#Cosmonaut Stories

[thatsrightice]

The story of these two men is my Roman Empire.

Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov were highly decorated Cosmonauts, both of which made firsts in the history of space flight.

Yuri Gagarin famously became the first man in space on April 12, 1961.

Vladimir Komarov piloted Voshkod 1 on October 12, 1964 on the first space mission to carry multiple crew members. He flew again aboard Soyuz 1 on April 23, 1967, becoming the first Russian man to make two spaceflights.

Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov were close.

The Soyuz 1 was described as being “a piece of shit” and a “devil ship” as issues plagued the spacecraft throughout development and failed testing. Yuri had done everything he could to get the launch postponed, including writing a ten-page memo detailing the 203 structural problems he had discovered during inspection of the Soyuz 1. Any person who had laid eyes on the memo would be fired or demoted.

Komarov knew of these issues, but refused to step down from the missions. In March of 1987 he met with Venyamin Russayev, a then-recently-demoted KGB agent who had been assigned to "mind" Yuri Gagarin.

He met with Russayev and said, "I'm not going to make it back from this flight." Russayev asked, “Why not refuse?” Komarov answered: "If I don't make this flight, they'll send the backup pilot instead." That was Yuri Gagarin. Komarov couldn't do that to his friend. "That's Yura. And he'll die instead of me. We've got to take care of him." Komarov then burst into tears.

Yuri, nicknamed Yura by friends and family, showed up on the day of the launch “demanding to be put into a space suit,” "demanding this and this and this...", doing anything and everything he could to be the one on that spacecraft instead of Vladimir. Unfortunately, his attempts were be futile.

Soyuz 1 would launch on April 23, 1967 and faced serious issues throughout the flight. The parachutes failed to deploy during reentry and the spacecraft burned up while Vladimir screamed and cried and cursed out those responsible.

Yuri Gagarin was grounded from future space flights and denied permission to pilot military jets. This was devastating for the already deeply depressed man and everyone knew it. Even his favorite hairdresser said that “Yuri couldn't live without flying. It was his whole life. A man can't live without his trade. He can't survive.”

He eventually convinced them to let him fly, but on March 28, 1968, less than a year since Komarov’s accident, he was tragically killed during a routine-training flight aboard a MiG-15. The cause of the accident is unclear, though many speculate that the accident was an assassination on the cosmonaut as he had a falling out with several high-ranking officials following the death of his close friend.

Both Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov’s names are featured on the memorial for fallen US Astronauts and USSR Cosmonauts left on the moon by the Apollo 11 crew.

[babayanska]

Dreams of a generation

-

Based on several photo studies from Arseniy Kotov’s book ‘Soviet Seasons’, the most notable being a mural for a technical college in Chelyabinsk by the artist V G Mishin. This book’s gonna be very helpful for developing Red River :]

[savrr]

"(...) The legend that was Jason!" . shirt prototype

[gregor-samsung]

Asphalte [Macadam Stories] (Samuel Benchetrit -  2015)

[ultravioletlesbian]

my favorite song of all time is the intro and a moment apart by odesza WAIT. THEYRE COMING TO MY CITY???? WAIT

[angellurgy2]

Hiveship

hii! this is the 1st and 2nd chapter of my new story, as a little show of whats to come when i make it a full-length book.

cw for bug rape but like, its also just an introduction to deeper non/sexual ways the bugs will destroy this girl's soul. you'll see!

i'd appreciate if people checked this out/gassed it up because i've worked reallyyy hard on this for a bit ^-^

CHAPTER 1

A live wire sparks as loretta reaches a gloved claw inside the open electrical box, her digits blunted by her heavily plated and padded, alabaster white cosmonaut suit. she roots around the active electricity, scraping out chunks of the greenish-brown sludge growing in its crevices- the same mysterious viscous slime that’s been popping up in parts across her starship over and over the past few weeks. her theories ranged from an excremetal expulsion of an unidentified space object, to some disgraceful cosmonaut’s trash finding its way into her ship’s vents.

she clicks the button for the analyzing tool of her protective visor, closely examining the fluid. long thin wires splay across all sections of the large junction, leaving burning hot indents in the thick substances that feel like way too much of a fire risk. looking at the wires, spread out in patterned parallels like gigantic spider-webs, an anxious tinge of fear strikes her. don’t fall in, don’t get caught- robots don’t need any more prey. not that you’re prey. you aren’t.

she flicks her visor back off, worried her sweat might fog up the the visor, and continues swiping the rest of the gunk into a bin.

all clean, she fixes the fuses back into place before immediately making her way back over to the equipment corridor to hang up her suit. on the way she passes vibrant posters of mechanical cross-section diagrams, detailed anatomy drawings of every variety of species she could scavenge, and historical propaganda posters. it was a nice splash of existence inside a clinical minimalist coating. 

lounging in the cabin suite on her sofa, she flips her state-provided entertainment console to the galactic news. on-screen a suited, pristine looking woman takes the centre stage behind a stretched out desk. her voice is calm and analytical, with a hint of soft sympathy that can’t be hidden no matter how hard of a professional facade they must put on.

“News from the pandora planets have finally reached the internal core, revealing devastating effects of the latest assault campaign from the exoskeletal hives, multiple colonies’ messengers have reported complete razing of ground and sub-ground infrastructure, with several not appearing for the census at all. the URSS military and all commune bioships have retreated back to pantheon-V for rehabitation before a pandora counter-takeover can be attempted.”

