Relics of the Fall Megagame Report (Part 1)
Written by Jon Searle, this megagame report highlights the antics he got up to at ‘Relics of the Fall’ - a megagame about a post apocalyptic society trying to get along (with the aid of giant ancient mechs). Part 1 of Jon’s first person account starts now…
Before I get into this in full, an aside: John Keyworth has given me free reign to be open with this write-up of his excellent game, probably because he has already made the first version freely available here. Thanks John! Let the waffle commence.
One recent rainy Saturday in Cambridge, UK, I was set to have a brilliant time playing through the highs and lows of a Steel Prefect Relics of the Fall, hosted by Crisis Games. The setting is a post-apocalyptic one; the mighty Steel Empire clasps an icy northern desert in an unyielding gauntlet, whilst through skilled trade the Silk City States hold dominion of blistering deserts and dense jungles in the south east. Between them spreads the Indicus Wilds- a lawless place strewn with curios of bygone ages and roamed by nomadic Wilder tribes, each with a Relic-Mech; a colossal war-machine from history.
As Steel Prefect, I reported directly to the NPC (non-player character) ruler of the Empire, the godly Steel Tsar Maximillian. The Empire had recently renewed interest in southern expansion. My previously placid existence was to be upturned by the arrival of two Steel Legions named the Immortals and the Heretics, each with a Legate commander, and the sinister presence of a Lictor (basically secret police). This would be our team of four for (most of) the day.
Unfortunately I was running slightly late and had to message ahead to warn Control:
Jon’s completely fair and reasonable message to Control (Photo by: Jon Searle)
Only a minute after I’d changed into my comfy prefect’s robe and Steel helm of office (a dressing gown and a knitted hat) I was summoned before Tsar Maximillian, who I should now document was a completely unhinged 13 year old. He said, in a screeching voice, that I was to conquer the Wilds within six years for his personal glory. Expectations were high, and had to be met. Uncomfortable with the silence following his demands, I floundered for a few seconds then remembered that as soon as I’d gotten to the game someone had mentioned a fallen Relic-Mech (I later learned there was no such thing). In a moment devoid of any common sense, I told the Tsar that we were planning on getting him the ancient titan. And put his face on the front. And bring blood and death to the wastes. He giggled manically.
This was a bad move.
I told my team. They thought it was a bad move too.
Determined not to let such a trivial mistake get my day off to a poor start, I reported to the main map to administer my province. Playing the Prefect was a combination of mechanical and political roles. As well as growing this arm of the Empire I had to provide for the Legates’ armies, and allocate our Lictor the resources he needed to conduct covert ops and also develop new kinds of thumbscrews (though the Lictor was cast as the research body of our team, I took over this for a large part of the game). On top of this, I was the team’s Face for negotiations. Yes I was rushed off my feet, but I enjoyed it immensely.
Negotiations between the Wilders and Imperial team are not going well... (Photo by Darren Green)
So I was busy, busy, from the start. I had to talk to all the Wilder tribes and the Silk City Plutarchs, keep the Lictor sweet and get the measure of the Legates from the Immortals and Heretics, all of whom had their own agendas both foreign and domestic. The initial tension was that the Empire used slavery in its workforce. Mechanically, it was one of the few things keeping us on the up and up rather than stagnant. Full confession here: the game didn’t have the scope to examine the ethical side of it. It was designed for fun, not sociological study. So we took the path of being respectful, polite, and handling it with sensitivity. It did still affect our (my) decision-making though. One of the tech unlocks removed the need for slave labour; I reasoned that if we could return the slaves the Wilders would be much better inclined to us. However it was nowhere near a quick fix and required a lot of co-operation from the game floor. I decided that carrot and stick would be the agenda we presented to the Wilders.
So I leaned into it. For my first team-time broadcast to the Wilds I went for a tone of ‘you’re making me do this, I don’t want to, but remember we really could do it’. I got booed, but we weren’t immediately attacked, which was pretty much the best outcome. Huzzah for gunboat diplomacy?
I’d read all the briefing material (twice, I’ll have you know) so went in to the game aware of all the mechanics, yet I wasn’t fully clued up on how to best put them together. So for the first two hours I was shuffling around in my dressing-gown and rarely without a rulebook in my hand:
In a rare quiet moment, the Prefect contemplates crop yield. (Photo by: Fraser Patrick)
Speaking of my dressing-gown look, the costume game was pretty strong. To take a completely random example:
This is your average Wilder. He wishes to be left alone. (Photo by: Fraser Patrick)
The Empire team had been hit very hard on the first turn by a narrative event in the form of a huge glowing angry sandstorm that put us on the back foot economically before the game began. Our two main resources were food and scrap. The latter had been hit by the storm, and further proved to be the limiting factor to building a working economy engine. Food income was okay, a bit of starvation and famine aside. I expanded out of the food-producing lowlands into an area of foothills called The Arch to increase scrap generation, whilst the Legates buzzed around our borders driving off threats and the Lictor did sinister thumb-screw stuff to peasants heretics. Did I mention that the Empire was one big cult? And that we all worshipped the 13 year old Tsar Maximillian? The Empire was just that kind of place. The best anyone other than the Tsar could hope for was sainthood, but the odds were heavily biased towards compulsory fanaticism followed by thumb-screws and sudden death.
