Restoring the Concord — the base-building subsystem

This is the one place The Frozen Crown adds rules. Everywhere else, the campaign assembles the core book and cites the owning chapter at every roll; here — and only here — it bolts a small new procedure onto that engine so that rebuilding the ark from a derelict into a power has structure. It is built deliberately, and deliberately small.

The flag (read this first).

• It is optional. A table that wants none of it can track the ark's recovery as plain progress clocks (Chapter 33) and ignore everything below. Nothing else in the campaign depends on this subsystem; the zones, factions, blocs, and node web all run without it.
• It never changes the target number. Every test here is the ordinary Wanderstar test: 2D6 + skill ≥ 8 (Chapter 5). There are no new dice, no new difficulty numbers, and no per-project bonuses. Harder or easier is handled, as always, by Advantage and Disadvantage (Chapter 6).
• It never touches Momentum. Restoration happens in downtime, outside the per-session Momentum economy — exactly as character creation does (Chapters 7, 14–18). Ark-project tests neither spend nor gain Momentum; the Advantage that resources grant applies directly, with no Momentum cost.
• It is built on what already exists: progress clocks (Chapter 33), the jump-week downtime (Chapter 33), the standard test (Chapter 5), helping (Chapter 8), the credit economy (Chapter 28), salvage (Chapter 38), and the faction turn (Chapter 34). The only genuinely new thing is the menu: which clocks the ark has, and a structured downtime action for advancing them.

If you keep one sentence: a restoration track is a progress clock, and an ark project is one ordinary downtime test that ticks it. Everything below is detail on that.

Index§

• The restoration tracks
• The ark-project action
• What a project costs
• When a project fails
• What the tracks unlock
• The Sovereignty track and the crown
• A worked jump-week
• Dropping the subsystem

The restoration tracks§

The Concord's recovery is six named progress clocks (Chapter 33), each tied to the zones in file 03 and each unlocking a capability when it fills. Bigger or slower work gets more segments, exactly as Chapter 34 sizes a faction's ambition. Draw them on the ark record (file 03); fill them through play and through the jump-week action below.

Some tracks gate others in the fiction, not by a rule: you cannot fill The Woken faster than Power & Life Support can breathe and feed them (which is why the woken lean on Farcradle, file 01), and Mobility is unreachable until Power and The Bridge are largely done. Let the fiction enforce the order; no extra mechanic is needed.

A track also advances through play, not only downtime: expose Lumen's wake-ledger and the Sovereignty clock ticks; salvage a reactor liner from a Stilldrift escort and Power ticks; free the stasis-hold and both The Woken and Sovereignty move. The jump-week action below is the reliable way to advance a track; dramatic action in a session is the fast way.

The ark-project action§

In the downtime of a jump week (Chapter 33) — or any stretch the crew spends at the ark with time to work — the crew may undertake one ark project to advance one track. The action is four steps:

1. Declare the track and the work. "We're stabilizing the core to throttle up power." Name which track, and what, in the fiction, the crew is doing to it.
2. Gather the inputs (below): the time (the jump week), the resources to attempt it at all (credits or salvaged parts), and the hands — who leads, who helps, and any specialist or faction backing.
3. Make one ordinary test. The leading character rolls the relevant skill against 8 (Chapter 5) — Engineering for the core, Biology for a revival suite, Bureaucracy or Negotiate for recognition, and so on (Chapter 23). Apply Advantage for a clear edge (a woken expert, the right parts, a faction's help) or Disadvantage for working against a hazard, a rush, or sabotage (Chapter 6). Others may help for Advantage (Chapter 8). No Momentum is spent or gained.
4. Read the result against the track:
   • Success (8+): tick the track one segment. If the crew committed exceptional resources — two or more clear advantages at once, or a faction's full backing — tick two (GM's call from the fiction, not a new die rule).
   • Failure (under 8): the project stalls — no tick — and a complication lands (below). As always, a character Trained or better may mark the skill they failed with (Chapter 20); that is the normal advancement engine, not a new rule.

One project per jump week is the default rhythm. A longer downtime — a month laid up in a friendly port — might allow two or three at the GM's discretion; the limiter is fiction (time, money, hands), never a special clock.

Projects by track — examples. Any work that fits the fiction advances a track; these show the range and the skill each tends to call (Chapter 23):

• Power & Life Support — stabilize the core (Engineering), reseal a reactor liner (Mechanical), restart a reclamation plant or a farm tier (Engineering or Biology).
• The Bridge & Command — crack a command console (Cracking), recover the split codes (Research), satisfy the old command-protocol (System Operations or Cracking).
• Defenses — wire point-defense (Engineering, fired with Remote Weapons), seal bulkheads into a redoubt (Mechanical), drill a woken militia (Tactics).
• The Woken — bring a cohort up safely (Biology), build out a revival suite (Engineering + Biology), settle and feed the newly woken (Command or Negotiate; gated by Life Support and Farcradle).
• Sovereignty & Recognition — argue the claim at Calloway's Watch (Bureaucracy or Political Science), win a power's recognition (Network or Negotiate), organize the woken into a governing body (Command; the crown, below).
• Mobility — design and fit the FTL retrofit (Engineering + Physics; the capstone, gated by Power and Bridge; Chapters 26–27).

