Scenario Wave — Combat & Heritage
The fourth wave foregrounds personal combat (Chapter 11) and the Companion question (Chapter 31) — the Second Liberation, the bond-holders who'd stop it, and the raids the crew must fight off to hold the Concord. These are the scenarios where the fighting is real and the stakes are who counts as a person. Danger here should be genuine: a fight the crew could lose, that could cost a limb or a mind (Chapters 10, 33). Three lean, drop-in situations along the Liberation chain and the ark's defense. Each closes with a solo/co-op note (Chapters 42–45). Nothing here is a new rule.
Index§
8.1 The Stasis-Hold§
The Companion question (Chapters 11, 31).
The door is heavier than the cryo-vaults', and the manifest beside it lists no names — only lineages and lot-numbers. When the lights come up inside, a hundred faces look back from the stasis-cradles: Hounds, Ferals, Drays, Warrens. People. Filed as freight.
The pitch. The crew opens the Concord's stasis-hold (Zone 6, file 03) and finds Companions logged as cargo. What they decide here lights a fire across the sector — and a bond-holder's agent is already inbound to collect what the old law says is theirs.
How it reaches the crew. The Liberation chain (file 04): reaching the hold triggers it. Wren Sablekin (file 02) finds the crew within the day, and so does the bond-holder's agent.
The situation. The Companions are people; the manifest says property (Chapter 31). The bond-holder — a combine that bought the old lien — sends an agent with papers and muscle to take them, betting the crew won't risk a fight over "cargo." The Free Burrow (Wren) wants them freed and will help. The crew is holding the door, and the choice is theirs: free them, hand them over, or deal.
Running it.
- The waking. Bringing a Companion up is Biology (Chapter 23); the first to wake remembers the boarding, and has opinions about the crew's intentions.
- The agent's claim. The collector arrives with paperwork and hired guns. Talk them down (Chapter 5), out-lawyer the lien (Bureaucracy; the bond-manifest, file 04), or fight (Chapter 11) — and a fight over the hold is close, brutal, and fought in the cradles where a stray shot kills a sleeper.
- The cost. Whatever the crew chooses, it propagates: the Free Burrow warms or cools, Marrow Deep hears, and the sector's Companions learn what kind of crew holds the ark.
Resolutions. Free them — the crew gains a community of allies, the Free Burrow as Ally, and the Second Liberation catching light (the Commons bloc, file 03); surrender them — clean credits and a stain that the Companions of the Shore will not forget; deal — a partial, uneasy outcome that satisfies no one and leaves threads.
What it advances. The Liberation chain and the Free Burrow clock (file 02, 04); the Woken track and the Commons bloc (file 03); the crew's standing across Companion space (Chapter 35).
Solo/GM-less. Oracle the agent's force and patience — how many guns? (a fireteam), will they deal? (even). Run the fight player-facing (Chapter 11); the moral weight is the table's to hold (Chapter 32, lines and veils).
8.2 The Collector§
Heritage under pressure; a defense (Chapters 11, 31, 34).
Marrow Deep's free Companions built this place out from under a charter they bought with their own backs. Now a combine's enforcers are walking its galleries like they own them again — and the older Drays have gone very quiet, the way they do before they don't.
The pitch. A combine moves to enforce an old bond-claim — at Marrow Deep, or against the Companions the crew freed from the ark — sending enforcers to take people back into bondage under cover of law. The crew is pulled into the defense of a community that has been here before and swore it wouldn't be again.
How it reaches the crew. The Liberation chain escalates (file 04): the crew's choice in 8.1, or their ties to the Free Burrow, brings the combine's reach down on Marrow Deep (file 01). Wren or a Marrow Deep elder calls for help.
The situation. The combine (a bond-holder faction, Chapter 34) has law on paper and muscle on the ground, and it's testing whether anyone will stop it. This is a defense: protect people and ground against enforcers who expect no resistance. Win, and the Second Liberation has its first victory; lose, and a community goes back in chains and the sector learns the cost of defiance.
