Sphere of Doom 2024: Encapsulated

 So this last Spring I re-envisioned my 2021 take on a Flash Gorden serial, Flash Gordon and the Sphere of Doom.

The first take was awesome. Things were groovy. Everyone was playing at least two characters and folks were introducing themselves to the comic strips.  This was not because of anything wrong with that campaign, but I had started to design a Dyson Sphere for roleplaying in.  So even after those takes I kept making notes.

Just a Little Off Course

So in session one, pretty sure there was only the two players  Iron Curtis and Peryton, Robin, playing the Characters Blix Bradigan and Professor Priscilla Vokraz. Aboard the Signus, the two were running an Oort Corps support mission for various space stations. One of the stations was the Ymir where Vokraz's husband Professor Elvis Vokraz was looking for the ninth planet.

Priscilla received a transmission that the Ymir was picking up promising gravitational findings and was going to change vectors of its orbit to investigate. Two weeks later, though, the research facility had not reported in. Ignoring orders to wait until further information could be collected, Lt. Bradigan, the vessel's captain, fired up the engines and headed towards the last known location of Elvis Vokraz and his crew...

Think We've Got Something
We try to keep our gaming groups flexible, which means my story line could take little diversions. The next time we met, Just Ben showed up and Robin would be showing up later. Bernard wanted to play a space princess and didn't mind randomizing her background. So while I kept Blix busy here and there with problems with navigation, the gravity just wasn't making sense, we had Princess Nova Veridian from Alpha Centauri B fleeing from the retribution of her father, the Emperor of Toliman after another almost baseless accusation of her trying to steal the throne again. She was a green-skinned Neptunian, a sub-species of human. Her ship was essentially a flying-saucer. When Vokraz finally showed up, I had both ships realized that they were in the gravity well of a massive sphere structure about four times the size of Jupiter. Neither of their vessels were designed for being close to masses much larger than smaller moons, so there were problems on both their ends.
Veridian's saucer would be shot by a mysterious yellow beam that would disintegrate it. This let me describe her species innate ability to survive for a few minutes in the vacuum of space, using its Quirk Space Face. Meanwhile the Signus moved in to save her, Blix did some highly skilled flying and Vokraz figured out a way to get the literal castaway aboard their ship with out killing her.

The Signus though was still in trouble and would have to find a spot to land.

Not Into the Underworld

Well Blix Bradigan was able to land the Signus without getting him and the others killed. The ship did need to get its power source "synced" and an external source of power would be helpful to recharge the reserve batteries as well. The first robot NPC for the space vessel, Boomstick, was created to handle this task. They were on the outer shell of the Dyson sphere and within walking distance of an unused structure that that the group decided to investigate. It was an out-of-the-way maintenance station. Considering that its nearest neighbor was roughly the distance from the Earth to the Moon, they pretty much had the place to themselves.
I had set a trap to get the PCs captured and taken towards the inner workings of massive world, but they avoided it. Blix and Veridian did manage to get themselves into trouble, while Professor Vokraz got power lines from the base to their ship. The two went out for a walk looking for access into any sort electronic communications network-- somehow we had determined that the base was isolated from any sort of communications outside of radio waves. Well about half a mile from the ship and now habitable base, they did find the super-science-y equivalent of a telephone pole and using power reserves from their own survival gear, started to hack the system so to speak.
Here they were able to get images of the Ymir in a low stable orbit around the sphere, but under attack or at least being disassembled by little specks being disgorged from a vacuum cleaner-looking vessel about a quarter of its size. Upon zooming in, the attackers appeared to be ape-men with metal parts and jet packs. Then the screen went fuzzy. This was because their space suits' power sources and reserves only had so much umpf to them. The two Characters were suddenly freezing.
Veridian got into true form and convinced Blix that they had to join their suits "to conserve energy and maintain warmth." Bernard did not make a vampy-chick character to not be noticed after all. Curtis Quipped, "My PC might be gay but she has big boobs." So instead of trying to walk back to where there was power the two Spacers huddled until Vokraz showed up on a OTR three-wheeler that she found in the base and saved them.

JerryTel showed up for a bit to play the Ming Character, Zargon Law, and we got into the politics of the Quad. The Quad being the most habitable, and therefore suppressed, realms of the Dyson Sphere.

Stuck In the Mud
So while the Signus, had garnered enough power for a take off from the area, the minions of the despot of the Quad and nominal dictator of the Ognim, the Sphere of Doom, had a take on them. The Mining Clans, cyborgs wrapped in clay, used their gravity cannons caused the Terrans a rather short flight.
Meanwhile, Kal Luin, Brett, showed up to start getting his hands dirty in some video table-top gaming. He then proceeded to produce an exact replicate of Blix Bradigan, named Brick Bradigan. He was the Security Officer of the Ymir, so I did some flashbacks.
    Poor Brick did the best he could to defend the Ymir against the ape-men with shining metal parts that were Zargon Law's Far Raiders, while the Mining Clans worked their gravity cannons dragging the ship downward. The space station would just shudder to a halt in the mud and gravel that made up most of the shell of the Sphere of Doom, where the Signus would land not to far from it.
    With a scouting party, Blix and Prescilla, would find Brick. Blix and Brick the fraternal twins would come together.
    "The last I heard you were on Mars."
    "I was." Replied Brick, "But things change."
    From there on their sibling rivalry would be a thing.



No Where Near
    As much as I hate railroading the PCs, getting to deep secrets was taking a bit longer than I wanted. So this episode was about fights and then forcing Priscilla into chasing her husband aboard a clay-cruiser. That slow moving subterranean craft, now with the Professor Vokraz aboard, would start making its way through the clay and sludge towards the interior realms of Sphere of Doom.  Blix and Brick stopped their bickering to get serious about following that Mining Clan vessel.