and rigid supports. They're fine for maintenance work, but not for casual strolls or anything more action packed. However, you could get a small unit kitted out in reinforced body suits that could be comfortably worn indoors and outdoors alike. Just send in the measurements and receive the merchandise. And make damn sure that what you're getting is up to snuff. DC 30

[X] Engineering
-[X] Mines – silver
Your science officer was quite enamored with the shiny metal and so are you. The veins are a bit further away than the copper is, but a little work has never stopped you from seeing the big picture: money. An extra drill head is arriving regardless. DC 35
-[X] Farms expansion: fruit
A test run of your engineers and supply chains was successful, now it's time to branch out. Ken tells you that you should focus on variety over quantity next, both from a physiological as well as mental perspective. It does get quite dull to eat beans and rations on alternating days. Set up a second, smaller facility for a plantation of fruits: grapes, watermelon, pineapple, lemons. DC 40

[X] Human Resources
-[X] Audits
Right now you still have a good idea of how much stuff you have. But as time goes on and you hopefully continue to grow, these numbers will become muddier and muddier and the longer it's been since the last time someone checked, the harder it becomes. Better get ahead of the game and set up a system now. DC 30

[X] Research
-[X] Trauma ward
Invest in a proper medical bed, some monitors and a respirator. Set up an x-ray machine. If you're particularly lucky, attract an actual surgeon. All things that might well save your own life one day. Most of the work is done, you just need some finishing touches. DC 20

Click to shrink...

(Roll laws, required 40: 45)

Creating a set of internally consistent and sufficiently broad set of laws from scratch would be a mammoth undertaking. Thankfully Hailey and her team gets to cheat. Instead of reinventing the wheel, they pick the core principles from various existing legal bodies, trim and reshape them to fit together, discard the bulk of them as something that doesn't apply to you yet and then mesh them together. Ultimately the creative part of the task, which falls to you, is deciding what constitutes a core principle.

"So, boss, I say we start from the top: leadership structure. Should I sign the letters with Supreme Space Sovereign O'Rielly?" Hailey flips her tab to show you an elaborate renaissance script.

"I'm pretty sure that if I went with something like that I'd be short at least two councilors tomorrow," you tap your chin. On the one hand, you lean towards the widely accepted democratic leadership model, but on the other hand, you have no intention of ever letting go of your current executive control. "How about starting with 'all people are equal under law'. Supreme sovereign or not, at the very least I'm willing to answer to the same laws as everyone else here."

"Quite magnanimous." You feign a shallow bow.

She taps a bit on her tablet, then continues, "That cuts off some of the more extreme stuff, but it does imply that someone other than you has final say as a judge."

"I've been thinking on that one. A judiciary branch could be in the cards eventually, but for now, I'll keep that power close to chest. Our council is six votes and mine is the tiebreaker. If the case concerns any of us, then it'll be five votes and majority rule."

"There's some kinks to work on, but we can do that as a base," Hailey scribbles down a few more notes, "How does the council get formed after us?"

"Appointed by me. Any appointees can be subjected to a no confidence vote by referendum, with three quarters supermajority rule."

"Does that include your own position?"

"All people are equal under law," you reiterate, "If I've screwed up badly enough for that, then I probably deserve it. I suppose in that case the remaining council will be choosing a replacement."

You go back and forth for some more time, but much of the actual decision making has to be pushed off to the next meeting.

A month later the scene is repeated; the topic this time is property law and capital ownership.

"We're agreed then," Hailey summarizes, "a separate entity of the colony itself which owns the land and receives taxes, from which the council can appropriate funds and assets as necessary. Private citizens can own capital if they buy it out from the colony, transactions approved by the council, or source their own, but the faculties and land can only be leased in perpetuity."

You're pretty sure there's smoke coming out your ears, but everything seems to be in order. Meetings like that continue throughout the year, sometimes lasting a few minutes, sometimes you need to take a break for sleep before continuing. It's not easy going and by the tail end of the progress you and Hailey are both irritable and snappish. More than once you've walked into her office when she's sitting in the dark and arguing with herself. Still, by the end of the year, you have a document.

The signing of the first constitution of Little Klondike is a quiet affair. Literally, as you've decided to hold the ceremony under open skies, borrowing the new armors for your staff. Each of you signs the physical paper, yours the final one on the page. You'd actually needed to practice your signature the night before, but the end result looks reasonably dignified. You can see people through the windows, clapping and shaking hands as food and drink is being passed around. The scene gives you a heady feeling – nearly two hundred people who call this place home, in four years you've just about doubled in size. Savoring the moment, you slowly roll up the paper. You'll probably end up framing it in your office later, but for now it's time to have some fun.

(Constitution written, greatly increasing legitimacy in diplomatic relations.)

(Roll armor, required 30: 57)

"Alright Amanda, that's ten K," you speak into your radio, keeping an eye on the homebrew dyno gauge, "get back in here before you break my instruments. Again."

"Roger," she replies, followed by a groaning as the metal springs she was pressed against push out once more.

You're testing the newly arrived armors' motors and so far things are looking good. Without a gravity well, Amanda's armored footsteps sound as light as ever as she comes back into your workshop and starts pulling off the exoskeleton. "Eighty percent of the manufacturers limit and not a single sound out of place. On my own I struggle with one kilonewton, but now I haven't even broken a sweat. One could get used to this," she shimmies her way out of the contraption for you to examine the machinery, "I think that's a good enough threshold to set the limits to, sir."

You give a noncommittal grunt as you dive into the interior with a flashlight and a magnifying camera. All the gears look perfectly new, no hairline fractures or chipped teeth – check. The custom-made pressure release valves are all intact and clean – check. None of the motors are shorting out or bent off center – check. You go through another dozen potential errors while Amanda gets into the next armor before answering, "Looks like we're clear. Eleven suits of power armor inspected, one to go. I'll get you the updated service manuals next week."

"Understood."

The suits are sleek enough to wear under baggy clothing, if one was so inclined. Made of dark carbon fiber and carefully placed tungsten ribs, you could keep moving in one even if the power supply failed. Powered up, your troops could probably lift and throw a whole freighter into orbit, given enough time. Still, the engineer in you can already see things that could be better. The battery lasts for a laughable four hours, but there's extra room along the spine to install more. Whoever designed these was still worried about weight, but reading the training reports of the QRF, they've developed acrobatic maneuvers like rolls and various spins to dissipate their momentum and the extra kilos would be helpful in getting them onto the ground faster.

Such are the problems of probing new frontiers. Most armor manufacturers produce things either for Earth gravity which are not suitable in a vacuum or full space suits that are meant to be maneuvered by thrusters in zero-g. What you need is something in between. Thankfully you've acquired a production license to be able to complete repairs. In theory the specific alloys and ceramics are still unknown to you, but you'd want to replace the stuff with something more suited to your situation anyway. The flexibility and motor configuration were of much greater interest to you and those you needed to know to service the gear, thus it's included in the sale.

Stopping your musings short, you speak to Amanda and the recorder, "Test 12 is a go, serial number LK-LA-0012, begin when ready."

(Tactical light armor for one full squad obtained, QRF mobility increased.)

(Unlocked armor improvement, heavy armor)

(Roll mines – silver, required 35: 83)

This time you will get your silver flowing in. With the small but noticeable amounts of pure metal veins you can already cut the cost of your solar panels, any transistors you'll need to make are cheaper, ceramic capacitor production will be that much closer and plenty of sensitive communications equipment will benefit from silver components. Not to mention all the things Weissmeier promised to cook up. Thus you spend much of the year out on the surface once again, your normally pale face taking on a heavy tan as you build out the conveyor tube to the half-finished shaft cap. You personally carry the twenty kilo main bore out. Not that it's necessary, you could have loaded a rover, but hauling the 600 kilo by classic gravity machinery makes for a great bonding opportunity with the new workers that arrived alongside the merchandise. Mostly from Earth, they're unused to the microgravity and little parlor tricks like this are still impressive to them.

For that reason you make sure to both supervise the new crews as well as get them as much no-atmosphere work as you can find, getting them acclimatized now to avoid accidents down the line when you're not babysitting them. Thankfully they're quick on the uptake and instead of playing the harsh taskmaster you get to blend in as one of the guys and ease their incorporation.

Thus the mines are ready for extraction a bit ahead of schedule on the harvest festival, and you make sure to keep your promise, firing up your tiny furnace to render down one of the better chunks to chemical grade purity. When the meals are served, you replace Weissmeier's food with the ingot and from the shine in her eyes you're genuinely worried that she'll try to eat it anyway.

(Silver mines completed, new work crews morale high.)

(Unlocked mines expansion: silver)

(Roll farms expansion: fruit, required 40: 39)

Meanwhile, your fellow engineer is having a bit less luck.

"I'm sorry, Will. I can't figure out why the grafts didn't take," Ken is standing behind a microscope, samples from the tiny, ill-formed fruits beneath it. "The structures are all there, but the first batch didn't activate them."

"Don't worry about it, some setbacks are bound to happen."

"It's just that this is the one thing I should be good at. What good am I if I can't even figure out why this happened, let alone how to fix it."

"Just get new seeds and try again; problem fixed," you give a mock punch to his shoulder, causing him to flinch, then shake his head.

"It's not that, they'll grow normally next harvest, but they were supposed to be ready now. I promised them this year and I failed. Cutting down the usual growth time by half should be easy for me."

You give him an incredulous look, "Let me get this right. Pineapples normally grow within two years?"

"Yes."

"And grapes take how long traditionally," you continue.

"The vines yield fruit after three years on Earth," it doesn't look like he's getting your point yet.

"Lemons?"

"It's about four months."

"From a seed…" you clarify

"Ah, no, three years for a tree to grow," for how smart the man really is, he can be quite dense at times.

"And the watermelons?"

"About three months."

"And next year you're telling me we'll have a full harvest?" you finish your line of questioning.

"Barring some other failure of mine," Ken sighs.

"So you've cut the time to grow the stuff in half, at least, for three out of four cases. Where I come from, that's a success not a failure," you tell the man with a chuckle, "Only you could look at a glass filled to the brim and say it's half empty."

The farmer still looks unsure, finally mumbling, "I promise to do better next time."

(Thanks to your head engineer's specialty, fruit farms will finish next turn.)

(Roll audits, required 30: 50)

"Alright team," Erikson is solidly within his element, "this is why I've been telling you to stack the packaging properly. Now it's child's play to scan the codes."

The section of the base you use as a warehouse has been cordoned off while the auditors take stock of all the things you're supposed to have, some of them laying dormant since you arrived here.

"If it's not a perishable good and that's more than two years old, tag it for review. We'll send it to research or engineering for checks," the normally quiet man bellows.

After the physical goods are counted, repackaged and compared to the ledgers they move to more delicate systems. Oxygen supply tanks and valves are checked, water cisterns are cycled around to inspect the insides for corrosion or leaks, stock room furnishing is controlled and replaced where necessary, power lines are measured for faults and loads and so on.

After a hectic week of activity when you could swear that there's twice as many people in the colony, everything returns to normal while Erikson returns to his office to both write up future protocols and tally the final results. That last report is being delivered to you now.

"A few things here and there are missing, but it's easily covered by human error and natural loss. I'm happy to report that we've not had any systematic pilfering take place."

"Glad to hear it," you scroll through the numbers yourself, "Any other issues?"

"We've set up a more accurate system for power draw monitoring. When the farms' watering cycle kicks in during a mine drill work shift, we're getting pretty close to peak production," he advises you, "We've also developed an excess of oxygen in tanks ten and eleven, which is a good thing, but now we're wasting some of the gas. Meanwhile, our biggest material expense is water by about twice the next two articles combined."

Taking a moment to pull up a different file, Erikson continues, "I've spoken to Lena about those last two and she said there might be a solution to both at the same time."

The picture he projects out is more concept art than technical drawing, but you trust in your science officer that it might be possible while the man explains, "As expected, we've mostly a lack of lighter elements this close to the sun. We're quite good at recycling oxygen and there's plenty of it tied to minerals as well, but hydrogen is far more sparse."

The drawing depicts a massive mesh of thin wires floating in space far above an asteroid and Erikson points to it, "Her technical report… well, you know how she gets, but the gist of it as I understood it was that we're constantly bombarded by electrons, free protons and blown off hydrogen from the sun, we just don't capture any of it – so why not change that."

"Sounds straightforward enough, I assume there's technical hurdles to cross."

"Yeah, the tech doesn't exists on an industrial scale because Earth and Mars don't need to do this."

"A big undertaking then," you muse.

"Just a thought. Over-engineered solutions to simple storage concerns are a staple of humanity everywhere."

(Auditing system introduced, you'll now be better informed of potential shortages and excesses.)

(Unlocked new research project.)

(Roll trauma ward, required 20: 47)

"Dr. Strauss, a pleasure to meet you, welcome to Little Klondike. Miss Weissmeier has spoken quite highly of you," she really hasn't but a little flattery never hurts.

"Likewise, Mr. O'Rielly, likewise, and please, call me Sebastien" the man shakes your hand, along with your elbow, shoulder and torso, his massive palm dwarfing your own hands. You're above average height, often even the tallest man in the room, but Sebastien Strauss towers over you at well over two meters tall and his forearms are about as wide as your neck. Originally hailing from a small Martian nation, the man looks nothing like you'd expect: a bulky muscled frame, pitch black skin and a mohawk dyed blue certainly don't strike you as classic surgeon features, but such is life.

"William, then. Were the facilities to your liking?" you carry on with the small talk.

"Quite so. It's clear whoever designed the ward knew what they were doing. The manufacturers are well chosen, the layout makes sense. I'll be doing a few readjustments, but that's merely my own personal preference," the only thing that meshes with your mental image of a dr. Sebastien Strauss is the man's voice, which only makes the physical qualities weirder. It's thin and reedy, high pitched and with a barely noticeable Russian accent. No matter, you're sure the man is a skilled surgeon all the same.

"Excellent. Now I believe your luggage has been delivered to your quarters. Personally I recommend taking a few days to get used to the layout of the complex and the gravity. Shall we go see the accommodations?"

"Yes. To be honest, space flight always tires me out. Quite cramped for me, you see," he gestures to himself with a grin, "However, I'll be ready for work by tomorrow. I've spoken with Lena and she told me you've not actually had a need for surgery so far."

"That's right, but I refuse to let my people die when the threat is so obvious."

"A good mentality, but not my point. It's that statistically I won't have anything to do for far too much of the time, so I'll be taking over the blood bank management from her starting as soon as she's briefed me on the operations. Free up some of her time."

"An excellent initiative. This way, please."

(Trauma ward operational, surgeon on staff.)

