The Clathran Menace: The Adventures of M. J. Turner in the 29th Century Across the Rim of the Galaxy in Dual Space

This is not the sort of game that can be told in screenshots.

      

I'm going to abandon the day-by-day account of my space travels in favor of a more summarized entry, particularly because most of this session involved a lot of backtracking to places I'd already been. Suffice to say that in about 180 turns, I finished exploring the part of the galaxy that I could explore, visited every planet but two, logged all of their trade goods, bought all of the weapons and armor (both ship and personal) that they had to offer, made new allies, read about 75 pages' worth of text, followed several quest chains to their conclusion—and still got stuck at a crucial moment. More to come.

         

Let's otherwise organize this one topically.

    

The Story So far

       

M. J. Turner is a hotshot pilot for the Space Patrol, assigned in the first Star Saga to explore Beyond the Boundary and destroy a notorious space pirate named Silverbeard. In the process, he discovered that Silverbeard's planet was in fact the last Outpost of famed explorer Vanessa Chang, last seen hundreds of years ago, who discovered the threat posed by a species of lizard aliens called the Clathrans. Now the first Captain of the Space Navy, Turner's mission is to collect intelligence on The Clathran Menace.

     

The Clathrans are so dangerous that I agreed (along with fellow hypothetical players controlling other characters) to destroy all information about how to get back to Earth. Only a giant compass on Outpost still points the way.

   

In my first three entries, I met several species. The dominant ones are:

   

• Hadrakians, "a centaur-like combination of tiger and gorilla." They come from the planet Hadrak but have colonies throughout the galaxy. All Hadrakians are born male and earn citizenship through victory in the arenas present on each of their planets. Visitors have to go through the same ritual, winning an arena battle, before they're able to do anything on the planets except make limited, unfavorable trades in the "civilian markets." I made contact with The Battle, Inc., an organization that resists the Clathrans. They keep telling me I have to upgrade my ship's defenses before they'll give me any serious missions.

• Worzellians, a species fighting a constant civil war. They've agreed to join the anti-Clathran cause.

• The Brotherhood, a human sect—remnants of a lost colony—researching a phenomenon called Dual Space. They've set me on a path to learn more about the phenomenon and to gain abilities inherent to their order.

• Bluvians, a hairy, ugly species whose people are intelligent and capable but also somewhat naïve. They live on several colonies, all with simple names (Bloo, Cloo, Gloo). They were conquered by the Clathrans thousands of years ago. The Clathrans experimented on them, giving different orders on different colonies, to see what method would best prepare them as Clathran soldiers. All the efforts seem to have failed, and the Clathrans abandoned the planets, but the Bluvians still live by those instructions.

        

My galactic map, in progress.

      

From the Hadrakians, Turner has learned about the Clathran Survey Line, an armada of ships moving slowly across the galaxy, ostensibly "surveying" each planet, but in reality conquering them. The Clathrans have a particular hatred of humanity and seek to wipe us out. You might say they're a menace.

     

Trading     

    

I bought my first trading drone, with three cargo spaces, in the last session. I used it for a few things but remarked that I was annoyed by the constant messages that I hadn't tasked it during a particular turn. In the comments, Scott offered: "I seem to recall having mine ALWAYS on the move, with its trades plotted out 10 or more turns in advance." I had a few more planets to visit before I could do this reliably, but once I hit Turn 120 or so (I started this session at 97), I was emulating Scott. The drone never sat idle. I identified what items I wanted to buy next and worked out the routes to travel.

      

I finally find a synthetic genius.

       

There are 12 common trade items in the game, traded in the common markets of each planet, accessible by the drone:

        

• Crystals
• Culture
• Fiber 
• Food
• Medicine 
• Munitions
• Phase Steel
• Radioactives 
• Super Slips
• Synthetic Geniuses
• Tools
• Warp Cores

        

For other items, such as weapons available in special markets and ship upgrades, you have to go to the planet and trade multiple items. 

   

I like to think I'm spreading Super Slip 'n' Slides all over the galaxy.

     

Enough planets sell 2 or 3 of something for only 1 of something else that as long as you have at least 1 trade item, you can eventually acquire anything you want. It happened a few times that after a particularly expensive trade, I was down to only a couple of items, but with time I could always bounce back. For instance, assume I got to the point that I only had 1 unit of radioactives (which can be mined in unlimited amounts on Dahl). But I wanted to buy the Causality Shielding on Dahl, which requires 1 phase steel, 1 synthetic genius, and 1 tools.

• Fly to Dosia, trade 1 radioactives for 3 munitions
• Fly to Unaria, trade 3 munitions for 3 phase steel
• Fly to Sallion, trade 2 phase steel for 2 synthetic genius
• Return to Turner, offload 1 phase steel, 1 synthetic genius
• Fly to Rialla, trade 1 synthetic genius for 3 tools
• Return to Turner

   

Now I have what I need and 2 extra units of tools besides. Obviously, I'd ideally start planning this six turns before getting back to Dahl, but there were plenty of times I screwed it up and spent a turn or two doing nothing on a planet, waiting for my drone to arrive (I could have skipped a step here with a five-bay drone). 

   

What hung things up for a long time was that I didn't know where to find synthetic geniuses. They were on Sallion, a Hadrakian world fairly close to the beginning of the game, but one I overlooked just because there are a lot of planets to keep track of. I should have been labeling a copy of the map rather than writing planets and their coordinates in a separate notepad. Even at turn 274, I don't have a reliable source for culture, which is required in a couple of major recipes. I had to buy some units in a special encounter that required a unit of primordial soup, also difficult to obtain.

     

Buying a new piece of equipment at the Ship Improvements Market. I don't know why I'd want to crush quarks.

       

But slowly, through this process, I acquired things I needed at the shipyards and weapon markets of different worlds, including personal weapons like a phase sword and power armor; ship defenses like a quark crusher, a plasma beam, and an entropy loop; and special materials used to construct other devices, such as a vortex coil (2 food, 1 medicine, 1 super slip, 1 warp core on Dosia) and a flame jewel (2 medicine, 1 culture, 1 synthetic genius, 1 warp core on Rialla). Using the special actions, I was able to build an Advanced Healing Unit (1 primordial soup, 1 probability membrane, 1 fiber, 1 synthetic genius, 1 tools) and a Discontinuity Wave Generator (1 flame jewel, 1 vortex coil, 1 crystals, 1 munitions, 1 radioactives). I also bought a stargate key at Dosia and upgraded my ship to hold 15 cargo pods (the maximum), but for some reason I never got around to buying a higher-capacity drone.

       

Assembling a Discontinuity Wave Generator from its component parts.

      

I have to say, I rather enjoyed the trading aspect of the game: making notes about what was available where (which sometimes changes), fitting new planets into the existing network, and plotting the most efficient routes. So much of the game is deterministic, told in long narrative paragraphs. This is really the only mechanic over which the player has full control. 

         

No More Outpost

    

While in the midst of all this trading, I decided to speed it along by returning to Outpost and its unlimited supply of most of the trading goods. It was at a time where my ship was damaged, and I figured I could fix it for free there. Bad idea. Shortly after I landed, the Clathrans arrived and started bombarding the planet. My computer noted that since it was just a solid rock, it could easily be destroyed by orbital bombardment. I had two chances to flee the planet. After trying to wait out the attack on the first chance, I fled on the second one.

   

Outpost was destroyed. Theoretically, this means I can't return to the Nine Worlds, since I destroyed all my information about their coordinates and Outpost had the only pointer. Something tells me I'll figure out another way before the end of the game.

        

Battle

 

By Turn 120, my notepad was filled with items like "return to Psorus when I can win the arena battle" and "return to Ghorbon when I can win the space battle." (Most battles are fixed like this, and fairly well telegraphed, but occasionally you get a random space battle, usually with a Clathran scout.) For a while, it seemed no matter how many upgrades I purchased—both ship and personal—I couldn't win anything. The tide really only started to change towards the end of this session.

      

Getting closer, at least.

      

When you meet an enemy in battle, the outcome is completely deterministic based on what equipment you have. There are things about the process, but in general, my understanding is:

    

• Every piece of defensive and offensive gear (again, both personal and ship) has a base offensive or defensive value. For personal combat, this also includes abilities you've acquired, like "Paralyze" and "Telekinesis."

• These base values are modified by your personal health or ship health depending on the type of battle you're fighting. If you're at 50% personal health, your phase sword is only about 50% as effective as normal.

• Base values are also modified by other characteristics, such as the nature of the enemy and the environment. For personal abilities, base values are modified by the "Dual Space Interphase" of the area, basically a value that tells you how much of the magical realm is leaking into real space. More on that later.

• The game automatically selects the three items having the highest offensive and defensive values in the current time and place.

• The values of those three items added up have to cross a certain threshold (I think it's been 100 for all battles so far) for you to win.

• Overcoming the "Attack" threshold is necessary to progress the plot (i.e., to win the arena combat on Hadrakian worlds or actually get to land on Ghorbon). Overcoming the "Defense" threshold is necessary to avoid damage to your personal or ship's health.

        

Made the grade.

     

Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of the above. Anyway, it would have been more of an RPG if the game had introduced some randomness or player agency to this process, but I recognize that for plot reasons, the authors wanted the player to cross certain thresholds before key events.

    

Both kinds of damage can be difficult to repair. If you don't fix damage, you can get into a downward spiral in which all your attacks are ineffective. Only a few planets have hospitals or shipyards, and some of them charge for services. I found out by accident (while twiddling my thumbs waiting for my drone) that unused phases during a turn can promote healing, and once I got the Advanced Healing Unit, it started happening automatically. Late in this session, I had a random space encounter in which an alien told me that they sell Automated Repair Systems for ships on Hadrak. I don't know why I didn't find that when I visited, but it's on my list to return and check it out.

  

This is not good.

     

Anyway, thanks to these increases, I was slowly able to win the arena battles on the Hadrakian colonies, fight off the harpy on Dardahl, and destroy the attack ship orbiting Ghorbon (this took me about six revisits). By the end of this session, I didn't have any fixed battles left on my list to complete, saving the Clathran Survey Line, which I'm guessing is not defeatable in regular combat.

      

New Life and New Civilizations

      

Most of the planets I visited during this session were colonies of species I'd already encountered, particularly the Hadrakians, who have about half a dozen colonies on the map, including Hadrak, Holoth, Sallion, Psorus, Adafa, and Franclair. Every one of them required winning an arena combat to explore the planet and get any decent trades in the market, although I never won on Sallion and thus made unfavorable trades for synthetic geniuses throughout this session.

Since these Hadrakians are colonists, the planets they live on often have other native species, such as the bat people on Holoth. On Psorus, the planet was populated by dinosaurs, one of which (a winged one) attacked me as I tried to leave the planet, and I had to fight it in a "space" battle. On Adafa, the Hadrakians are occupying an orbiting dome built by a more advanced, unknown race. The same is true of their colony on Adafa; it's an artificial world with advanced technology built by an unknown species. While exploring the devices, I gain a skill called "Prescient Choice" but lose "Paralyze." On Franclair, the Hadrakians co-exist with a race of protoplasmic blobs who constantly play pranks on everyone else.

       

The Bluvians were also relatively interesting. The Clathrans had tried several tactics to turn the gormless race into soldiers. On Bloo, they were given military-style training by robots and rewarded for completion of those tasks. On Gloo, they were taught to respect authority and created a rigid hierarchy for themselves. Then I discovered Cloo, where the Clathrans apparently taught the Bluvians to embrace individualism, to the point where nobody does any work (fortunately, they have robots) and their governmental and economic systems are constantly changing. In all cases, the Clathrans determined that the experiment didn't work and abandoned the colony, a fact I discovered by breaking into the Clathrans' empty bases and reading their research reports. In Cloo, I managed to give an impassioned speech that convinced them to join the Clathran resistance, but I never got acknowledgement of that the way I did with the Hadrakians, Worzellians, and Riallans.

          

The Cloo Bluvians are so disorganized that they can't even agree who gets to greet alien visitors.

     

New races included:

   

• Rialla, a planet of telepathic sentient gas bags. I guess I met some Riallans in Star Saga: One, although I don't remember it. These Riallans, who call themselves "Middle" Riallans, were created by that other race. Riallians apparently thrive in places where the Dual Space interphase is wide; in fact, such conditions were necessary for the original race to survive. Since it's been widening lately, the Riallans are doing well. I was able to convince them to send a courier to "old" Rialla for help against the Clathrans; the other option was to convince them to build a fleet of spaceships, which seemed beyond their capabilities. I learned more about Dual Space on the planet (see below) and acquired the "Sensearound" ability. The planet is also the only source of flame jewels, so if I were Valentine Stewart, I would have completed my personal quest.

    

Another ally.

      

• Zyroth and Yinkle both have hostile aliens who won't let me land. (At Yinkle, they called me a "disgusting alien-who-might-be-food.") The game doesn't even give me an option to fight. I suspect there's nothing to do at those worlds. A Zyran later attacked me in space, looking for a meal.

• Once I got past the ship blocking access to Ghorbon, I found a primitive race of racoon-like creatures called Roquies. While not unintelligent, they proved to be too capricious. When I tried to teach them to spy on the Clathran base on their planet, they just wandered away. 

• On Keros, I find a short, hairy, humanoid species. They are intelligent but uninterested in anything but playing games. I join some children in one for a while. They work only a couple hours a day and don't seem interested in culture or scientific progress. I learned a dodging skill from them called "Jump'r'." But while exploring the subterranean geology of the planet, I found some kind of cube that calls me "Master" and says that it has been following its prime directive "to keep the Kerosian race at a minimal intelligence level." Any Kerosian born too intelligent is compelled (telepathically) to report to the cube for "genetic revision" but the transport tube to the cube has been broken for centuries, so the Kerosians have just been jumping into a volcano. I tried to order the cube to stop is prime directive, but it wants an access code I don't have. I asked what it would take to fix the transport tube, and it said a vortex coil. I know where to get one, but I haven't had a chance yet.

    

The Hadrakian Questline

    

The Battle, Inc. is the inter-colony resistance organization the Hadrakians organized against the Clathrans. The Hadrakians, having the most colonies in this area of space, are the natural choice to lead the effort. They're concerned about the conquest of their colony on Innermost (which I haven't been able to visit yet), and they expect Adafa to fall next.

   

Every time I visited, on every colony, they would tell me that my ship was inadequate for any missions. Finally, at some point, I crossed the necessary threshold and they invited me deeper into their confidences. In a regular RPG, I'd do a few small missions for them, forming an overall questline. But in this game, they gave me the big one right away: Cross the Clathran Survey Line and do some scouting. Identify the Clathran home world, map the locations of their bases, encourage occupied colonies to rebel, and learn the status of the occupied Hadrakian colonies.

       

This was not quite the boon that the name suggests.

      

In response to my objections to the danger of the mission, they gave me intelligence from their agents that allowed them to create a series of tactical maneuvers to avoid Clathran destroyers, the Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers. More on the Clathran Survey Line soon.

    

The Brotherhood Questline

    

The mysterious Brotherhood, headquartered on Margen, had already helped me out by teaching me the skills "Kothan," "Darthan," and "Paralyze." As I closed the last session, they had asked me to find some operatives on Unaria, which I didn't get around to doing until late in this session. It's in a remote part of the galaxy.

    

Every time I returned to Dahl, I got more lines from the Dialogue, which I had to recite in full every time I returned. It got pretty old.

      

There are like eight of these responses at this point.

   

The agents on Unaria asked me to return their report to Dahl, after which I was sent to Dardahl. I had previously visited the temple of the gods there and was told by Derva, the Goddess of Knowledge, to return when I had more training. This turned out to be Brotherhood training, as this time I was introduced to Brother Almed, who was sort of controlling the goddess as a puppet. It turns out that the Dardahlian "gods" are just Brotherhood members speaking through statutes. I expressed some moral outrage about this, but Almed brushed it off: "Who is to say what a god is? We perform miracles and take care of them."

   

Almed taught me "Illusion" and asked me to find Brother Gretzen on Hadrak.  Gretzen had been collecting data on the Clathrans. I found her working in a garbage recycling facility, pulling intelligence from discarded reports. She gave me a report to take back to Almed.

     

When I did, he gave me more of the history of the Brotherhood. It dates back hundreds of years, to the time of Vanessa Chang. When she and her crew came up with the plan for the Boundary (to hide humanity from the Clathrans), the Brotherhood volunteered to remain in this part of the galaxy to keep watch. When I asked what happened to Chang, he said only the highest brothers know that information. I can find them on Mardahl.

   

The only problem: I don't know where Mardahl is. I assume it's on the other side of the Survey Line.

         

Random Noise  

       

The game doesn't really like you to spend an entire turn flying through space. It has a way of always finding a paragraph to give you even when all you've done is plot a series of moves across trisectors. In addition to their narrative purpose, these encounters also prevent imbalance in multi-player games.

     

I wonder if the authors programmed a specific order for these paragraphs to appear. Some of them clearly build on each other, but I otherwise don't know if there's any randomness to their selection. Most of them have to do with things heard over the subspace radio. Some examples:

   

• Multiple friendly contacts with engineers on Para-Para, who tell me about the strange things happening in the Nine Worlds.

• An argument with my computer about whether we're taking the shortest possible distance between points. The long paragraph goes into more detail about how the "trisector" system was created.

• A dream in which I'm contacted telepathically by the Riallans, who tell me flame jewels are available on their planet. I'd already been to the planet at this point.

• A Hadrakian vessel whose captain teaches me to play Thrakkah, the Hadrakian answer to chess. At the end of the match, she tells me I can find primordial soup on Dardahl.

• Through miscellaneous radio transmissions, hints about what trade goods I can find on various worlds. These are never accompanied by any information about the location of these worlds, though.

       

Some information in case I hadn't discovered Unaria.

     

• A power surge caused by a probe beam. No lasting damage.

• Transmissions that indicated that the Institute for Space Exploration had finished dismantling the beacons that made up the Boundary, dissolving the Space Patrol and incorporating it into the Space Navy.

There's quality world-building and storytelling in these paragraphs, but I have to admit that I've started to get annoyed when I'm just trying to get from one place to another, and the game wants me to stop and read another paragraph about a radio report.

    

Towards the end of this session, I stopped getting them, which strikes me as a bit ominous. If the game is out of random paragraphs, perhaps I'm running out of time.

     

Dual Space   

    

I learned more about Dual Space on Rialla from a scholar named Gloossh. It described it as "the theoretical dimension of all possible universes" or of "all conceivable changes to the real universe." Tapping into its energy causes changes in the real universe, such as teleportation, telekinesis, and the other abilities that I've been acquiring. There are places and times at which the barrier between real space and Dual Space is thinner (i.e., the "Interphase" widens); for some reason, it has been thinning all over the galaxy in recent years.

   

Since humans evolved in a time at which the Interphase was narrow, we don't have as much capacity to use it as other races. Too much access to Dual Space drives humans insane.

    

Unfortunately, that seems to be happening. As I traveled from world to world, I kept getting updates from the Nine Worlds, and things are looking pretty grim. News outlets are reporting increases in mental illness, hallucinations, suicide, violent crime, and riots. Researchers call it Sudden Adjustment Psychosis Syndrome (SAPS). Accidents, industrial disasters, and power outages are on the rise as people lose focus. A Harvard scientist tried to release the smallpox virus (but was stopped). A shuttle crashed on Monument, killing hundreds, while the pilot raved about dragons. Fringe political and social groups have been forming, leading to efforts to tamp them down. Harvard University (not the original, but the one on the planet Harvard) was destroyed by rioting students. Word of the Clathrans has somehow made it home, but people generally believe it's another delusion due to SAPS.

       

The Clathran Survey Line

    

I first ran into the Survey Line while circling the galaxy. I tried to draw it on my map, but of course it's just an estimate because I didn't visit every trisector. It cuts northwest to southeast (the way I've oriented the map), cutting off access to about a dozen worlds. I don't know if it moves. I don't think so, because when I went back a few dozen turns later, it was still in the same place. But it's possible that it starts moving later.

    

Obviously, the idea of ships forming a "line" across the galaxy is absurd, but when you're dealing with science fiction and hyperspace, I suppose anything is possible. You can imagine that each ship has advanced scanning abilities that cover a vast area and that their jump drives allow them to reach any anomalies in seconds. Of course, that should allow the anomalies to jump away in seconds, too. 

      

Stopped by the Survey Line.

    

Whatever the case, I had multiple options for dealing with them, none of which worked. On the first attempt, I tried turning off my ship's systems and drifting along like a rock. This got me a little farther, but then a ship with x-ray detection capabilities popped into view, and I had more options. I tried just speeding away, but a fleet of destroyers surrounded me.

      

First move options.

      

This not being the sort of game where you can just die and reload (I'm not sure you can die at all), a long passage subsequently related how I was taken to a base and tossed into a brig, but I managed to ambush a guard, knock him, out, take her gun, shoot up the control room, find my ship, and make a getaway, all my cargo and equipment intact. I was about a dozen trisectors to the east, though.

       

Second move options.

       

I hit the Line several times, always trying a different option, always failing, always managing to escape in the same way. You think they'd learn their lesson. Eventually, I had enough of a sense of the location of the Survey Line that I could avoid it.

After my first escape, the game related how I radioed my report back to the Institute for Space Exploration. I sent them information about the Survey Line, and they basically responded that I needed to find some way to cross it and recon the planets on the other side. 

          

Stealing a Clathran blaster from their base.

       

I continued upgrading my ship and equipment and acquiring abilities. I continued along the Hadrakian and Brotherhood questlines described above. After I learned "Illusion" from the Brotherhood, I used it to sneak into their (active) base on Ghorbon, where I stole a blaster from the armory and, more importantly, got the password to pass through the Survey Line: PENUMBRA.

   

At this point, having learned the Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers from the Hadrakians, having obtained the password, having acquired new skills and equipment, I was sure I'd be able to cross the Survey Line. So I returned to where I encountered the first time, blasted right through, and . . . got caught again. The Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers didn't even appear as an option. When I tried using the password, the captain of the Clathran ship got suspicious and grabbed me anyway. I escaped as before, but what the hell?

         

This got me nowhere.

     

So, clearly there's still more stuff to find. Fortunately, I have a couple of options other than just revisiting every planet to see what I missed. In particular, I took the time to label all of the planets on the map, and I realize now that I missed two of them on this side of the Survey Line. Maybe they'll have what I need. Maybe one will be Mardahl, and I'll be able to get to the end of the Brotherhood questline. Otherwise, I hope that returning that vortex coil to Keros somehow accomplishes something significant.

       

I realize this is a long entry. I was trying to finish the game the other night, so I pushed much further past the point at which I would normally have stopped to write an intermediate entry, and since I decided not to organize it chronologically, there was no obvious place to break it. If I can win it in a few more hours, it will be about as long as the first Star Saga.

    

Time so far: 19 hours