Chiron’s Doom

I pulled this out of last year’s Solo But Not Alone bundle on Itch.io and it took me a couple of hours to play I think. I was consciously ‘rushing’, ie choosing the obvious answer, not thinking deeply. So the actual ideas are a bit ropey and I know I played it wrong.

Ironically I played it for too long, continuing after the “end of exploration” card was pulled. You play with a regular deck, each card representing a new day’s exploration. The last diamond in the deck represents the final piece of the puzzle, but I forgot to keep track of how many I had pulled so just kept going until I reached the end of the stack.

I always struggle with journaling games to keep my ideas in line with what prompts might appear. I have been playing Trophy lots so my conception was that this was going to be desperate adventurers going where the outside world would not otherwise tread. But later on the prompts specifically bring in outside interactions. Oops! So here is my adventure, slightly misshapen as it is.

Build the monument

The monument looks something like this, because the game says “try googling ‘brutalist sculptures former Yugoslavia’” and that’s about the first image you see. Why investigate further??

Three adjectives: coarse - hollow - porous

In the right light the sun shines straight through it. Snow drifts through one face and out the other. Yet to the touch it remains solid and rough under your finger tips.

Gather your explorers

You choose 3 random prompts, and for each one answer a question from a separate list. That was as far as I went at the start. The details of what their names were, what they were like, unfolded with the prompts in gameplay - but for clarity’s sake I have listed them here.

Three characters:

• the last survivor of a heist gone bad
  • Harold
  • whose crew liberated a broken chunk of Chiron’s Doom from a private collection
• an unusual child
  • Garl
  • who is suspicious of Harold: how did the rest of Harold’s gang actually die?
  • held in perpetual youthful state by an implant
  • when they mature they will turn into some beast-like thing (think, Deep Ones from Innsmouth life cycle)
• an inseparable duo
  • Tex and Rex
  • who will never give up their sense of independence
  • a body with two heads, each with their own personhood
  • one of the heads is not who they say they are

Play the game

For each day you pull a playing card from your deck: this represents the events of the day. I wrote a short journal entry, though each one is from a different POV. I rolled a d6 to determine each day who was writing in their private journal, but didn’t actually write the name down, so have had to reconstruct that information. Some of them are generic, but if it’s obvious/helpful then I’ve put the name in brackets at the beginning of each entry.

Day 1. The monument extends further than we thought. We can walk around it in half an hour but now that we are inside we cannot see the back wall. We have walked for hours.

Day 2. I think we have tuned around, or been spun around. There are viewing ports facing back the way we came. The inside of the eye is spinning us away from where we want to go.

Day 3. Tex and Rex hit something out of anger and it broke off. Everything looks solid but breaks easily.

Day 4. Harold actually had the broken chunk from the heist! He didn’t tell us but he knew where it came from. It fitted back in to its place. The whole monument has started to hum.

Day 5. (Harold) That kid went back last night to pry out the broken-off piece. The humming continues but seems … angrier? The two heads just laughed.

Day 6. (Garl) Tex (or Rex, I don’t know, how can you really know?) got angry at Harold and smashed some pipe work, a tube, something - but it moved so fast as he swung at it - it just stepped aside and he, they, overbalanced and fell. The floors seemed to move aside as he fell, and then moved back into place when we could no longer make out his falling figure. We assume he’s dead.

Day 7. I swear the damn thing is reorienting around us so whichever way we walk we end up at the point where Tex/Rex fell.

Day 8. (Garl) My implant has started to malfunction. I have started to age and change like my grandmother did. My hands get less dexterous every minute. But my hearing and vision improves. Harold hasn’t said anything yet.

Day 9. We tried to the trick it, by splitting up. Harold stayed at our same spot and I walked forward - all the while we kept talking and then suddenly I turned a corner, my sentence half-finished on my lips and I was back but he had gone. I have not moved since - which way would I go, that always returns here?

Day 10. Some time in the hours when I slept, the world shifted. The floor we slept on is now a wall and the wall a ceiling. If I can get out, which way would that be?

Day 11. (Garl) I have to climb, to brachiate, because my legs are no longer built for walking. And I stumbled right into Tex/Rex. They did not recognise me at first. I am too changed. I can still talk but my voice sounds less human now.

Day 12. (Tex) I fell so long that I forgot I was falling - and then I was falling upwards. I think the gravity in here is not real, just a thing which switches like a mood light or background music.

Day 13. (Rex) I didn’t know what Garl was when we started out. It’s an obscenity - this whole time we’ve been trusting our lives to such a thing. I doubt that what it said about Harold’s fate is true.

Day 14. (Rex) I knew Garl couldn’t be trusted. It’s taken my emergency beacon. Of course it denies this but then it would, wouldn’t it?

Day 15. (Garl) Tex/Rex is deeply prejudiced against me, that much is clear. But today I heard something truly disturbing. I think one of them is a fugitive hiding out in that body. Someone escaping justice for terrible war crimes might hide in someone else’s body?

Day 16. (Tex) Rex offered to pay me double if I killed Garl and just walk away from this expedition. I feel my soul being tainted every minute he is inside me. Do I want to do his ugly work as well? I refused immediately but that I would think further on it.

Day 17. (Garl) I left Tex/Rex. I felt too unsafe in their company. Whatever apparent harmony they had no longer exists. They mutter and curse and flinch endlessly. I will try to escape now on my own.

Day 18. (Tex) I killed Rex. His slack face rests against our chest, dripping blood on everything. I will continue one more day.

Day 19. (Tex) I don’t know how they tracked me in here. They would not believe that he was dead or that I was not him. I go now to be executed for his crimes.