You wake up groggy on the morning after the festivities celebrating your signing of the constitution, your watch beeping and scrolling through your itinerary. The party started out innocently enough, but it seemed like everybody wanted to let out some steam and soon the ties were discarded and soothing elevator music switched for a dozen different styles playing in each opened up room while the hallways had extra drink served. You remember flitting about different little gatherings, laughing and chatting with people for most of the night before things get hazy. You're sure you ended up with your whole council together in the brewery, but the rest is questionable. A memory of Hailey and Ragnar dancing together seems plausible enough, but the images of Amanda and Lena of all people doing a waltz are probably just your fantasy playing tricks.

Alas, you'd stupidly planned your big important annual meeting for the day after the signing, so you drag yourself to the shower and get presentable once more.

On the way to your office, Amanda pings you to let you know that she'll be late from a patrol, but to start without her and that she won't be long. Were it an emergency you could do something about, she'd have let you know, so you call the meeting to order, the other four already present.

"Well boss, I hope you didn't lose the important paper last night, but other than that, I've got nothing for you," Hailey chirps. You check – the paper is still in the case, the case in your desk drawer.

"Filling in for Miss Carpenter, the armor acquisition is a success. Some of the relevant documents have been forwarded to R&D, but for basic needs, the suits will do just fine. Ken?" you prompt after Lena nods.

"Our food situation is nearing self-sufficiency. With the influx of new people we've less of a surplus, but there's still some. We're still buying up some fertilizers as well, but that's to be expected and we can make due without in a pinch. The mining operations are both functioning at capacity for the moment, but I believe Mr. Erikson has some more info on that."

"Indeed, my main concern is our power situation at the moment. The issue is two-fold. Firstly we're just about capped on generation. It's not at blackout levels yet, but the batteries are rarely if ever full these days. Secondly our means of production are quite vulnerable. Without a magnetosphere even a comparatively weak solar flare could fry much of the sun farm. We can't exactly shield the solar panels from solar radiation after all. I recommend at least an expansion or better yet, a diversification of assets. As I recall, we're close to a nuclear research lab, perhaps they could sell us a reactor patent. Alternatively we could improve our storage alongside production or set up a series of backup fuel based generators."

You nod along, "Our finances are looking quite strong, however a noticeable issue is our lack of access to appropriate markets. There's things we could be selling to the right buyer. This may be something for you, Hailey. Further, there's also a developing bottleneck regarding the logistics infrastructure. A single freighter simply won't cut it for much longer. Miss Weissmeier, how about you?"

"The base's medical facilities are remarkably advanced for such a young colony. As far as healthcare is concerned, my next objective in that field would be an oncology department, but I think our time is currently better spent elsewhere. Many of the projects that land on my desk are simply beyond my means to complete, not due to skill or funding, but due to lack of appropriate tools. I also still maintain that the silver nanite project could be an excellent source of high tech based revenue and a lifesaving feature in one, but proper labs would make my life that much easier, sir."

Just as you're about to get into the details, Amanda Carpenter marches in, still in her combat armor and a helmet held under one arm.

"Sir, we've found a complication."

You're halfway out of your chair already before she continues, "An ESA asteroid probe has landed on the opposite side of Little Klondike."

-.-

Hailey Maria Perez, or just Hailey, as she insists, is an energetic and empathic woman. Prone to some daydreaming and perhaps not with the most intense attention span, she nonetheless has an uncanny insight into what people are feeling around her. A masterful poker player and a great shoulder to cry on, the latter by her own words at least, she's probably best suited to face-to-face meetings and positive contacts. Also proficient in astrology. Choose 1 task to send her on.

[ ] Diplomacy

-[ ] Advertise your colony​

You'll pretty much always have room and jobs for people willing to put in the effort, but you won't get all that many colonists if no one knows of you. Place ads, make unreasonable and vague promises and put up flyers, whatever works. You'll probably get people to come, but they won't be… overqualified, to put it optimistically. On the other hand, maybe a bit of grunt work is exactly what you need right now, and occasionally you might – might – find rough diamonds with the slop. DC 25​

​

-[ ] Establish relations with…​

Subtly put out feelers for a patron, someone to legitimize your claim. Nothing overt, just find out who might be interested in your little rock and see what they might offer you in return. Nothing permanent or committal of course, your first partner will always be special and just the act of choosing will make you enemies as well as allies, even if they won't show it. Geez, this is like high school all over again, except now you need to worry about nuclear warheads instead of hurt feelings. DC 25​

​

-[ ] Seek corporate deals​

You can sell your output on the open market as it gets launched out, but the prices will fluctuate and rarely in your favor. Likewise for supplies of food, air and water, all of which can be scarce this close to the sun. After all, you can't very well not buy the food if deliveries come by once a year. Instead, you could find one of the many middle-man businesses that exist just to prevent that from happening. See what they'll offer you and make sure you can fulfill your part of the deal. DC 25​

​

-[ ] Send a probe to New Ireland​

New Ireland is mainly a refueling station, located on a chunk of ice from the rogue planet Lucifer. They process the ice into hydrogen and oxygen, selling the products as fuel for haulers on a round trip. A simple self-destructing probe can get in radio range of them and exchange your tightbeam comms protocols. DC 15​

​

-[ ] Send a probe to Deckard Station​

Maybe you should just go through New Ireland, but you can't well be faulted for trying if no one technically told you their political situation. And who knows, maybe you can get a better deal by talking with them directly. DC 25​

​

-[ ] Send a probe to the Children of Dreamers​

People with strange beliefs are nothing new and these ones are your closest neighbors. Surely they have some needs that you could fulfill or vice versa. DC 25​

​

-[ ] Send a probe to the Prismdust research base​

A research colony is usually well supplied by their patron, but they might have interesting patents to sell you and collaborative research, while a logistical nightmare, might produce some revolutionary results. DC 20​

​

-[ ] Send a probe to the private resort​

If it's some trillionaires party house, then something as exotic as locally sourced fruits and vegetables might very well fetch a price that would be ridiculous elsewhere. And the security staff have needs too, maybe you can undercut their current supplier. DC 25​

​

-[ ] Probe: diplomatic​

The whole 'set up a colony on a random rock' thing was always something you knew would come knocking at some point. Now that you've proven your viability beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's time to properly stake your claim and see who starts to protest. DC 45​

Miss Carpenter projects an air of confidence and her no nonsense attitude backs up her demeanor. Perhaps a bit headstrong and stubborn, but as long as you don't act against her she'll likely be quite competent. The slightly more militarized situation you currently face might technically be outside her expertise, but watching her conducting training exercises out on the rocks certainly assuages such doubts. Choose 1 security action to focus her on.

[ ] Security

-[ ] Armor improvement​

Your troops (a single squad) are kitted out with light power armor, but there's plenty of things to improve. A better compound material for shielding, an improved power profile for increased recon range, maybe even include a full jetpack. In addition to general enhancements, you might want to start work on specializing the light armor for different purposes. DC 60​

​

-[ ] Squads​

Your colony has a surprisingly professional and well liked police force, but that might be due to the fact that every officer is on first name basis with most residents. While you probably don't need more right this instant, looking ahead can't hurt. See if more people might be interested in joining the forces. DC 35​

​

-[ ] Vehicles​

You have in your possession a single heavy hauler and two electric buggies. None of them are fast enough to qualify as a response vehicle yet your rock is big enough that various mines should be spaced out across the surface, solar farms can be built out wide enough and enemies might land on your proverbial backside. Order two single-track astrobikes to deliver your emergency responders to the scene in a reasonable amount of time. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Ships​

Buying anything better than a tugboat attached to a fuel tanker is expensive. Really, really expensive. But you need to be able to project your power beyond your immediate colony. Whether as a statement to accompany your diplomats or as strike craft against asteroids or pirates, you'll be on the market for a proper spacecraft. DC 70​

​

-[ ] Professional army​

So it might be a bit presumptuous to call half a squad of enthusiasts an army, but it's a start. Fitness, team tactics, leadership exercises, rules of engagement and the like, alongside some live fire exercises to develop team cohesion is a good early basis for an officer corps. Ultimately you have dreams both of statehood and of mercenary groups you can rent out for sweet, sweet profit. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Weapon patents​

The guns you have are still in limited supply, no one wants to arm every random space rock after all. Do some shopping and convince a manufacturer to grant you access to their design specs so that you could start producing your own ammo and weapons. DC 55​

​

-[ ] Better armaments​

Turns out you nor anyone on your immediate staff is a trained soldier, so the weapons you got were probably more flash than bang. Not that they are completely useless, just that they could be so much better. Hunker down with your sheriff and find a better set of offensive equipment for your troops. DC 40​

​

-[ ] Heavy armor​

Instead of the mobile suits you have for everyday work, you want Power armor with a capital letter, the real space marine stuff. You'll try to buy it, but most governments are unlikely to sell what basically amounts to a personal tank to people, so be prepared to start your own designs. DC 60​

​

-[ ] The probe: assertive​

The simplest approach can be the best one at times. You don't want the probe here and there's nothing to gain by keeping it intact. Send a strong message to the owners that this rock is occupied already. Blow the thing up. DC 10​

You and Ken often find yourselves working together; engineering as an honest means of work is something you're both intimately familiar with. Likewise you both know that a space station's engineers are her lifeblood, so you've hit it off quite well with the man. Far from being a simple farmer, he does have a solid base in nearly all things mechanical and you shore up the electric side of things. While he's still shy, his beer is to die for. Choose 2 projects to start building.

[ ] Engineering

-[ ] Mines: copper​

Your first copper mines are up and running, providing you with a steady trickle of sellable ore. Expand that operation: widen shafts, open new ones, speed up transport, and order new equipment. DC 35, can be taken with Mines: silver for DC 50, counts as 1 action​

​

-[ ] Mines: silver​

Your first silver mines are up and running, providing you with a steady trickle of sellable ore and some pure silver for local production. Expand that operation: widen shafts, open new ones, speed up transport, and order new equipment. DC 35, can be taken with Mines: copper for DC 50, counts as 1 action​

​

-[ ] Refineries​

No matter how much rock you sell off, eventually you'd have to be a fool to give up your mass when you can turn it into more valuable mass first. A proper oxygen extraction centrifuge is costly, but will serve double duty as safeguarding your own vital supply and providing fuel to arriving tankers. If they can refuel here, they can make the trip for less cost and so more of them will look your way. DC 35​

​

-[ ] Luxury living space​

The current apartments are adequate, but not luxurious. Expand the existing ones by including more floors and extra amenities. DC 40, can be taken with More living space for DC 60, counts as 1 action​

​

-[ ] More living space​

Now that actual money is rolling in and you're firmly established, more and more people will be coming. It's a good idea to stay ahead of the curve and start up a second complex of living space. DC 30, can be taken with Luxury living space for DC 60, counts as 1 action​

​

-[ ] Docks​

Your launch facilities are in a word pathetic. Refueling takes ages and is wasteful, you need to cart the supplies way too far and there's still a very real risk of something crashing directly into your domes. Set up something resembling a dock, instead of having a nice flat patch of rock some half a kilometer away serving as a launch site. DC 60​

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-[ ] Transportation​

Moving to and from any installation on the surface is perilous. Low G walks under the blackness are scary and slow and you have almost no redundant cars. Ken pointed out that while you're small now, a robust metro network is never set up soon enough. The lack of unoccupied mining equipment is but a minor concern they assure you. DC 55​

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-[ ] Solar field expansion​

You are producing enough for your present needs, but what about the you of tomorrow? Another expansion of the solar fields is in order. Your current network is often working at capacity without issues, duplicating the setup should be relatively easy. DC 35​

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-[ ] Industrial capacitor bank​

A massive array of capacitors that can be used to fully charge a spaceship's batteries in a few hours. While bigger vessels have means of generating their own power, they can occasionally carry empty cells to reload and sell. Smaller ships meanwhile need a recharge almost as often as a refueling. Also, there are other possible uses for massive and sudden energy releasing, namely railguns and mass drivers. Alas, this stuff is really, really, expensive. DC 65​

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-[ ] Industrial battery bank​

A marginally cheaper alternative to capacitors, an oversized battery bank means that even if some disaster wipes out your energy farms, you'll have a month or so to do repairs before the air cyclers stop running. And you won't be wasting energy most of the time if you have a good reservoir to pump it into. DC 60​

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-[ ] Communal space​

How's a dictator supposed to give rousing speeches to their people without a wide plaza and a balcony. Jokes aside, the harvest festival brought to your attention the fact that people don't have a sufficiently large area for gathering. Fostering a strong sense of community is something Hailey is constantly on your case about, and a space should be set aside for it. DC 40​

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-[ ] Aquaculture​

Ken has come to you with a rather strange idea. The water cisterns you currently have are filled with distilled, pure H2O and you regularly add mineral content to it between the tank and a tap. What if you instead switched the injectors for filters and opened up the tanks. And then, he tells you, put fish in them. Most mammals and birds fare poorly in the super-low gravity, but supposedly fish mostly do fine and the stuff humans like to drink is an ideal environment to grow them. DC 60​

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-[ ] Bakery​

The closest thing to fresh bread you've had in years are the dry crackers from the ration packs that, rumors say, expand when you apply moisture. You now have a variety of grains, things like rye bread and rice cookies would definitely sell like hot cakes. Also, muffins, 'nuff said. DC 30​

A quiet individual, it took you months to find out that one of the children in your colony was the daughter of your personnel manager. When Ragnar Erikson does contribute to the conversation, it's usually a well thought out response or an insightful comment and his action plans are clear and concise. Perhaps this is just his way of separating his occasionally thankless job and his private life, as he seems to get along with Hailey at least. Choose 1 action.

