How long had Sughouri wandered? Years. Only seconds. Her heart ached, her limbs burned. She was dying, crushed by the intense weight of Proxima b. Her mind wasn’t working properly anymore. She was dreaming while awake, whispering to ghosts and crying out to absent friends.

She was in the mine. She knew she was. The tunnel kept going, and if she kept walking, she would soon come to the same door that connected to the refinery. She would see empty hoppers and pickaxes, and then she would be halfway there.

When she thought of it, she checked her watch.

It had been ten minutes since she fell.

“Sughouri?”

A passing fancy flit through Sughouri’s mind. She didn’t have to answer Kristiana when she called. What would that do to them, to be cut off? How would they react?

“Yes?” she answered, the moment past.

“What are you doing? You’re not supposed to be up for another two hours.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Sughouri shrugged. “Things to do today, so might as well get started.”

“Such as?” Victoria now. They all suspected. They had to have suspected for days now. They were watching her vitals every second of every hour. For all her naivete about space and the sciences, Victoria wasn’t stupid about people. Besides, they could see where she was heading.

Last time, I looked at Abilities and what sort of “Special Effects” Sync could add to their basic attacks. One of the more obvious options is conditions, so this time I’d like to look into what kind of conditions Manifest could have.

Luckily, I have two great sources of inspiration: Trespasser and Demon Crawl – Gothic.

Demon Crawl – Gothic, similar to its spiritual sequal Steel Hearts, has a small number of conditions, one for each damage-type. Designed to be a quick paced action game, these conditions aren’t the more narratively focused conditions like prone or grappled. Instead, they are closer to the hinderances of an action-adventure video game. Burning, for example, causes you to take three damage whenever you deal damage to an enemy. Rotting means you take an extra 2 damage whenever damage is dealt to you. Being Hexed causes you to receive 1 damage every square you move.

It had taken almost four days for Sughouri to finish her work. Cutting through the door was difficult enough, and took two four-hour days before she was finished. Then she fed a flexible camera through the hole, bringing along a connector cable with it. Breaking into the keypad took another day, and connecting her hacking kit into the security lock was no small feat in itself.

In the end, it took a full thirteen hours to break through the military-grade security lock on the door, and once she had finished, she had to return to the Hut and leave actually opening the lounge for the next day.

Today.

It had been a harrowing week for Victoria. Her mind filled with inescapable imaginings fueled by her past. Behind that door, there could be two hundred corpses, perfectly preserved in their final moments of death. It would be her job to discover what those final moments were.

Kristiana’s head was throbbing.

“Hamēstagān is a place referenced in the Dādestān ī Dēnīg, a ninth-century Persian religious text,” she recited. “It had been written by Zoroastrian high priest, and it’s composed entirely of ninety-two questions followed by the priest’s answers. Hamēstagān is a place where dead souls are sent to wait. It’s a neutral place for those whose good and evil deeds are in perfect balance, to wait for the day of judgment.”

“Okay, but what does it mean?” Sughouri said over the com. “‘Gone to Hamēstagān.’ Is this their way of saying they knew they were dying?”

“That’s one possibility,” Kristiana admitted. She didn’t like how excited Sughouri was getting. If she started to panic or lost control, there was nothing any of them could do. “We don’t have all the information yet, so it’s counterproductive to start guessing wildly.”

“It’s not wild,” Sughouri huffed. “It’s right there, on the wall of a flipping kitchen: Gone. To. Hamēstagān. Look, I’m all for restraint when it comes to making guesses, but it’s not like they’re speaking in code, here.”

Last time, I decided that abilities have both a basic effect and a Sync effect; a bonus that becomes stronger the higher your Manifestation’s Bond is.

But what kind of bonuses could a Manifestation have? For that matter, I’ve been talking a lot about tactical combat, but I haven’t really done anything with it, have I?

Let’s fix that. We can look at D&D along with any number of other systems to get a feel for a “baseline” tactical combat system. Everything from Lancer to Zafir, Strike! to Voyager: Tactics has some ideas worth exploring.

I don’t see a problem with starting with the most common assumptions: a battle map, miniatures, movement and areas-of-effect…fairly standard stuff. At its most basic, each unit on the board has a certain number of spaces they can move each turn, and a certain number of “actions,” which can be either attacks, special abilities, extra movement, etc.

“Section A,” Sughouri said as she dragged her LED across the sign. “This must be the place.” Sughouri glanced to make sure that Churji was still following along behind her. She was used to working in silence, hearing only the sounds of her suit, and periodic visual check-ins were vital to keep things moving smoothly. Her chest was beginning to hurt, but Victoria hadn’t said anything, so it was probably just her imagination.

“Hold up,” Zuri’s digital voice came over the comm. “Wolf just stopped. You’re close to where the drone broke down, and it doesn’t want to go further.”

Sughouri glanced back again. Churji was sitting a few paces back, camera steadily tracking her movements. She checked her suit and said; “I’m not getting any radiation, or environmental hazards from my suit. Can you tap it into my camera feed? I’ll go on ahead and it’ll see everything’s safe.”

“Is that right?” Victoria’s voice was delightfully confused. “Is Wolf that smart?”

Sighouri liked nicknames.

Normal names were universal. She was Sighouri to everyone, and always would be. But to her grandmother, she had been Noyoner moni. To her niece, she had been Sig. At the academy, she had been Bandar, thanks to her limber limbs and loud laughter. To her longest-term lovers she had been Ya amar, Jaanu, and Shona, respectively, and for two months on the ISS she had been Bullet.

The CHR-3 was Churji to her, and the Croatoan was the Śabādhāra. Everyone saw different things when they looked at the world, and to hang every viewpoint, every facet of a gem under a single name was unwise at best. Dangerous at worst.

Kristiana called them ‘colonists,’ but they could just as easily be pioneers, explorers, Noriamians, Proximans…

Sughouri was about to be an archeologist, or an SAR Engineer, or a surveyor, or a migrant, or an ex-pat.

Last time, I decided that the Manifestations will make all their actions with a die roll based on their Tier and Bond ratings: XdY, where X is their Bond, ranging from 1 to 5, and Y is their Tier, ranging from a d4 to a d12. I also decided to place a limit on leveling, such that a Manifestation will only ever level up 5 times.

But the math on that is a little squiffy. If a Manifestation focuses on leveling their Bond over their Tier, they are, in effect, hamstringing themselves. Take a look at this Anydice program:

output 1@2d12 named “2d12”

output 1@5d6 named “5d6”

If you look at the “at least” tab, you can easily see how the 5d6 Manifestation has a higher chance of rolling better than a 3 or 4 than 2d12, but 2d12 has a far better chance of rolling 6 or better than 5d6 has of rolling a 6. Both Manifestations have about an equal chance of rolling a 5 or better, but for one that means a 5 or a 6, while the other can go up to 12. That’s hardly balanced.

Zuri’s fingers itched. It had taken almost an hour for Churji to reach the main computer center in Central Control, then another hour for Sughouri to inspect the systems and wiring to make sure everything was still within proper working order.

“Okay,” Sughouri said at last, “I’m turning the computer on. Zuri, it’s in your hands now.”

Zuri could feel her shoulders relax as, on the screen, Churji’s claw threw the final switch. The feed swung about as all around it, lights began to flicker to life. When Churji turned back to the main screen, the system boot process was spinning past, throwing error after error, the same errors mirrored on Zuri’s personal screen.

“That doesn’t look good,” Victoria muttered.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Sughouri waved a hand. “The system is looking for a bunch of systems and hardware we haven’t turned on, that’s all.”

And likely never would, Zuri noted. No need for waste recyclers or temperature control now.