Script

The game's content is procedurally generated, but the story is mostly fixed and so is the general progression of game milestones, difficulty and tactical options. However, since the story is reconstructed by the player from the randomized bits and pieces and from the reaction of the world to the player actions, the detailed shape of the story depends heavily on the player's imagination, his preferred speed of play (no much pressure there), his choices (there are multiple endings) and even on the random setup of any particular game.

The general game progression is structured via the ascent through the spaceship levels and so is described as part of the spaceship design. The plot is loosely interwoven within the progression and the tempo and ordering of story elements that reach the player is even less predetermined and leaves a lot of room for mystery, deduction and surprise. Here we will summarize the initial parts of the story in a condensed form bereft of wonder and drama, which constitutes the worst kind of spoilers, though we will omit the heavy spoilers that are revealed to the player only at the end of the game (and only in some of the endings).

The outline below corresponds to what the player may perceive if he jumps straight into the game, without reading the manual (which describes elements of the general setting and backstory. Depending on his actions the story may develop differently than described, or end abruptly, but some initial sequence of events will match what is described.

Script outline

Part 1

First, a pleasant surprise, deck 2 looks hastily abandoned and long unused, but contains many scattered and hidden supplies and valuable items. There are also habitable quarters with functioning life support, spacious common rooms an impressive gym (will come handy after years of sedentary life in fractional gravity) and a medical bay of the kind that buffs up centenary millionaires to dance day and night for a week. The stairs from the airlock at the surface of the ship, where the shuttle is docked, lead directly up to deck 2. From here, stairs leads further up to deck 3, towards the centre of the vessel, but the airtight double doors of the staircase are destroyed by an explosion and crudely mended and welded permanently shut. Lifts are dead and sealed, too, but a few corridors away there is a dark, destroyed area with remains of a big staircase in the centre, housing intact stairs down to deck 1. The navigational console shows the Allure of the Stars running on full power of the crippled engines towards Uranus --- a travel of many months, which will give ample time for detailed exploration of the two longest decks of the disc-shaped vessel.

After a couple of days spent cleaning up, placing the scarce brought supplies out of the way and making themselves comfortable, the crew decides to explore deck 1. The double height, outermost deck acts as a buffer against meteor hits and cosmic rays and contains secondary life support subsystems and storage rooms with potentially valuable supplies. Here the huge water recycling basins are usually located on passenger ships, in which a natural water purifying process is emulated, employing bacteria, algae and aquatic and swamp plants. The odour of decay coming from downstairs inspires the heroes to climb down in a file, with electric torches and long sticks for probing the ground, and watching for trouble. Still, near the stairs, on the bank of a deep, overgrown and stinking basin, they get utterly surprised.

TODO: research dangerous sweet-water animals and try to make the following paragraph less cliche. Hippos, for sure. Tigers like water, too. Some weaker ones would will be needed, too. Wild dogs can be common to both decks. Perhaps start with wild dogs? They are least unlikely.

A big alligator bites the leg and breaks the shin bone of a hero and pulls him away from the others. In the ensuing struggle another hero falls into the water and gets wounded, attracting a swarm of piranhas and a couple of four feet alligators. When the fight is over, nobody is sure how exactly they managed to wrest the crippled crew member and his badly wounded and unconscious companion from the jaws of the beasts. What is sure and unexpectedly lucky is that the robotic medical bay is fully operational and of an unbelievably advanced type. Not only is the fallen hero revived. His wounds are fully healed, skin repaired and scars, even his old scars and imperfections, totally wiped out. The broken shin of the other victim is entirely mended and the bitten off muscle regrown, so that within days his mauled leg is stronger than the intact one.

Encouraged by the quality of their medical backup, over the next weeks the crew explores most of deck 1, gaining experience in combat with makeshift weapons and getting strong and accustomed to the sight of blood. There are many dangerous animals in the water treatment area and around, but they rarely attack undisturbed and are easy to dispatch with good teamwork, unless they manage to ambush the heroes, which still happens from time to time. The training is the main fruit of the exploration of deck 1, since the storage areas are mostly empty. Enough supplies is found, however, to rebuild the staircase walls and doors, so that no predator can sneak up the stairs to deck 2. The animals are far from eradicated, but at least they learn to fear the heroes, for whom killing has become a reflex.

Many of the animals belong to protected species and some seem slightly mutated, which adds to the difficulty of explaining the situation to space registry authorities. Another problem will be the filth and decay in the water basins and whatever contamination will be found in the upper decks. A prolonged quarantine of the Allure of the Stars would be disastrous, given the extent of the debt the heroes have gone into. Perhaps with time they will be able to clean up the mess permanently.

Adding to the mystery of the rich ecosystem of deck 1 are crazed autonomous household robots found in distant areas of deck 2. It looks like the whole ship has gone alive and feral over the years. The robots correctly replenish their batteries from the vessel's main electrical current, but the other parts of their programs seem utterly corrupted after 8 years without human maintenance and updates to anti-virus databases. The cleaning robots, shooting blinding foam, may seem harmless, but they are deadly coupled with aggressive greenery trimming robots, big autonomous transport vehicles or an occasional feral animal. Even the small rat-like robots for air-duct cleaning and power grid maintenance are nasty when dropping in numbers from above or dislodging hot water pipes and electric cables. Fortunately, the robots lack the animal predatory efficiency and don't reproduce, so all are quickly hunted down, dismantled and used for building automatic defenses and motion alarms.

