Players: Ben, Christopher, Mike

We decided to do something a little bit different with our game of Shock by avoiding the usual "far future in space" themes. Our setting: primitive humans who have just started to make the transition from hunter-gatherers to settled farmers. They are ruled over by a group of "priests" who reign from a temple which secretly hides a derelict, billions-of-years-old spacecraft. These priests are in fact a small group of humans in the far future who planted the seeds of humanity on this planet and then went into stasis, waking up at appropriate intervals so as to be able to impart the proper knowledge and technology on these new humans. The real catch: the priests are able to transfer their minds into the bodies of the humans. In fact, they must do so in order to survive. They are essentially immortal, unless they are killed or their technology is destroyed. On top of all of this, part of the new human population is "spirit-touched," possessing an abnormal psychology which makes the priests unable to inhabit their bodes.

Christopher's character was a jaded member of the priesthood who believed that his companions had strayed from their original purpose: he wished to prove his point by dying rather than extending his life into eternity as the others wished. Ben's character was a "spirit-touched" tribesman who knew that there was something special about the priests: he wished to take their power from them. My character was the best hunter in the land, who believed he was destined to become a high priest, and was also quite deranged, having murdered his own children after discovering they were spirit-touched.

We only ended up playing two scenes because of the amount of time we spent on set-up. Our setting took a bit of extra work, being quite different from the usual "we're in space" setting. I think we all had a great time with the two scenes, though, even though the last ones were quite short! It would have been nice to play an extra scene each, but this was still a great game of Shock.

In Christopher's first scene, his character, currently a missionary, was summoned back by his estranged life-partner (another priest) to their temple. They believed he had spent too long in his current body, and also too long "amongst the people" teaching them things they didn't need to know. He wished to take a young spirit-touched boy with him: the boy clearly possessed keen insight and should be observed! His life-partner agreed, but also insisted that the village be "cleansed" of any unhealthy knowledge he may have imparted on its people, leading to an inquisition and the execution of several people.

In Ben's first scene, his character returned to his tribal village after one of his many forays into the mountains. He had been scouting the priests' temple, as usual. He briefly met with his old mentor, who urged him not to anger the chieftain of the tribe (Ben's antagonist), who wished to maintain the status quo and stop these ridiculous notions of taking the power from the priests. A heated public argument led to Ben's character supplanting the chieftain and the chieftain running off to the priests to bring them back and settle matters with this upstart "spirit-touched" once and for all.

My character's first scene consisted of him arriving in the "city" near the temple and seeing some "spirit-touched," including members of his own tribe, being put to work as slaves. One of the slaves, someone he knew, called out to him. He berated the slave for daring to speak to him and demanded to know where the priests could be found. The slave, dumbfounded, said nothing, eliciting a brutal strike from the powerful hunter. At that moment, his wife approached, publicly berating him for having left her behind and revealing to the gathered crowd that my own children had been spirit-touched. The hunter's only way to save face was to admit that he had murdered his children in the name of his faith. His wife stalked away. The priests ended up turning away the hunter, but he managed to convince them that the only way to deal with "spirit-touched" was to enslave or murder them.

We were running short on time, so our second (and final) scenes were brief, consisting of a bit of setup and the conflict resolution. Christopher's character ended up committing suicide while under house arrest, but sadly his suicide was covered up by his antagonist as a natural death and had no lasting effect on the "infiltrators." Ben's character led his people to the temple and attacked, conquering it, but accidentally releasing the ship's energy and causing the city surrounding it to be destroyed. My character returned to his tribe and conquered it, slowly creating an army of warrior-slaves, but he was supplanted by his wife, who had been "possessed" by the priesthood all along.

Again, would have been great to have more time, but the large amount of time we spent on setup really paid off and made it very easy to play the scenes. I was very satisfied with the setting and I think the characters all had very compelling things going on as well! Ben and Christopher, maybe you'd like to chime in with your thoughts about the game?


Looking forward to trying out Shock again sometime soon!

Mike

"I'm a genius, for a caveman!"

His life-partner agreed, but also insisted that the village be "cleansed" of any unhealthy knowledge he may have imparted on its people, leading to an inquisition and the execution of several people.

Yeah, that first scene was a great case of "Oh, that's not a conflict? Well how about this? Okay, well how about this? Fine, then how about this?" Christopher wasn't opposed to the first things that I expected to be conflicts (demanding he return to the temple/base, ending the missionary program entirely, solidifying the policy that the "natives" shouldn't be taught or enlightened just exploited) so the trouble just kept building until I went all the way to "sending priest inquisitors to find out what you've been teaching these people (science, logic, higher learning) and wiping anyone who has learned too much." We kind of drew a veil over how bad the purge was, since it would have been weeks after Loric (Christopher) left, but I feel it was pretty brutal.

Loric drinking poison later to make a statement to his fellow Infiltrators (what we called the "reverse Socrates") was a very cool scene. Seneri was a great sympathetic antagonist, because of course she thinks she's helping Loric, protecting him from himself, but really she's destroying everything he's trying to accomplish. Her weeping over his body and calling for physicians to save him while Christopher rolls to die and not be saved was sweet.

I feel pretty bad for Get (Loric's link, the precocious Spirit-touched boy). After we established (in Mike's scene) that the Spirit-touched were now being actively persecuted and enslaved by the priests, and then Mike piled on top the "the only good spirit-touched is a dead spirit-touched" credo, it was pretty clear Get being in the hands of the priests only meant one thing. It was particularly mean, because it was Loric who pushed a conflict to get him brought to the priests in the first place, thinking Get could be apprenticed / taught, and that the priests could see the spirit-touched had potential. Best of intentions...

Mike, I really liked your ending, replacing the destroyed Infiltrator/priest religion with one of your own. It was cool because it played off the domino from my scene (energy blast wipes out the city and the priest/Infiltrators), as well as your rejection from your first scene, when the priests basically said "bugger off, you're a hunter, you're not fit to be a priest!" That whole "I am destined to be a priest" idea was fascinating, because we players knew that the high priests were solely the 100 or so surviving crew implanted in native bodies, so there was literally no way you could ever be one of them, but of course your character had no idea what the real hierarchy was.

Oh yeah: starting issues were Abnormal Psychology, Crime and Reproductive Success. Crime got short shrift, mostly centering on the disruption of the normal tribal structures in the face of the changes the Infiltrators had enforced (breaking up tradition and undermining traditional values, causing people to do unpredictable things, like Mike's child-murdering hunter). The Abnormal Psych and Reproductive Success went hand-in-hand, with the Spirit-touched being the evolutionary off-shoot that might dominate, except for that the Infiltrator priests were suppressing them because they were dangerous to the Infiltrator's dominance. The Spirit-touched were crazy in some ways, but genius in others. I tend to think that from a primitive point of view they were frightening because they thought differently, but really they were a radical branch of evolution, caveman savants. Reproductive Success also came in with the Infiltrators themselves: they had no bodies of their own anymore, so they were just transplanting their minds into a series of native hosts, but obviously that meant as a race they were doomed: they had no means to reproduce and spread.

Yeah, I would have paid cash money for time to play that game out more slowly. I think we did remarkably well at wrapping it up in a satisfying way, but I could have spent hours more digging into the situation.