Loretta shudders. the exoskeletals have been advancing deeper into URSS territory much faster than ever before, the fact that the state hasn’t been able to put a stop to it—and that the threat has only gotten more aggressive—makes sweat begin to pour down her head. if she was doing a term with the forces or part of a commune science crew she’d probably be worried for her life right now. thankfully, her ship was currently flying safely in one of the middle systems, relaxing in orbit of an abandoned desert world after recently coming back from a call of excursion to the outer worlds. she always enjoyed the quiet of minimal space travel and the utter lack of civilization when she gazed down upon a world, so this has been her favourite spot to reside for a long while. from the cabin module’s glass wall she can see such stark vistas of sandy mountain ranges, demarcating the most beautiful fields of gigantic outstretching spiny cactus.

with a loud buzz the tv automatically switches to the nightly Sallite news segment, where they broadcast the most important of state propaganda to every television set at 8pm local time. with an exasperated sigh she turns the volume all the way down to 1, takes off her grey tank, and throws herself into her cushioney bed. a switch on the wall next to the alloy headboard turns on the room’s surround sound to a soft pitter of forested rainfall, and she falls asleep in a matter of seconds.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Loretta awakes to the foreign sound of a sloppy wriggling near the floor by the end of her bed. jerking upright, she quickly slides into the suit boots she had laid at the side of her bed, strapping them tight, and moves to examine the intruder. 

a pulsating green slime slides itself across the floor, leaving a small trail of slightly transparent lime goo behind it. loretta kneels to look at it closer. she could swear it’s looking right back at her- though without any obvious eyes or features of its own. it excretes another loud squelching sound and fires off a copper-smelling mist around it, some of which sprays directly into loretta’s face causing her to wince and tear up at the dense cloud of smell. she reflexively slams her booted heel down into the creature, stomping through its gelatinous body.

she attempts to swiftly scrape the thing off her heel,, but the flattened slime spreads to encase her entire boot before she can even look down at it. when she does, she sees sticky lime green half-translucent goo coating the suit metal like adhesive, excreting a slight burning odour. loretta throws her leg around trying to eject the subject, but only manages to trip over herself, tumbling to the thick panelled floor with a resounding thud. 

on her back she watches with wide terrified eyes as the slime continues to slowly expand up her limb. it should be stretching itself out fully by now, but it seems to have an infinite amount of mass to express over her. some kind of anomalous entity from deep space? but how would it have gotten this deep into the middle systems? a new wormhole would’ve been reported immediately, and the nearest systems are all too well-inhabited. the gears turn in her head, clearly rusted over, struggling to think of a potential scientific hypothesis. by the time she breaks out of her clouded monologue and thinks to stop analyzing, the slime has already subsumed her entire left leg, grasping spreading tiny green tendrils grappling for the next part, which is fully uncovered by the comforting protection of the URSS engineer corps. she struggles to force herself away by clawing into the floor, but the slime seems to have extra weight to pin her leg down. such a little creature, overpowering her so easily- it must be alien. she doesn’t stop struggling even if it pins her utterly. if she could just get to the corner and grab her piece she could-

her scrabbling eyes find themselves staring at the cabin’s ceiling vent. a thick bile-like grey sludge seeps down from the cracks, forcing her to hurry. loretta shoves her hand into the green slime against her better judgement, trying to peel it off like one of her mother’s gelatin molds. her hands try to slide underneath it but they find themselves struggling to push against an unmovable solid, far away from the gravyesque consistency it had before. then she feels her legs, or rather, feels the lack of feeling of her legs. when she tries to move them, she cant even muster a shake, lower half pinned to the floor, not even pins or needles remaining. it doesn’t stop her relentless pushing and attempts to pull herself out by her arms, but she might as well be an amputee at this point. like one of those UOA prisoners of war from back in the day, laser neutered to be nothing but working hands for the Authority’s machines.

unable to get away from the oncoming deluge, lorreta realizes it must be relent or die. and so she does, shutting her eyes tight and curling her lips inward together like the anti-parasitites’ studies have taught her. though this wasn’t the typical annalidesque parasite commonly found in the outer cosmos, or a parasite at all for all she knows, it’s the best her dizzy mind can handle. and as she feels the sludge’s drip touch down on her estrogenated skin, it succeeds in helping stop it from flowing inside her eyes. she can feel it coat the skin tight, like a face mask but smelling of wood and suffocating and lively probing at her pores, blocking her vision black with its opaque body.

the sludge now dispensed, loretta senses a chance and attempts to pry the mask off of her. blindly groping for a free spot by her neck and sliding her unkempt nails under it and into the disgusting goo. it feels like a cadaver from anatomy class under her fingers, diving into the fat and peeling away the outer layer. but this corpse has undergone rigor mortis, and loretta’s attempts to peel it off go only slightly better than with the green thing, lifting an inch before it slaps itself back on even tighter. her second attempt goes even worse, her arms starting to feel numb and anaesthetized. she lifts her arms to fight but she cant feel the texture of what she touches anymore, and then the viral limpness travels to the rest of her motor function, and they flop uselessly at her sides. no part of her body responding to her brains frenzied orders to move, the most she can do is flail inside.

she pictures Andromeda-ZE in her mind’s eye, emotionally travelling to the place she spent most her childhood. she’s running through the market, the most well-known place in the capital, excitedly waving at family friends and commune teachers like she’s a kid again, so happy, so free, so ignorant. red and yellow and orange colours shine bright on the market stalls, sand and wood structures stand beautifully tall around her, everything is even more beautiful than it was when she was young. the wind on her cheeks as she runs makes her glow with a safety she doesn’t feel in the atmospheric void in space. not far ahead she spots her unit hut, and ramps up her speed. in a minute of invigorating sprint, she makes it to the large aspen door, knocking 5 times. she hears several light footsteps trot up and bounces with excitement. the door slowly creeps open… 

and a hulking nurse bug towers over her. its mandibles chitter, the egg sack on its back wiggles, and its claws rub together in front of its chest. she looks into the creature’s eyes and sees a thousand mirrors staring back at her. she screams muffled into the slime gag, jolting away from the colour behind her eyelids, and back into the void in front of them. instead of trying to push inside like loretta assumed, the sludge begins to creep into the part of her eye socket above her lids, pushing with prying hair-like digits. her heart cramps, and she can feel her heavy perspiration being immediately absorbed by the material the second it drips.  she doesn’t want to close her eyes, doesn’t want to see the bugs that close again- the spindling inner legs, the slimey chitin, vision of swarms of exoskeletals charging her squad flash through her, all she wants to do is scream but all it does is wear out the last muscles she can work. but she can’t stop, she wails banshily, reverberating in her own skulll. and then she can’t manage to hold her eyes open any longer.

the jointed arthropod returns, fully subsuming her soul. 

“it’s okay, sweet darling Lore, we are here now” it speaks in her mothers voice. sweet and soothing.

CHAPTER 2

loretta wakes up in a stasis vat, her body floating in air like oil. green biofluid drenches her skin, manufactured nutrients flooding her organs, keeping her fed and stable. she smiles, thinking back to her first spacewalk, bounding into the open cosmos with footless steps. she kicks her foot up, sending herself into an airy backflip. her mouth opens on its own and takes in a load of the fluid. it tastes like the earth pineapples her mothers would trade for on her birthdays. she has to figure out what this is when she’s out of here. and by the looks of her motor functions, she’ll be out of this in no time. 

