Hecla Colony Disaster

I'm still thinking about Alchemy and we're going to come back to that topic, soon.

In the previous post, I wrote about the different affiliations that characters can have. This is similar to the character's 'class' in other fantasy role playing games. In this game, characters will have three major choices to make in building their character: Species, Affiliation, and Profession. Species will have a short number of special features but have a minor effect on the play-style of the character. The Affiliation will have the most dramatic effect on a character, defining their core concepts, chief mechanics, and set the course for the character's advancement. The Profession is the final choice the character makes and defines the role the character will have on the rocket crew. It is the most loosely defined part of the character and will ensure that the character has access to the tools necessary to perform their function and a small number of abilities (in comparison to affiliation) will have a profession prerequisite.

But this post isn't about that. It's about Hecla.

The Hecla Colony was first launched as an experiment on Antarctica as an investigation into two main items: international collaboration on a long term scientific study and the logistics of a long term scientific study in an extreme environment. Though the environment on Enceladus is much more extreme than that of Antarctica, the goal of the project was to launch a rocket mission and establish a research colony on the moon of Saturn.

A number of novel technological innovations were developed and tested to allow a large team of scientists to survey in exceedingly cold environments. Chief amongst those innovations was the personal fusion power plant, a device that now powers a huge variety of gear in use on rocket missions.

Well equipped and with large, bright, capable team, the Hecla mission to Enceladus was underway. The colony was established successfully and research began. Hope was to discover life hidden in the subsurface ocean. In short order, communication was lost with the colony and fear was that disaster had struck and the whole research team was lost.

These fears were born out as a subsequent rescue mission found evidence that the team had turned psychotic and violence had broken out that ended with the deaths of the whole crew. Also discovered was an alien microbe native to the moon. Research would conclude that the microbe colonized the brain stem of the research team and seemed the cause of the psychotic break.

Samples were brought back to earth and the Hecla Research Initiative was established. It found that the microbe was nourished by electromagnetic radiation and had a particular affinity for the neuro-electric field of the human body. In addition to psychosis, exposure to the microbe also caused an increased sensitivity to electric and magnetic fields. Cultivation of the microbe lead to a strain eventually tolerable to humans.

Limited trials lead to a transition from the Hecla Research Initiative to the Hecla Symbiosis Institute. There, carefully selected candidates undergo voluntary symbiosis with the Hecla microbe. In doing so, they are awakened to an entirely new sense. In the years since the Institute was established, symbiots (now known as Algeans) have become capable of more and more fantastical feats. Precognition, psychoelectric kinesis, ESP, telepathy, and a number of other bizarre phenomena are all possible, once thought to be the realm of pseudoscience.

Algeans are unnerving but valuable rocket crew members, bringing a host of capabilities no other members can offer.

This may be a union analogous to an alchemic chimera. I'll be reading about these creatures in the coming weeks.