Come winter, I was summoned back before my lord and master for another session of grovelling and was reminded about the whole ‘I’ll get you a Relic-Mech’ thing. Woops. David Armstrong as Control played the Tsar and cried that he hadn’t got his big ol’ stompy war-machine, which I took genuine pleasure from. I’d made a fictitious infuriating pubescent teen cry and it was good. Sue me. I then did a round of the capital being briefed on political disruptions and trying to curry favour with the houses of the Empire. There was political manoeuvring to be done? The Lictor could deal with it. Apparently there was some religious strife in my province? The Lictor could deal with it. Spoiler: the Lictor was dealing with it, by causing it, and I let him go unchecked for the whole game. I was sent away, ears ringing with demands for demonstrable progress.
Well it’s a good thing I had a plan for that then, thinks I. Back to Operation Careful Expansion. However this careful expansion didn’t give us access to the really juicy ‘Fall Relics’ cards which we needed to automate our farms, so we continued to witness an uneasy no mans land across our borders. About half a turn passed, and after some 90 minutes of playtime I felt I was almost close to getting on top of events. Our Lictor was happily preaching fire and fervour, but the Immortals Legate told me that their troops were getting… antsy. Seconds later, the Heretics Legate repeated the message. Okay fine, have a careful fight. Nothing too reckless.
This mech is friendly, right? (Photo by: Darren Green)
So as soon as I turned my back they did the full Leeroy, diving deep into Wilder territory. Unhappily I realised that possibly the Tsar wasn’t the only unstable presence in the Empire. These Legates really did have their own loyalties and pride to consider. All credit to them- they were playing straight to brief. Still, it caught me completely unaware. I begged them to come back before the other Wilder tribes got ideas, but no matter! Because we were summoned before the Tsar. Who noted our poor performance. And insisted we undergo a team building exercise. In the form of group torture. Due to some jammy rolls the team came through unscathed, but thoroughly motivated. And I made my winter broadcast from the Pain Chambers, which really took the shine off it.
We now had to abandon my plan of building up the economy in order to fulfil the Tsar’s insane wishes of conquest here-and-now, do-and-die-trying. The problem was that we couldn’t actually reach any Wilders to fight. We spent the next (three?) seasons frantically clawing at anyone who we might be able to attack, but all possible targets seemed to realise our desperation and hung back. Economically this looked very good. Politically, the internal whims of the Empire meant it was a death sentence.
Whilst we’d not managed to accumulate any of the super tasty powerful relics we might use to flex some sci-fi military muscle, we had gotten a fair old stash of wonderful pre-fall Indus Relics. These included the such rarities as a magnificent feyah-ixtinweesher and an arcane vvaakkoom kloinarr. More to our purposes however we had a [grammarphone] [parabolic microphone] and [a radar dish]. In the spirit of desperation I’d instructed the Immortals Legate to record the sounds of his bloody conquests so we might play them back to Tsar Maximillian at bedtime. When he couldn’t force an engagement in Summer that turn, I instructed he take the old propaganda line of firing some shots in the air, planting a flag, declaring victory, and retreating. Naturally, this would bite us in the arse.
The Wilder lands sure look inhospitable (Photo by: Darren Green)
By a stroke of luck in Autumn that year, both Legates joined up and managed to have a “solid scrap”. I dunno who against, but this Winter we went to Tsar Max all happy and full of joy, only to once again find him in a foul mood. Children are so fickle. Apparently he’d found out that the first recording was fake, and then suspected the actual fight was fake as well. Someone had informed on the Immortals Legate. Someone on the team. And it wasn’t me. I didn’t get involved as my team descended into infighting in front of my eyes. When I did go to talk, the Tsar looked at me and again began crying “My titan, my titan”, curling up into a wet teary ball. That promise was really beginning to pay off political dividends as a sort of grand smokescreen- all of our other failures looked so small by comparison. I call it a win.
For once I had a tiny, tiny scrap surplus going into this year. This meant I could immediately take some advice from John, and moved up my plans for establishing new cities. Cities could, proportionate to their size, cover the scrap upkeep cost of population cubes. In the spirit of premium grade toadying I named the first Divine Tsarberg and the second New Maximberg. With some frankly lucky rolls this proved to be a good year for harvest and scrap. My fledgling province was just noticeably clawing ahead, driven by fear, pain, and desperate self-preservation.