Operation Euthanasia
Premise
SOLARIA – the forgotten, the forsaken, the forbidden.
The first sacrifice in the name of power was comprehension.
What Solaria was, once, in the timeless past, defies classification and defies description. The final civilisation of the cosmos, it reached boundless heights and depths. The apex and nadir of creation, it filled the cosmos, and the cosmos was it. Life and death, creation and destruction, time and space – there were no absolutes left, merely whims of intellects so distant that their roots could no longer be discerned, a triumph of an absolute will upon reality.
Yet, driven by a desire that transcended what could still be called arrogance, Solaria moved to grasp the one thing that was claimed to exist beyond it. The gate that must never be opened was, and humanity reached inside and plucked the sleeping God from his heaven as one would a plum from a tree.
Thus speak the surviving records, streams of data pouring into your brains as you wake inside your capsules.
What happened? How much time passed? There are no answers, the once-glorious halls of Solaria’s golden age now tarnished and rotting, gilding long since replaced by bloodied gauze.
Cosmos itself is rotting, a process that had full time to bear its terrible fruit, reality decaying to the agonal beat of an unseen heart. The once invincible civilisation dissolved in a sea of suffering – mindless, pointless, blinding, searing. Yet, it does not die. It cannot die. It is not allowed to.
In the ultimate depths of the Megastructure, the crown jewel of Forbidden Solaria, the vivisected God writhes on the altar of ultimate hubris, turned into its final engine, and his suffering bleeds into reality, slowly corroding it as it descends into madness.
Only one thing remains, one final act to perhaps preserve what is left, or to finally put it out of its misery.
You must euthanise God.
Rules
Character Creation
Waking from capsules on the upper levels of the Megastructure, you have penetrated the outer layers of corroded space that surround it, reality turned into white noise. You have little hope for outside aid; fragments of Solaria’s once-invincible autonomous battlefleets yet remain, greatly limiting what can be sent in by those who still remain in the outside world. You are not the first ones to descend; you might be the last. Nevertheless, the objective uniting you remains clear, and through great effort and sacrifices, were equipped with a weapon of absolute destruction – the Existence Denial Enforcement Nucleus, or EDEN, a perfectly-black sphere approximately the size of a human head - that can fulfill it.
Gathered from across the ruined time and space of a universe going mad, you have considerable freedom to define exactly what champions were given this task, why and by whom. Was it an honour or a punishment? Aesthetic here leans towards far-future science-fiction and cyber-dungeons, but feel free to pursue your heart’s desire. There is very little that could not have been done, once upon a time.
The heights of Solaria are long past, miraculous technology long reduced to rotting, incomprehensible ruins. Yet, examples of it still remain.
Your character is allowed one such device, capable of extreme effects, but which can only be used once per session. Take care of them; they are the last lights of a golden age that will never come back, and perhaps must not. Feel free to come up with something that you feel suits your character concept. It can be pretty out there! You will not need to roll, it'll
You also have one piece of more contemporary gear at your disposal, offering 5 automatic successes for some specific circumstance or action. This can be a weapon, armour, device etc – essentially, it’s something that can give you a bit of certainty about something that your character is supposed to be good at against the ravages of RNG.
Besides that, you are given a certain supply (40) of stat points to distribute in following stats, representing innate capabilities, special skills, body modifications, equipment etc etc, as desired:
- Tactical – the stat of physical action and taking lives, whatever your means. Straightforward.
- Strategic – the stat of investigation, planning, understanding and use of technology. Can be used to lend additional dice to others on their rolls.
- Communication – the stat of establishing bonds and understanding. Not all inhabitants of the Megastructure are fully claimed by madness yet. Can also be used to communicate with Megastructure’s more advanced systems, which were once fully self-aware, even if little remains of most of them now.
- Integrity – the ability to withstand the corruption that fills the Megastructure and which threatens to crush you. Can also be directly spent to remove negative effects. Negative effects include death.
- Fate Simulation – the power to reject reality and rewrite outcomes. Rerolls, essentially. You get one of those free.
Your raw HP is equivalent to double your Tactical score, but damage can be ignored by spending a point of Integrity. Some extreme cases might not allow it, though – detonating your bomb early, for instance.
Both Integrity and Fate Simulation are spent, but will regenerate over time. Warning: the closer you are to Megastructure’s core and your target, the greater the pressure you face will be, and the regeneration process might become more difficult. Generally speaking, it’ll be a lot easier to regenerate HP than either of those, though.
Characters
Absolute Military System 'Sophia'
Information
Key information collected during the game will be put here, as you learn more about the situation within the Solarian Megastructure and the various elements still at work within.