Skip the story, I want to play cards. -3 minutes
Jack Barns has spent his life on Station LM13 which has fully embraced its nickname “Lime” by having the outside painted in a green color. The large round body of the station fit rather well and if you squinted just right, while far enough away and at the right angle it did sort of resemble a lime. The interior of the space station was getting on in age coming up on around fifty years of continuous service, the deep gouges in some of the metal floor panels from things dropped over the years or the ancient stains on the walls showing through the fresh paint. By no means was LM13 a dump, just getting a bit old. LM13 dealt in trade goods and also some manufacturing of textiles to a mid tier market. Large and small trade ships come and go all hours of the day and night, of course on a station it is neither day or night. Perhaps all the time would better describe how frequent they were, one will be docking while another somewhere else is leaving. Even though the gravity here was a bit uneven, especially in certain spots, it was home.
Jack spent his youth attending virtual school and working at different shops and stalls throughout the station over the years and took a particular interest in power generation. The station itself ran a cold fusion dynamo which consumed a crate worth of CFDF (cold fusion dynamo fuel) and a few hundred times that weight in the station’s trash or waste. What was most interesting to him at the time is not only was this a great way to continuously use waste and unwanted trash, it also made power for them and the special formula of the CFDF allowed this to all be done without any pollution or byproducts. It’s easy to see how Jack became so fascinated with it. He spent years wearing out datapads (essentially a sci-fi tablet) learning everything he possibly could about CFDs and CFDF. Although he was never properly educated on it by the virtual school he would often try to hangout with the engineers and mechanics on their breaks and lunches. Eventually growing close enough friends with some of them to bend just a few regulations and let the teen visit the engineering room and even help out with the CFD. The human teen was often found tagging along with Voxel the head engineer, he was a half dog with large floppy ears and a square birthmark over one eye. Before long Jack was helping calibrate systems and monitoring things while the other engineers were out on other duties or dealing with something below the deck. That continued until it wasn’t uncommon for Jack to be left alone in the engineering room without anyone else around this of course was irresponsible but it wasn’t for a lack of trust in Jack or his motives. More a what if something in its 50 plus years of flawless operation something went wrong?
Something Went Wrong.
(Playing Your First Action)
There’s a sudden jolt in the flooring and a screeching sound loud enough to make anyone’s ears ring. One of the gravity generators had jumped out of its socket and is sparking against the wall. As unusual as this was, it shouldn’t be catastrophic simply shut down the gravgen and let the backup do its job. Except the backup was slowing as well, Jack could feel himself becoming lighter. He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, that is until the red spinning light comes on and a CDF CRITICAL error pops up on every console within his sight. He did know what to do about that, meanwhile a call starts to come in from Voxel. He looked like he had shoved himself into somewhere pretty deep as the camera couldn’t make out much of him at all. “Jack! Hit the emergency shut down!” That much was obvious, Jack could see the large red button not far from him and under a thin glass material.
Gravity is all but gone and Jack needs to play his EVA skill to move around in a environment without gravity. EVA Stands for Extra Vehicular Activity, though in Abide Asteria it is used whenever there is no air, no gravity or a mix of the two, it matters not if you’re in or out of a vehicle.
Take a look at your hand again and play your EVA skill, it is as simple as declaring. “I’ll play EVA” and take one card from your hand then place it in front of you. For this event you have no skills or training in EVA, so we’ll use just the value of your card. If your chosen card is a number card simply just use the number. If you’ve picked a face card or ace those are as follows. Jacks are worth 11, Queens 12, Kings 13 which is pretty easy to remember since the highest number card is 10. However the odd one here is the Ace which can be either a 1 or a 15, you’ll almost always want to pick 15, but if you want the option to play low for whatever reason, that’s something to keep in mind. If you haven’t, pick a card from your hand and place it face up in front of you, anywhere is fine.
When we’re done with this sequence (this one turn) you will move that face up card from its current location and start a face up discard pile. You can make this discard pile anywhere next to the deck or on the other side of you, whatever is most comfortable. After you discard your play, redraw the amount played, this will end your turn.
Below is to see if Jack was able to use his EVA skill to reach the button or not. We’re basing this on the honor system with yourself, but feel free to explore the story once you’ve completed it or play it again with your own character.
( Jack is able to reach the shut down button with his EVA skill on a 7 or higher. )
One last reminder that to see your results you will need to highlight the above as if you were going to copy and paste it somewhere.
Abide Asteria 