Moe Lane's Blog, page 37
August 9, 2025
Megacorporations, Part 2B (Unfiltered)
Still on this stuff.
…
NGOs:
Adjudication Council: the Great Powers use the Council to manage the current interstellar spaceship monopoly. The Council uses a curation selection of megacorps to handle procurement. The megacorps hire out various contractors to actually build the ships. The Process oversees the whole thing, to watch for corruption, expense padding, and/or diversion of resources. Whether it would actually do anything about any of that, assuming that quarterly goals are still being reached, is another question.Survey/Colonization Initiative: S/CI has contracted out transportation facilities and shipments to the Mercury Group (a consortium of megacorps specializing in transportation and accommodation services). Once in the Mercury Group’s official pipeline, a transportee is guaranteed safe transit to the colony worlds, with as little anguish and suffering as can be expected in such a regrettably necessary situation. Even the suggestion that not every transporter makes it into the pipeline is scurrilous.Lunar Authority: the LA can be seen as a megacorp itself, in its way. It sells housing and resources to mining colonies and industrial complexes across the solar system, handling the infrastructure and allowing the megacorps to focus on resource extraction. It is also the NGO that has the most isolated outposts and overlooked locations. The Solar System is an extremely large place.United Nations Scientific Organization: the UNSO needs and dislikes megacorps in equal measure. Corporate expeditions are the most reliable sources of alientech, and the megacorps know it. However, the UNSO is the best source of the expertise needed to keep new alientech from exploding, imploding, dissolving, or forming a temporary micro-singularity, and the NGO knows it. This can lead to an interesting dynamic between the UNSO and salvage-focused megacorps, as well as particularly fraught salvage expeditions.Terra United: No megacorporation openly supports Terra United, despite the fact that a one-world government would make things more consistent for financial planners. On the other hand, Terra United rarely lacks for resources.Other Megacorporations: the megacorps avoid creating unsanctioned monopolies, on the sensible grounds that actually succeeding would make them the immediate subject of a Great Power intervention. Likewise, megacorps do not fight each other on Earth, as there is too much for everyone to lose. What happens behind the Oort Cloud is a different affair.
Patreon!
Book of the Week: Daindreth’s Assassin.
So I grabbed Daindreth’s Assassin because Elisabeth Wheatley did a small Facebook Reel about what it was like to write Romantasy (fantasy romance, in other words) while being a Christian. More accurately, I grabbed it because one of her commenters attempted to denigrate her faith, in that special oh-I’m-so-disappointed-in-an-enlightened-superior-way-at-your-beliefs sort of way that you get from people whose hot messes have hot messes. I could have unloaded at the commenter, but where’s the fun in that?
Anyway, the book’s been pretty good, so far. I think I might pick up the series, in fact. Isn’t it awesome when evil doth evil mar?
#commissionearned
August 8, 2025
‘5 Years Time.’
When I finally see SUPERMAN again I’m probably going to start out by watching this scene again. It was fun, fun, fun.
5 Years Time, Noah and The Whale
#commissionearned
WEAPONS looks promising.
My eldest is definitely seeing WEAPONS on Sunday: I just have to decide whether to go with him. It’s not entirely my style, but it’s also a chance to get out of the house. Plus, movies are a thing I try to do with my kids.
Must ponder.
July 13, 2025
It was a fun wedding.
A somewhat hot wedding, though. The kind where you gravitate to the air conditioning when you absolutely don’t have to be somewhere else. We had a good time, though. Then again, I’m at the age where the news that the hotel room had really good curtains is a good time, all on its own.
The THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS Retro-trailer.
Yeah, yeah, I know THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS is likely gonna be bad. But it’s a good trailer. I like the aesthetic.
Patreon Microfiction: Waste Not, Want Not.
“Waste Not, Want Note” reminds us that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or, in this case, supernatural raw material. But, hey! Maybe the end product is strictly for foreign use…
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July 12, 2025
Encounter Seed: The Secret Door to DOOM.
This has a certain flavor to it, yes. Turns out an expansion on this will not be needed, after all. Enjoy!
The Secret Door to DOOM
The party goes through a Secret Door. On the other side is an abbreviated dungeon complex, currently being overrun by the DOOM. The DOOM is not currently advancing. According to the defenders, the DOOM has consumed the rest of the world.
There are three groups who are defending against the DOOM:
The Fatalists. This is a grab-bag of various species and character classes who know that they’re going to die, and just want to go down swinging (everyone even slightly prone to suicide has already done so). Their goal is to inflict as much pain on the DOOM as possible before the end.The Optimists. This is a collection of the very last remnants of the armies who fought the DOOM, heavy on the paladins and clerics. They remain convinced that resistance is not futile, despite all indications to the contrary (everyone even slightly prone to despair has already succumbed to it). Their goal is to protect the others, until the end.The Preservers. This is all that remains of an order of scholars and arcanists who dedicated their lives to study and knowledge. They swore an oath to keep safe a powerful artifact (the Reliquary of Wisdom) that contains all the knowledge and lore of their home plane. Their goal is to keep the Reliquary safe, for as long as they live.These groups are not at first hostile to the party. But once the situation is explained, each group will independently and immediately come to the conclusion that if people can enter their plane of existence via a Secret Door, then people can leave it the same way. One of the defenders will try to go through it, only to discover that he cannot pass through the portal.
