Iron Sky
Procedurally Generated
IronDM Round 2, Match 2
Deep Crude
Harbinger
Crude Map
Convergence of Clouds
Fatal Flaw
Compromised Position
Fairy Tale
Loaded Dice
The first adventure in a modern/near-future campaign.
The players are merc “problem solvers” and not yet a team.
You are all lounging in the finest hotel lobby bathroom in New York City, trying awkwardly to look busy. Maybe the pay for this job was too good to be true. Several other individuals are doing – and probably thinking – the same.
Describe all the player characters without saying who is who, mixing in a hard-looking, heavy-browed man in a long coat.
The Client walks in exactly on time, motioning for his bodyguards to stay outside. Isaiah Daniel Hann II.: young for a billionaire, clean cut in a custom-tailored Enzo suit that matches his ebony nail polish.
He stands in the center of the bathroom, taking everyone in nervously. "I'm glad you all could make it. Sorry for the meeting place; the joys of the paparazzi.”
He flops glossy magazines down. The latest TIME Magazine proclaims 2 Isaiah: The Prophet of New Oil above Isaiah wearing biblical robes and holding up a laptop like a stone tablet. A second is OUT headed with The Bi Billionaire: Crude to Refined over Isaiah astride an oil barrel in a white suit, wearing a rainbow of gem-studded rings.
“I'm sure you understand that what I say is confidential. My lawyers are on retainer, speed dial, and over for cocktails regularly in case you forget. That said, there's not much time so I'll just summarize the essentials. I contacted you individually, but I'm assembling a team. The 'what for' takes a bit to tell and is... personal.
“I came out accidentally when my father caught me and my boyfriend Hadrian, um, 'occupied' in the hot tub three months ago. The shock triggered the heart attack that killed him – or rather the advanced congenital aortic valve stenosis they found did. He'd have disowned me if he'd lived, but instead I inherited control of Intercontinental Reserves and #34 on Forbes' richest billionaires ranking.
“Intercontinental was already struggling and when Father died, stocks tanked. Untried CEO, peak oil in the rear-view, discovery rate plummeting; a tough hand. But I had an ace up my sleeve: Hadrian, as brilliant as he is beautiful.
“When we were buddies in college, we drove to Atlantic City together, raked it in at the craps tables with these dice he'd made and palmed in when he was up to roll. Programmable somehow, turned them off when the casinos kicked us out – on suspicion since they couldn't prove anything. Didn't even know he was gay until a couple of goons called us 'cheating faggots' after tossing us. He just said 'I prefer “sharping fairies”' and kissed me hard. Took the beating of our lives and I found the love-of-my-life in process.
“Anyway, he'd told me about this 'deep AI' he'd built at MIT and thought he had an idea to apply it to petroleum geology, then explained with gibberish about 'fuzzy data', 'weight decay', 'emergence', 'inverse problems', 'backpropagation”... yeah. He's the smartest person I've ever met – and I went to Harvard – so I believed him utterly.
“When I proposed it, the board laughed and asked me if I had some magic beans for sale too. In response, I took a position with the entirety of my inheritance shorting oil. For the non-market inclined, that means I bet every one of my billions that we'd increase world supply enough to lower the price. The board – and the press – sat up and took interest.
“I gave Hadrian an unlimited budget, spent millions on computation time and storage. To get enough we used all the major cloud vendors at once: Azure, AWS, Salesforce, HPE, SAP, IBM – you name it – running his 'Concrudence' AI's algorithms, massively parallel.
“Six weeks later, Hadrian emailed me a map of world oil reserves.
“I've seen dozens of them so I didn't get what the big deal was.
“'Concrudence did it.' 'Did what? We already knew all that.' 'No, it invented it. On its own. From nothing.'
“Then I got it: Concrudence worked like I promised the world it would! I felt the energy future – and futures – of the whole world shifting in my hands.
“So we knew it could find what we already knew about, just needed to set it loose to discover what we didn't.
