Into the Black

(Virtual Room at NERV HQ)

The weekly planning meeting for the Game Masters of Dreams Amongst the Stars was not going well. The most recent controversy? FTL weapons.

“Damn it, is there any way we can nerf those torpedoes?”

“No way! Not without breaking FTL entirely. The new Ihm shields are already a compromise, and even that was only possible thanks to the eye opening!”

“But that’s two whole planets gone! One of them a freaking capitol planet! Just ‘poof’ and gone, with god knows how many people and resources! And that one was all done by one person in a stealth ship the size of a light freighter! This is too gamebreaking!”

Isaac cleared his throat, drawing the eyes of his GM squad to him. “I’ve gone through it with the main controlling AI. Right now, we agree that the FTL torpedoes are only considered overpowered in ship-to-ship engagements. The ship-to-ground engagements are already covered with sufficient in-game consequences that it is not an issue, as with all other Exterminatus weapons.”

“As if that will keep some player like Legion from doing something just to see the world burn!”

“Indeed. Which is why we’re going to work on seeding some Lost Tech into the game worlds.”

“Seeding Lost Tech? Can we even do that, at this stage of the game world’s development?”

“Yes, I checked it out with the AI, and it agrees with me. We will hotfix in underground structures on all inhabitable worlds. These ‘cloaked’ structures will start ‘waking up’ due to galactic conditions, including a couple of their linked outposts going offline recently.”

Isaac paused, looking around the room. “Once active, they will hard-stop any FTL that is about to impact the planet. This means that anyone wanting to launch an FTL attack on one of the protected planets will need to first do a ground strike to take out the facility, same as those planets with planetary shield capabilities. The systems, however, will remain cloaked until people find and disable the cloaking systems manually.”

One of the other GMs nodded. “And if it is all ‘Lost Tech’, in places that are cloaked, then that can explain why no one has ever seen this before. And if we make it sufficiently advanced, then people will have a hard time reverse engineering it. So, who will be responsible for initially creating this tech?”

Another GM piped up. “How about the Gate Builders? Players already know they existed, were all over the galaxy, and no one can really replicate their tech.”

Isaac nodded, and made a note. “That’s good. We’ll be using that. And people already know that Gate Builder tech can sometimes be out of phase, and unreachable by normal means, so that will go further towards people not questioning why the system hasn’t been discovered before now.”

“Are we going to tell them about the new system?”

Isaac considered, and then shook his head. “No. We’ll do the hotfix as part of regular maintenance, and slip it in without telling anyone. So, it will be a surprise for whoever the next group to go firing off FTL torpedoes at a planet might be.”

He took a breath. “All right. Next order of business. The Ihm Imperium scenario is growing more contentious. With their leader’s transition from Empress to Imperatrix, the player population of the Imperium has dropped to zero. As in, literally the last player as part of the Imperium faction has already switched sides and fled.”

That started a frenzy of conversation amongst the GMs. Isaac just sat back, and let his team do what they did best, coming up with solutions. Micromanaging too hard could kill a creative team, after all.

“So, what? Find ways to entice players to the Ihm faction?”

“Oh, wait! We could make the Ihm the main antagonists, now! Especially with the X’thari being out of the picture until more people progress into the wider galaxy. The Ihm can be the overarching villains. We’d just need to empower them a bit with their new goddess, and they could start making inroads against the other factions.”

“But won’t that just make everyone join up and treat them like the Harvester?”

“Well, what would you suggest?”

“Uh, how about we have their space get taken over by the Eye of Despair completely, so that most of their worlds are in Hellspace. And they can launch raids into realspace from anywhere, in warbands? That would force the existing powers to beef up militaries, and pay more attention to defenses behind the front lines. All while keeping them from effectively taking the fight to the Ihm.”

“Right, that would work. Ooh, and we could have some offshoots as splinter races! Like, most of the Imperium goes into Hellspace, but you have two factions that refuse. This will let players who want to be an Ihm amongst Ihm do their thing, without having to be the Imperatrix’s chew toy.”

“And what kind of reason would we give for the two splinter factions?”

“We could do an ideological split. One side rejects the pride and perfection angle, and tries to go with a more repressed lifestyle, keeping tight control on all their emotions, but especially pride, since that feeds the goddess. The other side doesn’t want to be with the Imperium, but still leans hard on the perfection stuff, going a bit twisted with it, maybe? That way, you can have one side for people who want to be less bad, and one for people who want to just go hardcore.”

“Will that get by the PR department? I mean, they’ve been working hard with Legal to keep anything from looking like we’re moving past homages and easter eggs and into troublesome content.”

Isaac spoke up. “I checked with Morgan. The Hellspace stuff has been different enough that no one can say it is a direct copy, and even the story beats that are similar are different enough for Legal to approve. It helps that most of the things that tread close to copyright material are player creations, not ours, and we’ve worked hard to keep those creations out of any promotional material we use.”

“Awesome, then we can go through with this, right?”

Isaac nodded, and was about to speak, when a notification window popped up in front of him. “Aw, hell. We’ve got a new problem. The Black Stars entered the Eye, and are on the run from the Imperium’s forces. Signs point towards the leader being targeted directly by the Imperatrix.”

“Oh, shit. What can we do?”

“Nothing we can do. Go ahead and get started on what we talked about. I have to go break the news to Morgan, so she can get ahead of this. People are going to freak.”