* * *

she awakes groggily inside of another vat. there’s no more fluid, but something similar sticks to every inch of her skin. the walls of steel have turned into a coffinesque cocoon, fleshy and aboreal brown and wriggling with her movements. yet as she attempts to push herself backwards, her hands still find themselves scraping cold metal. she sees how some light manages to seep through the cracks of the chitinous chamber, and prods at the squishy folds where the tiny glowing rays strike, poking through an inch or two of foreign flesh before her fingertips feel air. bio vat? or some sort of.. metamorphosis chamber? she can’t remember how she got here, or when she signed up for such a procedure. she needs to find someone before she gets stuck. she lifts her moist lips to one of the little holes and screams out a plea for help. she manages to fit another finger out, and begins trying to spread open the breach when she’s stopped by someone’s cold fingers pulling hers. one of the scientists, or guards? 

the person outside pulls on loretta’s hand hard and she feels her light body raise up to the roof of her confines. despite her reaching the walls, they keep going, tugging forcing painful friction between her bare limbs and the meaty hide. in a few short, supernatural pulls she is burst through the sac entirely, getting to see chunks of what appears to be sinew and slime splattering the surroundings as she flies through antigravital space and crashes hard into a familiar wall.

HISSSSSSSTHH

innumerous spindly brown limbs bringing fading memories of phasmid anatomy charts stretch out across the polished floor and walls now brutally scattered with keepsake and furniture debris, looking like abstract blobs in loretta’s slime coated vision. blobs which are constantly being absorbed upwards into the air by twitchy movements. loretta grasps at the wall behind her, pulling herself away from the enormous creature. 

slamming into the far wall, she attempts to reach for where her dresser should be, where her trusty sidearm should be awaiting its imminent retrieval. then she remembers the lack of gravity. 

it was a stupid idea to make a grav switch so accessible. she never even uses it, and humans are the only creature out in this abyss who are weak to its pull. stupid stupid stupid. she tries to look for it in the debris but can’t make it out through all the other white and grey blobs. 

in the room, a few brown splotches stand out, utterly foreign to the ship’s shade-based palette. she stares closer, and even more seem to appear. the black space where the open door leads to dark corriders begins spewing them  out en masse until at least two dozen of them scatter across the floors walls and ceiling of the cabin, staring right back into her with beady pinpricked eyes. 

a bug pounces, its thin limbs pinning loretta hard. the hair on its tarsi scrape across her bare arms jolting goosebumps up her entire body. its membranal underside presses up close, making her shake with unease as its squishy segmented body rubs against her and coats her with an inky discharge well familiar to her after multiple campaigns. 

click, click, click, click. clinking mandibles together, like a hungry and petulant child. antennae rub against her ears, just then noticing their dulling by a xenotic wax substance. yet the vile hissing of a group of specially angered freaks still deafens. 

searing pain transports into her flesh. she screams but a sludgey backup in her windpipe stops everything but the vibration. loretta looks down at the thick brown apical claw stuck inches deep in her side. a gaping void begins a slow seeping of crimson.  another of the blobs quickly dashes into her view, bursting into definition as it pops up at the wound’s side. the same black liquid that drapes over her skin begins to leak out of its open mouth-thing, mixing and diluting the blood until the cut is naught but a thick black wall subsuming a portion of her outer thigh. 

she looks forward again as a twinge of neck pain insults her for forgetting herself, and sees the first roach reaching its body upwards. a yonic hole in its abdomen begins to slowly invert, while a large black tendril reaches out of the now-extremity and fluidly twirls itself around loretta’s leg, dripping ichor all the way.

she’d never gotten this close to one of the breeders before, to the point she didn’t even recognize their exotype until now. as far as she knew, they stayed deep inside the tunneled grounds of the hive worlds, fucking like lagomorphs to appease their queens and ever-outbreed the URSS’s onslaughts. and yet, here they are.

the appendage flicks into loretta’s belly, proding at and pushing inside her navel cavity. it feels almost like she’s being licked by a pet dog, or it would if it wasn’t by a fucking bug. the creature tries to push forward past the inch-deep space and is swiftly yanked back in turn, reaching the end of its rope. loretta sighs. if they can’t even reach her then the worst they could probably do is-

the tentacle prods at a lower place before a concept can reach her nerves. a deserted, forgotten plateau, a space too human for her to accept. sliding over a smooth ravine, wet shocks drive up her legs. coiling atrocity digs into her malleable dirt like the hills in pandora. she screams like she imagines it must. though the terror speaks in soft, writhing texture, and not pain. pandora and i, sister bodies- desecrated in twain.

she turns her head to the room’s one window. beyond the hexagonal plasteel frame, one of the last things held up through the chaos, halcyon skies stretch out for infinity- vistas of beautiful achromatic calm broken only by dots of terrestrial colour. an anaerobic dead zone, where nothing except calm would subsume her. devour her. she yearns to feel that cold blanket take her now. she dreams of the window bursting open, space gaining pressure the glass wasn’t ready for, and ripping them all out with it. she dreams of mom bursting through the door gun in hand. she dreams of simply disappearing from all being. 

from above her head slithers another pair of mandible and trio of forceps, digging into her budding chest. a sparse pink miasma sprays across her vision, and she’s stumbled out of her wonder by a furious coughing fit rising in her trachea, and finally taking off some of the adhesive coating her throat alongside it. she tries to look back outside and the claws digging deeper just force her gaze right back. her eyes glaze over with water and, unable to wipe the sleeves away, it drowns her. it fills her mouth until her muscles strain, spread taught like an epithelial fingertrap. she cant help but cough more, painfully clenching on the foreign object sliding deeper inside using her windpipe as a transistor to her weak points.

beige meat squishes up against her face, phantom sensations of a man’s stomach thrusting. it should never have been able to get more evil than that. how did they put human’s cruelty into animals, was it taught? more inches of squishish meat force the thought from her shrouded head. her tears taste like ink. maybe they like it that way.

Lorettas’s hull stretches with fullness and terror. she cant see it, but she can feel it bulging her front extremitously. it feels like the two tendrils will soon meet in the middle. she shudders in fear and feels them swirl inside her as punishment. 

she feels a slight relent, and her thoughts finally losing their haze. the creatures in front of her thrust backwards through the air, and the twisting coiling tentacles whorl their way out like a pullcord. again she has to feel the thing climb her hole, leaving a painful space where there used to be nothing, unable to go back to nothing. it is ashamed and sobbing in it’s own. what a bipolar old lady you are, where is your rage?

his voice forces itself inside of her. look what you’ve done. ruined and irreparable. you must’ve loved it. you and your little bug fascination. maybe if you didn’t spend your time with abominations, you wouldn’t have become one. 

she screams back. it’s not too late, i don’t love them. he’ll never control me again, i’ve carved so much into the world, i won’t let myself be belittled. you’re smart, they’re miniscule- a surprise assault shows their utter lack of strength. i’ll kill them all if i have to. i’ll prove it, i will.

she tries to open her eyes again and sees, stained by pink clouds floating in her sclera, a huge mutated insectoid towering behind the others. a large dynastinaen horn displays ignorant ideas of its strength above its excitedly quivering mandibles. or perhaps the exoskeletals have no need for concepts of pride or egotism. perhaps hive mentality’s destroyal of the individual will always grant them an advantage. no thought of the victim- evil little creatures. no different than the evil of the Authority. no different than-

two blunt black mandibles thrust into her chest. the wind is crushed from her body before she can realize what’s happening. she is too dazed to look at the impact. her deflated cadaver is thrusted into the air, and carried,

her vision bobs up and down as swift twig limbs drag her forth without thought. station windows fly past her, blobs vaguely looking like her favourite posters lay scattered and sliced in pieces, slime staining them irreparable as it coats the floor. does their cruelty know no limits? was the destruction of her ship and her spirit not enough? the destruction of her people? will anything sway their pure evil? she wants to cry, but she’s already using all the tears her body can muster. 

black begins to gorge itself on the halls, the chunky whirring of automatic doors blares in her ears drowning out the chattering sounds of dozens of limbs. the hydraulics were a deeply familiar sound, one she had always cherished hearing. it felt like a reminder of the spacecraft’s life, always interacting to her existence, responding in kind noise whenever loretta’d root around fixing her insides. it was a comforting relationship, wonderful in its unconditionality.

now, her beautiful partner screamed red with anger. they destroyed her entrance too. the airlocks outer seal is burst open with what could fairly be assumed to be anti-ship cannons, if not for the claw marks and acid tainting it all. she looks through the inner seal, into the void where death surely awaits, her body has been so painfully torn and remade, that she can’t make herself put up a single limb to fight at the end. she imagines a blaster in her hand, and clenches its handle tight. then she opens her eyes, and her fingers havent moved an inch. 

then her face meets cold surface, jagged. then the green drapes grab onto her skin again. then her blood mixes with the green and turns the colour to the same rust she smelled in the air at the start. then she feels the perfectly held-at-average air of her beloved spaceship turn into cold freezing anguish of the outside. then she feels her body turn to nothing. then, she feels nothing at all.

[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 17 - Complex Dice Tests

We lied! Today was going to be about the meta-campaign mechanics, but we did a really cool system overhaul instead and we simply have to tell you about it.

Basically, we overhauled a part of our dice system in a pretty major way. It’s involved some fairly dramatic changes to how rolls are done, though all the other systems we’ve created plug pretty seamlessly into it (and as we’ve integrated it, it’s actually let us effectively cut systems now that they’re covered automatically by the new system). It’s one of the deftest bits of game design we’ve ever done and we gotta brag about it.

Development of the Previous System

One of the things that has been a problem for Torchship for a long while is that it wanted to be a dice pool system (roll X dice, looking for Y amount of Z+ results), which doesn’t just have binary pass-failure outcomes. We wanted players to feel competent in their fields, but we also needed there to be interesting difficulties and complications so that stories aren’t just a stateful progression of experts effortlessly performing the tasks they’re experts in.

This is surprisingly difficult!

Nailing down exactly how it would work has gone through about a half-a-dozen iterations, all of which always felt like hacky temporary solutions. The version we came up with before this, which the game has been using for about a year, involved two thresholds on each roll; a “Difficulty” to do the thing, and a “Complexity” tacked onto it that you had to reach to do it without any extra problems.

This served the purpose, but its various incarnations slowed the game down a lot more than it should have, and put too much stress on the GM to work out what these two targets would be and how complications would emerge from it. It was a clunky solution which required a lot of experience to use properly, functioning just well enough to build systems around without ever being stellar on its own.

It Must be Tuesday

While working on Must be Tuesday: Revived Edition, which uses a similar dice pool system, my wonderful editor Lexie came up with a really clever system while we were working out the dice odds. In that game, you have a “Skill” target from 6+ to 3+ with a variable dice pool and a number of Successes needed. 

Our partial successes there comes from a concept of ‘Scrapes’; dice which are 4+, but don’t meet your Skill target. If you reach the number of Successes you need when you add your Scrapes to your rolls meeting your Skill, you get a partial success! Brilliant, isn’t it? That means everyone has a chance to get by on even hard checks using their worst skills, but it’s never easy.

When we poked at Torchship stuff after testing that system out, we found ourselves wondering if something similar wouldn’t fit here as well. It wouldn’t translate 1-1; Must be Tuesday is about teenagers fighting monsters in a horror/comedy setup, where nobody is doing anything really complicated, and even the people who are the best at things are still only as good at it as, you know, teenagers. It’s not a good tone fit, but it inspired the system we used.

Complexity Certs & Complications

The solution we came up with, which we are so proud of we bumped a whole dev diary for it, is the idea of Complexity Certs.

Basically, we’ve ditched the previous Complexity target from before. Your dice Test just has a single, easily determined Difficulty. In ideal circumstances, you roll a number of dice determined by the tool you’re using, needing to get results over your Cert target. Get as many of those as the Difficulty, you succeed, otherwise you fail. Simple binary outcome to a simple problem.

But you’re playing cosmonauts. You know, you boldly go places you probably shouldn’t. You don’t face simple problems.

When the GM calls for a roll, they can tack on Complexity Certs in accordance to the situation you’re facing. Essentially, they’re saying this roll is a test not just of the ‘Primary Cert’ that determines if you pass or fail, but it’s also a test of some extra skills that have come up because of the number of moving parts involved in the situation.