Running it.
- Reading the ground (Chapter 11, Tactics). The galleries are the Companions' home turf — narrow, deep, theirs. The crew can turn that to advantage (Advantage from preparation and position, Chapter 6).
- The confrontation. Enforcers come in hard, expecting compliance. A stand-up fight (Chapter 11), a defended chokepoint, or a feint that makes the combine's hand too expensive to play. Trauma is real (Chapter 10); so is the chance to break the enforcers' will rather than their bodies.
- The aftermath (Chapter 34). Whatever happens, it ticks the board: the combine's clock, the Free Burrow's, and the sector's read on whether the old law still holds.
Resolutions. Hold Marrow Deep — the combine withdraws, the Free Burrow's clock surges, and the Liberation has momentum; a costly stand — the crew holds but pays in trauma and a patient enemy; lose — people are taken, and the next scenario is a rescue with the sector watching.
What it advances. The Free Burrow and combine clocks (file 02); the Commons bloc's strength (file 03); the crew's trauma and reputation (Chapters 10, 35).
Solo/GM-less. Run the defense as a fight with a clock (hold N rounds, or break their morale). Oracle the enforcers' resolve — do they expect a fight? (no, at first). The home-ground advantage is the crew's to earn in the fiction.
8.3 Boarders§
Defending the ark; the ark as terrain (Chapters 11, 13).
The alarm you jury-rigged actually works — which is the worst possible news. Something has docked at the breach you fought so hard to hold, and now there are hard-suited figures moving through the dark of the lower decks, toward the cryo-vaults, toward the bridge, toward everything you've spent months bringing back to life.
The pitch. Someone boards the Concord — GANYMEDE muscle to seize the core, a NULL team to reach the memory cores, or a rival bloc's coup against the bridge. The crew defends their half-built home deck by deck, in the dark and the cold, where the ark itself is both battlefield and the thing they're protecting.
How it reaches the crew. Any high faction clock can trigger it (file 02); GANYMEDE after the core, NULL after the cores, or — late — a Bridge Court or rival claimant making a play for the bridge (the crown, file 03). The Defenses track (03a) determines how ready the crew is.
The situation. The boarders have an objective inside the ark (the core, the cores, the bridge, or a Sleeper), and the crew has to stop them in a structure that is mostly unlit, unpressurized, and full of things that can kill everyone — including the defenders. A firefight near the reactor risks the rad pocket; a breach near the cryo-decks risks forty thousand lives. The ark is terrain (Chapter 13) and hostage at once.
Running it.
- The ark fights too (Chapter 13). Use the hull against the boarders and against the crew: vacuum, cold, a structural pocket, the rad-leak by the core. Where the fight happens matters as much as who wins it.
- The defense (Chapter 11). Stations, chokepoints, the woken militia if the crew has one (the Defenses track, 03a). Players roll; the world rolls only the boarders' damage (Chapter 40). A restored ark fights back; a derelict one is a death-trap for defenders too.
- The objective. The boarders aren't there to win the deck — they're there to reach the thing. The crew wins by denying the objective, not by killing everyone; a boarding party that gets what it came for "loses" the fight and still wins the war.
Resolutions. Repel them — the ark holds, the attacking power's clock ticks back, and the crew's claim to defend it is proven; hold but bleed — they're driven off at a real cost in trauma (Chapter 10) and damage to the rebuild; fail the objective — the boarders take the core, the cores, or the bridge, and the campaign pivots to getting it back.
What it advances. The attacking power's clock and the metaclock (file 02); the Defenses track tested and proven (03a); the crown, if the boarding was a bloc's coup (file 03); trauma carried into the next arc (Chapter 10).
Solo/GM-less. Oracle the boarders' objective and number up front (who sent them, and what do they want?), then run it player-facing with the ark's hazards as fronts (Chapters 13, 44). The dark and the cold are the GM the table doesn't have.