The groups will then try to work out why. Casting detect magic on the Secret Door will tell any magic-user with the Arcana skill that it is specifically linked with ethereal strands (use your own arcane doubletalk to suit) to the people who passed through. As long as they’re still on this side, the Secret Door will not let anyone else through. There’s also a fairly hefty weight limit. Each party member can bring back up to ten pounds of stuff with him (more if he drops some of his existing gear).
However, if one of the people with a strand dies, a competent spellcaster should be able to link up the now-open strand to a replacement. If the entire party dies, a group of spellcasters might simply jam the Secret Door open long enough for everybody else to get through.
The groups will react to this news as follows:
The Fatalists were only that way because they had no choice. Given a chance to make new ones, they will, and not to the benefit of the players. Some of the Fatalists will advocate killing a couple of party members to give the most worthy a chance at life, some will argue that the whole party must be sacrificed for the good of the many, and an unfortunate number of Fatalists will start backstabbing anybody who looks like they might have a chance at an open slot.The Optimists’ collective moral codes will not let them kill the party. Those codes will let them try to destroy the Secret Door itself, whether the party’s still on this side, or not. Allowing the DOOM a chance to spread to another world is just too high a risk to take. The Optimists won’t immediately try their sabotage plan, but the longer the party is present, the more likely it becomes that they try it.The Preservers have a simple deal for the party. The Reliquary of Wisdom must be preserved, at literally all cost. If the party is willing to take it back with them, the Preservers will do everything in their power to help the party. Can the Reliquary be brought back? Yes, but it weighs fifty pounds. That’s going to put a big dent in the party’s weight allowance.What would have happened if the party that came through the Secret Door was a bunch of first-level characters without agency: The Fatalists will be the first to discover the conditions of the Secret Door. They promptly seize the entry point, then proceed to scheme and plot until they can grab the entire party, and sacrifice them in order to hold the Secret Door open.
The Optimists attempt to stop this, but fail, because the Preservers will come in on the side of the Fatalists, in exchange for the Fatalists allowing the Reliquary of Wisdom to be brought through the Secret Door. The Fatalists agree to this, without even thinking of a double-cross. Unfortunately, the Preservers do do a double-cross, attempting to kill the Fatalists now linked to the Secret Door from breaking the connection once the Reliquary has passed through. That fight decimates both factions.
Meanwhile, the Optimists (trying to hold off the DOOM by themselves) are slaughtered, and the DOOM rushes in — and right through the Secret Door, killing everybody else in the process. The spell that created the Secret Door was critically damaged, allowing the DOOM to burst through. It cannot destroy the other universe, but it will do a lot of damage to the countryside before it decoheres under pressure from the new reality. So, to recap: the original party dies screaming under multiple knives, the Fatalists sacrifice a bunch of sapients and get nothing in exchange for it, the Optimists bitterly die futile deaths defending people who frankly don’t deserve it, and the Preservers don’t preserve a single, solitary thing. Oh, and a lot more innocent people die.
On the bright side? Anything better than this is a net good.
Questions:
What’s the party’s victory condition? The party getting back out with a couple of pieces of gear upgraded to +1 feels reasonable. Getting out with the Reliquary of Wisdom is a serious victory. There are plenty of mages who would pay through the nose to buy an artifact of that power level. Intangibly, the party gets to wrestle with some moral dilemmas, and possibly some desperate NPCs. That’s always interesting.
Can the Secret Door be destroyed? Sort of. If that happens, the party will find itself being dragged back through it, to the Optimists’ secret relief. Getting tossed out like that will hurt, though. 8d6 damage seems reasonable. Or, if you want to be really nasty, 3 levels of Exhaustion. My DM threw that at me a few sessions back, and it well and truly was a not-fun experience.
What happens if the party turns right back around and goes back through the Secret Door? Yes, that’s the smart choice. They’d better make it before one of the defending groups figures out the situation, because after that the portal’s going to be guarded. If the party does show a certain healthy paranoia and gets while the getting is still good, scowl a little and mutter, “Maybe next time.” That’s a fine reward for them, honestly.
Can the party defeat the defenders? No, as long as all three groups are still working together. With the help of one of the groups, the party should be able to defeat one of the other ones with only some difficulty.
Is there loot? Tons. There’s plenty of gold pieces, but smart adventurers will grab the jewels, instead. Also, +1 weapons and armor litter the remains of the dungeon. Players should be able to scrounge up minor magical replacements to their mundane gear. All the good stuff was already looted by the defenders, though.
What is the DOOM? I don’t know. Whatever makes your group sweat a lot. A tarrasque, I guess — and no, I don’t know how it’s getting around in a dungeon complex, either. Maybe it’s eating the walls. …Huh. That actually would work. Yeah, it’s eating the dungeon complex, and reality with it. Don’t look past it, to the void beyond. Because it’s a real void, not the edgy, trendy ones you get these days.
Can the party reason with the DOOM? No, the defenders have already tried to do that. Turns out that it’s not particularly sapient, and it is definitely hungry.
Can the party defeat the DOOM? Yes, actually. Or at least at first. The defenders keep dissipating the DOOM, but either it reforms, or there are multiple DOOMs out there, and another one quickly comes to take its place. This is a war of attrition, and the defenders are running out of resources.
What if some of the defenders get through? Or worse, the DOOM? Any escaping defenders will find themselves in a dangerous dungeon, low on spells and hitpoints, with no friends or support. This is still better for them than before. As for the DOOM: the Secret Door will snap shut before too much of it gets through. What’s left on the other side is probably defeatable. Probably. Roll for initiative.
What if the party figures out how to fix all of this? Give them cookies, and Inspiration Points. You’re not trying to kill them all, after all.