So while you still only have one Difficulty, you need to meet that difficulty using multiple dice targets to succeed without qualifiers. If you just meet the difficulty on your Primary Cert, but not the Complexity Certs, then the GM can hit you with a Complication that can emerge naturally from the Cert in question. Conversely, you could end up in a situation where you have a better value on your Complexity Cert than the primary, so you could fail, but avert other disasters.

Or you could fail at both, and now you have two problems!

This system elegantly compresses a bunch of things the system needed to do into one quick judgement call by the GM in the moment. We don’t need to have specific penalties for working remotely through a robot, working in a spacesuit, or doing things in low gravity; the GM can just add the Drone Operator, EVA, or Cosmonaut Certs to the Test as Complexity Certs. There’s no limit to the number of Complexity Certs that can get added either, so you can sum up really complex situations with a single roll.

It also made the game’s group test mechanics much simpler and more impactful. Helping can be a complex game design challenge; you want people to be able to give each other a hand, but you need to make sure people can’t simply do it on every single roll to avoid slowdown and the trivialization of gameplay challenges. The way Help works now is allowing you to lend a friend one of your Certs to take on a Complexity Cert, basically monitoring a potential problem for them while they focus on the main task. 

As you get XP for Helping or being Helped on Checks where somebody is rolling with a higher Cert than you, you might want to point out potential problems with people’s plans that relate to your expertise as they come up so you can be the one to solve them. It also means that the presence of a Complexity Cert acts as a prompt for characters to step in and help one another out, and rewards a properly multi-disciplinary crew working together to tackle complex problems. 

You know. Like… like a Star Trek.

Examples

The example we use in the game rules is as follows.

Let’s say you are at a shooting range with your laser pistol, and you want to shoot a target. That’s a straightforward Sharpshooter Cert test. You either hit the target or you don’t. Easy!

But let’s say you’re doing the same thing but in a combat situation where you might get hit in return. The GM can (and is encouraged to) add the Soldier Cert as a Complexity Cert to the roll; Soldier is the Cert that covers tactics, movements, and the use of cover, so if your dice meet the difficulty using your Sharpshooter target, but don’t from your Soldier target, then you probably hit the target but exposed yourself to danger in the process.

Suddenly, we can see the difference between an Olympic target shooter and an infantryman.

Or let’s say you’re a guard posted in a reactor room; if you are doing some shooting there, the GM could throw in Damage Controller as a Complexity Cert to represent the chances of you breaking something vital in the antimatter reactor by throwing lasers everywhere. Suddenly, you have a really good reason to cross-train your guards in engineering skills, at least enough that they know not to shoot the matter/antimatter exchangers.

Or maybe you’re trying to incapacitate an unfamiliar alien creature without killing it; the GM could add Life Scientist. What if you’re doing it in a spacesuit? Add EVA. Knocking out a piece of machinery? Add Technician. Aiming a remote turret instead of doing it yourself? Drone Operator.

Which means you could, conceivably, be in a spacesuit operating a tablet controlling a gun drone non-lethally shooting a strange device on a strange alien in a combat situation inside an engine room… and it all happens with one roll and no need for infinitely stacking penalties.

Knock-On Changes

The biggest knock-on change this has caused is a need for finer gradation between Certs so that the differences come up more often and are less severe. For that reason, we moved the game to d10 pools from d6s; yes, this was an enormously annoying change to make through our draft, and we’re still working out how to rebalance advancement through it. It also means we have to do yet another pass through the Traits, which we were midway through… oh well! 

(We have a cool new lever that’s come out of, actually; we can have Traits just make Complexity Certs just not count in appropriate circumstances. Freefaller characters get to ignore 0g penalties, for example, which includes adding Cosmonaut as a Complexity Cert to a lot of rolls). 

I’ve submitted Torchship to Metatopia again this year, and I’m really looking forward to running it on the other side of a year of rewrites and de-heartbreakerification. I’m confident it’ll go much better this time around. 

Anyway, next Dev Diary will be about the Zinovians, and then we’ll do the meta-campaign mechanics. Unless something even cooler comes up.

[likeadog]

ok maybe controversial opinion but while the story of laika the dog makes me cry like a bitch i actually dont think of the scientists as uniquely cruel nor do i think a lot of the use of her as a symbol of angst is necessarily aligned with the situation and i think its interesting that the people that decry the use of dogs in the cosmonaut programs never make angsty vent art about the monkeys or other animals the us used despite primates being closer to humans in intelligence. taps mic hey is this thing on

[tree0frog]

Hi, I just recently came across your blog and I really liked the way you write.

Can I make a request about the twelfth doctor and Clara?

Where Reader is in Clara's class at Coal Hill School, and she always enthusiastically talked about her main hobby - space. Since childhood, she could look at the starry sky for hours, and also talk about it for hours. She reviewed all science fiction films and TV series on space topics, reread all the works of famous astronomers and astrophysicists. Can name all astronauts and cosmonauts in chronological order.

In short, she is the number one fan of everything cosmic, and everything seems to be fine, except for the constant endless bullying from classmates and passive-aggressive reproaches from parents on the topic that "how stupid it is at her age to get carried away with such nonsense." And one day, hiding in a remote alley in the backyard of the school, Reader accidentally sees her teacher Miss Oswald first talking to a strange old man, and after that how both of them go into a strange blue booth.

Hi sorry this took so long iv been busy with work and college and trying to finish the other 100 things I wanted to write lol hope you like it .

i will do a part two if its asked

strange man

main master list

doctor who master list

platonic Clara x teen reader

To most, you were weird quite a freak even.

But to Clara you and your mind were amazing. You found comfort in her from the start bonding over your love for all things space and sifi.

The doctor started questioning his companion when she took little gifts from their travels.

"what's a {Y/N}?" he asked looking up from his book.

" A kid in my class gets bullied and I thought this would hear them up doctor, their mind gosh it is just incredible you'd love them" she laughed tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

so life continued for some time Clara would bring you small gifts from her travels and would tell you about them.

" so the man in the box whats he like?" you asked taking a drink from your bottle and you found yourself eating lunch in the safety of your teacher's classroom like most days.

"Well, he can be very grumpy most of the time VERY Scottish old the doctors are very smart as well"You smiled as you went on listening to your teacher ramble about this old man who could travel in time and space.

