"Honorable humans... I request violence!"

Players: J.C., Ed, Alton, Ben

A long-dead civilization left behind an incomplete Dyson sphere, a vast artificial bio-globe encircling a distant sun. Humanity and two alien races, the Blue and the Tershy, vie to colonize it and unlock the secrets of the Sphere-builders.

Very, very good game. Everybody really brought it:

Despite showing up after we'd already made the bookends and having no input into the idea for the history, Alton jumped in with both feet and made our first focus and scene. And did I mention this was his very first story game? Yep, awesome.

Ed gets the "most interesting alien" award twice over, once for his gropey-feelie Tershy and again for making linguistic purity a reigning concern of the Blues.

J.C. was our valiant facilitator, and also doomed/saved Blue society by leaking the info that they really weren’t the same race that made the Sphere, just some primitive life forms that the Sphere-builders uplifted millennia ago. Wah wah!

Epic history.

One of the things this game showed me in a way I hadn't really seen before is how much any kind of theme players are interested in can come out. Both of Ed's aliens seemed to be as much about language as anything else and reminded me when he named a sun-person (in another game) the color pastel green.

I think this is something (read: yet another thing) I love about story games. They're not just about telling cool stories, but about exploring themes we each find powerful, moving and important.