Casting Shadows

Not as much the most-recent time, but the two times before that, I went almost as deep into building readiness to both run and play Blue Planet as I have gone this time. It’s like the first few times, but with momentum. I have gone so deep, so fast, that the bends or explosive decompression are inevitable should I choose to surface. Come on in, the water’s fine…after a few genetic modifications…and with some armed friends on overwatch… with torpedoes.

This effort to break the Blue Planet curse under which I suffer will feature alternating GMs, troupe play, and a lot of 1:1 sessions. The jury is out on whether all or some of the sessions will be recorded, but as I owe a huge debt of time to all the unedited sessions of Call of Cthulhu: Turn of a New Leaf to pay, I am leaning to recording specific sessions and regular recaps and reports on the campaign rather than each moment of play. We’ll see.

Over the past few weeks, during my commute, I have been spending a lot of time putting my imagination to work inhabiting the world of Poseidon and all that that entails. I have been paying particular attention to the little details that matter to a character’s perspective, like what biocrete might feel like and sound like underfoot, and what tang a saltier ocean might carry. I wonder at the feel of loss the absence of gulls might evoke, and if the folk music of natives and newcomers alike might try to fill that void. I put my mind’s eye under a sky with two moons and nightly flares of launches to orbital stations. It’s not just that. It’s a world where uplifted cetaceans from earth vie with humanity for work and happiness. It’s a world with not just uplifted species, but three species of humanity we have created with blind luck, boldness, and more than our fare share of callousness. It’s a world we are in a rush to despoil with toxins and bloodshed.

It’s a world where the dream of immortality can be achieved… or at least, believed.

During these drives full of imagination inspired and supported by Blue Planet: Recontact I have been busy creating new vehicles, pub menus, tourist booths, and customs forms. I have been hearing the music and inane “TV show” themes of 2199. I have been seeing the stars in a new light, now that they are reachable – or at least one is. I have been feeling the creeping unease of a population that knows it has crossed a line, but isn’t ready to talk about why, how, or what they might do about it.

I have been seeing the livery, banners, and coats of arms of the new lords of the new, feudal frontier of corporate nation states and weakening governments. I have been tasting the futile hope and hopeful futility on the sea breezes blowing past the native street vendors and their seafood delights and past the segregated cafes with location-chipped servers in the high-end arcologies.

I have been considering characters, mine and those whose players I will be the GM for. Where do they fit on this world? What do they not expect, but should? What do they fear, but shouldn’t? What will be the result of their strivings and goals as Poseidon spins on in its curious way around Serpentis II with its two peculiar moons in tow? I have been considering the characters of the world as well, the NPCs. Where do they shop and what guilty treat do they indulge in? What taste of home, perhaps gone forever, do they miss. Do they dream of it as I might dream of my grandmother’s butterscotch pie?

As you can tell, Dear Reader, we are well and truly submerged and the images are easier to summon now. The mechanisms of the system are becoming clear and moving from the theoretical to the practical. The feel they invoke and the choices they frame and help decide are resolving into that comfortable feel of understanding as well.

It’s just a matter of time and tide now.

Life on Poseidon awaits in all its alien splendor and with all of its familiar danger.

Perhaps our voices, raised in play, speak the language of the gulls I have been looking for~