“That was two weeks ago. Two days ago, Hadrian stops giving me updates or... anything. Yesterday I get an ominous email that just says 'Ave prophetam, vivat Caesar' with a picture of us. Not only am I worried about him, but I have billions at jeopardy if he doesn't come through. Here's where you come in: I have my own security, but I need you to fly to Washington to ensure Hadrian is safe. My jet leaves in an hour. Who's going to be on it?
At this point the hard man in the coat produces a knife and leaps to gut Isaiah. Isaiah's security burst in and overzealously kill the assassin whether the PCs have him subdued or not.
The man has no identification and burned-off fingerprints, his phone history cleared except for Isaiah's hiring email and a picture of Isaiah.
Isaiah is shaken, but thankful for any PC aid and even more insistent about Hadrian's protection.
Heading to Hadrian's house after arrival in Washington they find him lying in a pool of blood near a smoldering server rack, the house ransacked. Several thugs loom over Hadrian.
Queue firefight.
The hitmen flee if losing which may result in a car chase. If the PCs flee, the are chased with a similar result. The thugs are Asian, with Chinese prison tattoos, pictures of Hadrian with address, and no other ID. If captured even torture won't budge them.
They return to find Hadrian barely alive.
He clutches at a PC and gasps out: “Didn't have enough inputs... used clouds to... hacked satellites... government server farms... finally enough... fed Concrudence... thought they couldn't track... someone did... Concrudence perfect... my weakness... hubris... killed me... too many to get away with it all... so close to fin-... only tri-... only tri-... Isaiah... love... sorry... remember... Atlant-... City...”
As he dies he thrusts something into the PC's hands – a pair of bloody dice.
Calling Isaiah: anguish and anger. “His last words! Falling in love in Atlantic City!”
Isaiah pushes them to find whatever of the map they can so Hadrian's death has some meaning. More cynical players will note that his billions are backing a fantasy unless they can find something.
Distantly approaching police sirens and tight time/action management add tension while searching for clues:
• The computer equipment is trashed – rigged to self-destruct.
• Books on craps, programming, AI pack the shelves.
• Old map printouts at various levels of refinement lay scattered. Most have GPS coordinates printed or scribbled on them.
• Most prototype maps have three equidistant points that converge more and more on subsequently dated maps until they meet at a single point.
• Hadrian's tattoo: Alea iacta est.
• The dice results don't seem entirely random if rolled, but aren't fixed either.
Solution: the dice are programmed, each roll adding up to one digit of a 4-digit GPS coordinate per rol. They cycle through 9 GPS locations(72 rolls) then repeat. They form three equidistant points from each of the three actual locations due to Concrudence not completely finishing.
The final GPS locations map out to Antarctica, the Congo, and Kazakhstan.
Isaiah dispatches company geologists to travel with the PCs to the coordinates for confirmation, ordering the PCs to keep the final destinations need-to-know in his increasing paranoia.
In various countries, the PCs face an array of difficulties and dangers:
• Extremes of heat, cold, elevation, and weather.
• Diseases, poisonous vermin and plant life.
• War zones, brutal regimes, untamed wilds.
• Travel hazards/breakdowns/sabotage.
• A variety of global intelligence agents attempting to kill or capture them to learn what data Hadrian “stole”.
• One of the geologists attempting to steal or destroy any data.
• Corrupt/suspicious/hostile local officials, warlords, rebels, criminals.
• A dogged reporter trying to get the story out while they try to keep it on the down-low.
If the PCs figured out the GPS locations, but not that they are approximations, they will be hundreds of miles off in some of the most dangerous and/or unstable regions in the world. A few such trips should bump them towards figuring out the corrected coordinates.
When the PCs reach the actual three locations, massive reservoirs with tens- to hundreds-of-millions of barrels of light, sweet crude are discovered.
If they succeeded, Isaiah uses his regained (and vastly expanded) wealth to reward them handsomely and buy off the various governments pursuing them. They have a major ally/employer for the rest of the campaign.
If they failed, Isaiah loses everything and begs them for protection. The campaign likely becomes about finding what exactly Hadrian hacked into and/or being hunted by major powers.
