SIF Games

Coming back to Haunt

A virtual content larp for 12 players

Characters

All characters in this larp may be depicted by a player of any gender and players choose the name and pronouns used by their character. Romance storylines or background are not affected by character gender and sexual preference and gender identity are not themes played on in this larp.

Although secrecy is not the most important component of the game, there are several secrets in character sheets, so players are requested not to share them with others. This document contains public profiles and information only, a complete character sheet will be provided after casting.

Crew

The Blue-Black Phantom had borne some of the most brilliant scientists of its generation. Experts were drawn from the leading universities of the day and, along with the rest of the crew, expected to be away from their homes, families, and tenured positions for only 18 months, made possible by a revolutionary new FTL drive capable of jumping between pre-set coordinates to approach the Edge. Only once there did their Pilot become useful to navigate the ship manually into unknown space.

During the solar storm that corrupted the Phantom’s FTL drive, four of the cryo tubes were irreparably damaged, rousing the Crew members inside: Captain Andren Pere (the Captain), Riane Coley (the Medical Officer), Aran Heson (the Communications Specialist), and Hazel Bennad (the Exoplanetary Scientist). Realizing there was nothing that could be done either to repair their tubes or alter course, they simply lived out the rest of their lives while their shipmates remained in cryosleep. They left behind several video messages for their shipmates which have unfortunately been damaged by radiation; their recovery requires a more advanced communications console than what is on board the Phantom.

Upon awakening at their original destination and realizing that the mission had experienced a catastrophic failure, the First Mate ordered everyone to immediately return to cryosleep to return to Luna, whence the mission had departed, setting the AI to rouse them as soon as any signal was received. Several other survivors strongly opposed this action, feeling they may at least complete the task which had brought them there. They’d had only moments to grieve for their fellows and themselves, several hundred years out of time, before returning to their dreamless cryogenic sleep.

The First Mate

The Unready

It was your first commission with your parent, Captain Andren Pere, and you were ready to make some memories. When the AI roused you upon arrival at the Edge, you realized they were dead and that you were now responsible for the Phantom and souls it still bore. You’d tried to keep calm by carefully taking note of minor changes made to the ship by your now-deceased shipmates; when the grim reality turned into rising panic, you ordered an immediate return to the cryo tubes and to Luna in stark contradiction to the demands of the surviving scientists. Through you, first contact was made with Proxima Centauri Base via the Comms Officer. This was not an eventuality you could ever have imagined, so what should you do next?

The Pilot

The Professional

You could fly even this new vessel in your sleep with one hand tied behind your back. You know procedures backwards and forwards and have piloted out of more disastrous situations than you have fingers and toes; it’s not arrogant to say that you were the best for the job and made up a solid, reliable team together with your close friends and long-time colleagues, Riane Coley and Aran Heson. You don’t socialize much with the others on board, but there is one person you’ve grown awfully close to. Triggering an immediate return back to Luna and returning to the tubes to ride out the physiology-wrecking FTL jumps was absolutely the right choice once you’d all realized what must have happened, even if the First Mate’s voice had come out in a sort of strangled squeak when they gave the command. Can you trust them to make the right decisions to keep you all alive?

The Astronomer

The Ambitious

This expedition was not only the chance of a lifetime, it was the perfect opportunity to secure your permanent place in history and maybe try to reconnect with your distant spouse, the Geologist, too. But really it was all about the phenomena you could witness and record, the hypotheses you could test! The scant hour you’d been conscious and mobile at the Edge had shown you as much. Being torn away from that because people had hypothetically died was ridiculous; after all, scrapping the mission wouldn’t bring them back, would it? And you didn’t believe it anyway: your friend and frequent co-author, Hazel Bennad, wouldn’t have died from something so silly, not with their brilliant brain.

The Engineer

The Outsider

You’d designed the energy system that both made this expedition possible and doomed it. You hadn’t even really wanted to go, leaving behind your beloved spouse, six months pregnant with your first child. But she had insisted, and you could never say no to her. Instead, you’d found you didn’t quite fit in the two cliques that had naturally formed: too theoretical for the astronauts, too practical for the scientists, you were often overlooked by the others – but did pick up on every secret they tried to keep from each other.

The Geologist

The Conflicted

You thought that by signing up for this expedition, your spouse, the Astronomer, might finally find their way back to you – by necessity if for no other reason, with so few others to talk with. Instead, they’d remained as distant as ever, obsessed with Hazel Bennad’s opinions and jokes while Hazel’s spouse, the Physicist, bored you to tears. Instead, you sought entertainment and comfort among the others, and found it. The disaster threw everything into disarray, but you have the patience of your subject of study and know everything will be cleared up and maybe you’ll even be happy in the end.

The Physicist

The Attaché

You followed your beloved spouse, Hazel Bennad, on to the Phantom. It was their dream to be here, to further their study of the Goldilocks zone. Waking up to their absence, to learn that they were dead and gone in the blink of your cryo-closed eye, has left you bereft. You hate the Astronomer for bringing you both here, you’re heartbroken that your spouse is dead, you’re jealous that the Geologist still has their spouse and doesn’t really appreciate them, you’re angry that it was all for nothing.

