The Planet Crafter
Author's Story Foreword
Now for something rather different from my usual writing…
Planet Crafter has become something of my chill-out game of late, a wonderful way to de-stress in the evening hours by building up a planet bit by bit from a rocky uninhabitable hellhole to a usable, colonizable world. It's not a AAA-class game and doesn't pretend to be. It doesn't have much in the way of drama, and I like that. Perfect for detoxing after work.
Just a mandate, a method, and a bit of mystery. And lots of stuff to build to make it happen.
So, naturally, in the hundreds of hours of gameplay I have done, I have started building a head-canon around the bits and drabs of story that Miju has written into the game, and I think it is time to put those to a written form as a way to extend the stress relief from work and worry, and hopefully bring to a few readers a moment of relaxation and thought of their own.
And now I put it to the written word.
I will be running this through the lens of a new playthrough, from just before landing all the way to the end of reasonable progress available at the time of me reaching as far as Miju has made progressable. At the time of this story start, the game is still version 0.8 and in Early Access, so the main campaign is not completed yet. But trust me, just on what they have so far, you're already looking at 35-40 hours to reach top end of the Froggo chain.
So here goes. Something completely different from my normal writing faire, and what is to become of it.
STORY DISCLAIMERS:
Note that Stravag does not own any part of any included works, in whole or in part. By my use of the included works, I intend no challenge to the copyright or the legal ownership of such works. I claim ownership only of the original elements, characters, and premises of this story.
Writing note: numbers in parentheses, like this: (0) mean check the footnote for something else I think goes along with the thought. Could be informative, could be humorous, or both. This will be my preferred method of including explanation or detail information that would otherwise disrupt the flow of a story, providing the backdrop that is deserved of the disparate elements without breaking into the narrative with an author filibuster.
BAAAAAD LANGUAGE WARNING: Much as in real life, there will be foul language in some sections. Even the best of us let fly a four-letter word when really pissed off, startled, or else. Though it will be seen, it shall not be grossly common.
And now, may the story commence!
(The Planet Crafter)
(Chapter 01: Landing Blues On A Red Planet)
(Year 3058, Day 0 of Campaign)
(T-2 Hours before drop pod deployment)
Sommen picked up his pen and bent to the notepad provided to him for the coming document. Last will and testament, yeah right. I have nothing to will to anyone, so I'll lean heavily into the 'testament' part of that old sacred name, Sommen thought with an inward smile for it. A quick sigh as he gathered thoughts, then he began writing a document that was wildly unlikely to ever see the light of day again.
I write this document freely of my own accord and not under duress, except as described below. I have objected more than once to my present state and have attempted to file an appeal under galactic law, though I strongly suspect that my appeal was never sent or even read. Hence my present state of captivity and thereby my only road to freedom at this time is to join the Planet Crafter Program through Sentinel Corporation.
No reasonable man would consider my actions two years and two months prior to have been any manner of unjustified. I did not seek a fight with Barrow. I did not challenge him; as evidence was presented, I attempted multiple methods of de-escalation. Barrow's state of intoxication and his general foul attitude lent him to press the engagement, and even after he began swinging I tried to disengage and leave. Only after taking multiple hits did I strike back, though Sentinel Corp will never care about that. A lowly Software Engineer such as myself is much more sacrificable than a Director of Procurement, even if the Director would have been in jail for his foul conduct on any Galactic-held planet and not a Corporate one.
My conviction for Manslaughter is patently unjust and I refute it in this document. Still and all, this is my Final Testament, and I expect that nobody will care to review the evidence or overturn what should have been a charge of self defense at most, certainly not a conviction for something that is normally a life sentence in a space cell. I go now to what is probably a slow death by exposure on a planet in the Izital sector.
The corporations don't care about the people on their worlds, only about their senior management and their inviolability. The Planet Crafter Program is all the evidence ever needed for such. I take my place in this program under duress and extreme protest, but I will do the duty or die trying.
Sommen set down his pen, tore off the document, and slipped it into an envelope for archival. With that completed, he stood up, walked the envelope to the mail slot, and was down the corridor toward the drop pods.
Time to suit up.
-x-x-x-
(Year 3058, Day 0 of Campaign)
(T-10 Minutes before drop pod deployment)
"You ready to go, convict?" the Drop Master asked, though in saying he was not being spiteful to Sommen.
