Operation Red Star

Titan DMZ

Belts of quick-fabbed starship scaffolds ring the large, hazy moon of Saturn. Large ring objects, nudged gently into Titan's orbit are slowly hollowed out and eaten away, becoming space habitats and raw materials for a booming construction industry. Constellations of kilsats and carrier torches orbit at odd angles, covering every arc with the ability to launch kinetic mines and particle lances.

The Titan DMZ, encompassing almost the entirety of its orbital plane around Saturn, likely contains more antimatter warheads than anywhere else in the solar system.

Even as global powers eye each other nervously, interplanetary business concerns compete for attention, resources, contracts, and orbits from each major power, their business disputes erupting sporadically into outright sabotage and espionage. Domed cities on the surface host the office parks of competing hypercorps with rich parks and day spas between them, while their workers in the vast subsurface tunnels carry on vicious work gang brawls between each other. The embassy staffs work as much for the corporations as their respective government, and are traded between them like sports players between teams.

The outskirts of the domed cities of Aarhus, Union City, and Juren Chengshi are surrounded by bioroid factories and automated construction gear, preparing for a second wave of human colonization.

Technology

The technology is hard-sf and heavily inspired by Transhuman Space. Synthetic lifeforms (called synths or bioroids) are an emerging technology that is only in its second generation. On Titan, gangs of human workers, synthetics, and remotely operated shells work side by side to build the human presence. Whole brain emulation exists, but is currently an imperfect technology; the ghost of an individual created by the destructive uploading process isn't really the same person though to some, they are 'close enough'. Antimatter and fusion torches are the pinnacle of spaceflight technology. Embedded devices and smart materials color every aspect of day to day life. Reputation through official and unofficial network channels has become an accepted part of day-to-day life, though not, as some have hoped, a replacement for currency.

The Interrogation

You wake up cold and wet. Your finger reach out blindly and are blocked by cold glass. In a panic you thrash blindly, your limbs hitting hard curved surfaces. You try to breath, but your lungs are filled with a liquid. Darkness overtakes you again.

You wake up again, dry and clothed. You're dressed like a hospital patient with a thin smart jumpsuit, and there's an elastic band around your arm that almost certainly has a tracking device, if not outright shock system. You're in the custody of some corporation, but you're alive. That's better than you had any right to expect. The gravity is light, but not so light that you could be on Titan. A habitat, then, or a ship undergoing spin. You wait to meet your captors.

They're going to call it the worst act of corporate terror in decades - and that's without counting the secrets revealed and the distrust now seeping across corp and gov't lines. There are going to be recriminations. Media campaigns. Bullshit and lies. You've only just finished being glad to be alive; now you're wondering what, if anything, will happen to your story.

Secrets, Bargains, Lies

Character creation consists of a name, a concept, and five points distributed between Secrets, Bargain, and Lies. Characters are all being debriefed by an interrogator after some major event (which is the real story that's being revealed, bit by bit). They are assumed to be truthful - they are either under some form of compulsion, trust or want to help the interrogator (to whatever extent) or simply want to tell the story. The interrogator (GM) can override their version of events at any time, declaring that they know that something different happened or decide between alternate versions of events between PCs. The interrogator doesn't have to answer any questions. The exceptions are the secrets, bargains, and lies.

You can use a Secret to tell the interrogator something that's not the whole truth - you can omit key details, or your real motivation for doing something. The interrogator can't call you on it (though obviously you have to provide what really happened).

A Bargain is a bit of information that the interrogator is interested in and willing to trade some information of their own for. You can trade this bit of information for something from the interrogator - some bit of background or information about themselves or the other PCs that they must reveal.

You can also declare that something the interrogator says is a Lie. You know that their version of events *isn't* true, and why. You can choose to call them on it, or keep the knowledge that they're lying to yourself (again, you obviously need to provide how you know as part of your own stream of consciousness). This doesn't mean you can dictate what actually happened, just that you know they're lying for some reason.

You can use a point at any point in the interrogation, but once it's gone, it's gone. Game is over when we're out of Secrets, Bargains, or Lies, and the truth, whatever it is, is on the table.

Characters

Post your characters here. Your character should be someone that has business on Titan, preferably someone who gets around a bit. Your character could be an an official cover spy at the embassy, a hypercorp executive, a smuggling worker, an activist hacker, a terrorist, a corporate mercenary, a corrupt businessperson. Characters should generally be active people, people who might instigate events, or, if wrapped up in events beyond their control, actively attempt to become involved and change things. So, for example, a hypercorp executive who just wants to talk about product placement is bad, a mid-level executive who is eager to spin a potential catastrophe for their company is good. A mining worker who just wants to get through their shift is bad, a mining worker who is a former space marine is good. And of course, spies of all types are welcome.

You should include a name, a basic concept, something that you think was going on, and your distribution of Secrets, Bargains, and Lies.

Character List: