Alternity Campaign Retrospective

Well, we finished out our long term Alternity campaign, The Lighthouse. Set on the eponymous space station in the Star*Drive setting, each player had two characters – one on the Concord command staff and one who was a diplomat, rogue, or wanderer of some sort.  Very Babylon 5.

You can and should go read all our session summaries!

I asked the GM and players about their favorite memories of the 57-session long campaign, and they were many.  Here’s a list!

From Chris (Ten-zil Kem the playboy, Rokk Tressor the undercover spy, Drest Talorgin the Pict warchief):

• The outrageous swimsuits worn by the players the first time they vacationed on Bluefall.  The funniest was Dr Zelnaga’s “Borat thong one-piece.”
• Angela Quinn, who went from naked volleyball player to Bluefall intelligence to CIB deep cover agent. I’m just sad she didn’t appear in the finale.
• The Red Queen, the crazy alien AI who was stalking Ten-zil Kem, in her diminished but crazier “Alice” version.
• Ten-zil Kem declaring, “Those cute, cuddly bear creatures are going to go mad and rip us to shreds!”  And they did!
• Ten-zil Kem ordering a whore (dressed as “that hot Mafia security chick”) on Penates and nearly blowing the mission.
• Lambert Fulson getting ko’ed 3 game sessions in a row.  I was being to think the GM hated him.
• Captain Takashi’s hatred of the “donut priests” (Hatire mind knights with a donut tattooed on their hands) and their on-board pope.
• Taveer’s unnaturally close relationship to MINA the AI.
• The early bruiser duo of Markus and Haggernak.
• Finding out Lenny the t’sa is also an intergalactic cat burglar.
• Dr Zelnaga’s ability to set fires with his mind being purchased at the cost of his medical skills, giving him a Dr Zoidberg-like reputation in the medical bay.
• Finally destroying an enemy fleet.  It was the Klicks above Meribel.
• The dhros were a plot twist that got a lot of mileage:  loldhros, dropping them off in enemy vessels, dropping them off in the Thuldan research ship, putting cameras on them as way to watch the Lighthouse for weirdness our own security was missing… I’m betting the last one netted us lots of footage of dhros drinking out of toilets and eating garbage and little useful intel.
• The t’sa grenades activated by licking. Plus Lenny’s wide-eyed belief that that was completely normal… And that the way human grenades activated was completely crazy.
• ” I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.”

• Captain Takashi’s steadfast refusal to sign off Taveer’s purchase requests.
• Taveer’s whole relationship with MINA, from the beginning right until the big bang at the end.
• The great juxtaposition of Ten-zil Kem as ambassador of VoidCorp, but also a dissipated hustler on the make.
• Poor Martin St. John, the “pilot”, who had so few official responsibilities at the start that Captain Takashi had no concerns of sending him into ventilation ducts to hunt dhros.
• Gerard Peppin in his role as Cancer Jesus with a Space God in his Head.
• The ongoing notion that Peppin (for all of his weird appearance and weirder behavior) was constantly followed by a film crew for a program incredibly popular back in Old Space.
• The Kadarens, spastic science roach men aliens (“Be careful with these guys – they Ice 9′d their homeworld due to a mathematical error…”).
• The great mystery attached to the nature of the I-krl and the entire Externals threat – it took us an awful lot of time to figure out what they really wanted…
• Haggernak, playing “Show me far…”
• The slow development of Lambert Fulson into a slimy Jerseyite who ran a rattletrap flotilla of least-common-denominator cargo ships.
• Ten-zil Kem’s performance at the VoidCorp presentation, early on – he did a remarkably good job of improvising to a sequence of random images.

Tim (Haggernak the weren security chief, Gerard Peppin the dissipated academic):

• Everyone wearing “I survived the thunder hole!” t-shirts in reference to the place Rokk Tressor died.
• The psychic dhros.
• The tribe of seshayans living in conference room B.
• Takashi opening his fridge and asking “Zuul?” after alien agent Alex Racine appeared and disappeared in his kitchen.
• Lenny’s reptilian flirting rituals (“licks his eyeball seductively”).
• The donut monks.
• Threatening the kadarens with boredom.
• Finally seeing the ship that had been lost in drivespace.
• Figuring out what had happened to the populace of Bluefall.
• Re-purposing the assassin ship as Peppin’s replacement pleasure yacht.

Me (Captain Takashi, Markus Orozlan the warlion bartender):

• Takashi’s nighttime hobby of making “loldhros” pictures of the station dhros and posting them anonymously on the Grid.
• Insisting that the gardh’yi are “space vampires” based on their illustration looking like something from Warhammer 40k.
• Ten-zil Kem’s great Tony Stark impression. And that his name changed spelling all the time.
• “Taveer isn’t a member of the Concord Military, so he can’t be awarded a medal, but he isn’t forgotten. Captain Takashi sends a recommendation through channels to the Administrator hierarchy about his valiant acts. They award him with a “STAR Award” and a $50 gift certificate to the restaurant of his choice. He discovers this when a Concord HR administrator shows up at his cube and drops off the certificate and a nice plaque made out to “Thomas”.”
• Markus being Pict king for a week after killing King Steel.
• Markus shouting out, “Alien collaborator says what?” and flinging a pulse grenade into the midst of a bridge full of bad guys. Bang!
• Peppin dressing up like the Miner ’49′er and phasing through the wall into a mining exhibit completely by chance, terrifying the intruder there, who “hadn’t eaten solid food in a long time.” Ha!
• The little nervous Medurr groundhog slave race with exploding collars.
• Our squad of Concord Recon Marine helpers, Sgt “Animal Mother”, Cpl “Klinger”, LCpl Wierzbowski, Pfc “Ludafisk”, and Pfc “Motorhead”.  Hoo-ah!
• Takashi writing out a formal promotion for Martin St. John to be Captain of the Lighthouse.
• Takashi getting to declare VoidCorp “enemies of humanity.”
• Drest talking to a Concord Marine, saying “I sense the war is winding down. The I’krl are hunkering down in their stolen systems building their strength back up. The ambassadors are talking. Planetary populations feel safe. But we haven’t killed enough of them to fill our Hell and their Tentacle Heaven. God loves us when we send him fresh souls. We need the political will for the next war.” “Amen.”
• Finding out the Ancients were a bunch of stoner mollusks.
• Our main boss foes falling to Markus’ chainsword.
• Takashi getting to yell “Prepare to fire the primary weapon!” and using the Lighthouse’s doomsday device.
• Admiral Takashi’s memoirs, “Space Vampires and Donut Priests – Or, How Everything In The Verge Tried To Kill Me“

All well done, and thanks to our GM Paul!

Two bonus links:

• Watch Babylon 5 episodes on “the WB.”
• AlternityRPG.NET, the main remaining Alternity fansite.