"Yes, and no," Sommen admitted.
"I read you. It's a bitch of a thing, you're about to drop onto a very hostile world with limited resources and not a lot of hope, but here we are."
"Yeah, here we are," Sommen looked out the window next to the Drop Pod hatch at the world in question. "What can you tell me?"
"Not much. Trace atmosphere, pressure is well below Terran, and the gas mix is unbreathable right now. Surface temp is low, if it had an atmosphere and moisture it would be snowing or sleeting. No plant life, no animal life, but plenty of resources all over the place to work with."
"Resources?" Sommen asked.
"Raw materials, raw iron, raw silicon, similar. Nearly no atmosphere on planet, so meteors typically hit ground rather than burn up on the way down," the Drop Master reported. "You'll be able to pick up the leftovers and make use of 'em."
"Good, that will go a way to making things doable," Sommen made sure to make a mental note of the thought about meteroid leftovers.
"Don't get your hopes up, kid. You're not the first Planet Crafter to hit the ground on this world. If you can find anything on the last guy, be sure to report what you find."
"Here's to hoping I live long enough to do some exploring," Sommen nodded thrice.
"Hangar Deck, Bridge, we are approaching deployment position. Load and prepare the pod," the Captain of the ship ordered.
"Time to go, convict. God help you," the Drop Master said.
Sommen stepped into the pod and took his seat to the right of the entry / exit hatch. After a moment, Sommen sighed and relaxed his tension a bit. "One way or the other, see you on the other side," he said before he locked down his helmet and began belting himself into the drop chair.
The Drop Master gave the Planet Crafter a perfunctory salute and slapped the button to close the hatch. The five-point harness was completely cinched down before the Drop Pod began moving to launch position, and Sommen was ready for what he knew was going to be the 'easy' part of a supposedly-impossible job.
"Drop Pod 23, stand by for launch," the ship's operator said after a moment of silence in both the pod and Sommen's mind. "God be with you, Planet Crafter. Launching in, three, two, one, ejecting."
Sommen could feel the pod boost out of the launch bay and toward the planet below. The display panel to his left showed a time to landing of fifteen minutes, which he figured not an unreasonable length of time for a high orbit ejection. Too slow and he risked becoming just another doomed orbital object, too fast and the drop pod could fly into the ground fast enough to pancake a normal human. And as much as Sentinel was putting him on the ground as free labor and really did not give a shit about his fate, the Drop Pod did not include any niceties like inertial dampeners to prevent pancaking the free labor, so a cautious landing was the optimal procedure.
"Fifteen minutes. I will probably go insane before all is said and done," Sommen grumped as the pod buffeted a bit from passing through the planet's rather active magnetosphere.
-x-
(Year 3058, Day 1 of Campaign)
(Landing +1 minute, 1215 Local time)
"Well, that sucked," Sommen grumped. The pod had held, the landing was survivable, but had resulted in a tweaked back that he could easily tell was going to be sore for days or weeks to come. Still, he had not pancaked on landing, which meant that the duty was next.
Sommen Garber, former software engineer, convict (Manslaughter 1), commuted life sentence to Planet Crafter duty, stretched out and breathed deep. This was not what he wanted for his life, but this was now his future, a future he had prepared himself for even under the disapproving eye of Sentinel Corp. Now, on planet and with a mandate, Sommen forced himself out of his weeks-long pity party and brought forth in his mind the years of personal survival training he had gone through. That, more than even the gear or the mandate, would be what saved his ass, he knew. The mandate may or may not be impossible, he figured, but for damn sure Sentinel Corp had given him nearly everything he would need to survive on this shithole red rock.
First, take stock of equipment and resources at hand, Sommen remembered his first lesson and requirement for survival. The encounter / labor suit was in good shape, and Sommen could identify no tears, scratches, cuts, or undue abrasion on it caused by the flailing around during the landing. So, at the minimum, he had mobility around the area, and that would give him a fighting chance to make a go of it on this planet.
Basic crafting terminal in the Drop Pod is functional, Sommen enumerated mentally after he checked the interface and it sprang up the Tier 1 list of constructables. The basic terminal could handle only a couple very minor things, but critical ones: air bottles, water bottles, backpack, an oxygen tank, and three types of microchip add-ons for the promised BG-01 Multifunction Build Gun. He would have to supply materials for the terminal to make things, but that was no different than having to do it himself — and frankly, much easier than his survival training, natch. After all, the pod would do the heavy lifting on making a water bottle, all he had to do was find a chunk of ice for it to do the thing, just as one example (1).