[ ] Internal Affairs

-[ ] Background checks​

Sure, you've vetted everybody important on board, but can they spot the lies on their underlings' resumes? Didn't think they had any? Maybe, but now you're thinking about it. Look into the staff of your staff, maybe they let someone accidentally slip through. If you intend to maintain control of your colony you'll need all the info you can get. Sic your spymas- set human resources to finding out about the people here, see what they'll dig up. DC 25​

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-[ ] Port info gathering​

When various ships stop by your colony, they bring more than just material goods. They also bring a wealth of info, either from back home or locally. Also they have money they might spend elsewhere if you don't give them any reason to come out of their ships. A bar or two is bound to pop up sooner or later, but if you had a hand in the game from the start, you'll have a good source of rumors under your control. DC 20​

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-[ ] Surveillance​

As of three hours ago, nobody had left any airlocks open or stolen extra rations, but you can't be sure that's still the case. To start with, a comprehensive set of motion sensors and fire alarms, pressure indicators and air purity measurers should be installed. It'll make the job of any future police that much easier and the first steps are just common sense on a rock without atmosphere. DC 30​

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-[ ] Thorough check - Ken Hiragi​

There's something about the nice, quiet ones. Erikson brought to your attention the barest of possibilites, but you should still follow up and reassure yourself. DC 50​

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-[ ] Thorough check - Lena Weissmeier​

Why is she so secretive, what sinister motives could she have? Remember, it's only rude to pry if you get caught doing it. And no, this does not count as stalking or harassment, you're doing this for security reasons. DC 60​

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-[ ] Emergency generators​

Your current power supply is awfully vulnerable to forces of nature and targeted attacks alike. Set up well hidden, well shielded and separately supplied backup generators that would at least sustain basic life support around your compound should something happen to the solar fields. DC 30​

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-[ ] The probe: covert​

So someone wants to map out your asteroid. The thing about these finicky little drones barely the size of a small car is that they get lost or destroyed all the time. If something were to happen to this one, before it's sent back any results, or maybe if it sent back clearly nonsensical data, it'll be of no consequence to the owners and you'd get some extra time to yourself. DC 60​

Miss Weissmeier is a younger, more conventionally beautiful and feminine version of Miss Carpenter. Even in zero G she wears a dark business skirt and heels, her reports are thorough and drier than a vacuum, but you can't fault her data or methods. She might be the youngest on your council, and in rare moments her lack of life experience shows, but you're quite glad to have someone with medical expertise on standby at all times. Choose 1 subject.

[ ] Research

-[ ] Mineral surveys​

The general readings claim that your rock should have a good balance of light and heavy metals, silicates and oxygen rich rock, and who knows what else. You've gone over the surrounding top soil, for lack of a better term, but there's more to the asteroid both in depth as well as further out, keep looking for more minerals. DC 40​

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-[ ] R&D labs​

As it stands, your science corps is working out of two offices and a single room with tables, chairs, a whiteboard and a projector which they'll eventually move out of when there's more kids to school. Set up a room that has proper computers, a holodeck, some centrifuges and spectrometers at least. You'll leave the specifics to Miss Weissmeier. Got to start somewhere after all. DC 35​

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-[ ] Communications​

Right now your best bet at transmitting data is to pack some drives on a resupply shuttle and send them off. Expand your reception arrays by building more and shielding them better to reduce loss. You'll still have periods of blackout when the Sun is in the way, but bouncing your signal around just has to wait for the moment, none of the existing deep space arrays are interested in your traffic and to change that is either the work of a diplomat or you'll need to design, manufacture and launch your own mirrors. DC 35​

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-[ ] Medic Training​

The people in your colony come from various backgrounds and educations, but lifesaving knowledge is something everyone should have. Expand the rudimentary programs currently set up and make it a mandatory part of life on this rock. It will cut into productivity a bit but it'll be worth it to literally save lives. DC 20​

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-[ ] Oncology ward​

The next step towards a fully-fledged space hospital is a cancer ward. Cosmic radiation can be mitigated quite well these days, but ultimately the human cell is still the same as it was thousands of years ago. For most colonists, there's the option of flying back to Earth for treatment if the tumor is detected on time, but you'd like to be better than that. DC 60​

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-[ ] Silver nanites​

Miss Weissmeier has charmed you into supporting her research on silver nanomachines for medical purposes. It'd be easier if you had proper mining set up for the silver, if your refining options were of better quality and quantity, if you actually had a lab, but she assures you that she can still start her work now, if you give her the green light. DC 70​

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-[ ] Solar wind capture​

The lighter the element, the less likely you are to find a good supply of it around here. Unfortunately hydrogen is one of those, yet you need a constant supply of it. It's used in many, many chemical reactions and synthesizing processes, it's a prime component of rocket fuel and the only component of fusion fuel. It's also hard to keep recycling it, as the tiny gas can leak through most seals in time. Thus, try to catch some of the material that the Sun constantly bombards you with. DC 90​

Colony name vote is closed, Little Klondike has crossed the finish line.

Human Resources has been renamed to Internal Affairs, because it makes more sense to me and feels like it has a wider variety of tasks to pull from.

Speaking of tasks, while I spend probably far too much time thinking about this quest, I'm hardly omniscent. If something you want to accomplish is missing from the options, speak up and I'll either gladly include it or try to drop some hints as to what prequisites you might need for it.

In other news, I've updated the people ledger on the first page yesterday. The text has mostly been featured in-story, but each character also has a picture attached now, so feel free to check it out if you haven't already.

Well, I say each character, but your own image is still missing. Hence, the next fluff vote: choosing your own image. There's four options that I like, but you can offer a write-in as well. As far as I'm concerned, they're all images of William with different art styles and different ages for your character, but only one will make it to the official bio. I'm feeling ambitious, so let's say it's first to 5 votes this time around, but also feel free to vote for however many you like. Same deal as last time, keep a plan and the image vote separate.

[ ] Image 1

Spoiler

[ ] Image 2

Spoiler

[ ] Image 3

Spoiler

[ ] Image 4

Spoiler

[] Image 5

@Karf how's this? it has an a moon background and everything... though Colbert's portraits are awesome as well.

Spoiler: Conan O'Brien Space Mayor Large Image

Click to shrink...

 

[Karf]

[X] Diplomacy
-[X] Probe: diplomatic
The whole 'set up a colony on a random rock' thing was always something you knew would come knocking at some point. Now that you've proven your viability beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's time to properly stake your claim and see who starts to protest. DC 45

[X] Security
-[X] Vehicles
You have in your possession a single heavy hauler and two electric buggies. None of them are fast enough to qualify as a response vehicle yet your rock is big enough that various mines should be spaced out across the surface, solar farms can be built out wide enough and enemies might land on your proverbial backside. Order two single-track astrobikes to deliver your emergency responders to the scene in a reasonable amount of time. DC 40

[X] Engineering
-[X] Solar field expansion
You are producing enough for your present needs, but what about the you of tomorrow? Another expansion of the solar fields is in order. Your current network is often working at capacity without issues, duplicating the setup should be relatively easy. DC 35
-[X] Refineries
No matter how much rock you sell off, eventually you'd have to be a fool to give up your mass when you can turn it into more valuable mass first. A proper oxygen extraction centrifuge is costly, but will serve double duty as safeguarding your own vital supply and providing fuel to arriving tankers. If they can refuel here, they can make the trip for less cost and so more of them will look your way. DC 35

[X] Internal Affairs
-[X] Port info gathering
When various ships stop by your colony, they bring more than just material goods. They also bring a wealth of info, either from back home or locally. Also they have money they might spend elsewhere if you don't give them any reason to come out of their ships. A bar or two is bound to pop up sooner or later, but if you had a hand in the game from the start, you'll have a good source of rumors under your control. DC 20

[X] Research
-[X] R&D labs
As it stands, your science corps is working out of two offices and a single room with tables, chairs, a whiteboard and a projector which they'll eventually move out of when there's more kids to school. Set up a room that has proper computers, a holodeck, some centrifuges and spectrometers at least. You'll leave the specifics to Miss Weissmeier. Got to start somewhere after all. DC 35

Click to shrink...

(Roll vehicles, required 40: 76)

The bikes you're after are produced in a solar orbiting space station, specifically made for traversing rocky terrain in near zero gravity – precisely the thing you need. What you thought at first to be a sales gimmick of them delivering you the goods in 'original packaging, no shipping fees' proves to be anything but, when you're informed that your purchase has been finalized and two units have been launched to your coordinates. Instead of having to wait for the single freighter to drop off your goods, in a month you have two tiny rockets burning to slow down a bit before slamming into an empty patch of land near the complex.

The vehicles' front wheel looks more like a spiked ball held to the frame and controlled by electromagnets. The rest of the machine rests upon a shoulder width track with plenty of grooves and tiny wicked hooks for traction. Most of the engine and batteries are stowed between the suspensions of the tread. On top of that, there's space for a driver and two passengers alongside compartments for their gear in the seats. All told, an intimidating machine that's soon proven to be as functional as it is sleek.

Theoretically the bikes should be kept in the garage whenever they're not deployed on a specific task, but for the first few weeks Amanda tactfully assigns an escort to the training exercises under the guise of 'breaking in the goods'. The actual reason is that the bikes are quite fun to ride and if they were kept under lock and key you might have to bring disciplinary measures against joyriders. You yourself hitch a ride to the solar fields you're setting up several times.

Still, eventually the novelty wears off and the vehicles are now held in reserve for when you actually need rapid deployment. You make sure one of the bikes is designated for a medical loadout: a fresh blood pack, several air tanks and an inflatable rubber bubble capable of holding an atmosphere fill the storage compartments alongside some basic drugs and tools. The other remains empty for situational adaptability.

"So, sheriff, what are your thoughts on the equipment?" you're doing some AAR with your chief of security once the dust has settled.

"The astrobikes are an excellent addition to any ground based operations, sir. When we develop additional squads I recommend assigning at least one bike to each unit," as usual, she's standing rather than take a seat. "They're also compact and light enough to be worth taking on a transport shuttle if we ever need to work away from home."

A glowing review if you've ever heard one, "How about further options for mechanization?"

"Largely dependent on what you expect of us, sir. A proper troop transport would be the next ground based vehicle I might recommend. Alternatively, there's been some talk of jetpacks amongst the troops, however I believe we'd need more long range weapons or better armor to compensate for the loss of cover."

"Understood, meeting adjourned unless there was something else?" you usually end up falling into military talk when she's delivering her reports.

"No, sir."

(Acquired two motorcycle/snowmobile equivalents that are excellent for moving around on asteroids.)

(Unlocked new vehicle acquisition options.)

(Roll solar fields expansion, required 35: 35)

The same rhythm you adopted on the first year here works just as well now. Print out the necessary components overnight, assemble them in the morning and install them in the afternoon. This time instead of wasting wiring to place the field away from your main complex, you build them around the refinery structure going up near the landing site. All the protocols and workflow is already in place, so progress is fast and you find yourself leaving the work in the hands of your engineer team to tend to other issues in the colony. By the fourth month of perfectly smooth operation, your presence on the project is practically unnecessary and you officially give over the reins to Wei Minsu, your unofficial second in command for the construction effort.

A few test runs of the industrial centrifuge show that the array you've planned is indeed plenty to feed the refinery and have a comfortable buffer, once more putting your power balance well into the green. As such, the bare minimum has been established and you feel confident enough in your underlings to take the bulk of the work from here and turn your focus to more pressing matters.

(Power budget expanded, most of the energy goes directly to the refineries. Solar panels are automatically built by your team at a much slower pace.)

(Roll refineries, required 35: 48)

Most of the tech that goes into the metal refinery you and Ken plan out is quite straightforward and already present in your colony, now you just want to make it bigger. A lot bigger. The biggest arc furnace you currently have access to has a capacity of just over two tons. This facility will have four furnaces with half a kiloton capacity each, jumping three orders of magnitude just for sheer volume alone.

Of course there's also the robotic feeders to set up, the casting basins to manufacture, supply conveyors to lay and so on. A lot of the work is purely constructing the building itself, then deciding how much of it is pressurized and where you can get away with leaving it as a vacuum. In the end you decide that rather than cycle the incoming raw material through an airlock, the main furnace room shall be left with no atmosphere while the molten metal jets would pump to another room down below, where the molds are. That room at least will be built airtight, so you could pump gas in if you needed to change the casts.

The gaseous byproducts of the smelting process are not wasted either, but drawn into kilometers on kilometers of tubing to cut the temperature by decreasing gas pressure, then pumped into tanks and silos that are just on the edge of dangerously close to the landing site where the oxygen can be used as propellant for ships.

The biggest obstacle you actually face is heat dissipation. There's massive metal spikes covering the roof of the building and running all throughout the facility to radiate away some of the energy from cooling ingots and you drill the deepest holes you've made so far to lay pipes of water to dump even more heat into the asteroid itself.

Work is progressing on schedule when the freighter arrives with the huge kilns, furnaces and the centrifugal separators and before your attention is pulled elsewhere, the first test run of a single furnace is successfully completed.

(You now produce much purer metals, which are worth more per weight unit in most ports. Refinery products can be used in manufacturing various end goods and components. Oxygen as a common byproduct is an integral part of rocket fuel, enticing ships to come to your ports.)

(Unlocked options for more specialized production of goods.)

(Roll port info gathering, required 20: 65)

It's a surprise it hasn't happened already. Splitting up the canteen and the bar is a simple matter of expanding another room near your airlock, setting up the tables and chairs and designating the brewery's stockpile to be taken to the new storeroom. A few speakers and colored lights on the floor below the main entrance and there's a proper club. A few closets up top on the second floor with beds and you can even try to convince some captains to stay for a night.

Thus when the freighter lands to drop off a few incoming colonists you also manage the captain and crew to get a free medical screening and a short brake while the cargo is swapped around. This leads to the loaders also demanding some time off after their shift completes and eventually the captain caves and declares that liftoff will be at 8 AM instead of PM. Sure enough, suddenly the bar is packed and among the regular patrons and newcomers, Erikson is sipping on something clear, you suspect water, and letting shiphands regale him with tales from Earth.

"Yeah, I took the shuttle from French Guiana, didn't have much of a wait time there, but it was some years ago now," your spymaster says.

"Lucky you, the port there is currently under blockade. The US is demanding Europe hold up its end of the LEO cleanup treaty and parked one of their cruisers above the place."

"That bad, huh?"

"Worse, the Black Sea site remodeling is delayed again."

Erikson lets out a high whistle, "I think we felt that here even, had some shipping delays a year and a half ago."

"Could be. Titanium is still priced above nickel when we left, if you can believe that," his drinking partner takes another sip.

"Didn't they open a good deposit of TiO on the Moon just recently?"

"That's the Chinese, and they're not selling to anyone to stay neutral," even though the last bit is said at a lower volume, another spacer leans over from a nearby table.

"Bullshit, Tommy. They're not selling to stoke the tensions," the other man is doing the exact opposite, raising his voice.

The first just rolls his eyes and sighs, "I put up with the conspiracy nut there for month. Just for one day, I'd like to have some peace. I'm going downstairs. It's been a pleasure, Ragnar, I'll make sure to remember this place if I ever come around here again. Real good beer, I should buy a case or two to sell back home."

Erikson tips his drink and once the man has left turns to the guy who interrupted them, "So, why do you think the Chinese are stoking tensions? Wouldn't that just mean that no one is buying their goods?"

(Ships more willing to make you a destination on their trip, basic rumors available next turn.)

(Roll R&D labs, required 35: 84)

"As specified, sir, the labs are designed with flexibility in mind. Most of the budget went towards computing power and increased sim speed," Weissmeier is giving you a tour of her new workspace.