Not long after the first two decks are conquered, the crew hears a distant explosion, the engines start working erratically, changing the course of the Allure of the Stars, and all contact with the outside world is lost. The wires from the communication and navigation panels are traced up towards the centre of the ship, where the reactor and the engines are located. The heroes pop the entrance to deck 3 open, kill the first thing that jumps at them, which is an oversize ostrich with bloody eyes, and deck 3 is never silent again. Even welding the staircase doors and air-ducts shut and building barriers and traps will never again hold the nasties above for long, given bears and other heavy animals from the zoo gone wrong in the greenery area at level 6 and given reprogrammed construction robots, built to tear down walls and cut through steel plates. But this is yet to come.

The wires from the communication panel end up in the construction area on deck 9, among completely smashed computer and radio racks. Every piece of wiring around is torn apart by the explosion, including the navigation cables. The huge antenna at the other side of the hull has been dislodged and has drifted into space, though the hull itself is not breached. Replacing this equipment will be extremely expensive and is probably out of the question for a year at least. Fixing the navigation cables that go outside the hull at this place is much easier, but requires searching for suitable equipment in the increasingly dangerous environment.

While searching for the tools, the heroes glimpse some of the past splendor of the cruise liner among the wreckage of luxurious passenger cabins on deck 4. They find precious stone jewelry after prying open a safe and they loot the corpse of a vanquished construction robot, apparently originally tasked with plating walls in the construction area with gold. The can't yet discover the main storage of the gold plates, but they manage to find whatever is needed to repair the navigation circuit and set the ship on its course. As long as they can fend off demolition robots on all levels up to deck 9, they should be able to control where the ship is going. The gardening tools, including chain saws, from the treble height greenery area on level 6, help as crude weapons and the construction equipment, such as pneumatic hammers, electric saws, construction foam sprays, pneumatic rivet setters and nail shooters are effective even against the toughest robots.

Just before the Allure of the Stars finally reaches Uranus orbit, the crew has a few encounters with robot-animal hybrids. The clumsy cyborgs look very disturbing and behave with rudimentary intelligence, but the hardened heroes can no longer be cowed and slaughter the interlopers with cold fury. After all, it's their ship, bought with years of deadly risk, loneliness and sweat. It's their hope for independence, gained by breaking all contracts and burning all bridges. It's their all-in bet to be defended at all cost, by toil, fight or bluff, if needs be. Neither mutated animals nor infected robots, nor prying humans, nor even if aliens themselves were to descend from outer space, will prevent the heroes from building their future on this moving stretch of land they took for their own.

Part 2

The small orbital scrapyard and shipyard on Uranus oribt fails to fix or even just open up the external cargo bay doors of the Allure of the Stars, leaving the ship with no official cargo capacity. The ship registry clerks inspect the shuttle and the air quality in the main staircase by the airlock, but at the last moment are refused entry to the quarters area on deck 2, so no passenger transport permission can be granted, either. Eventually, the vessel is registered just as a personal recreational ship and the crew has to buy local cheap commodities "for personal use", transport them with the shuttle and store along unused corridors. The goods harvested from the ship during the trip don't fetch a satisfying price, but have to be traded for the most urgent repairs and supplies. The crew hopes to harvest much more before they reach Jupiter, which has a big market and the biggest shipyards after Earth.

After setting sail for Jupiter, the heroes reinforce their defenses with purchased supplies and resume exploring the upper decks. After a few days, electrical current surges recurring for four hours burn down lights on all levels from 5 to 9 and the animals seize their chance of a good hunt. The crew is pushed down to deck 4, despite brave efforts and rotational use of the medical bay, and the control over the engines is lost. Just when the heroes start regaining ground, manning barricades and rebuilding traps, a new wave descends on them. This time they face animals mutated beyond recognition and unarmed robots of unknown make and purpose. After a few weeks of struggle the heroes prevail, set course for Jupiter again and then manage to explore a couple of new levels, learning more of the ship's mysteries and plundering quite a few treasures troves.

Before the essential supplies run out, the Allure of the Stars reaches Jupiter's orbit and the heroes face tough decisions. How to spend the money gained by selling Neptune's commodities and the plundered treasure? Repair cargo bay and legalize the ship's trade? Repair communication antenna? Repair one more engine? Buy more supplies of various kinds, poisons, traps, sensors? Buy cheap Jupiter products? Buy any new ship upgrades? Buy gym or medical bay upgrades? Where to go from Jupiter? To a planet related to the history of the ship: Earth or Neptune? To the planet with the best price for Jupiter goods? To Kuiper Belt or Asteroid Belt to buy precious minerals cheaply? What to do with the captured mysterious robots and unidentified species? Whether to try and buy illegally any weapons? Whom to ask for advice and how much to tell?

When the decisions are carried out and the ship sets out, when the crew strengthens the defenses and makes some progress exploring, suddenly the lifts come to life and after a few hours a new breed of robots breaks through their doors. This wave is armed, even if crudely, and combines alien design, mutated animal body parts and behaviour that can no longer be attributed to randomly corrupted internal programming. In a few weeks of struggle the control over engines passes from hands to tentacles and back again many times over. The heroes are exhausted, but the supplies hold out so, whenever there is a chance, defenses are rebuilt, motion alarms are reset, traps are rigged and overrunning any level costs the invaders dearly each time.

The final passengers of the lifts are bipedal and four-armed animals, wielding weapons, wearing armor and using remote communication and mapping devices. They take their wounded comrades with them, when they finally simultaneously retreat, but some of their gear is left behind when the motion sensors fall quiet. The heroes, one always resting inside the medical bay and the others gathered around, as has become a ritual regardless of the need for healing, pass the items from hand to hand in silence.

Part 3

The events at this point depend crucially on the player actions. Many of them also touch the heavy spoilers matter, so no further details are provided here.