The aforementioned build gun he found in the storage box that was in the pod. It was locked prior to the drop, but now that it was planetside it was accessible. What else do we have in here? Sommen asked himself mentally, and started rummaging through the storage. A plant in a sealed container, a Lirma type, specifically a genetically modified plant that was hearty enough to grow anywhere that was above absolute zero and had at least a small trace of oxygen. That will be useful once I get some basics going, Sommen thought.
The next shipping unit in the container included five Space Food meals, which he knew to have about 1200 calories per pack — slightly more than half a day's worth of food energy, and probably enough to keep him from starving for five days or thereabouts. It's a start, but I'll need to find supplemental foodstuffs around the area, if there are any. Otherwise, I'll be dead in less than a Terran month, Sommen thought.
Strapped down for shipping in the container were three bottles of supplemental Oxygen, of which Sommen popped one out of the bracket and put it in a lock band on his suit belt. Next to the oxygen bottles was a bottle of water, which he also picked up and snapped into a bottle holder on his belt. Water was going to be his continual hazard on this job, he knew, as a person could survive a month without food but only two to three days without water — dehydration killed people by the score on Terra every year, even in the 31st century.
With nothing else to check, Sommen picked up his Multifunction Build Gun and thumbed the activation switch. It came active and immediately displayed error messages — no construction chip, no deconstruction chip, no lighting chip, no compass, no filter chip, no mining speed boosters. "Of course Sentinel would not be that nice, I'll have to make the chips through the Crafting Terminal," Sommen grumped aloud. The three chips combined cost less than 20 credits, not even a full Terra Token in price, and would have been chump change for them to include in the supply kit of a condemned man, but nooo… Sommen checked the Crafting Terminal and sighed in relief that three of the chips were what the Crafting Terminal could do. At least the resource mining and harvesting function was already built into the gun, Sommen said a quick prayer for that small fortune.
"Welp, time to bust some ass. My suit has 100 units of air onboard, that should do me for 50 minutes (2) out of the Drop Pod," he said aloud and with more cheer than he really felt. Sommen stopped at the information station next to the pod hatch and looked at the notice on it.
" 'Welcome to your assigned planet. Your mission is to advance the terraformation process of this world. Generate O2, Heat, and Pressure to do so. First, reach 175,000 TI and create a blue atmosphere. Sentinel Corp, Year 3058.' Well, that says plenty, and the data uplink includes some starting recommendations." After reading aloud the message, he hoped that it would not become his madness mantra in coming days, weeks, months, possibly into years.
Sommen took a moment to scroll through the recommended first steps: craft and equip a tier 1 backpack. "Okay, what does the crafting terminal want for a basic backpack?" he looked to the terminal interface and read the materials list. "Simple, two units of iron. Gotta start somewhere, and extra carrying capacity is a good starting point." He looked out the hatch and sighed; for as far as he could see, there were all kinds of materials strewn about the ground, and he hoped the Build Gun could identify what was what.
Six minutes out from his pod, Sommen came across two chunks of red metal within spitting distance of each other. He waved the build gun over it, and after a moment the gun returned the code FE — iron ore. The Planet Crafter-in-potentia aimed the gun at the first chunk and squeezed the trigger; the mining beam broke it down and deposited the material in his suit inventory readily in the space of about 30 seconds, so Sommen stepped up to the second such chunk and picked it up as well. A couple meters past that second chunk of iron, he found a chunk of ice partially embedded in the ground, so he applied the mining beam in the hopes that he would get intact ice — what the terminal wanted for a bottle of water. True to intention, he got the chunk of ice in chunk form and in his suit inventory. Seven minutes march back to the pod, not even a full twenty on the ground, and he was back inside.
"Whew, it's a start," Sommen breathed a sigh after he entered the pod and his oxygen was quick to refill. He connected his suit inventory to the crafting terminal and told it to manufacture the backpack. 90 seconds later, he pulled the completed backpack out of the terminal and attached it to his suit modular upgrade panel and with it his suit inventory expanded from 12 units to 16. "Next steps, next steps," Sommen grunted as he scrolled through the recommendations while the crafting terminal churned the ice out into a drinkable water bottle, and the next on the list was a supplemental air tank. "Air tank: two cobalt, one iron, one magnesium. Here goes."
