Tabletop Tuesday — A Tale of Traitors (Part Three)

It’s Tuesday again and I’m back with my series of traitorous garbage characters discussion. When I first thought of this as a topic it occurred to me that I had two stories—or maybe a semi-third—from a TTRPG point of view about weaving traitorous characters—and now I’m at the end of the trio (semi trio?)

Why is it semi? 

Because this time, though I’m heading back to Star Trek Adventures again, the traitor in question has only been hinted at, and might not even exist yet.

Because time travel.

Paradox Get it? “Ashes”? Because it’s the Phoenix Cluster?

In the second episode of my USS Curzon group, I threw the characters into a “Temporal Heptahelix.” What’s a temporal heptahelix? Well, it’s Treknobabble, but here’s the basics: they entered the Phoenix Cluster, an area of space overdue a survey ever since the Enterprise-D didn’t get around to it on account of Will Riker picking up an STI (Star Trek Infection) on Risa, and bringing it back to the ship where it spread among the crew, all of whom got brainwashed except for Wesley Crusher and Data but it all worked out in the end.

But that survey never happened, what with all the discs dropping into hungry tubes.

So, I sent the USS Curzon there, and when they arrived they found signs of former occupancy on a planet that was evolutionarily speaking way ahead of when humanoids should be there, and so the Captain, Security Officer (both NPCs) and some cadets (who were due a “survival skills” training session) went down to survey the site where there were apparently odd and old structures. This let me do two things: one, show off the Supporting Cast rules (which I’ve waxed poetic about before) by asking all the players to create some cadets and/or take on the role of the Security Officer; and two, underline that the Captain was a former A&A Officer, and greatly interested in cultural and anthropological sites.

Meanwhile, the starship warped off to the next star, leaving the cadets, Captain, and Lieutenant behind to survey these strange ruins, with the notion they’d be “right back” to pick them up within a couple of days, while the cadets learned how to “rough it” (albeit with multiple two shuttles worth of supplies).

Unfortunately, things went wrong immediately. First, the ship found itself lurching from the oort cloud of the system into another one immediately—that made no sense—and also multiple system failures went off, and the short version is this: it turns out the Phoenix Cluster wasn’t a collection of stars, a proto-star nebula, and something else, it was actually the same star at seven different points in its lifetime, and the ship was stuck in a helix that moved it from one time period to another whenever it tried to go past the borders of the system.

When daylight broke on the planet with the Captain, Lieutenant, and cadets? A stone appeared in the centre of the structures they were exploring, as if conjured by sunlight. One of the cadets—Brinner Kol, a botany cadet created by the wonderful Evan May—touched it. This was bad for him. But it sent off a wave of energy through all seven timelines and the Curzon started to realize they needed to (a) figure out how to realign all these seven distinct timelines, and (b) likely needed to do so after recovering the captain, in order not to strand them millions of years in the past.

Oh, and then people started slipping through time.

And you get a Vision, and you get a Vision!

While the crew were desperately trying to figure out what was going on (including cracking a language on what was apparently an abandoned M-class planet who’d used that stone to somehow buy themselves more time to escape the star’s rush-towards-expansion by jumping into the past to create sleeper ships to get the hell out of Dodge), they started “slipping” into their pasts or futures at random, reliving moments (if it was the past) or being along for the ride of glimpses of potential futures if it went in the other direction.

For one of the those characters, Ensign Miari Grix (the ship’s Operations officer, who likes machines way more than she likes people, has an odd relationship with her symbiont where she doesn’t experience the emotionality of her past hosts, only the factual side of memories, and is generally just as prickly on the outside as she appears; played to perfection by Hudson Lin), this side-trip to the future was particularly bad.

Because she was being interviewed by two JAG officers who were asking her exactly when she became first aware of the traitor on the Curzon.

So, Wait, Is There a Traitor or Not?

Maybe. At first, Grix threw herself into trying to figure it out, but then, over time, as she needed to involve more of the crew (read: the other players), it became clear there was a potential for the traitor to not be there yet. Part of the interview Grix saw included mention of a stardate, and that stardate was between two and three years later than the current time. Also, she and the JAG officers were in a different uniform—a grey one, rather than the black jumpsuit with yellow, blue, or red shoulders—which was another checkmark in the “this might happen later” column.

The players realized they very well could have ruled someone out already who would later decide to betray the ship. Or maybe it was someone they hadn’t met yet. Also? Through their own actions in looking into the potentially suspicious activities of one crew person, they uncovered something else that was against the regulations—and changed that crew person’s view of the future, preventing it from happening.

So the futures they saw? They can change.

Eventually, Grix included the rest of the senior staff, theorizing that even if it was one of them, they’d be in a position to hide it from her anyway, so better to have all the senior staff aware of what was going on—or might go on in the future—and the Captain eventually settled things with, “we stay aware, but we can’t be paranoid about this.” They can’t second-guess everyone and everything—but they know it’s a possibility, and to keep their eyes open.

Yeah, but ‘Nathan, is there a traitor?

You bet your spotted Trill buttocks there will be. But is that person already a traitor? Is that person already plotting? Is that person already on board?

They’ll have to wait to find that out. The whole reason I did the glimpses of the future in the first place was to cement some “potentials” for the players, underline some relationships for their characters that might develop, and to drop some sense of long-term continuity into the game right out of the gate, but I wont lie: “the Traitor” plot is the one I’ve worked on the most. Eventually, all will be revealed, but this is why I considered this story kind of a “half” of a Traitor story.

We’re not there yet.

What about your games? Ever included any glimpses of the future for your players? I was nervous to do it, but they all jumped in with both feet and it’s been fun as those events get closer. Any time I want to ratchet up the tension for the ship’s counsellor, I just mention a certain crewman’s length of hair (she’s growing it out, and his vision included talking to her when her hair was of a certain length, and they were talking about something bad having just happened). The first officer has a really rough conversation in his future with his former brother-in-law. The science officer already wrestled with “was this free will or did I just let myself kiss that guy because I already knew I’d wake up with him at some point in the future”? Oh, and the chief engineer totally saw the ship falling to pieces.

It’s been fun.