The other kids would tease and pick on you for believing in things like that however to you well it was different just the idea that life could exist beyond earth was so amazing to you and to find someone who shared your interest even if she made up still story to make you feel better its worth it.

The bell rang singling that it was the end of another day at the hell you called a school,walking past the back gates you noticed a blue box that wasn't there before outside side it was a man and you.

Teacher?

you froze in your seat as you watched the pair enter the blue box your eyes met the strange man's gaze as he smiled at you before you watched him shut the doors and the blue box faded into nothing.

[allatariel]

WIP Wednesday!

@gordopickett tagged me earlier this week—thank you <3—and I planned to do it today and then of course forgot until the evening. I should have just done it and scheduled it to post today, but I had hoped to work more on Love at the Drafting Table and post that. Alas—I talk about a project and then life conspires to keep me from working on it!

Instead, below is an older, very rough snippet from another languishing, unfinished WIP, The Calculus of Grief, written at the end of April.

Tagging: @madamairlock, @littlelindentree, @caitylove, @shu-of-the-wind, @fireandsoup

More tags (split to work around broken tumblr tagging): @imsfire2, @cryscal, @air-mechanical, @youreorangeyoumoron, @wanderleave

And anyone else who might want to <3

Though the school year had barely just begun, it was actually still a month out from the second anniversary of Sergei’s first day teaching at Spiro T. Agnew High School. October 1, 1995 felt like a lifetime ago. To be honest, he tried to think about the time before as little as possible. But today was a different anniversary: September 4. Today it was harder than most days to ignore the gaping hole in the center of his life. Two years ago today he and his family had landed in Germany. After an hour of debriefing and setting the wheels in motion, of letting hope run wild and selecting a name to bear during their transition, he had called Margo from his hotel room. He had been overjoyed to see her, and when he hung up, his mother had joined him from the adjoining room where his father slept, with his sisters and their families resting safely down the hall. She had asked him about this woman who had saved him, who so clearly held the heart of her firstborn, her only son. So, Sergei had told her their story. For the first time in his life, he was free to tell his mother about the woman he had been in love with for well over ten years. Hours later, when the news reached them, she had pulled him sobbing into her arms as she had when he was small, before the births of his sisters. That was the only time he had given into the despair of losing her. He was trying to live, to stay safe as she had told him. To keep his family safe. And the only way he could manage to do that, to go on, was to leave it all behind. But then just last night he had seen on the news that the Sojourner 1 astronauts and Mars-94 cosmonauts had finally returned to Earth. After their nearly two year ordeal, the world joined in their joy and relief as the survivors were reunited with their loved ones. Sergei had watched Rolan Baranov, the cosmonaut turned astronaut—a defector like himself—be reunited with his American wife and son. His wife who had survived the bombing of JSC. Unlike Margo. Sergei honestly wasn’t sure how he’d made it into work at all. “Mr. Bezukhov?” Principal Alice Nikolsky—not Nikolskaya—called as she knocked on the door of the classroom. “We have a new student for your homeroom. She’s just transferred up from Huntsville, Alabama.” A young girl stepped into the doorway, her pale orange hair falling around wire rim glasses and shadowing her pale freckled face. She looked up, her blue eyes so like his mother’s, his own catching him already off guard as Alice introduced her, “Madison Morgan.”  Seryozha, if you do not let yourself mourn her, she will haunt you forever. His mother’s plea rose in his mind as he took in this child, bouncing nervously on balls of her feet. In another life they could have had a daughter who looked like this girl.

[trancylovecraft]

(KNY)(MASTERLIST) You, Shibou. I, Kokoro

☆♡☆ AO3 LINK ☆♡☆

YANDERE PLATONIC KOKUSHIBO x SISTER! READER

[F/N], A shrine-maiden that was brutally killed in the Sengoku era reincarnates five hundred years later as the strongest hashira alive.

However, Her older brother turned demon is haunted by her passing every day, Grieving over the loss of his little sister.

When they finally meet each other again, He really can't blame himself for what he does next.

GENRE(s): Tragedy, Slow Burn, Heavy Angst, Dark Fantasy, Classical Driven, Action, Drama.

RECCOMENDATION: While not necessary at all, I highly suggest listening to Achilles, Come down. While reading this fanfic as it a song that helped inspire the story and mood.

Thank you!

☆♡☆CHAPTERS ☆♡☆

1, Chapter One: "Michi-Nii" 2, Chapter Two: "You crazy-ass cosmonaut, Remember your virtue, Redemption lies plainly in truth." 3. Chapter Three: "Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, jump now. You are absent of cause or excuse. So self-indulgent and self-referential, No audience could ever want you" 4. Chapter Four: "Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, come down Won't you get up off, get up off the roof?" 5. Chapter Five: "These explanations are valid. But it should be known if the same day a friend of the desperate hasn't spoken to him with an indifferent tone.." 6. Chapter Six: "Loathe the way they light candles in Rome. But love the sweet air of the votives" 7. Chapter Seven: "The souvenirs of a lost country, the hope of a promised land. This divorce between the woman of her life-" 8. Chapter Eight: "You’re scaring us and all of us, some of us love you Achilles, it’s not much but there’s proof" 9. Chapter Nine: "Feel your breath course frankly below and see life as a worthy opponent" 10. Chapter Ten: "I witness that a lot of people are dying because they consider that life is not worth living." 11. Chapter Eleven: "He changed a lot after that and that this story had-" 12. Chapter Twelve: "Do not waste yourself on this roof" 13. Chapter Thirteen: "You will not be more than a rat in the gutter" 14. Chapter Fourteen: "..So much more than a rat" 15. Chapter Fifteen: "Soldier on, Achilles." 16. Chapter Sixteen: "You crave the applause yet hate the attention, Then miss it" 17. Chapter Seventeen: "But it's cool in a weird way that I wish I could be" 18. Chapter Eighteen: "Where you go, I'm going." 19. Chapter Nineteen: "Your act is a ruse."

(INCOMPLETE, MORE SOON)

-----

SIDE-WORKS

Mitsuri x Reader: You, Tsuri

You, 'Katsu.

Daughter of Ōkami (To Scorch The Sun)

[lonestarflight]

Artwork of the Gemini-Vostok Rescue of the stranded Mercury Capsule in orbit. This scene is from the book version of "Marooned", specifically the first edition of the book.