Base

First contact with the Phantom was made by the Comms Officer during a late, boring shift at Proxima Centauri Base. They’d followed normal protocol in putting the station on full alert until the First Mate had finally woken up enough to come on screen. That first conversation had been incredibly difficult until eventually, identifying an archaic form of Common through key technical terms, the built-in translator caught up to the conversation and the Blue-Black Phantom could be found in the archives.

The alert was stood down but many important people were already awake and apprised of the situation. The Base’s Governor saw only how to turn the situation to their advantage to try to secure their re-election at the upcoming election and, through the mission archives and their staff, found some of the Crew’s distant family already on the Base. Of course, that got the Governor’s nemesis, the Party Leader, involved, and now two of the biggest politicians in PCB are embroiled in a battle of appearances. At any rate, it has not yet been decided that the Phantom will be allowed to dock.

Except for the Comms Officer, the Base personnel are all making their way to the docking port for one reason or another. As they travel, they join or drop out of a call to figure out what exactly to do while taking every opportunity to speak with the survivors one-on-one via the ship-base channel. Although the translator is perfectly able to make each side understandable to the other, most everyone from PCB speaks to the Crew in a very patronizing and simple way; after all, these are practically savages!

The Comms Officer

The Sympathetic

Until now, you could easily characterize your life on Proxima Base in one word: disappointing. Maybe two: also boring. But it was easy, too, the people were mostly alright and you spent all your free time in VR anyway, so who cares where you actually lived? Now, something actually exciting had happened and you were confident you preferred the boring: your instruments picking up the UFO that looked nothing like any ship you’d ever seen and didn’t respond to hails had made your blood run cold and you’d triggered the rote emergency protocols in a sort of daze. You’ll be happy to put this shift behind you but until then, you’re stuck dealing with this situation and know you’ll be torn between the demands of some high-ranking Base personnel and your sympathy towards those poor bastards on the ship.

The Medic

The Realist

You’d been working through a quiet, late-night shift on call at the Base medical facility when the state of emergency was raised and then lowered; it was only when the Party Leader called you that you learned about the Blue-Black Phantom and the Governor’s misguided plan to welcome its survivors onto the Base, to freely distribute potentially virulent pathogens on to the Base’s population. Under no circumstances can this be allowed to happen! Moreover, you know they’ll have used old cryo chemicals long banned after realizing they caused brain damage. The effects would be reversible, but only by treating the subject in a modern medical facility within 24 hours of being roused, and there’s no way for you to bring the survivors there under isolation. There’s no process for this, so you have to make it up as you go and do what is right for everyone at PCB.

The Governor

The Populist

You’re a politician of the people, no matter what the Party Leader says; they’re just jealous, anyway! But they’ve also been guarding the purse strings for your upcoming election too closely and you’re set to lose unless something miraculous happens. A long-lost ship from ancient times might be just the thing to cinch your win! You found some relatives of the survivors conveniently already on PCB, the Descendant and the Distant Relative – married to your own, trusted cabinet member! – and everything was shaping up to be your publicist’s wet dream until the Party Leader found out. Now they’re on their way to the port as well to try to stop you; you’ll have the final say of how to handle the situation but it makes good sense to get them on your side – can you do it?

The Party Leader

The Old Guard

As a member of your family’s political dynasty, you were destined for high office since before you were born. You’d held it, even, and for several years before that idiot, the Governor, unseated you with a series of mindless populist appearances. You’re always of two minds as you watch their polling figures plummet: delight at their failure and concern for the party. When a mole inside their cabinet told you of their plan to meet the ancient survivors of a long-lost ship at the port with full media coverage and a press conference, you knew this would be the nail in the coffin for both and cannot let it happen. These survivors were completely unscreened and unprepared, practically neanderthals! Who knows what crazy ideas they’d spout on a universal stage to really put the nail in your party’s coffin or worse, spark a riot?

The Descendant

The Historian

Although you’re an aerospace engineer, to say you have a love of history is putting it mildly: your obsession with genealogy has definitely led to some spontaneous snoring from your spouse at times, but you don’t mind. And now you’re faced with meeting an actual ancestor, your favorite, the one that inspired you through your training! What will they be able to tell you about themselves and what will all of them be able to tell you about life in the past, from the early days of FTL, before any of the catastrophes? You cannot wait to get to the port!

The Distant Relative

The Token

You’ve built a decent life with your spouse on Proxima Base where you work as a psychiatric nurse; on this, one of your rare nights off, who should call but the Governor’s assistant, telling you some nonsense about a long-lost relative. You could just as easily have hung up and gone back to your VR because the Governor is one of the few people who bring out the worst in you. You can generally avoid them but unfortunately your spouse is in their cabinet and “encouraged” you to board the transport to the port and at least help with the survivors, even though you’re not even on call. There goes your nice, lazy evening.

GM / The Technician

The GM is available at any time via a private channel if there are any issues or questions during the game, but they also play the Technician, an NPC on PCB, and have very important tasks:

They recover the message requested by the Comms Officer each act, provide it to them in text form, and play it for the groups as the Comms Officer instructs.
They manage the ship-base channel. Characters will be invited to join the channel when they are called by someone from the other group and may be informed that connectivity is being lost and they need to end the call. Requests to call the ship or the base should be made to the Technician via private chat; if there are several requests, the GM will try to ensure everyone gets a chance for the 1:1 video calls requested in a given act. There is generally enough time for every character to make one call per act.