"We've installed new printers for rapid prototyping, chemical diffusion baths, vats and ultra-speed centrifuges for compound synthetization and better spectrometers for sample analysis. We should be equipped for most practical applications on a small scale going forward," she explains, "An often overlooked and cheap optimization is the ability to visualize and share the work with colleagues, so all rooms come with a built in holo-display capabilities."

"Good choice, I too prefer a more visual medium," you tap your watch to hook into the system and are pleased to see the clock display materialize in front of you as you walk.

"You might want to ask Hailey about her glasses, sir. I assure you we'd have given her twenty-twenty vision if she didn't have it already."

"Noted. Tell me more about the computing ability."

She leads you to a hatch in one of the storage closets, "The server racks are in the basement for temperature control. While I'd still recommend setting up specialty labs for anything truly groundbreaking, there's quite a bit we can just simulate on a computer, with quite marginal degrees of error."

"So anything boring we can do, anything interesting requires more effort?"

"Such is the nature of the beast, sir."

(You have access to much better scientific facilities, success chance for research increased.)

(Unlocked laboratory specializations.)

(Roll probe: diplomatic, required 45: 1)

Captain Lisette Rousseau was not having a good day.

Indeed, she found herself lacking words for just how terrible, horrible, awful, miserable, abysmal, appalling, dreadful, atrocious her day had just become, and she was quite articulate, thank you. She played back the latest missive from mission headquarters.

"Captain Rousseau, we've received a transmission regarding your targeted landing site. Not sure how to put it, so I'll just say it. A William O'Rielly has contacted us through the mapping probe's tight-beam, claiming the asteroid in the name of 'Little Klondike', a colony of some two hundred people."

The speaker left a pause to let you digest that nugget for a moment before continuing, "We've checked all the records on Earth, Mars and Luna – there's no trace of such a colony registered anywhere."

She paused the message, taking a deep breath and rubbing her temples, 'Who in their right mind would just decide to take a prime asteroid for themselves? There are proper channels for this type of thing!' Pressing play again, she let the rest of the message play out.

"The EU mission remains active. The asteroid is now considered our land and as such, your orders to establish a colony haven't changed. While the EC doesn't condone violence against natives, it's still subject to our laws now. It'll be your job to enforce those laws, including but not limited to using force against anyone resisting lawful authority. We trust that you'll successfully solve the situation in the best manner possible. Gibraltar out."

'Natives,' she let out a snort, 'how are there natives in space?'

"Captain, we're set to begin breaking maneuvers in ten minutes, any orders?" her pilot's voice came through the open intercom.

"Negative, we're proceeding as planned, landing just after it exits the earth-sun shadow" she started strapping herself into the seat.

The fact that command hadn't designated the squatters as pirates outright was annoying, but she'd have a few hours to think things over still. Maybe they'd just agree to her terms and assimilate or leave. 'And maybe I'll just turn this ship into the sun. Feels about as likely.'

-.-

The crisis meeting takes place a few days after the regular freighter has left.

"So let me get this straight," you lean back in your chair, "We're now residents of the EU, there's a governor on the way to 'inspect the asteroid' and we owe back-taxes?"

"For what it's worth, boss, I prefer your wording to theirs," Hailey tries to make a joke, but even she's not smiling right now. "The Union colony ship is set to arrive right after the quiet season."

All of you descend into a tense silence and to your surprise it's Weissmeier that breaks it first.

"I recommend a preemptive strike on the approaching vessel," her shoulders are tense and her face might as well be made of stone.

Ken looks similarly terse, but gives a curt nod. Amanda doesn't look supportive, but she's not as appalled by it as you expected. Instead it's Hailey that rounds on the younger woman, "What?! There's innocent people on board. We can't just slaughter them like that. Amanda, back me up here, we don't kill people just like that. There's diplomatic channels we can go through, get other backers to boost our legitimacy, anything else."

"I think we can at least let them land," Amanda begins, "Once they do, they're effectively illegal immigrants. Take them into custody and send them off on an independent shuttle, probably to New Ireland. The colony ship must've launched before we contacted them, it's unlikely they're well-armed. Once they land they lose any advantage they might have over us."

It's Ken's turn to speak his mind, "We could also try to sabotage their operation after landing, force them to negotiate on our terms. It might not even come back to us if it's done carefully enough."

"Or we can just ignore them," Ragnar shrugs at the five stares directed his way, "What are they gonna do about it, they can't storm in here. It'll buy us time and force them to make the first move."

[ ] Find a backer post haste to get the colony ship called off by its superiors. Of course you'll be granting them significant leverage over you, but needs must.

[ ] The incoming ship is an act of war on a sovereign nation and you're well within your rights to defend yourself with prejudice. Shoot the ship down.

[ ] Arrest the colonists for illegally entering your borders, call in an emergency express shuttle from another colony and send them off.

[ ] Make it look like an accident, cut some wires and make it look like wear and tear, puncture the oxygen tanks and blame micrometeors or deliver a lab-grown disease into the water supply.

[ ] Wait and see. Maybe the rock is big enough for both of you, there's certainly enough surface area for two towns.

[ ] Write-in



So, uh… this didn't go according to any plans. I had somewhere between three to six threads baking in the background and this wasn't one of them. I should switch from random.org to someplace that has a roll history just to take screenshots of this stuff for posterity.

In-universe it's about two months between the last scene and the ship actually arriving. There will be dice rolls involved with the options, but the difficulty will be determined by your arguments for any particular position – who should you contact as a backer and what can you promise them, what message if any will you put out after taking the shot, how do you plan to capture and hold about a hundred people, which sabotage options (not limited to the ones in the flavor text) are you willing to go for, are you opening any contact while waiting and about what, etc. Note that you don't need to provide arguments for just the option you want to win. I'll do my best to consider your reasoning for any option.

The wait and see thing means that the next turn will proceed as normal, but you don't know if that means they'll respond in kind (sabotage, combat actions of their own, cut off your supply and so on). I'll also try to answer any questions you might have that William would know or be able to estimate.

In lighter news, the image vote is still open, refer to turn 5 for options. So far images 1 and 5 have 2 votes each while 2 and 4 have 1, 3 is on 0.

 

[Karf]

[X] Arrest the colonists for illegally entering your borders, call in an emergency express shuttle from another colony and send them off.

Click to shrink...

The first step of your plan is to immediately send for an empty transport ship from one of many hauling companies that offer such services. It's expensive to buy an empty shuttle and doubly so when there's no profit in a return trip either, but it's still cheaper than having your whole operation grind to a halt for basically a whole year as you try to securely hold a hundred people, likely against their will. In fact, you get two ships to leapfrog the colonists, once from Little Klondike to Venus, the biggest colony of the new belt home to some fifty thousand people, that's about three months ahead of you in orbit and another to get them to Earth from there. This means you'll only have about a week to detain the colonists before you can get rid of them.

The second step is to build a giant wheelbarrow.

Alright, it's a bit more sophisticated than that. The ship is likely set to land near the probe almost cardinally on the other side of the asteroid from your complex and facilities. In order to stop them from just lifting back up into orbit and waiting for reinforcements or worse yet: attack you from space, you'll be disabling their engines as fast as possible. Assuming you succeed in that and manage to keep the crew on board, you'll want the craft in a better location, both to facilitate an easier transfer and to maintain control. Thus, a harness to pull the massive ship over rough terrain. The offhand remark about your power-armored troops lifting a freighter might just be put to the test. And since you have little else to do while you wait out the silent season, that's what the first forges make.

You and Amanda both wish you could set up tactical fortifications around the landing site, but much of your plan to avoid bloodshed is dependent on the captain landing, so you can't make your plans too obvious. What you can set up are a series of hallways disconnected from your actual base filled with sleeping cots, a few toilets and environment systems. You're loathe to call it a prison because it honestly isn't worth the name. It's more like an enlarged storage container or a cage, but your conscience, and Hailey's, is assuaged by the fact that you're actively taking steps to minimize the prisoners' time in the rooms.

Another trick Ken comes up with is to print out weapon shaped replicas. You might not have the precise machinery to produce reliable assault rifles and you don't have a stockpile large enough to arm more than a handful of people besides your existing security, but the colonists don't know that. Some fiddling with the modelling software and you have sleek carbon coated rifle shaped plastic pieces rolling off the assembly line. The people who aren't actually armed will be staying as far back as possible while still looking suitably menacing to hopefully deter violence.

Eventually the dreaded day comes when you can pick out the small breaking plume of an inbound ship heading your way past the backdrop of the sun. Soon enough, the vessel reaches your broadband communication array range and you can open a dialogue. You decided that rather than offload the negotiating on Hailey or Amanda you'd do it yourself.

"This is William O'Rielly, leader of Little Klondike. Who am I speaking with and what is your purpose here?"

After a brief minute of silence, your radio sparks to life, "This is Captain Lisette Rousseau. I am on an EU mandate to establish an outpost on asteroid designation NB-L-275."

Good, if they're talking then at least they're not coming here to glass you first and ask questions later.

"Captain Rousseau, as per UN law a ship may land on foreign soil if it has permission or you require emergency supplies, repair or medical attention. As Little Klondike has not granted you permission to land and you're not broadcasting any distress signals, you're required to divert your course."

"Your present operation on an EU claimed object is, as per UN law, illegal profiteering and exploitation. Cease all non-vital actions and submit to the designated authorities for an investigation into your actions," she softens her voice, "No one has to get hurt, an ably managed if misguided settlement can only speak in your favor at a trial, you might even avoid any additional punishment."

"As a sovereign nation we do not recognize the EU claim to our asteroid. No crimes have been committed. Landing will be considered an aggressive action and we will seek redress by appropriate legal avenues," you're careful to never imply that she's welcome to land while also never either threatening direct violence or deterring her from coming down.

"We will be conducting an investigation into the matter upon arrival as an appointed representative of a member of the UN. Until the conclusion of such an investigation you are required to cease and desist all non-vital operations on the asteroid," the connection drops.

"Think she took the bait?" Erikson asks while Hailey is chewing her lip, eyes flickering as if reading something.

"A thoroughly empty and meaningless conversation otherwise, I sure hope so," you switch the comms panel back to normal and call Weissmeier, "How are things looking like in the sky, Lena?"

"Their approach trajectory remains steady. Thirty minutes to landfall."

Keying in Amanda to the same channel you ask, "Sheriff, are the field teams in position?"

"Affirmative."

You'd sent out about forty people, all equipped with a dull gray cloth as camouflage near the predicted landing site. The empty astrobike has likewise been disguised as a rock on the surface where Ken, his best welder and Amanda's best driver are ready to hit the engines as soon as the flares turn off. You very nearly went yourself but by a unanimous vote against you, you were forced to remain in the command chair, overseeing the operation from afar. It still galls you to be stuck so far from the action and you nervously tap your fingers over your desk.

"Look, I'm sure they'll be fine, you can't get me down," Hailey breaks the tense silence.

"Huh?" Erikson turns to her.

"Ah, nothing. Just nervous like all of us," she waves her hands in front of her face with a nervous chuckle.

Eventually, your phone buzzes to life again, Amanda's voice coming through, "Touchdown in a minute, everyone final check-in."

You're not keyed into the whole network to reduce useless noise, so you don't hear the confirming clicks, but after a few seconds she speaks up again, "Luke, you know what to do. Go, go, go."

"I really wish we had proper surveillance systems and asteroid-wide broadband set up," Ragnar sighs, "More than just Amanda's helmet feed at least."

On the display you can see her and the QRF carefully approaching the cargo bay doors, but your engineering team isn't in her field of view. You can just about imagine it anyway. There's a brief window in common thruster types when the propellant injectors always report errors right after the flow is cut off. It's so prevalent that most ship engineers have a function to turn off the reporting of errors for a moment after thrust is cut off. It's during that window that you've planned your strike. Cut the injector wide open and even if the captain wanted to risk a liftoff with a faulty thruster, the fuel never reaches the ignition chamber. As long as your engineers can find the right spots fast enough, it's a ten second cut. If they miss the window and if the captain realizes what's happening fast enough, they can turn the thrusters back on and at worst incinerate the people near them.

Meanwhile, you tune your microphone back to the global broadcast system, spamming contact requests at the landed spacecraft.

(Roll, disable engines: 75)

"Both engines disabled, move up, team," Amanda's voice comes in a second before you get an open connection with the ship.

"This is captain Rousseau, we-" before she can get much further, you start playing the computer generated loudspeaker voice clip.

"You are under arrest, comply with the security officers," the mechanical speech is a police staple on Luna. "Open the following wavelengths for direct communication channels," there's a data packet that you're sending out simultaneously.

(Roll, initial contact: 91)

At the same time, the arresting team has reached the cargo bay. Like all civilian spaceships, the doors have emergency release buttons on the outside to make sure that no engineers get trapped outside during in-flight repairs, and the metal sheets open up, revealing a perfectly ordinary room full of canisters and containers, along with a pair of startled men in the process of unchaining a hauler strapped to the floor. Although the combat suits have speakers attached to them, the bay isn't kept pressurized, so your security still can't give verbal commands, but the pointed guns are a clear enough sign to stop and lift their hands. Neither of them is in anything but a standard environmental suit, so zip-ties are quickly applied and the two are soon bundled up. Amanda calls in two of the unarmed people to bring the captives out of the ship and signals her team to set up towards the airlocks.

You wish you could see the captains face when the arrest happens. This was never going to be a stealth mission since you're not killing people, so the two engineers have surely delivered the news on their own intercoms by now.

"Captain Rousseau, you're surrounded, feel free to check your external cameras. Our police forces are already on board. For the sake of your crew, open the comms before someone gets hurt. It's only a matter of minutes before we breach them anyway."

You don't receive a reply, but the line remains open, so unless she's left the bridge entirely she still heard you. On the camera feed, you see one of your troopers kneeling next to a ripped open speaker port while the airlock cycles.

"Karl, Ai, get the crate set up against the entrance, we need some cover," Amanda orders as she keeps her gun trained on the door further into the ship.

Close quarters combat aboard a spaceship is the stuff of nightmares. There's always nooks and crannies in every corridor, the interior is mazelike and most passages loop back around, never letting one be sure that they've cleared their behinds. Most ships keep the gun locker near the bridge, which is dozens of stories and elevator shafts away, each door a potential bottleneck and each intersection a potential killbox. Thus, the plan isn't to take the ship by force. By controlling the cargo bay you can get enough access to the ship for your purposes. Instead, you've decided to approach this like a medieval siege. Except instead of waiting out the food stores of the defenders, you'll threaten something much more vital.

"Captain, you don't have the firepower to contest us. Remain in the ship until it's been towed to the appropriate location, then start sending out groups of ten people. You will not be harmed."

For a moment you start to think you really are talking to an empty room, but then she does answer, "Or else?"