Deep Crude
Harbinger
Crude Map
Convergence of Clouds
Fatal Flaw
Compromised Position
Fairy Tale
Loaded Dice
The first adventure in a modern/near-future campaign.
The players are merc “problem solvers” and not yet a team.
You are all lounging in the finest hotel lobby bathroom in New York City, trying awkwardly to look busy. Maybe the pay for this job was too good to be true. Several other individuals are doing – and probably thinking – the same.
Describe all the player characters without saying who is who, mixing in a hard-looking, heavy-browed man in a long coat.
The Client walks in exactly on time, motioning for his bodyguards to stay outside. Isaiah Daniel Hann II.: young for a billionaire, clean cut in a custom-tailored Enzo suit that matches his ebony nail polish.
He stands in the center of the bathroom, taking everyone in nervously. "I'm glad you all could make it. Sorry for the meeting place; the joys of the paparazzi.”
He flops glossy magazines down. The latest TIME Magazine proclaims 2 Isaiah: The Prophet of New Oil above Isaiah wearing biblical robes and holding up a laptop like a stone tablet. A second is OUT headed with The Bi Billionaire: Crude to Refined over Isaiah astride an oil barrel in a white suit, wearing a rainbow of gem-studded rings.
“I'm sure you understand that what I say is confidential. My lawyers are on retainer, speed dial, and over for cocktails regularly in case you forget. That said, there's not much time so I'll just summarize the essentials. I contacted you individually, but I'm assembling a team. The 'what for' takes a bit to tell and is... personal.
“I came out accidentally when my father caught me and my boyfriend Hadrian, um, 'occupied' in the hot tub three months ago. The shock triggered the heart attack that killed him – or rather the advanced congenital aortic valve stenosis they found did. He'd have disowned me if he'd lived, but instead I inherited control of Intercontinental Reserves and #34 on Forbes' richest billionaires ranking.
“Intercontinental was already struggling and when Father died, stocks tanked. Untried CEO, peak oil in the rear-view, discovery rate plummeting; a tough hand. But I had an ace up my sleeve: Hadrian, as brilliant as he is beautiful.
“When we were buddies in college, we drove to Atlantic City together, raked it in at the craps tables with these dice he'd made and palmed in when he was up to roll. Programmable somehow, turned them off when the casinos kicked us out – on suspicion since they couldn't prove anything. Didn't even know he was gay until a couple of goons called us 'cheating faggots' after tossing us. He just said 'I prefer “sharping fairies”' and kissed me hard. Took the beating of our lives and I found the love-of-my-life in process.
“Anyway, he'd told me about this 'deep AI' he'd built at MIT and thought he had an idea to apply it to petroleum geology, then explained with gibberish about 'fuzzy data', 'weight decay', 'emergence', 'inverse problems', 'backpropagation”... yeah. He's the smartest person I've ever met – and I went to Harvard – so I believed him utterly.
“When I proposed it, the board laughed and asked me if I had some magic beans for sale too. In response, I took a position with the entirety of my inheritance shorting oil. For the non-market inclined, that means I bet every one of my billions that we'd increase world supply enough to lower the price. The board – and the press – sat up and took interest.
“I gave Hadrian an unlimited budget, spent millions on computation time and storage. To get enough we used all the major cloud vendors at once: Azure, AWS, Salesforce, HPE, SAP, IBM – you name it – running his 'Concrudence' AI's algorithms, massively parallel.
“Six weeks later, Hadrian emailed me a map of world oil reserves.
“I've seen dozens of them so I didn't get what the big deal was.
“'Concrudence did it.' 'Did what? We already knew all that.' 'No, it invented it. On its own. From nothing.'
“Then I got it: Concrudence worked like I promised the world it would! I felt the energy future – and futures – of the whole world shifting in my hands.
“So we knew it could find what we already knew about, just needed to set it loose to discover what we didn't.