Synopsis of the book:

"The first edition of the novel Marooned opens with the central character, Major Richard 'Dick' Pruett, attempting to come to terms with his impending doom. Pruett, an astronaut in the Mercury-Atlas IV program, is in orbit alone. His engines have failed to fire for re-entry and he is stranded in orbit, where he faces death due to asphyxiation as he depletes the on-board supply of oxygen. The story goes into an extended flashback that reviews Pruett's development as a US Air Force fighter test pilot and training as an astronaut.

As Pruett reviews his life, a friend of his in the astronaut corps, Jim Dougherty, refuses to accept that all is lost. He pushes NASA officials to mount a rescue mission using the prototype of a new spacecraft in development, the two-man Gemini.

The challenges are formidable. The rescue mission must be prepared and launched in a matter of mere days. Dougherty must fly the untested Gemini spacecraft solo, achieve a rendezvous with the Mercury vessel stranded in orbit, get Pruett on board the new spacecraft in the empty co-pilot's seat, and return to Earth. (At the time the novel was written, none of these tasks – Gemini launch, rendezvous or EVA – had been attempted.)

As NASA scrambles to prepare and launch the rescue mission, the Soviets secretly make their own plans to rescue Pruett first, rushing to send a cosmonaut aloft in a Vostok spacecraft. (In this version, the Soviets have already achieved the orbital objectives of rendezvous, docking and extravehicular activity [EVA]; in real life the Soviets did not achieve all these milestones until 1969.) Ultimately Dougherty succeeds in his mission and rescues Pruett; cosmonaut Andrei Yakovlev in the Vostok does rendezvous with the Mercury and provides assistance in the rescue (by using high-intensity spotlights to improve visibility) but does not take an active physical role in it. The novel ends with all three spacemen returning safely to Earth."

-Information from Wikipedia: link, link

Posted on Flickr by Drew Granston: link

[thefrakkintrinity15]

I cannot thank enough to those wonderful fanfics’ writers that fill the voids left in the devastating story of Margo and Sergei. 🙏🏼🙌🏼👏🏼🫶🏼

Funnily enough, I have an idea for a fanfic that involves something I believe I haven’t read yet: marriage. 👻

Yes, Margo and Sergei need to get married to save his life. How come?

Set in Season 3 finale.

Margo didn’t have to flee to Moscow nor died, despite the bombing. She wasn’t in her office and Aleida didn’t keep digging in the nuclear engine design stolen by the soviets.

Sergei defects to the States.

He is offered a witness protection life by Department of justice and State. But he refuses that option. He hasn’t come to the US to hide but to live his life, he desperately tells Margo. He emphasises that cosmonaut Rolan Efimovitch didn’t hide himself when he defected to the US in the moon.

Add the dramatic situation that Margo and NASA are going through with the bombing and the mess in Mars. And despite Margo first thinks that Sergei couldn’t have come in the worse moment, he ends up being an important and very comforting presence around her.

Strange as it sounds, the government, Margo, etc… come to the conclusion that the best way to protect him is to make him somehow visible to the public eye, popular.

Announce his defection for personal (not political) reasons: Margo. He won’t work in NASA to support that argument, but he will be teaching as professor in an Engineering University (for instance)

President Wilson and Gorbachov will be proud that NASA director and former Roscosmos Director are involved in a personal relationship… and by promoting this union, Margo and Sergei are pointed out as untouchable. If something happens to them, everybody will know which organisation did it.

Think of how awkward will be for Margo talking to others about this unexpected development in her life. Thinking of it as a kind of marriage of convenience but that’s far from the truth.

They don’t have a proper honey moon, but they will take some weekends off to go to New Orleans. 🎊

Sergei and Margo are scared but full of hope because, despite everything, their hearts will be finally healed . ❤️😜

Do you think this idea sounds crazy? 🤔 sadly, writing fanfics is an enterprise that I’m not able to tackle.

[retroautomaton]

howdy! I'm also a robot enthusiast and I'm trying to get better at designing robot characters. I absolutely adore all of your robot designs, especially the sweet salt cosmonauts! do you have any advice for designing robots?

Ohh thank you~!! ✨✨

The biggest advice I can give is to study the functionality! That’s the most interesting part of robots to me, and influences all my designs. You definitely don’t have to understand the mechanics completely, but getting an idea of the basics, and knowing what the function and purpose of the robot is, and what parts help to carry out that function, is always a good starting place!

Here’s an example of how I was mostly focused on the saw mechanics of the shoulder, because that’s what was important to the story, and made the rest mostly aesthetic driven.

Whereas with Thylo, I had an idea of how I wanted his legs to look, and built the mechanics around that, to serve the aesthetic, but it also plays into his motion, and how he stands, and his balance.

For Snap, both her new and older designs are more personality driven, and wanted to keep her more ‘human’ elements more round and approachable, and her mechanical parts sharper, to sell that they’re weaponry, and that she’s both kind and a fighter. But even her sharp aspects are never perfectly straight, keeping it fun and light-hearted.

Her’s is also a transforming design, and every little piece serves that function, especially the head area, and I consider how the panels will fall or open, or attach. Again, it doesn’t have to be mechanically accurate, but if you’ve got a solid idea of how the physics work for the character, it really sells the design!

Even for less humanish designs, you can give a clear idea of the robot’s function through decals, or how it affects the environment/other characters.

Here’s a little example: let’s say I wanna make a robot whose purpose is to lift boxes on top-shelves, and bring them down to a pallet. It would need a way to see the box, a way to reach it, and to push it onto the pallet.

So, I’ll play with the idea of his functionality first. I could go with some sort of scissor lift, or hydraulic system, but I settle on mostly a telescoping mechanism, and build a little warehouse, or dock worker aesthetic around him.

In short, I’d say just study mechanism that interest you, play with their shapes, their motion, figure out the purpose or character of your robot, and how they function, and what ways you can best convey that through their design! Hope this helps! ✨

[medilies]

Byler fic rec - 5 WIPs that are worth it

I know some of y'all don't like reading incomplete fics, but here are some that are so good even the WIP averse won't regret reading them.

These fics are still updating (just not very regularly) so you will get the complete story eventually.

As you can probably guess, they're all longer chaptered fics, so expect multi-layered plots with at least a healthy dose of angst in each.

cosmonaut. by ghostshaming (T, ~82k, 15/?)