What a project costs§

A project needs three things, and only the first is strictly required to attempt it:

• Resources — required to try. Either credits, scaled to the campaign economy (Chapter 28: reckon a project at a job's worth — a few months of the note), or salvaged parts in lieu of credits: alloys and components pulled from the ark's own zones or a Stilldrift wreck (Chapter 38), or fabricated at Brightspan (file 01). This is the line that ties the trade and salvage pillars to the base: flying and breaking wrecks fund the rebuild.
• Specialists and allies — grant Advantage. A woken expert thawed for the purpose (a Zone 5 engineer, a Zone 6 Companion technician), a Contact's help (Chapter 35), or a faction's backing (Brightspan's foundry, the Free Burrow's hands) each grants Advantage on the test (Chapter 6). This is why who the crew wakes and befriends matters as much as their credits.
• Time — the jump week. Downtime is the currency the campaign already spends here (Chapter 33): repairs, healing, scheming, and ark work all share the sealed week between worlds, which paces the whole thing for free.

Bringing more than the minimum doesn't lower the target — it stacks the odds the right way (Advantage), exactly as the GM's difficulty dials always do (Chapter 32). The number on the dice is always 8.

When a project fails§

A failed project is not a wasted week; it is a story. On a miss, the work stalls and the GM spends the failure (Chapter 32) — no new dice, just consequence:

• A hazard surfaces. The core's rad pocket flares (Chapter 13); a sealed deck floods or decompresses; a fire waits on the returning air. The next attempt is at Disadvantage until it's dealt with.
• A cost overrun. The parts were wrong or the work undid itself; the crew is out the credits or salvage and must source more before trying again.
• A power takes notice. GANYMEDE's sensors catch the reactor spooling up; Lumen hears the crew is waking Sleepers without them; Helios offers, oh-so-helpfully, to fix what the crew couldn't. Tick the relevant faction clock (Chapter 34) — the failure moved the board.

The crew never just loses a roll into nothing. They lose a week, gain a complication, and — if they were reaching past a reliable skill — a mark toward growing (Chapter 20).

What the tracks unlock§

Filling a track changes what the ark — and the campaign — can do. Capabilities, not numbers; the ark grows in reach the way every Wanderer does (Chapters 34–35), never a power curve.

A few specific unlocks are worth dangling as goals in their own right: a restored med-bay (a Power + Woken side-project) can clear a Maimed or Broken node (Chapter 10) without a trip to a surgeon — a standing reason to invest; a restored hold and dock turns the Concord into a trade hub (Chapter 28), a source of income rather than a money-sink; a restored archive (Zone 7) hands the crew the campaign's secrets and strengthens their claim.

The Sovereignty track and the crown§

The Sovereignty & Recognition track carries the campaign's central question, so it works a little differently from the others: it advances not only by work but by politics — recognition won at Calloway's Watch's registry, standing earned with the powers (file 02), the woken organized into a body that can govern (file 03). As it fills, the crew is forced to commit to a direction — the Bridge Court, the Holders' Table, or the Commons (file 03, the question of the crown) — because a polity cannot be recognized as nothing in particular. Each external power pushes the bloc that suits it; the crew leads one, brokers among them, or installs a rival.

This needs no clock of its own and no new rule — it is the Sovereignty track plus faction standing (Chapter 34) doing the work. When the track fills, in the Sovereign phase (file 09), the ark becomes what the crew built it toward, and the title's question is answered: do you take the Frozen Crown?

A worked jump-week§

The crew has held the breach (Zone 1) and cracked the core's shielding enough to read it. With the note due and the cryo failing, they spend the jump week out of Saltgate on Power & Life Support.

• Declare: stabilize and throttle up the core (Zone 3).
• Inputs: they pay salvaged parts — reactor liners pulled from a dead escort hull at Stilldrift (Chapter 38) — so no credits needed to attempt. They thawed a woken systems-tech, Chief Reyes (file 03), to advise: Advantage. And Bram helps Echo on the heavy work (Chapter 8).
• Test: Echo leads, rolling Engineering against 8 with Advantage (Chapters 5–6). Advantage means 3D6 keep the best two: she keeps 5 and 5 → 10, and her Engineering bonus only pads it. Success. (No Momentum spent — this is downtime.)
• Result: a clean success ticks Power one. Because the crew brought both the right parts and a woken expert — two clear edges — the GM rules it ticks two: Power goes from 3 to 5 of 6. One more good week and the ark breathes on its own.

Had Echo missed, the rad pocket would have flared (Chapter 13): no tick, the next attempt at Disadvantage until the leak is sealed, and — Echo being Trained in Engineering — a mark toward her next rank (Chapter 20). Either way, the week mattered, the dice were ordinary, and the target was 8 throughout.

Dropping the subsystem§

If your table would rather not track six projects, throw the whole file away and lose nothing essential. Run the ark's recovery as the GM runs any long effort in Wanderstar: a progress clock or two (Chapter 33), ticked when the crew does something in the fiction that earns it, filled when the work is plainly done. The zones (file 03), the blocs, the factions, and the node web (file 04) all play exactly the same. This subsystem is here for tables that want the rebuild to have texture and a downtime rhythm — offered, flagged, and entirely optional, the single deliberate exception to the campaign's zero-new-rules standard.