The Blue-Black Phantom was a government-subsidized exploratory vessel launched in 3214. Its mission was to probe around the Edge of known space to take direct readings and samples of various bodies identified by telescope and unmanned probes. It was thought that the 10-person crew would be better able to influence the ship’s flight plan and activities at the Edge than either doing so via program, which had already led to numerous mission failures when unforeseen objects negatively affected a probe’s trajectory, or remotely, which had a lag approaching several years towards the outer reaches while requiring the piloting team to be on-site in distant locations best suited for miners and the like. The Phantom was named after its particular shape, a sleek little thing thought to be especially suited to navigate any surprise debris, and color, selected to minimize light glare and ensure accurate imaging. It was outfitted with cryosleep tubes for the trip to the Edge and back after a year of collecting data; while tests had proven that it was possible for humans to withstand an FTL-jump, the drastically increased background radiation had caused significant physiological impact in several cases and was persistently linked with mental degradation and the onset and worsening of mental illness. Astronauts in cryogenesis, however, had experienced no such ill effects.

Contact with the Blue-Black Phantom was lost shortly after its launch during a particularly violent solar storm when its FTL drive appeared to malfunction; no trace of it nor its crew was ever found. Although the mission became little more than a blip in broader human history, it obviously left a mark on the families and colleagues of its doomed crew.

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It is now 3684. Humans have been star-faring colonists for well over a millennium and, after they got all the gremlins out of the early generation FTL drives, able to travel great distances in the blink of an eye. Hundreds of celestial bodies have long since been developed to varying extent and with appropriately varying success, each riddled with its own particular social issues. The Edge has expanded considerably in the past several hundred years in particular as technology advanced far beyond what it had been almost five hundred years prior.

Late last night (or early this morning) on Proxima Centauri Base, a settlement on the terraformed Proxima Centauri B still considered a backwater province of human civilization, a UFO was identified coming from the direction of Fischer-12K, an exoplanet several hundred light years from Earth. After the confusion (and a short-lived full alert), it could eventually be identified as the Blue-Black Phantom, still containing some of its original crew – alive. Only six life signs could be identified however; what happened to the others? And where have they been all this time?

Messages

The four missing Crew members left several video messages for their shipmates which have unfortunately been damaged by radiation over the years, requiring assistance from the Technician to recover. Recovering a message irreparably destroys others and the pressure is on to see as many as possible before they are permanently corrupted. It’s now or never.

While the decision of which messages to recover is ostensibly up to the Crew, the Comms Officer actually makes the final decision and there are opportunities for others to lie or choose another message at different stages of the process. This may later cause serious infighting among the groups (imagine the Crew agreeing to recover the scientist’s message but hearing the medical officer’s instead; who is to blame? Similarly, what threats might the Governor make to hear the captain’s message instead of whatever the Crew wanted?)

When a message is recovered by the Technician, the Comms Officer receives highlights via text and must decide if the video recording should be played, and to which group: the Crew, the Base, both, or neither. They have only one opportunity to make this choice.

1. Crew discusses which message, makes a decision and designates a Crew member to inform the Base (Crew group call)
2. The Crew member calls someone from the Base, informs them of the decision (ship-base channel)
3. The Base personnel discuss the request, the Comms Officer is given a command (Base group call)
4. The Comms Officer informs the Technician which one (private chat)