Back outside, he found the first piece of cobalt mere meters from the entrance to his pod, a bright blue object that caught the sun's rays when looking at it from a certain direction, and zapped it into his inventory. A few meters beyond that was a chunk of raw silicon, not necessary for his present task but Sommen decided he'd need it soon enough. The magnesium was about five minutes past the silicon and ten minutes out from the pod, and both the second cobalt and the necessary iron were within easy walking distance. Fifteen minutes, all the materials needed for the air tank. On the way back to the pod, Sommen tried his hand at jogging back to the pod rather than a leisurely walk, and was surprised at how easy he could do so in this suit (3). For all their other sins, Sentinel Corp made their encounter suits at least somewhat reasonable to work and move around in, Sommen figured.
Inside the pod, the Planet Crafter prepared his new supplemental air tank and attached it to the modular hardware interface. The Crafting Terminal again had it ready for him in 90 seconds after it stripped the materials out of his suit inventory, and once connected the tank was automatically filled by the atmosphere inside the pod. "Now 145 units of air, that should be roughly 72 minutes (4) out on the ground if I am doing the math right," Sommen said mostly to hear a friendly voice. "So, next steps, a Construction chip for my build gun. Might be handy to build shit, Sentinel Corp weasels," the convict groused. A quick check of the crafting terminal gave him the materials: two units silicon, two units magnesium.
The silicon was easily found within five walking minutes of the pod, two units as needed. The magnesium he had to venture a bit farther out, fifteen minutes overall walking distance, and back to the pod with the materials. Sixty seconds in the crafting terminal and he had the necessary chip to apply to…his modular equipment interface, strangely enough. Not a direct application to his build gun, mind, it hooked into the hardware slots on his suit.
"If I programmed like Sentinel Corp designed their exoplanetary gear, I would have been fired and deported long ago," Sommen groused at this rather nonsensical design choice. Still, he took a minute to take stock of what he had accomplished so far, and figured now was a good time for a break so he could rest up for the next steps: building a habitat shelter and the first steps on the road to terraformation.
The Planet Crafter knew he was in for a long bitch of a job, and breaking his neck (or a leg, or an arm, or his back, or any other part of his anatomy) on trying to overachieve right after landing would only turn him into another statistic on Sentinel Corp's ledger sheets, not a successful Planet Crafter. A short break was in order, he figured.
Author's Chapter Afterword:
Chapter 1 of what promises to be a long story!
This is almost 180 degrees off-base from my usual writing. I am normally a military sci-fi and techno-thriller kind of writer, so doing a completely peaceful story such as this is a totally different barrel of fish from my usual. On the plus side, this is a very good game, even if it lacks a lot of the polish of bigger titles, and that old-school charm and focus without extraneous drama makes it very relaxing to operate on.
So, be prepared for a long adventure on this one. I'll be writing this completely inline with playing through, you will see the action as I go through the steps, do the exploration, the whole nine yards. And any disasters (deaths) you will see just the same.
NOTE: I am playing this with one mod, a feature that arguably I think should be in the base game. I will explain it and identify the mod when I get to that point. For now, though, it will not make a difference play-wise or story wise.
If you have any comments, questions, recommendations, advice, go ahead and post me a review!
Review Replies: No reviews so far. I try to reply to every review here so that all readers can benefit from the back-and-forth of the storytelling!
The Gripe Sheet: No complaints so far. My beta-reader Takeshi Yamato helps keep my prose straight in all my works, and for that I am always thankful!
Footnotes:
(1): Crafting recipe: 1 chunk of ice = 1 water bottle. You will need this recipe a lot when starting out. It will be obviated later in the game, though.
(2): I am using the conversion of 1 second in-game to 1 minute in real-world time, as having a mere 50 seconds of breathable air in a space suit in the year 3058 is wildly unreasonable. And, doing this in the space of minutes conversion for the game mechanics is more plausible, as I will demonstrate in coming chapters.
(3): In Planet Crafter, at least as of 0.8, there is no penalty for using the fast movement key (by default, hold Caps Lock while moving).
(4): The default air use is 2 units per second in game, which I am extrapolating to 2 units per minute for the purpose of this storytelling.