“That was two weeks ago. Two days ago, Hadrian stops giving me updates or... anything. Yesterday I get an ominous email that just says 'Ave prophetam, vivat Caesar' with a picture of us. Not only am I worried about him, but I have billions at jeopardy if he doesn't come through. Here's where you come in: I have my own security, but I need you to fly to Washington to ensure Hadrian is safe. My jet leaves in an hour. Who's going to be on it?
At this point the hard man in the coat produces a knife and leaps to gut Isaiah. Isaiah's security burst in and overzealously kill the assassin whether the PCs have him subdued or not.
The man has no identification and burned-off fingerprints, his phone history cleared except for Isaiah's hiring email and a picture of Isaiah.
Isaiah is shaken, but thankful for any PC aid and even more insistent about Hadrian's protection.
Heading to Hadrian's house after arrival in Washington they find him lying in a pool of blood near a smoldering server rack, the house ransacked. Several thugs loom over Hadrian.
Queue firefight.
The hitmen flee if losing which may result in a car chase. If the PCs flee, the are chased with a similar result. The thugs are Asian, with Chinese prison tattoos, pictures of Hadrian with address, and no other ID. If captured even torture won't budge them.
They return to find Hadrian barely alive.
He clutches at a PC and gasps out: “Didn't have enough inputs... used clouds to... hacked satellites... government server farms... finally enough... fed Concrudence... thought they couldn't track... someone did... Concrudence perfect... my weakness... hubris... killed me... too many to get away with it all... so close to fin-... only tri-... only tri-... Isaiah... love... sorry... remember... Atlant-... City...”
As he dies he thrusts something into the PC's hands – a pair of bloody dice.
Calling Isaiah: anguish and anger. “His last words! Falling in love in Atlantic City!”
Isaiah pushes them to find whatever of the map they can so Hadrian's death has some meaning. More cynical players will note that his billions are backing a fantasy unless they can find something.
Distantly approaching police sirens and tight time/action management add tension while searching for clues:
• The computer equipment is trashed – rigged to self-destruct.
• Books on craps, programming, AI pack the shelves.
• Old map printouts at various levels of refinement lay scattered. Most have GPS coordinates printed or scribbled on them.
• Most prototype maps have three equidistant points that converge more and more on subsequently dated maps until they meet at a single point.
• Hadrian's tattoo: Alea iacta est.
• The dice results don't seem entirely random if rolled, but aren't fixed either.
Solution: the dice are programmed, each roll adding up to one digit of a 4-digit GPS coordinate per rol. They cycle through 9 GPS locations(72 rolls) then repeat. They form three equidistant points from each of the three actual locations due to Concrudence not completely finishing.
The final GPS locations map out to Antarctica, the Congo, and Kazakhstan.
Isaiah dispatches company geologists to travel with the PCs to the coordinates for confirmation, ordering the PCs to keep the final destinations need-to-know in his increasing paranoia.
In various countries, the PCs face an array of difficulties and dangers:
• Extremes of heat, cold, elevation, and weather.
• Diseases, poisonous vermin and plant life.
• War zones, brutal regimes, untamed wilds.
• Travel hazards/breakdowns/sabotage.
• A variety of global intelligence agents attempting to kill or capture them to learn what data Hadrian “stole”.
• One of the geologists attempting to steal or destroy any data.
• Corrupt/suspicious/hostile local officials, warlords, rebels, criminals.
• A dogged reporter trying to get the story out while they try to keep it on the down-low.
If the PCs figured out the GPS locations, but not that they are approximations, they will be hundreds of miles off in some of the most dangerous and/or unstable regions in the world. A few such trips should bump them towards figuring out the corrected coordinates.
When the PCs reach the actual three locations, massive reservoirs with tens- to hundreds-of-millions of barrels of light, sweet crude are discovered.
If they succeeded, Isaiah uses his regained (and vastly expanded) wealth to reward them handsomely and buy off the various governments pursuing them. They have a major ally/employer for the rest of the campaign.
If they failed, Isaiah loses everything and begs them for protection. The campaign likely becomes about finding what exactly Hadrian hacked into and/or being hunted by major powers.