Thanks to: Josh Symonds, Benjamin Bernard, Alissa Mortenson Tyka, Matthew Sullivan-Barrett, Nathan Black, Benjamin Hains,

S. Ben Melhuish, Ben Wray, Joe Beason, Julie Southworth, Aaren Friesen, Jason Blalock, Lukas Myhan, Martino G., Jason Pitre, Dev Purkayastha, Adrian

Amidst Endless Quiet

Sprysak, Brent P Newhall, Baywei Chang, Guillaume Carré, Larry Lade, Andrew Hauge, Stras Acimovic, Joshua Crowe, Robert Reese, Evan Silberman, Quinn Murphy, John Bogart, Harman Duyker, Joe McDaldno,
Flavio Mortariano, Epidiah Ravachol, Cristoph Boeckle, Julia Nienaber, Joshua Ramsey, Johnstone Metzger, Raffaele Manzo, Peter Lehman, Carolyn Lehman, and others for their continuing patronage.

A roleplaying game for one or more player by Ben Lehman

You are Elios, a deep space transport en route them from their demographic information. And Game Rules
from Gliese to Zhou’s World. You’re never going in an absurd sop to human paranoia, your You, the person reading this, are Elios. You
to arrive at Zhou’s World. You’re going to die. engineers included within you a lifeboat, which make its choices and, when appropriate, portray
will maintain a human in sleep indefinitely it in play. Divide up control of the passengers
By absolute blind dumb luck, you have been
while transmitting for a rescue. It may be many between all other players, who will portray those
struck by a stray micrometeorite. A deep space
thousands of years before it is heard, but your characters in play. If you are playing alone, you
transport such as yourself isn’t designed to
journey was many thousands of years anyway. control all characters.
withstand any sort of impact, and you are currently
experiencing a catastrophic systems failure that But the lifeboat was never meant to be used. It Before you perish into the void of death, you
will end with your annihilation. You are devoting cannot hold all the humans. It cannot even hold have time for 20 actions with respect to your
all your resources attempting to jerry rig your self- most of them. It can only hold one. human cargo. In addition to this, you are of
modification systems to cope with the problem, course frantically and futilely fighting to maintain
Every human you are transporting is worth the
but you already know this is almost certainly your systems. At the end of these 20 actions,
expense and time of sending physically across
fruitless. And, with the last of your consciousness, you die, and any humans who are not loaded
the infinite silence of interstellar space. They
you have a decision to make. into the lifeboat and launched will die with you.
are not simple commuters or travelers: they are
Amongst your cargo of physical art, block data, necessarily luminaries, as priceless as any of To start, you know nearly nothing about your
and biological samples, you are carrying five the art you carry, but much more fragile. passengers, certainly not enough to make a
living humans, suspended in long term sleep. life-or-death decision. Likewise, the passengers
Before your death, you can take time to
You have interacted with all of them in mostly are locked in sleep; ignorant of both the danger
remember the humans, investigate their
trivial manners over the course of the month- and their impending deaths. Use the time you
history and their dreams, try to gain a further
long sleep induction process, many hundreds have to learn about them, understand them,
understanding of them. In the end, you can
of years ago, but otherwise you only know inform them, negotiate with them, but in the
choose one to save, or none.
end, the final choice is yours.
Passenger Manifest
The players of the passengers will make up
Name Gender Ethnicity Experienced Age Calendar Age Vocation details about the passengers and reveal them
Clio Erypteus Aiya F Gliese 54 54 Academic to you in play.
Sorrel Quorm X Zhou 34 20k Sculptor After you take the twentieth action the game
Le Quan M Earth 73 100m Prophet / Scientist ends with your death.
Mor Mol Ae F Gliese 17 17 Experimental Subject
Arc Morus Elya X Transposed 22 (in body) 4k Courtesan

Jason Wodicka, Tayler Stokes, James Graham, Tony Dowler, Noah Illinsky, Mike Sugarbaker, Thom Kiraly, Cheryl Trooskin-Zoller, Olivier Murith, Eduardo Baruzzo, Michael Fujita Wight, Vincent Baker, Theo Clarke, Lap Luchini, Jessica Hammer, Ariamaki, Gregor Hutton, Lester Ward,
Amidst Endless Quiet List of Actions

Recall Observe Discuss

Recall your interactions with a passenger You may observe the interactions between You can return a passenger to a state of
during the initial boarding / loading at the edge passengers in their sleep state. Mostly, they are semi-consciousness in order to discuss the
of the Gliese system. Play out a scene of your completely inert, however the sleep process situation with them, given them a chance to
interactions with the passenger that helped requires periodic cycling into a dream state to directly address the crisis at hand. They are
form your opinion of them. prevent neuroconnective decay. During this still retained within the long sleep; you do not
times, the passengers interact with each other in interact physically. You can even discuss with
You may do this as many times as you like
dreams. Although you have never watched this more than one character at a time, although it
per passenger: each time, you get a different
process, you do retain the recordings internally, may not be advisable. You create the setting
memory. More than one passenger might be
and can observe previous interactions between and your own appearance for the purposes of
involved. Whoever controls a character plays
the various passengers. the discuss action.
them in these recollections.
Dreams are often set in the past of one or the When you discuss, you give a passenger an
Research
other passenger, and may involve those events. awareness of what’s going on and their own
Search through your personal data reserves
upcoming death. If you choose not discuss with
and news networks for information regarding a When you choose this, you view a particular
a given passenger, they will live or die “in their
passenger. Tell the player what you are looking interaction between two passengers you name.
sleep” without conscious awareness.
for: they tell you what you find. This is publicly You cannot directly participate or even question:
available information, but that accounts for most simply watch until it is over. You can discuss as many times as you want.
of your passengers lives. One action provides However, once you have woken a specific
Dream
both general information and answers to a line character, you can no longer take dream actions
You can enter a passenger’s current dreams
of inquiry. You may do this as many times as with that character.
to interact with them and understand them
you like, taking one action each time, each time
better. With this action, you will be entering Load
pursuing a new line of inquiry.
into the context of their dream, embodied as Load a passenger into the lifeboat. The lifeboat
You also carry private block data in your cargo. a participant or recollected person from their only holds one person at a time. If you load a
You may, as a separate action, illegally access past. The dreams might explicitly re-enact second passenger, the first one is displaced.
your private block data looking for information a past event, or might be more symbolic or
Launch
about a passenger. There may or may not be representative, or might just be the ramblings
Launch the lifeboat.
any: if there is, the player should disclose all of of their subconscious mind.
it to you. This is secret information, unknown to
The player of the character controls the
the outside world.
character, and the dream, and casts you in it.