"You cannot break out of the ship and I implore you not to try. None of us wish for any wasted lives. If, however, you intend to bunker inside, we're prepared to vent your atmosphere section by section," you really hope it doesn't come to that. Venting a ship's atmosphere is a common tactic for pirates targeting orbital shuttles back in the satellite sphere of Earth and while it makes you feel slimy just threatening to do so, it's common because it's effective. The people inside won't die, but it puts them on a very fast-ticking clock, cutting the potential years of supply on a colony ship down to days at most.

(Roll, surrender: 77)

Her voice is weary and distant, but no less clear as you hear the ship's loudspeaker system blare to life with your initial message, Amanda's team gaining access, "Very well, Mr. O'Rielly. I'll comply with your demands. Let us know when to start."

Over the course of the day the vessel is brought to the location you prepared for it. With the two already detained engineers keeping people calm by assuring them that they're not getting shot the moment they're out of sight, the groups are herded into the pressurized shelters, searched and let loose after an explanation of their immediate future. A week of cramped living with three meals a day and all actions monitored until an independent transport ship can take them back home with a simple transfer at Venus. Erikson conducts random questionings with each group to get an estimate of how many people are left on board, comparing the results to the crew manifest you got from Rousseau during the travel.

Last to leave is the woman herself and her security staff. She's thin and shorter than average, with straight dark hair and pale skin, and she walks with her head held high. Clutched in her hand is a secure briefcase.

"These are sensitive files and diplomatic logs as well as cargo manifests. If you intend to keep to your thin veneer of legitimacy then I'll be allowed to return these to Earth."

You've no way to verify her statement without taking the case from her, but at the same time, the case could contain weapons or explosives, and even if you're willing to let her blow up her own shelter, the captain of the incoming ship has made it abundantly clear to you in the contract that all the people he's taking to Venus are to be completely disarmed. Thankfully, Weissmeier has a quick solution to offer you.

"A clear acrylic box. It can easily be dismantled with power tools and we'll pass on the key to be given to them on Earth. But by hand she can't open it up."

Straightforward enough and even Rousseau can't argue against the measure as you watch her place her briefcase in the box, then take said box into the temporary prison.

(Roll, compliance: 17)

The week is nerve-wracking for you as you expect the colonists turned prisoners to try something, anything. You've trouble sleeping, dreams of blaring alarms constantly waking you up; of course, you don't have such alarms set up to go across the whole complex, but you're not sure if that makes your worries better or worse. You're restless enough that by the fifth day you've basically moved into Erikson's office to keep an eye on the feeds yourself, but nothing happens.

The ship arrives and after a bit of fast construction to create a pressurized tunnel between the airlocks of the vessel and holding cell you're down a hundred mouths to feed and up one fully stocked colony ship.

"Uh boss," Hailey starts the next council meeting, "There really isn't any clear protocol for impounded colony ships. We could treat it like a confiscated criminal asset or reparations or spoils of war. Depending on which laws you want to follow, we'd be fully within our rights to say it's ours now."

"What about our laws, what should we do according to those?"

"Surprisingly there isn't a clear precedent of modern nations failing to colonize other modern nations. The diplomatic thing would be to give the thing back wholesale, you can be sure the EU will frame us as pirates if we don't give them their car back with batteries charged to boot."

"Ragnar and I have gone through the cargo and as far as we can tell, it's pretty basic stuff, sir. A bit higher quality than what we have, but it's not worth the hassle to swap over any existing stuff," Amanda quips in, "some really fine resolution printers and the mining equipment would help, and perhaps Lena or Ragnar can get through the biometric locks on their guns, but the rest of the supplies we have a surplus of."

Choose 1.

[ ] Ship

-[ ] Keep it
A shiny new ship just for you? No, you're not giving it back, it's yours now. Having access to a freighter of your own is basically the last thing you need to be entirely independent from the outside world. You can export your own goods and return with the merchandise on your own schedule. You can credibly project power beyond your own ground. The possibilities are endless.

-[ ] Return the cargo, keep the ship
As above, but you'll let them have a little silver lining, you don't need their stuff, they can have it back. Let them start a colony with it elsewhere.

-[ ] Keep the cargo, return the ship
So they might be a bit peeved if you take the stuff on the ship, but they'll be ecstatic to get their vessel back, so surely they can overlook you taking the ticket price of some cargo. Really, you sent them back their people, alive and well on an express route, you give them back a ship that they very well should have lost, they owe something to you.

-[ ] Return it
If you give everything back just as you found it (yes, found it, officer) then they'll really have nothing to hit you with as far as diplomacy goes.

-[ ] Write-in
Keep some specific amount or part of it, pack them a present, something else?​

Hailey Maria Perez, or just Hailey, as she insists, is an energetic and empathic woman. Prone to some daydreaming with a short attention span and with a habit of talking to herself, she nonetheless has an uncanny insight into what people are feeling around her. A masterful poker player and a great shoulder to cry on, the latter by her own words at least, she's probably best suited to face-to-face meetings and positive contacts. Also proficient in astrology. Choose 1 task to send her on.

[ ] Diplomacy

-[ ] Advertise your colony
You'll pretty much always have room and jobs for people willing to put in the effort, but you won't get all that many colonists if no one knows of you. Place ads, make unreasonable and vague promises and put up flyers, whatever works. You'll probably get people to come, but they won't be… overqualified, to put it optimistically. On the other hand, maybe a bit of grunt work is exactly what you need right now, and occasionally you might – might – find rough diamonds with the slop. DC 25

-[ ] Establish relations with…
Subtly put out feelers for a patron, someone to legitimize your claim. Nothing overt, just find out who might be interested in your little rock and see what they might offer you in return. Nothing permanent or committal of course, your first partner will always be special and just the act of choosing will make you enemies as well as allies, even if they won't show it. Geez, this is like high school all over again, except now you need to worry about nuclear warheads instead of hurt feelings. Recent events have also not made you a more attractive target for courtship. DC 50

-[ ] Seek corporate deals
You can sell your output on the open market as it gets launched out, but the prices will fluctuate and rarely in your favor. Likewise for supplies of food, air and water, all of which can be scarce this close to the sun. After all, you can't very well not buy the necessities if deliveries come by once a year. Instead, you could find one of the many middle-man businesses that exist just to prevent that from happening. See what they'll offer you and make sure you can fulfill your part of the deal. DC 30

-[ ] Send a probe to New Ireland
New Ireland is mainly a refueling station, located on a chunk of ice from the rogue planet Lucifer. They process the ice into hydrogen and oxygen, selling the products as fuel for haulers on a round trip. A simple self-destructing probe can get in radio range of them and exchange your tightbeam comms protocols. DC 25

-[ ] Send a probe to Deckard Station
Maybe you should just go through New Ireland, but you can't well be faulted for trying if no one technically told you their political situation. And who knows, maybe you can get a better deal by talking with them directly. DC 25

-[ ] Send a probe to the Children of Dreamers
People with strange beliefs are nothing new and these ones are your closest neighbors. Surely they have some needs that you could fulfill or vice versa. DC 25

-[ ] Send a probe to the Prismdust research base
A research colony is usually well supplied by their patron, but they might have interesting patents to sell you and collaborative research, while a logistical nightmare, might produce some revolutionary results. DC 20

-[ ] Send a probe to the private resort
If it's some trillionaires party house, then something as exotic as locally sourced fruits and vegetables might very well fetch a price that would be ridiculous elsewhere. And the security staff have needs too, maybe you can undercut their current supplier. DC 25

-[ ] Smooth relations with the EU
The whole 'your colony, my colony' thing was so long ago, who even remembers these things anymore. Surely we can all just let bygones be bygones and start on a blank page. DC 90​

Miss Carpenter projects an air of confidence and her no nonsense attitude backs up her demeanor. Perhaps a bit headstrong and stubborn, but as long as you don't act against her she'll likely be quite competent. After a successful operation under her belt and her necessity in the colony thoroughly proven, there's no doubt that she's in her element as a commander of your executive branch. Choose 1 security action to focus her on.

[ ] Security

-[ ] Armor improvement
Your troops (a single squad) are kitted out with light power armor, but there's plenty of things to improve. A better compound material for shielding, an improved power profile for increased recon range, maybe even comms equipment for increased bandwidth. In addition to general enhancements, you might want to start work on specializing the light armor for different purposes. DC 50

-[ ] Squads
Your colony has a surprisingly professional and well liked police force, but that might be due to the fact that every officer is on first name basis with most residents. While you probably don't need more right this instant, looking ahead can't hurt. See if more people might be interested in joining the forces. DC 30

-[ ] Ships
Buying anything better than a tugboat attached to a fuel tanker is expensive. Really, really expensive. But you need to be able to project your power beyond your immediate colony. Whether as a statement to accompany your diplomats or as strike craft against asteroids or pirates, you'll be on the market for a proper spacecraft. DC 75

-[ ] Professional army
So it might be a bit presumptuous to call half a squad of enthusiasts an army, but it's a start. Fitness, team tactics, leadership exercises, rules of engagement and the like, alongside some live fire exercises to develop team cohesion is a good early basis for an officer corps. Ultimately you have dreams both of statehood and of mercenary groups you can rent out for sweet, sweet profit. DC 30

-[ ] Weapon patents
The guns you have are still in limited supply, no one wants to arm every random space rock after all. Do some shopping and convince a manufacturer to grant you access to their design specs so that you could start producing your own ammo and weapons. Or, failing that, try to build your own. DC 60

-[ ] Better armaments
Turns out neither you nor anyone on your immediate staff is a trained soldier, so the weapons you got were probably more flash than bang. Not that they are completely useless, just that they could be so much better. Hunker down with your sheriff and find a better set of offensive equipment for your troops. DC 40

-[ ] Heavy armor
Instead of the mobile suits you have for everyday work, you want Power armor with a capital letter, the real space marine stuff. You'll try to buy it, but most governments are unlikely to sell what basically amounts to a personal tank to people, so be prepared to start your own designs. DC 60

-[ ] Jetpacks
Combat mobility is key and especially in a zero gravity environment you want your troops to have all the possible tactical advantages. The basic ship maintenance stuff has tiny thrusters to control yourself, but the combat variant would be much stronger and come with proper dampening software and trajectory control. DC 40

-[ ] Armored personnel carrier
A support vehicle for ground based combat, capable of light fire support, however its main purpose is to serve as a safer way to get infantry into combat zones. Its current usefulness to you is questionable, but you never know. You've been on both the unprepared and over-prepared side and you know which you'd like to be on. Whether there's someone out there that produces APCs for a microgravity environment is a different matter. DC 55

-[ ] Drones
Just imagining combat inside a spaceship gives you the chills. Information is worth more than bullets in many cases and a tiny camera can't be too hard to stick on some legs. The classic flying approach from Earth doesn't work without an atmosphere, but some skittering spiderbots should be within your means of development and production. DC 50​

You and Ken often find yourselves working together; engineering as an honest means of work is something you're both intimately familiar with. Likewise you both know that a space station's engineers are her lifeblood, so you've hit it off quite well with the man. Far from being a simple farmer, he does have a solid base in nearly all things mechanical and you shore up the electric side of things. While he's still shy, his beer is to die for. Choose 2 projects to start building.

[ ] Engineering

-[ ] Mines: copper
Your first copper mines are up and running, providing you with a steady trickle of sellable ore. Expand that operation: widen shafts, open new ones, speed up transport, and order new equipment. DC 35, can be taken with Mines: silver for DC 50, counts as 1 action

-[ ] Mines: silver
Your first silver mines are up and running, providing you with a steady trickle of sellable ore and some pure silver for local production. Expand that operation: widen shafts, open new ones, speed up transport, and order new equipment. DC 35, can be taken with Mines: copper for DC 50, counts as 1 action

-[ ] Fuel refineries
Instead of trading away leftover oxygen as a low quality, low yield fuel replacement, get proper cooling towers and better filtration systems, start importing proper amounts of hydrogen and maybe even water for industrial electrolysis. Sure you'll be intruding a bit on your neighbor's market, but they'll be out of the production business soon enough anyways. DC 50

-[ ] Luxury living space
The current apartments are adequate, but not luxurious. Expand the existing ones by including more floors and extra amenities. DC 40, can be taken with More living space for DC 55, counts as 1 action

-[ ] More living space
Now that actual money is rolling in and you're firmly established, more and more people will be coming. It's a good idea to stay ahead of the curve and start up a second complex of living space, you've even laid some groundwork with the holding cell you built for those colonists. DC 10, can be taken with Luxury living space for DC 55, counts as 1 action

-[ ] Docks
Your launch facilities are in a word pathetic. Refueling takes ages and is wasteful, you need to cart the supplies way too far and there's still a very real risk of something crashing directly into your domes. Set up something resembling a dock, instead of having a nice flat patch of rock some half a kilometer away serving as a launch site. DC 60

-[ ] Transportation
Moving to and from any installation on the surface is perilous. Low G walks under the blackness are scary and slow and you have almost no redundant cars. Ken pointed out that while you're small now, a robust metro network is never set up soon enough. The lack of unoccupied mining equipment is but a minor concern they assure you. DC 55

-[ ] Industrial capacitor bank
A massive array of capacitors that can be used to fully charge a spaceship's batteries in a few hours. While bigger vessels have means of generating their own power, they can occasionally carry empty cells to reload and sell. Smaller ships meanwhile need a recharge almost as often as a refueling. Also, there are other possible uses for massive and sudden energy releasing, namely railguns and mass drivers. Alas, this stuff is really, really, expensive. DC 65

-[ ] Industrial battery bank
A marginally cheaper alternative to capacitors, an oversized battery bank means that even if some disaster wipes out your energy farms, you'll have a month or so to do repairs before the air cyclers stop running. And you won't be wasting energy most of the time if you have a good reservoir to pump it into. DC 60

-[ ] Communal space
How's a dictator supposed to give rousing speeches to their people without a wide plaza and a balcony. Jokes aside, the harvest festival brought to your attention the fact that people don't have a sufficiently large area for gathering. Fostering a strong sense of community is something Hailey is constantly on your case about, and a space should be set aside for it. DC 35

-[ ] Aquaculture
Ken has come to you with a rather strange idea. The water cisterns you currently have are filled with distilled, pure H2O and you regularly add mineral content to it between the tank and a tap. What if you instead switched the injectors for filters and opened up the tanks. And then, he tells you, put fish in them. Most mammals and birds fare poorly in the super-low gravity, but supposedly fish mostly do fine and the stuff humans like to drink is an ideal environment to grow them. DC 60

-[ ] Bakery
The closest thing to fresh bread you've had in years are the dry crackers from the ration packs that, rumors say, expand when you apply moisture. You now have a variety of grains, things like rye bread and rice cookies would definitely sell like hot cakes. Also, muffins, 'nuff said. DC 30

-[ ] Fission power plant
Sure you've a good system developed for powering your stuff, but diversity is a strength. Unlike the free sunlight, you'd need to import uranium, possibly refine it too, not to mention the difficulty of developing and constructing a plant from scratch. On the plus side, waste isn't a problem when you've the world's biggest incinerator staring down on you and no pesky gravity to stop you from chucking things in. DC 80

-[ ] Fusion power plant
This is what the big boys use. There's a total of three functional ones on Earth, one on Mars and probably a few on some cutting edge satellites and military cruisers, so it might be worth it to build one just for the prestige alone. It'll also mean that as long as you have access to the most abundant element in the world you can produce power. Not to mention the potential scientific benefits. DC 95​

A quiet individual, it took you months to find out that one of the children in your colony was the daughter of your personnel manager. When Ragnar Erikson does contribute to the conversation, it's usually a well thought out response or an insightful comment and his action plans are clear and concise. Perhaps this is just his way of separating his occasionally thankless job and his private life, as he seems to get along with Hailey at least. Choose 1 action.

