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Project Nodens

Designer, Writer & Game Master

FATE Core · One session played

Project Nodens is a science-fiction horror campaign for FATE Core. We played one session.

Hollow-Veyl closed its asteroid mine, Nodens, ten years ago. Now a distress signal comes from it. The company hires a broke crew of war veterans to bring back whoever sent the signal within 48 hours.

The rules I added are two extra stress tracks, one for cyberware and one for sanity, a hacking run in three steps and cyberware packages that can glitch.

Nodens asteroid outpost with landing pad, solar farm and command dome.
The abandoned outpost. Maps built in Dungeon Alchemist.
Four documents that disagree

Before the first session each player gets the public mission file and the contract. Two players also get a private order.

Document Who gets it What it says
Mission file Everyone Find the source of the signal and bring it back.
Payment agreement Everyone Fifty thousand each and a price list for salvage. Acting against the company cancels the payment.
Classified letter The commander’s player The real goal is the prototype antimatter core. The clones and the crew are expendable.
Protocol Omega The android’s player If the signal’s source is a clone, eliminate it.

The commander’s letter ends with this line:

Remember, your daughter’s treatment depends on this mission’s success.

The ship’s terminals

I built six terminals for the crew’s ship in Twine. Players click through them as their characters would. On the cockpit radio the distress call only comes through after the player retunes four times. The inbox on the data hub holds one message for each character, and each message is that character’s reason to take the job.

A green text terminal with scan lines. It describes heavy static on the ship’s radio, offers a link to adjust the frequency, and shows a fragment of a cargo ship’s broadcast with a link to keep searching.
The radio hisses with static and electrical bursts from Jupiter's magnetic storms. ‘Adjust frequency’ picks up a cargo ship's broadcast: ‘Titan's cargo... route... J-7... ETA...’ ‘Keep searching’ continues the scan.

…can anyone hear us? …captive… It is listening… Signal… K-73… I repeat, K-73… Please…

Five layers

The mine has five layers. Each obstacle has more than one solution, and each solution suits a different character. On the third layer the crew can save a trapped clone or leave him. The fourth layer opens with a different line for each choice.

If the crew saved him If the crew left him
“You… it’s you. The ones who saved K-73.” “Murderers! You left K-73 to die under that press!”

I built the maps in Dungeon Alchemist.

  • Clone room inside Nodens with banks of orange pods.The clone room, where the mission becomes a choice about who to rescue.
  • A 3D map of the asteroid surface: a landing pad with a small ship, a lit walkway, grey buildings, a field of solar panels and a glass dome.The surface: landing pad, solar field and the dome over the command centre.
  • A 3D map of an underground level: rooms joined by round pipe corridors, and a long hall with two rows of orange pods.Layer 2: the living area and the clone room.
  • A top-down map of a spaceship: cockpit at the front, crew rooms and a main hall in the middle, cargo bay with a rover and engines at the back.The crew’s ship, S.S. Mendirek.

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