Gut wrenching. Heart breaking. A deep dive into Mike's depression and what could have been. You'll notice the writing is beautifully sensory, I'd also say this fic probably is the closest to the show plotwise. One of those fics that has its own little vibe unlike anything else.

them's the breaks by emelinelou (not rated but I'd say T, ~90k, 14/?)

A bit of canon divergence here where Will can mind-travel into the Upside Down and make it his own... or so he thinks. And ik I'm saying this for all of them but this is just fucking BRILLIANT - the overall tone is a bit more lighthearted than cosmonaut despite the characters still getting into some sticky situations, the byler of it all is ~chef's kiss~ and I really like the characterization of Mike and Will here (that is, if they were the type of people to greet each other with 'Yo').

If You Stay by Flurryofstarz (M, 52k, 11/?)

The Proposal AU! This is another fun, fairly lighthearted one. I watched the film for the first time after reading this, and I gotta say, I was disappointed - this is so much better than the film imo!! (Read: more meaningful conversations between the two leads, fewer bizarre moments thrown in, well adapted to fit byler, just as much comedy, and more drama heheh). A wonderful fic, whether you've seen The Proposal or not.

Make Believe by Flurryofstarz (E, ~84k, 17/?)

Flurryofstarz strikes again! This is an a/b/o fic, in which Mike does everything in his power to protect Will, who he's sure will present as a male omega, the most oppressed designation. (Don't worry if you don't know what the terminology means, it's all explained!) This fic is so intricate and beautiful and stays so true to the characters, it had me SCREAMING at Mike at some points, because that boy has good intentions but that does not translate to good outcomes. This is definitely one of the more serious fics, with no end to the angst in sight. 10/10. Go read it.

(Also, note that while it's marked as explicit, it hasn't yet reached any NSFW content, so please don't let that stop you. Though be warned there are some uncomfortable moments thanks to our favourite small town bullies - so far I'd rate it M.)

the vale of shadows by sevensided (stonedlennon) (M, ~30k, 11/?)

I mean, duh. Everyone's familiar with sevensided's legendary work a dream always the same - that's just basic byler lore - and this is the third and final installment of that series, in a fantasy setting this time! I can't say much more for fear of spoiling it, but trust me when I say it's equally brilliant as ADATS.

This is the only fic on this list where I'm not 100% sure if they'll continue to update. Even if they don't, though, the latest chapter ends on a nice note.

That's all, go give these amazing stories some love!

[vladdyissues]

Please give us som Vlad headcanons!!! :)

Oh boy, you're gonna wish you'd never asked 😆 Long post ahead

🎧 Vlad is a huge fan of 80s synth-pop and new wave. Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Smiths, Duran Duran, Tears For Fears, Pet Shop Boys, a-ha, and New Order, to name just a few.

🎵 On a similar (quarter) note, music from the late 70s and early 80s is still difficult for him to listen to because it reminds him of the years he was pining for Maddie, the accident, and being hospitalized. Mid-80s music and beyond, when he began to take his life back and build his wealth and power, is his "good old days" music.

🎹 Another music headcanon: In Familiar, I hinted at Vlad being a pianist. I think he'd look pretty hot playing a saxophone, maybe even a trumpet. And Martin Mull is a pretty good guitarist and singer, so Vlad also having those talents would be really cool. But I like to believe that Vlad plays the geekiest, dorkiest, nerdiest, most Slav-coded instrument of all: the accordion. Just imagine him torturing Danny and Sam and Tucker with polka music and ballads about cheese while on a camping trip. Maybe Wulf howling in agony from somewhere in the woods.

🧀 Yeah, he’s basically the negaverse equivalent of Weird Al.

👂 Vlad got his ear pierced in the mid-90s.

🔥 Despite being a fire specter ("having a fire core", to use the phandom terms), Vlad loves the cold. Winter is his favorite season, Christmas his favorite holiday. A bit of a spoiler for either chapter 13 or 14 of Familiar: Vlad is a superb ice skater.

💔 Besides his mother, Maddie was the only woman Vlad ever loved.

🐄 Vlad grew up the son of a poor Wisconsin dairy farmer. His mother was a first-generation Romanian* immigrant. He was the first member of his family to go to college, and on a full scholarship. He has no siblings. (*I may adapt Vlad’s nationality depending upon the story/art/situation, but generally I like to HC him as Romanian, which you can see on his backpack here in this AU.)

👊 Vlad was a victim of bullying in his teen years. Because of his first name and his ethnicity—not to mention his appearance and disposition: skinny, gangly, "ugly", shy, nerdy, poor—Halloween was always a miserable time for him: getting pelted with plastic vampire fangs in the hallways at school; cruel nicknames like "Count Vladislob" or "Vladis-louse"; racist remarks about his Romani mother; "Bleh bleh! I vant to suck your bluud!" It was awful.

✌️ Because he spent so many years being made to feel ashamed of his unusual name, when he became rich and successful after obtaining his ghost powers, he put his name and initial everywhere. V for Vlad.

🏈 Vlad got his love of Green Bay from his father. Apart from a shared surname, it was one of the only two (2) things he and his dad had in common.

🔧 Working on farm machinery like tractors and hay balers was the other. Vlad and his dad would often fix the farm equipment themselves rather than hire a mechanic—mostly out of necessity. Vlad is still pretty good with a monkey wrench, though in college his focus shifted from engineering to physics after meeting Jack and Maddie.

🚀 Vlad grew up in the sixties. Space race, the moon landing, the Cold War. Every kid his age had space fever. Vlad was no exception. His bedroom walls were a collage of stars, rockets, shuttles, astronauts, and cosmonauts. Yuri Gagarin was his hero. He wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up. (Just like Danny.)

🩸 I mentioned this on another post, but I'll add it here, too: Vlad's obsession with gaining more power stems from the trauma and weakness he experienced when he was hospitalized. He made a vow to never be that helpless again.

🪦 Both of Vlad's parents were dead by the time he got out of the hospital. He was estranged from the rest of the Masters family and therefore had no one to turn to.

👶 Because of this, Vlad became obsessed with having a family of his own. Ironically, the accident sterilized him. He will never be able have biological children.

🍪 Some of Vlad’s happiest memories are baking with his mother. He had (and still does have) quite a sweet tooth—and a penchant for cooking.