[ ] Internal Affairs

-[ ] Background checks
Sure, you've vetted everybody important on board, but can they spot the lies on their underlings' resumes? Didn't think they had any? Maybe, but now you're thinking about it. Look into the staff of your staff, maybe they let someone accidentally slip through. If you intend to maintain control of your colony you'll need all the info you can get. Sic your spymas- set internal affairs to finding out about the people here, see what they'll dig up. DC 25

-[ ] Surveillance
As of three hours ago, nobody had left any airlocks open or stolen extra rations, but you can't be sure that's still the case. To start with, a comprehensive set of motion sensors and fire alarms, pressure indicators and air purity measurers should be installed. It'll make the job of any future police that much easier and the first steps are just common sense on a rock without atmosphere. DC 30

-[ ] Thorough check - Ken Hiragi
There's something about the nice, quiet ones. Erikson brought to your attention the barest of possibilites, but you should still follow up and reassure yourself. DC 50

-[ ] Thorough check - Lena Weissmeier
Why is she so secretive, what sinister motives could she have? Remember, it's only rude to pry if you get caught doing it. And no, this does not count as stalking or harassment, you're doing this for security reasons. DC 60

-[ ] Emergency generators
Your current power supply is awfully vulnerable to forces of nature and targeted attacks alike. Set up well hidden, well shielded and separately supplied backup generators that would at least sustain basic life support around your compound should something happen to the solar fields. DC 30

-[ ] Poke the black site
Alright, so you're not going to launch a probe to knock on their front door, but if a casual solar wind analyzer happens to pass by, they'd surely have more to lose by reacting to it. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it gave man the stars and if you've built a house next to a wolf den then you should make sure to guard your sheep. Err, bad analogy, you definitely don't think of your people as sheep. Anyways, try to find out anything about your secret neighbor. DC 75

-[ ] The colonists
Why did Europe come after your rock so insistently? Sure it's a lovely rock, but as you sent them packing, it clearly wasn't worth fighting over. Was it just an overzealous officer? Find out what you can about the expedition to Little Klondike and the lead officer, one Lisette Rousseau. DC 50​

Miss Weissmeier is a younger, more conventionally beautiful and feminine version of Miss Carpenter. Even in zero G she wears a dark business skirt and heels, her reports are thorough and drier than a vacuum, but you can't fault her data or methods. She might be the youngest on your council, and in rare moments her lack of life experience shows, but you're quite glad to have someone with medical expertise on standby at all times. Choose 1 subject.

[ ] Research

-[ ] Mineral surveys
The general readings claim that your rock should have a good balance of light and heavy metals, silicates and oxygen rich rock, and who knows what else. You've gone over the surrounding top soil, for lack of a better term, but there's more to the asteroid both in depth as well as further out, keep looking for more minerals. DC 40

-[ ] Communications
Right now your best bet at transmitting data is to pack some drives on a resupply shuttle and send them off. Expand your reception arrays by building more and shielding them better to reduce loss. You'll still have periods of blackout when the Sun is in the way, but bouncing your signal around just has to wait for the moment, none of the existing deep space arrays are interested in your traffic and to change that is either the work of a diplomat or you'll need to design, manufacture and launch your own mirrors. DC 35

-[ ] Medic Training
The people in your colony come from various backgrounds and educations, but lifesaving knowledge is something everyone should have. Expand the rudimentary programs currently set up and make it a mandatory part of life on this rock. It will cut into productivity a bit but it'll be worth it to literally save lives. DC 20

-[ ] Oncology ward
The next step towards a fully-fledged space hospital is a cancer ward. Cosmic radiation can be mitigated quite well these days, but ultimately the human cell is still the same as it was thousands of years ago. For most colonists, there's the option of flying back to Earth for treatment if the tumor is detected on time, but you'd like to be better than that. DC 60

-[ ] Silver nanites
Miss Weissmeier has charmed you into supporting her research on silver nanomachines for medical purposes. It'll be easier now that you have proper mining set up for the silver, your refining options are greatly expanded and you actually have a lab; thus she assures you that she can start her work now, if you give her the green light. DC 60

-[ ] Solar wind capture
The lighter the element, the less likely you are to find a good supply of it around here. Unfortunately hydrogen is one of those, yet you need a constant supply of it. It's used in many, many chemical reactions and synthesizing processes, it's a prime component of rocket fuel and the only component of fusion fuel. It's also hard to keep recycling it, as the tiny gas can leak through most seals in time. Thus, try to catch some of the material that the Sun constantly bombards you with. DC 80

-[ ] Magnetic field research
A key component of fusion, magnetic fields can be used to direct a stream of particles. Similarly, Earth enjoys a protective shell shielding her from harmful radiation thanks to a massive iron core generating immensely big fields. Could there be anything you can do to replicate these effects? Or perhaps probing one of the fundamental forces of the universe might reveal some new applications that people haven't thought of or haven't needed so far. DC 70

-[ ] Primitive AI
They always say that true artificial intelligence is ten years away at most. They've been saying it all your life in fact, so it must be true. Mostly, the nonexistence of AI is attributed to a treaty known as the Tokyo Convention, but upon even a cursory glance at the text, there's clearly still room for research. The forbidden parts of AI have more to do with the moralities of developing something with feelings and ill-defined motivations than actual AI. Try to skirt that line and see where something barely smarter than a goldfish can take you. DC 50

-[ ] Life extension
Sure, you'll probably live to see a hundred and fifty, barring some accident. But if you want to enjoy eternal youth not eternal life, then you might want to put in your own contribution to the development of various life extension technologies. DC 60​

 

[Karf]

[X] Ship
-[X] Return it
If you give everything back just as you found it (yes, found it, officer) then they'll really have nothing to hit you with as far as diplomacy goes.

[X] Diplomacy
-[X] Advertise your colony
You'll pretty much always have room and jobs for people willing to put in the effort, but you won't get all that many colonists if no one knows of you. Place ads, make unreasonable and vague promises and put up flyers, whatever works. You'll probably get people to come, but they won't be… overqualified, to put it optimistically. On the other hand, maybe a bit of grunt work is exactly what you need right now, and occasionally you might – might – find rough diamonds with the slop. DC 25

[X] Security
-[X] Squads
Your colony has a surprisingly professional and well liked police force, but that might be due to the fact that every officer is on first name basis with most residents. While you probably don't need more right this instant, looking ahead can't hurt. See if more people might be interested in joining the forces. DC 30

[X] Engineering
-[X] Mines: copper
Your first copper mines are up and running, providing you with a steady trickle of sellable ore. Expand that operation: widen shafts, open new ones, speed up transport, and order new equipment. DC 35, can be taken with Mines: silver for DC 50, counts as 1 action
-[X] Mines: silver
Your first silver mines are up and running, providing you with a steady trickle of sellable ore and some pure silver for local production. Expand that operation: widen shafts, open new ones, speed up transport, and order new equipment. DC 35, can be taken with Mines: copper for DC 50, counts as 1 action
-[X] More living space
Now that actual money is rolling in and you're firmly established, more and more people will be coming. It's a good idea to stay ahead of the curve and start up a second complex of living space, you've even laid some groundwork with the holding cell you built for those colonists. DC 10, can be taken with Luxury living space for DC 55, counts as 1 action
-[X] Luxury living space
The current apartments are adequate, but not luxurious. Expand the existing ones by including more floors and extra amenities. DC 40, can be taken with More living space for DC 55, counts as 1 action

[X] Internal Affairs
-[X] Surveillance
As of three hours ago, nobody had left any airlocks open or stolen extra rations, but you can't be sure that's still the case. To start with, a comprehensive set of motion sensors and fire alarms, pressure indicators and air purity measurers should be installed. It'll make the job of any future police that much easier and the first steps are just common sense on a rock without atmosphere. DC 30

[X] Research
-[X] Communications
Right now your best bet at transmitting data is to pack some drives on a resupply shuttle and send them off. Expand your reception arrays by building more and shielding them better to reduce loss. You'll still have periods of blackout when the Sun is in the way, but bouncing your signal around just has to wait for the moment, none of the existing deep space arrays are interested in your traffic and to change that is either the work of a diplomat or you'll need to design, manufacture and launch your own mirrors. DC 35

Click to shrink...

(Roll, advertise your colony, required 25: 98)

'The rule of law, unchained from ancient tradition and old fat – Little Klondike treats people with respect. We do not bow to bullies and we conduct ourselves with dignity. If you too are tired of the old world way of doing things, if you too want to make your own fate, this is your proven chance. Right now, Little Klondike needs your presence, your will, your wits – every person is valuable to us. Your voice lends us strength, just as we will stand by you as we stood by our principles and unquestionable right to self-determination.'

Hailey pauses the narration at your request, the video showing clips of Amanda and the QRF during exercise drills and very carefully spliced together scenes of the arrests.

"Isn't 'old world' a bit too on the nose? Sure everybody knows what we're alluding to regardless, but you said yourself that we have to leave them an out."

"It's very terra-centric to think of the old world as Europe. Both Mars and Luna refer to all of Earth as the 'old world' in their recruitment videos," she assures you before pressing play again.

'Little Klondike is no longer a risky startup. We are out of the first few years where luck is the biggest factor next to good management. The first we had plenty of and the latter is more evident than ever to anyone who sees the truth of things. Now, what we need is you. We will continue to grow, and the faster you come and get established, the closer you are to the founding, the better your prospects will be.'

The camera shows clips of your signing of the constitution to candid shots of you chatting to people during the last harvest festival, then switches to scenes from your lab and hospital, cut with aerial shots of the mines.

"A little bit of good old fashioned fear of missing out thrown in there." Hailey just nods.

'Our facilities are top of the line and it's not an injustice to compare them to ones on Earth. Too many colonies fall into the trap of complacency – 'the facilities are as good as Venus', better than the ones next door'. We say no, we can break beyond the top.'

The clip continues in a similar vein, extolling the virtues of coming to your home and subtly, or not so subtly, suggests that the faster one gets here the better.

"Looks good to me, Hailey. If there's nothing else then we can wrap up for tonight," you give your customary end-of-meeting speech, but instead of the usual 'see ya, boss!', she remains seated, the silence stretching.

"There's actually something. About the ship," she starts.

"I thought we agreed to send it back with all the cargo?"

"Yes, and I think that's a good idea, but I was thinking of something else."

It's not like her to be so indirect, "Okay, I'm listening, what's the matter?"

"It's been six years since we came here now, and it's been great. But with the ship making an unplanned trip to Earth, I was thinking…" she takes a deep breath, "I'd like to be on the ship, boss. I haven't seen my parents or siblings in person in a long time now. A sort of working vacation if you will."

"Alright," you blink, "have a nice trip? I haven't thought about it, but we can keep things going here for a while."

"I'd be back on the supply freighter and I think there's things I can do for the colony while I'm there, some interviews and…" she rushes out before processing your words and leaning back, "Wait, just like that?"

"It's not like you're a prisoner here. Just because I've pretty much invested everything into this place doesn't mean you guys can't have your own thing going on."

"Thanks, boss!" she's eyeing the table between you and you get the feeling you'd be the recipient of a bone-crushing hug without it. Then she launches herself across the table and nearly topples you over anyway.

"How long has this been brewing? Of course you can go see your family," you do your best to extract a limb and awkwardly pat her on the side.

"I was going to bring it up at the start of the year, but what with things happening it got put on a backburner. The Almighty knows it's been kind of stressful for me," she speaks into the leather of your chair before finally getting back up off you.

"For us all. Is there anything you need my help with or do you have things ready?"

Hailey is back to her energetic self in the blink of an eye, "No, got it covered boss! The banking node is great for transferring assets back and forth. I'll send you some publications that have asked for an interview, look them over and let me know if I can contact them back to schedule a date. See ya."

Sure enough, by the end of the week your diplomat is going to Earth to deliver a laden colony ship and drum up an even bigger media frenzy over a colony in the belt beating back the big mean EU. True to her word, she sends you several news clips of her answering questions about Little Klondike with glowing praise. Once it's time for the usual freighter to launch from a lunar port you've signed off on an extra crew module rental for all the people that want to relocate to your little rock.

(Colony size doubled again, population about 500 people, expect more growth.)

(Roll, squads, required 30: 79)

Today, instead of meeting with Sergeant Carpenter as you've lately been doing, you're meeting with Officer Carpenter, the leader of your police force and one Anatoli Lirov.

"It's not right that the people receiving military training in all but name remain a part of the force that interacts with our own citizens," Amanda delivers her starting statement, "Furthermore, we risk eroding the built up goodwill and public trust if we use military equipment for in-complex patrols or sending home drunk patrons from a bar, sir."

You just nod, letting her continue, "We've had more people express an interest in joining the security forces, especially after the lander operation. Mostly on the military side, but some on the policing side as well. When it comes to guaranteeing public order, our numbers are perfectly adequate and we don't need to expand the current operation more than a cursory amount as people immigrate. The military side can always take more people, but while I am happy to receive more funding, from your own perspective it'll have to justify itself at some point, sir."

"A healthy military budget serves a multitude of purposes from clearly measurable effects like the development of an experienced officer corps to intangible but no less important ones like a deterrent force," you wave away her concerns.

"Of course, sir," Amanda tilts her head then switches tracks, "You're certainly familiar with Officer Lirov."

Anatoli Lirov is a short man with tan skin, dark cropped hair and clearly East Asian roots. You've seen him around plenty of times, first when handing out rations as the man seemed to have a constant supply of sweets to hand out to any kids and later as Amanda's representative on petty grievances while the woman herself was out on the fields.

"We've met before."

