Let's talk about Over/Under + Short fic I wrote the night before my character died.
There's a week left in the game, but my character Nostra is dead. I plan on doing a deep dive on the topic once the game concludes. For now, just a few thoughts and a short fic I wrote about Nostra tying up some loose ends related to the recently executed Vor Veljko.
The Good of Over/Under:
- Very immersive and full of creative wonderful people to roleplay with. Many of which are making cool stories and art of all kinds.
- Amazing setting for a game like this, Prospero's Dream is already a favorite, but now even more so.
- Perfectly themed with Mothership Month 2025
- The best memes
The hindsight stuff:
- Player expectations I think could have been primed a lot better by including the language from Sam's blog post link: https://samsorensen.blot.im/mothership-month-2025-wargame-over/under about the thing being experimental. More players should have known unplanned issues could crop up and mentally prepare themselves for a bit of figuring it out as we go.
- If there was a doptown faction, I really wish it hadn't been cut so a Hunglung insurgency could actually factor into the game.
And now a short story:
Nostra’s boots rang hollow and metallic on the passageway deck. The Vor.. no.. Veljko’s quarters seemed deserted, not even a zveri to bar his way. He wondered if the new Vor would have enough time to redecorate before the next calamity.
An odd sight caught in the corner of his eye and he faltered outside the door to the penthouse ante-chamber. At the end of the passageway, something new. A large canister with a window in it, a flash of movement, a black-massed swirl, perhaps an eye. He wrenched his eyes away with a thrill of fear. Whatever mad shit Veljko had stashed in the place was Lockley’s problem now. Most of them, but not all.
His callused hand squeezed the crowbar, would they already know that Veljko was dead? Did they feel it when it happened? Maybe a fun little bonus to making Beef use his hands all slow like, not the main reason of course, but a fun little last twist of the knife through whatever fucked up connection the trio shared.
The hatch squealed in protest when he wrenched it open and stepped through into the cramped ante-chamber, hinges kept rusty on purpose no doubt. Veljko’s proxies, Selva and Renfield, stood on either side of the closed door to the Vor’s quarters.
Exposed skulls and profane cyberware protrusions. Drooling and staring, listless. Nostra kept his eyes on both as he shut the hatch behind him with another screech of metal and clunk of a handle latched in place.
“You’re wondering if he’s alive. If you have to maintain this charade any longer.”
He approached Renfield first, prodding him roughly in the chest with the curved end of the crowbar. He tipped back, then rolled forward as Nostra withdrew the steel and turned toward Selva.
“Renfield seems fried, or he’s hiding it better than you, Selva. Which is it? I know you’re in there-”
He hauled back the crowbar and swung it at the proxy’s head, missing intentionally and filling the compartment with an earsplitting clang. Selva didn’t flinch, just a steady, bubbling drool. But Reinfield’s eyes flicked toward him, bulging with fear.
The crowbar came back, arcing at Renfield’s skull, and that was enough to break the facade. Renfield flinched right before impact, and collapsed to the deck, moaning and crawling away as Selva tried to run past him and rush the closed hatch. By the time the hatch lever was grasped, the short barrel of his revolver was roaring and spitting.
He kicked the groaning Selva over and leaned down low, looming.
“I should have done this sooner, last week maybe? How long have you been in your full faculties? I saw it in your eyes, in the bar. The old you. The turncoat that he said would be dead by the time I returned.”
The garbled voice came out, desperate, but somehow still defiant, “Nostra I would do it a thou-”
He pulled the trigger until it was empty, “I wish I could hear what the fuck you’re saying to me right now.”
Blood trickled from his ringing ears as he stomped over to the crawling Renfield, picked up his crowbar, and finished the job.
The crowbar had another purpose too, a messy, clumsy task in his inexpert hands to remove them, but preservation of the black boxes wasn’t really his priority. It took another breathless few minutes to pulverize them to bloody, glittering bits of shattered circuitry, and smashed data storage.
“Sorry for the mess, Joe.”
tags: over/under, mothership, mothership rpg, glue trap games