The F-ship

Unlike the first, the second wave of Space colonisation was largely automated. The great Corporations found it more cost-effective to send into the Void enormous, automated factory ships commonly known as F-ships. These contained vast stores of the raw materials, capital such as machine tools, and other relevant equipment need to terraform entire planets. The expectation was that colonists would eventually follow, inhabiting the new virgin worlds and paying their intergalactic taxes.

The Second Great Depression that demolished the economy of the core worlds happened decades after the F-ships had been dispatched. Colonisation and manned exploration effectively ceased. Even without any colonists in their wake, however, the F-ships continued onwards in their mindless mission. Built to last centuries, they remake world after world ever farther into the galactic abyss.

The F-ships are not entirely uninhabited, however. Stowaways, fugitives, hitchhikers, and pirates each with their own reasons to flee governed Space live sprinkled about in the great ships. Some have borne children who know nothing other than life aboard an industrial spacecraft. Others die childless of old age. People can spend their lives on board one of these vessels never meeting another soul. Others find each other, for good or ill.

Party Creation & Communication

PCs in DEAD METAL are usually easy to create, because often so much of their lives have been robbed from them by Space Madness. It's the mental lacunae left behind that contain the bulk of their specific memories of their life prior to their fateful boarding of the F-ship. Just as they are not by this account stupid, they are not without identity, but they cannot articulate it in words or summon at will clear mental pictures. Rather, who they are is developable by the players as they choose to act as they will in the situations Being presents, just as Being [the GM] supplies glimmers of their past, as it deems appropriate.

For games with multiple PCs, what's a little harder, yet as interesting as the ongoing development of those PCs, is creating the gaming party itself. The PCs begin play alone, castaway into the F-ship's labyrinthine innards, with the intent of Being being that their paths eventually cross. The specific entrypoint should be decided by Being with input as to the ideas and desires of the players. From there, they will explore their chosen world, as Being observes and conspires to have them meet.

This may happen within a kilophase [33 minutes], or a megaphase [23 days], or longer, or much shorter, depending on how expansive Being has fashioned the interconnected Environments of play and the logic of the Stenario [Story-Scenario] it has concocted.

When a PC detects a moving object such as another PC or an NPC or robot, he has the following options:

(a) fight it whether through raw Impact (see Part 1: Ontological Inertia) or violence (see Violence & Murder),

(b) retreat or run from it,

(c) freeze and study it or wait for it to act,

(d) posture as by screaming, wailing, flexing, self-stimulating, throwing and/or breaking things, or manipulating objects, or

(e) communicate (see below).

Communication: Communication is the most difficult option, and comes in the following steps. Each step made makes logic trances less frustrating for the student (see Part 1: Logic Trance).

(1) ignorance conflict, where the PC conflicts with another human being, through theft, obstruction, physical conflict, or following when one doesn't wish to be followed, or an attempted logic trance. The PC makes a prodding gesture—poke something and see what it does. A logic trance teacher's Frustratingness is unchanged; 

(2) space negotiation, wherein if/when the object (i.e. the objectified PC or NPC) reacts in some firm way, the PC finds the need to "dance" in some fashion, over a kilophase or megaphase, perhaps following, perhaps being followed, perhaps aggressive, perhaps mischievous, etc, but working out "rules" for behaviour. At the end of this time a logic trance teacher's Frustratingness is halved;

(3) a telling mistake, as the PC does something gauche, terribly insulting, painful, hitting, violent, or just generally retarded that re-alienates or offends the objectified PC or NPC.

(4) a glimmer of insight that leads the PC to regret in some dim fashion the misstep, leading to a time of ashes as the avenue of atonement, where the PC feels wrong, uncertain, bereft in some way and to a limited degree, as if walking down an empty dark tunnel in which Being silently, indirectly begs the question of "Do you realise what you did wrong?"
 
(5) the attainment of perspective, when the PC both (a) explores a new Environment, and (b) significantly changes his behaviour in response to his glimmer of insight from level 4. He does this by remembering a memory from before he contracted space madness, a memory from his pre-F-ship past, which gives him sufficient reason to change his behaviour. At the end of this a logic trance teacher's Frustratingness drops to 0%.

(6)
(i) after the first memory is gained from level 5, the ability to communicate, in single syllable words, is gained;
(ii) after the second memory, the ability to communicate with double syllable words is gained;
(iii) after the third memory, the ability to communicate freely is gained.

Any PC that Understands Language (see Part 1: Understanding) can skip step 5 and can communicate at will, with no word limit.

Regardless of their Brains %, and their madness, the PCs are not stupid, and value their lives as much as anyone. They have a wall between them and other people, however, and the process of penetrating this wall, starting pre-verbally, and then working up to oral communication, characterises early and middle interactions.
Parallel to this process of achieving communication is the ongoing Stenario itself, which involves the PCs in an adventure, intersecting with their lives and furnishing a goal beyond just exploration, survival, and communication.

After the three memories are gained, the character gains a new memory at the end of every Stenario in which he performs a meaningful and costly Virtuous act (see Mood & Victory).

The Virtue Fortitude is a special case. A character gains an Echo upon reaching 20 KV, and gains Full upon reaching 50 KV.