"I've decided to promote Officer Lirov to be in charge of the local precinct as the head of police moving forward. Officer?" Amanda prompts the man.

"The administrative change will place me in charge of day to day police operation in the colony," he steps forward and, whether subconsciously or not you can't tell, mimics Amanda's posture. "While Lieutenant Carpenter remains as the ultimate leader for both branches, she'll have much more time to devote to the new influx of recruits for the action squads."

You stand up and offer the man your hand, "Congratulations on the promotion, Mr. Lirov."

There's a few documents that the three of you go over which require your signature, but before long Lirov bids the two of you a good day and leaves for his new post.

"It's strange, sir," Amanda speaks up after he leaves, "I'd never have imagined myself as leading a paramilitary organization even three years ago, let alone back on Luna."

"That's life for you, sheriff. How are the new guys doing anyhow?"

"Settling in as best as they can. I've allocated funds for more of those armors we're using and handed out the last of our weapons stockpiles. If I were a lesser woman I'd say that getting a gun manufacturing license and workshop should be our next priority."

"But you're not, so what should we be focusing on?"

"It's been fine so far when I was the leader of a single cohesive unit. I didn't even mind the split between police and the QRF. However, there's a reason militaries come with a strict hierarchy and regulations. I can't remain in charge of a squad myself while having another equal unit. Not without setting up clear rules that can serve as a base going forward," she sighs, "If we're going to have an army then we need to organize the whole operation as one. I've made Luke into a sergeant as a field promotion, but it's not the right way to do things, sir."

(Second unit of 10 troops gained.)

(Roll, mines: copper + silver, required 50: 100)

The expansion of the mines is continuing apace: new holes are drilled and tunnels get expanded, the additional equipment arrives on time with the freighter, there's plenty of people to apply for the jobs and the veins themselves run even deeper than you originally thought. In fact, upon further consultations of ground x-rays and borehole sample analysis the two deposits seem to merge into each other. Not that it makes a significant difference, you nonetheless decide to connect the two shafts, excavating a long tunnel between the two mines. It's in the middle of that cavern that you and Ken find yourselves, called there by an engineer checking the lights and power lines of the new hole.

"So, uh… either of you know what that is?" the man asks you after a while.

You're all staring at the side of the tunnel where the copper vein should be meeting the silver vein. Instead of the red-teal of copper, glittering blue silver ore or the usual grayscale silicate minerals and quartz, the wall you're staring at looks like a window into the depths of the asteroid. A clear substance fills the merging point of the two metal shards and shining a light into what looks eerily like a hole eventually gives the thing a faint blue color in the far distance. There's small crushed shards of the stuff laying around from the tunnel bore and although it's hard to gauge the relative weight of things with your local gravity and spacesuits, the splinters are still much lighter than you'd expect. You try to chip at the hole, carefully avoiding stepping on the darkness that extends below you for no practical reason but due to the inherent creepiness of standing on a void, and find the stuff harder than it looks.

"No idea," Ken shrugs.

"Something great," you mumble, your gut feeling telling you you're right. "Let's get this to Lena."

Your scientist steps back from the microscope, absently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Alright, you made some alumina oxide aerogel, there's some things that are off from what I know about it, but I'd need to run more tests and check some publications. It's an impressive amount and I'd assume you used the lab without me knowing about it, sir?" she phrases the last sentence as a question, as if looking for something to praise.

"It's not manmade," you tell her.

She pauses, "D-Did Amanda make it?"

"It's not manufactured," Ken corrects you.

"Funny. Now I have a time sync ping coming up, if you don't mind, sir."

"Send the packet then clear your schedule for today," you tell her bemusedly, "We've got something to show you."

(Silver and copper mines successfully expanded, found another avenue of research.)

(Roll, living space: luxury + expansion, required 55: 10)

Finding the unexpected mystery deposit has thrown a wrench into your expansion plans, as has the sudden influx of new people. The location of the veins' meeting place just happens to be right beneath your planned expansion trail and rather than go through with it and then uproot the complex soon anyways, you scrap the foundations for another time. Only the ex-prison hallways get transformed into apartments and connected to your other networks, but you're too proud to accept a backslide in lifestyle, so the rooms that were cramped for a hundred people now house about thirty.

The incoming wave of people similarly forces your hand with expanding existing condos. Instead of installing second and third floors or knocking down connecting walls to make them bigger, it's all you can do to throw up comparable shelters for the newcomers, leading to some grumbling about useless remodeling.

(Roll, surveillance, required 30: 74)

"A comprehensive sensor suite," you prompt Erikson when the man comes to your living quarters with his tools and gadgets.

"Optical smoke sensors in every room of the complex, fed by direct wire and hooked into a central system. People get a minute to turn off the alarm via a button on the device or disable the thing entirely for ten minutes if they know they'll be making some smoke."

He demonstrates the little knob switch on the side of the innocuous off-white box, then moves on to the next device.

"Barometer for air pressure, mechanical for the most part. If the room loses atmosphere a spring relaxes and breaks a circuit. Same system as the smoke alarm, different sound so you know what sort of danger you're in, also a strobe effect for when there's no air at all to carry the sound. That one is more for rescue crews looking for which rooms they can open and which ones to keep sealed."

The man's far from done.

"Air quality sensor, technically measures the ratio of nitrogen to oxygen to 'other'," he makes air quotes, "Doubles as a moisture detector. It may seem silly, but there's been a few farming satellites that had to be condemned due to mold. The spores can apparently survive vacuum just fine."

Next is a far smaller capsule.

"A networked thermocouple for your air conditioning unit, obviously reports temperature."

"Let me guess," you point to the next things in line, "motion sensor for the door – no wait, the whole room – wall voltage detector for shorted wires, manual panic button… is that seriously a scintillator?"

"If you get hit with a burst of cosmic radiation then every second can matter."

"Fair enough. These are all installed in every room?"

"Yes, and wide lens cameras for all hallways, storages and public rooms," You follow him to the corridor where he points to a black dot in the ceiling no bigger than your thumbnail.

"Bye-bye privacy," you wave at the eye.

"Just the alarms are monitored, the rest is only accessible with my, Amanda's or your say-so. Alright, now let me work," he orders you around as he starts to install the myriad of devices.

(Proper sensors installed throughout the colony.)

(Roll, communications, required 35: 88)

The communications equipment is still outside of your ability to make on the spot, even if you're inching ever closer to it. Still there's network protocols to write, reflector and amplifier dishes to set up and fiber-optic cable to install while you and Lena wait for the precision lasers and focused wave generators to arrive on the freighter. It would be easy to just rig an ancient broadcast antenna and blast away any info you needed; at least it would certainly reach your nearest neighbors, but doing so is both illegal and quite rude. Illegal because you'd likely slam into someone's tightbeam and scramble possibly vital data, and rude because the long range frequencies are kept open for emergency broadcasts.

There's three acceptable modes of communication. First is short-range radio, which you've used extensively and which dissipates after no more than a few thousand kilometers. Not that you usually operate at the upper limit, a hundred clicks being enough for keeping in contact with your patrols and mines, especially if you deploy your backup relay to reach the backside of your rock.

The second is direct tightbeam, which you use to send and receive data with Earth. Hyper-focused lasers that are carefully timed and calibrated to tag a target no larger than a standard airlock door across the whole inner solar system. Great for private, fast communication, but terrible for bandwidth. The laser pulse separation time and receiver frequency are the main bottlenecks, with the usual solution being to just add more lasers and receivers when you need more data.

The third is a newer tech, which uses precision tools that can carefully calibrate a wave pattern that dissipates to background noise right after reaching the intended target, so long as the target is within the same cosmic neighborhood. This one you flat out haven't had access to yet, but it's popular for talking to asteroids that haven't exchanged tightbeam data. Its main drawback is security, as using it is akin to shouting across long corridor full of doors to unknown rooms.

After the freighter arrives and brings you the necessary components, you spend no time in getting improved access to all three, helped along by Hailey's skills in calibrating the correct cycles for your little rock's spin.

(Communication equipment installed, diplomatic, internal and research options unlocked.)

Another year, another meeting. You're glad Hailey is back, the place really wasn't the same without her.

"Well, boss, not going to lie, gravity is a real downer back home."

Then again, maybe you should send her off as soon as possible. Ragnar swats her shoulder and Ken physically flinches, you just sigh.

"With that, we've another year to review and plans to make. How are things going?"

Ken is the first to take the floor, "We're officially generating more metal than a single freighter can fit. Moving forward, our bottleneck is the lack of landing facilities and extra trade contracts or ships of our own. Power production remains at a steady but delicate balance, the teams Will set up are doing an admirable job finding free moments on the precision printers for expanding the solar farms. Unless we intend to take on particularly power hungry projects we should be fine as is. Lastly, our food situation has both good and bad news. The good news is that we make a balanced diet locally and even have some luxury produce in the menu. The bad news is that with the influx of new colonists, we're straining the self-sufficiency angle; there's just not enough growing."

"About that," Hailey cuts in, looking worriedly at Ken, "the amount of people coming is pretty much guaranteed to grow unless we literally stop accepting ships with passengers."

Ken nods, sitting back down and Ragnar takes over, "In the same vein, we'll actually have to cut back on private living space or bunk up people if we don't do something about it."

"In line with our population monitoring efforts, a proper census might be in order after this year's influx," he hesitates for a moment, "One more thing, not strictly related to internal affairs, but important to me. I'd like for us to set up a proper school. There's enough kids and teens around that the current teleschooling doesn't have to be the only option. I can work on the paperwork and get it set up if you give me the green light."

"Speaking of children," Weissmeier smoothly picks up the conversation, "we're going to have our first one this year."

'Phrasing,' you barely catch yourself from glancing down to her belly before she continues.

"One of the women on the farm teams is in her first trimester. We're adequately prepared for the birth, just thought you might want to know, sir."

"Of course, good."

"In other news our facilities are ready and waiting for a project."

Amanda is the last to speak, wrapping up the discussion, "We've ran out of weapons to hand out and we still can't produce more locally. However the more pressing concern is the structure and purpose of our standing army, sir."

Rumor mill:

People's Daily: Ministry of Finance and People's Bank of China in talks for third miner bailout since impact; mineral prices continue freefall.

Minister Ming met with bank directors again earlier this week, sources indicate. The debate around the effectiveness of providing a third stimulus package to mining giants in two decades grows fiercer with supporters labeling opponents anti-patriotic. Meanwhile speculation over mineral price indexes remains negative as New Belt colonization gathers steam.​

BBC: exposé from the vac-dock – months long queues mean nightmarish production quotas.

In an interview with an anonymous source that works in a US LEO shipyard, we explore the hidden underbelly and unexpected cost of the surging demand for more and more spaceships. As companies push to meet rising demand driven by far away ports, one person speaks out: "It's like the industrial revolution, but there's no Ford to help the workers".​

Al Jazeera: the age of the micro-nation

The Impact Age is ended, the Solar Age has begun, and the first winners are emerging. We sit down with the diplomatic envoy from Little Klondike: independent colony turned nation state, who sent Europe a fully loaded colony ship. Read the perspective of a country light-minutes closer to the sun.​

New York Times: on the double standard of the EU – "For too long have they made laws for others to follow" – Riley

In a scathing speech on the Guyana Crisis, US ambassador to UN Jaylen Riley calls out the Union for pressing through international laws and signing treaties they have no intent to follow. The accusations follow in the wake of last years' fight over colonization rights between the superpowers.​

The Olympian: peaceful protests in Arabia continue – "Martian justice for Martian pain!"

Extraction of US head scientist amid further human experimentation accusations continues to draw ire in Arabia Terra; protestors demand government step down for not defending Martian interests. Opposition promises so called 'pirate rules' on crimes against humanity: absentee trial, guilty considered armed and dangerous, permission to post bounties.​

Hailey Maria Perez, or just Hailey, as she insists, is an energetic and empathic woman. Prone to some daydreaming with a short attention span and with a habit of talking to herself, she nonetheless has an uncanny insight into what people are feeling around her. A masterful poker player and a great shoulder to cry on, the latter by her own words at least, she's probably best suited to face-to-face meetings and positive contacts. Also proficient in astrology. Choose 1 task to send her on.

[ ] Diplomacy

-[ ] Advertise your colony
You'll pretty much always have potential room and jobs for people willing to put in the effort, but you won't get all that many colonists if no one knows of you. Place ads, make unreasonable and vague promises and put up flyers, whatever works. You'll probably get people to come, but they won't be… overqualified, to put it optimistically. On the other hand, maybe a bit of grunt work is exactly what you need right now, and occasionally you might – might – find rough diamonds with the slop. DC 15

-[ ] Establish relations with…
Subtly put out feelers for a patron, someone to legitimize your claim. Nothing overt, just find out who might be interested in your little rock and see what they might offer you in return. Nothing permanent or committal of course, your first partner will always be special and just the act of choosing will make you enemies as well as allies, even if they won't show it. Geez, this is like high school all over again, except now you need to worry about nuclear warheads instead of hurt feelings. Recent events have also not made you a more attractive target for courtship. DC 45

-[ ] Seek corporate deals
You can sell your output on the open market as it gets launched out, but the prices will fluctuate and rarely in your favor. Likewise for supplies of food, air and water, all of which can be scarce this close to the sun. After all, you can't very well not buy the necessities if deliveries come by once a year. Instead, you could find one of the many middle-man businesses that exist just to prevent that from happening. See what they'll offer you and make sure you can fulfill your part of the deal. DC 30

-[ ] Send a probe to New Ireland
New Ireland is mainly a refueling station, located on a chunk of ice from the rogue planet Lucifer. They process the ice into hydrogen and oxygen, selling the products as fuel for haulers on a round trip. A simple self-destructing probe can get in radio range of them and exchange your tightbeam comms protocols. DC 25

-[ ] Send a probe to Deckard Station
Maybe you should just go through New Ireland, but you can't well be faulted for trying if no one technically told you their political situation. And who knows, maybe you can get a better deal by talking with them directly. DC 25

-[ ] Send a probe to the Children of Dreamers
People with strange beliefs are nothing new and these ones are your closest neighbors. Surely they have some needs that you could fulfill or vice versa. DC 25

-[ ] Send a probe to the Prismdust research base
A research colony is usually well supplied by their patron, but they might have interesting patents to sell you and collaborative research, while a logistical nightmare, might produce some revolutionary results. DC 20

-[ ] Send a probe to the private resort
If it's some trillionaires party house, then something as exotic as locally sourced fruits and vegetables might very well fetch a price that would be ridiculous elsewhere. And the security staff have needs too, maybe you can undercut their current supplier. DC 25

-[ ] Smooth relations with the EU
The whole 'your colony, my colony' thing was so long ago, who even remembers these things anymore. Surely we can all just let bygones be bygones and start on a blank page. DC 85

-[ ] Introduce yourself to the neighbors
What it says on the tin. With your upgraded comms, you can send out an all-purpose greeting and find out if someone else wants something from you. Why do you have to do all the legwork, let them come to you instead. Genius. DC 40​

Miss Carpenter projects an air of confidence and her no nonsense attitude backs up her demeanor. Perhaps a bit headstrong and stubborn, but as long as you don't act against her she'll likely be quite competent. After a successful operation under her belt and her necessity in the colony thoroughly proven, there's no doubt that she's in her element as a commander of your executive branch. Choose 1 security action to focus her on.

