Wednesday, April 22, 2015

112. The Village

The devastation of Earth was thorough, but is not total. The planet suffers from roving nanoswarms, radioactive fallout, mass extinctions, chaotic weather and continuing bombardment, but while total extinction was well within TITAN capabilities, the environment has suffered as collateral damage. There are patches of the planet that, due to isolation, protective geography, or sheer luck, seem almost untouched.

In one of these peaceful places, a single village lives on, seemingly indifferent to the troubles of Earth. The residents farm, run a few small businesses, and, somehow, live as they always have.

Plot Hook: The village is a TITAN honeypot trap for survivors. The villagers are genuinely human, but have been carefully edited so that they cannot understand the events of the Fall or the threat of the TITANs. They are otherwise friendly, and will offer shelter and basic supplies to survivors. At midnight, they will enter a trance-like state and kill any survivors who have taken shelter with them. The players are tasked with investigating the disappearances of the villages former victims.

Plot Hook: The village is a survivor honeypot trap for TITAN war-machines. The village consists of buildings rigged to give off statistically plausible infrared and wireless emissions, and a handful of worker pods, puppeted by AIs programmed to carry out simple village life. Any TITAN machine that attacks what looks like an easy target falls prey to IEDs, sappers and seeker nests. This time, however, the village has bit of more than it can chew, and disabled, but not destroyed, a fractal. The players must travel to the village and either retrieve the fractal for study at base, or study it in place, while defending the village from further attacks.

Plot Hook: The village is the control of a TITAN social experiment. In the chaos of the Fall, one TITAN was having difficulty establishing a baseline for its psychological/sociological/memetic experiments. The village's isolation kept it relatively intact, and TITAN protection guaranteed its security. The villages residents are aware of the Fall and evacuation of Earth, but are afraid to leave. The village itself has always remained peaceful, isolated even from the extreme environments of post-Fall Earth, whereas those who leave lose their protection and have never returned. The villagers have made radio contact with the players and asked them to aid in the evacuation of a resident determined to leave anyway.

Plot Hook: The village is genuine, having survived the Fall through isolation and incredible luck. It is slowly dying, however, as crop yields fall and the environment sickens. They must evacuate, but evacuate several hundred stack-less flats from Earth is virtually impossible.

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