[ ] Security

-[ ] Armor improvement
Your troops are kitted out with light power armor, but there's plenty of things to improve. A better compound material for shielding, an improved power profile for increased recon range, maybe even comms equipment for increased bandwidth. In addition to general enhancements, you might want to start work on specializing the light armor for different purposes. DC 50

-[ ] Squads
Your colony has a surprisingly professional and well liked security force, largely thanks to the expertise of your sheriff. While you probably don't need more right this instant and lack the means to equip them, looking ahead can't hurt. See if more people might be interested in joining the forces. DC 50

-[ ] Ships
Buying anything better than a tugboat attached to a fuel tanker is expensive. Really, really expensive. But you need to be able to project your power beyond your immediate colony. Whether as a statement to accompany your diplomats or as strike craft against asteroids or pirates, you'll be on the market for a proper spacecraft. DC 70

-[ ] Professional army
So it might be a bit presumptuous to call two squads of enthusiasts an army, but it's a start. Fitness, team tactics, leadership exercises, rules of engagement and the like, alongside some live fire exercises to develop team cohesion are a good early basis for an officer corps. Ultimately you have dreams both of statehood and of mercenary groups you can rent out for sweet, sweet profit. DC 30

-[ ] Weapon patents
The guns you have are still in limited supply, no one wants to arm every random space rock after all. Do some shopping and convince a manufacturer to grant you access to their design specs so that you could start producing your own ammo and weapons. Or, failing that, try to build your own. DC 50

-[ ] Better armaments
Turns out neither you nor anyone on your immediate staff is a trained soldier, so the weapons you got were probably more flash than bang. Not that they are completely useless, just that they could be so much better. Hunker down with your sheriff and find a better set of offensive equipment for your troops. DC 40

-[ ] Heavy armor
Instead of the mobile suits you have for everyday work, you want Power Armor with a capital letter, the real space marine stuff. You'll try to buy it, but most governments are unlikely to sell what basically amounts to a personal tank to people, so be prepared to start your own designs. DC 60

-[ ] Jetpacks
Combat mobility is key and especially in a zero gravity environment you want your troops to have all the possible tactical advantages. The basic ship maintenance stuff has tiny thrusters to control yourself, but the combat variant would be much stronger and come with proper dampening software and trajectory control. DC 40

-[ ] Armored personnel carrier
A support vehicle for ground based combat, capable of light fire support, however its main purpose is to serve as a safer way to get infantry into combat zones. Its current usefulness to you is questionable, but you never know. You've been on both the unprepared and over-prepared side and you know which you'd like to be on. Whether there's someone out there that produces APCs for a microgravity environment is a different matter. DC 55

-[ ] Drones
Just imagining combat inside a spaceship gives you the chills. Information is worth more than bullets in many cases and a tiny camera can't be too hard to stick on some legs. The classic flying approach from Earth doesn't work without an atmosphere, but some skittering spiderbots should be within your means of development and production. DC 50​

You and Ken often find yourselves working together; engineering as an honest means of work is something you're both intimately familiar with. Likewise you both know that a space station's engineers are her lifeblood, so you've hit it off quite well with the man. Far from being a simple farmer, he does have a solid base in nearly all things mechanical and you shore up the electric side of things. While he's still shy, his beer is to die for. Choose 2 projects to start building.

[ ] Engineering

-[ ] Farms expansion
You've a solid culture of different plants, but as you continue to grow it's just not enough. Build another tower next to the first one and get more food. Ken is always happy to try new strains and cultures of plants and growing more of the old stuff is just as fine with him. DC 30

-[ ] Aerogel quarry
You might not have the full picture regarding the deposit, but you know for a fact that if you carefully chisel out massive sheets of the stuff then you can get at least equally massive amounts of dosh for them in exchange. Can't go wrong with massive amounts of dosh. DC 50

-[ ] Fuel refineries
Instead of trading away leftover oxygen as a low quality, low yield fuel replacement, get proper cooling towers and better filtration systems, start importing larger amounts of hydrogen and maybe even water for industrial electrolysis. Sure you'll be intruding a bit on your neighbor's market, but they'll be out of the production business soon enough anyways. DC 50

-[ ] Luxury living space
The current apartments are adequate, but not luxurious. Expand the existing ones by including more floors and extra amenities. DC 40, can be taken with More living space for DC 55, counts as 1 action

-[ ] More living space
Now that actual money is rolling in and you're firmly established, more and more people will be coming. It's a good idea to stay ahead of the curve and start up a second complex of living space, you've even laid some groundwork with the holding cell you built for those colonists. DC 10, can be taken with Luxury living space for DC 55, counts as 1 action

-[ ] Docks
Your launch facilities are in a word pathetic. Refueling takes ages and is wasteful, you need to cart the supplies way too far and there's still a very real risk of something crashing directly into your domes. Set up something resembling a dock, instead of having a nice flat patch of rock some half a kilometer away serving as a launch site. DC 50

-[ ] Transportation
Moving to and from any installation on the surface is perilous. Low G walks under the blackness are scary and slow and you have almost no redundant cars. Ken pointed out that while you're small now, a robust metro network is never set up soon enough. The lack of unoccupied mining equipment is but a minor concern they assure you. DC 55

-[ ] Industrial capacitor bank
A massive array of capacitors that can be used to fully charge a spaceship's batteries in a few hours. While bigger vessels have means of generating their own power, they can occasionally carry empty cells to reload and sell. Smaller ships meanwhile need a recharge almost as often as a refueling. Also, there are other possible uses for massive and sudden energy releasing, namely railguns and mass drivers. Alas, this stuff is really, really, expensive. DC 65

-[ ] Industrial battery bank
A marginally cheaper alternative to capacitors, an oversized battery bank means that even if some disaster wipes out your energy farms, you'll have a month or so to do repairs before the air cyclers stop running. And you won't be wasting energy most of the time if you have a good reservoir to pump it into. DC 55

-[ ] Communal space
How's a dictator supposed to give rousing speeches to their people without a wide plaza and a balcony. Jokes aside, the harvest festival brought to your attention the fact that people don't have a sufficiently large area for gathering. Fostering a strong sense of community is something Hailey is constantly on your case about, and a space should be set aside for it. DC 35

-[ ] Aquaculture
Ken has come to you with a rather strange idea. The water cisterns you currently have are filled with distilled, pure H2O and you regularly add mineral content to it between the tank and a tap. What if you instead switched the injectors for filters and opened up the tanks. And then, he tells you, put fish in them. Most mammals and birds fare poorly in the super-low gravity, but supposedly fish mostly do fine and the stuff humans like to drink is an ideal environment to grow them. DC 60

-[ ] Bakery
The closest thing to fresh bread you've had in years are the dry crackers from the ration packs that, rumors say, expand when you apply moisture. You now have a variety of grains, things like rye bread and rice cookies would definitely sell like hot cakes. Also, muffins, 'nuff said. DC 30

-[ ] Fission power plant
Sure you've a good system developed for powering your stuff, but diversity is a strength. Unlike the free sunlight, you'd need to import uranium, possibly refine it too, not to mention the difficulty of developing and constructing a plant from scratch. On the plus side, waste isn't a problem when you've the world's biggest incinerator staring down on you and no pesky gravity to stop you from chucking things in. DC 80

-[ ] Fusion power plant
This is what the big boys use. There's a total of three functional ones on Earth, one on Mars and probably a few on some cutting edge satellites and military cruisers, so it might be worth it to build one just for the prestige alone. It'll also mean that as long as you have access to the most abundant element in the world you can produce power. Not to mention the potential scientific benefits. DC 95​

A quiet individual, it took you months to find out that one of the children in your colony was the daughter of your personnel manager. When Ragnar Erikson does contribute to the conversation, it's usually a well thought out response or an insightful comment and his action plans are clear and concise. Perhaps this is just his way of separating his occasionally thankless job and his private life, as he seems to get along with Hailey at least. Choose 1 action.

[ ] Internal Affairs

-[ ] Background checks
Sure, you've vetted everybody important on board, but can they spot the lies on their underlings' resumes? Didn't think they had any? Maybe, but now you're thinking about it. Look into the staff of your staff, maybe they let someone accidentally slip through. If you intend to maintain control of your colony you'll need all the info you can get. Sic your spymas- set internal affairs to finding out about the people here, see what they'll dig up. DC 25

-[ ] Census
Take stock of your current populace. Where do they come from, what do they think of life here, familial status, religious affiliation, occupations, etc. DC 30

-[ ] Thorough check - Ken Hiragi
There's something about the nice, quiet ones. Erikson brought to your attention the barest of possibilities, but you should still follow up and reassure yourself. DC 50

-[ ] Thorough check - Lena Weissmeier
Why is she so secretive, what sinister motives could she have? Remember, it's only rude to pry if you get caught doing it. And no, this does not count as stalking or harassment, you're doing this for security reasons. DC 60

-[ ] Emergency generators
Your current power supply is awfully vulnerable to forces of nature and targeted attacks alike. Set up well hidden, well shielded and separately supplied backup generators that would at least sustain basic life support around your compound should something happen to the solar fields. DC 30

-[ ] Poke the black site
Alright, so you're not going to launch a probe to knock on their front door, but if a casual solar wind analyzer happens to pass by, they'd surely have more to lose by reacting to it. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it gave man the stars and if you've built a house next to a wolf den then you should make sure to guard your sheep. Err, bad analogy, you definitely don't think of your people as sheep. Anyways, try to find out anything about your secret neighbor. DC 75

-[ ] The colonists
Why did Europe come after your rock so insistently? Sure it's a lovely rock, but as you sent them packing, it clearly wasn't worth fighting over. Was it just an overzealous officer? Find out what you can about the expedition to Little Klondike and the lead officer, one Lisette Rousseau. DC 50

-[ ] Schooling
As your colony grows and your colonists settle in and start to consider the place a home instead of a place to work for some time, you'll start having less young single childless people and more expectant families. Not to mention that more and more pre-existing families are also willing to come over. Give the children a competitive education. Or bash them with books until they can recite them backwards. DC 30

-[ ] Global WIFI
With generally expanded data transfer equipment set up in your central complex, you can fix the issue of having communication on your proverbial backside. At the moment you need to route through your silver mine tower and the single mobile antenna you have. Set up towers all over Little Klondike to grant adequate internet connection to every nook and cranny. DC 50​

Miss Weissmeier is a younger, more conventionally beautiful and feminine version of Miss Carpenter. Even in zero G she wears a dark business skirt and heels, her reports are thorough and drier than a vacuum, but you can't fault her data or methods. She might be the youngest on your council, and in rare moments her lack of life experience shows, but you're quite glad to have someone with medical expertise on standby at all times. Choose 1 subject.

[ ] Research

-[ ] Mineral surveys
The general readings claim that your rock should have a good balance of light and heavy metals, silicates and oxygen rich rock, and who knows what else. You've gone over the surrounding top soil, for lack of a better term, but there's more to the asteroid both in depth as well as further out, keep looking for more minerals. DC 40

-[ ] Medic Training
The people in your colony come from various backgrounds and educations, but lifesaving knowledge is something everyone should have. Expand the rudimentary programs currently set up and make it a mandatory part of life on this rock. It will cut into productivity a bit but it'll be worth it to literally save lives. DC 20

-[ ] Oncology ward
The next step towards a fully-fledged space hospital is a cancer ward. Cosmic radiation can be mitigated quite well these days, but ultimately the human cell is still the same as it was thousands of years ago. For most colonists, there's the option of flying back to Earth for treatment if the tumor is detected on time, but you'd like to be better than that. DC 60

-[ ] Silver nanites
Miss Weissmeier has charmed you into supporting her research on silver nanomachines for medical purposes. It'll be easier now that you have proper mining set up for the silver, your refining options are greatly expanded and you actually have a lab; thus she assures you that she can start her work now, if you give her the green light. DC 60

-[ ] Solar wind capture
The lighter the element, the less likely you are to find a good supply of it around here. Unfortunately hydrogen is one of those, yet you need a constant supply of it. It's used in many, many chemical reactions and synthesizing processes, it's a prime component of rocket fuel and the only component of fusion fuel. It's also hard to keep recycling it, as the tiny gas can leak through most seals in time. Thus, try to catch some of the material that the Sun constantly bombards you with. DC 80

-[ ] Magnetic field research
A key component of fusion, magnetic fields can be used to direct a stream of particles. Similarly, Earth enjoys a protective shell shielding her from harmful radiation thanks to a massive iron core generating immensely big fields. Could there be anything you can do to replicate these effects? Or perhaps probing one of the fundamental forces of the universe might reveal some new applications that people haven't thought of or haven't needed so far. DC 70

-[ ] Primitive AI
They always say that true artificial intelligence is ten years away at most. They've been saying it all your life in fact, so it must be true. Mostly, the nonexistence of AI is attributed to a treaty known as the Tokyo Convention, but upon even a cursory glance at the text, there's clearly still room for research. The forbidden parts of AI have more to do with the moralities of developing something with feelings and ill-defined motivations than actual AI. Try to skirt that line and see where something barely smarter than a goldfish can take you. DC 50

-[ ] Life extension
Sure, you'll probably live to see a hundred and fifty, barring some accident. But if you want to enjoy eternal youth not eternal life, then you might want to put in your own contribution to the development of various life extension technologies. DC 60

-[ ] Natural aerogel
Normal aerogel remains costly as it's time consuming to make in large quantities and the size of any single piece is limited. What you have is thoroughly unique: both in its amount and its method of formation. Also, what did Weissmeier mean when she said it's not quite normal? DC 40

-[ ] Patent encryption breaking
There's several techs in your colony that you'd be able to produce yourself, in theory. From guns to motors to radios and lasers you should be able to make the components as prototypes in your lab. It's not industrial scale production and if someone caught wind of you using or worse yet, selling cracked products you'd be in trouble. But if you don't get caught then you'd be able to sustain your own needs just fine. DC 60​

Votes for the image of William O'Rielly standing as follows:
4 for image 1
1 for images 2, 4, 5

First to 5 wins, refer to turn 5 for the options.