Deep Dive Sneak Peek: Fahr Colonies (Patreon)

The otherworldly capstone that began with Dark Matter Fellowship, these colonies are an iceberg of a conspiracy - a mere regional conspiracy on Earth but an unquestionably widespread one in the world it has colonized.

As always, this is a first draft. There will be significant changes.

Fahr Colonies

The Fahr Colonies are an outgrowth of Fahr Industrial Partners, which has found a means of accessing a parallel world with abundant untapped resources where time flows a thousand times faster than it does on Earth. It exploits its technological advantages to subjugate Fahr’s natives and leverages the benefits of accelerated time to extract raw materials and manufacture goods at a pace that would be impossible on Earth.

George Fahr is the fourth-generation owner of Fahr Industrial Partners, a mining company that built its success on gemstone and precious metal extraction in sub-Saharan Africa. The company under his leadership has turned its attention to rare earths and invests in research that promises to increase their profitability. It was through one of these speculative investments that George found California-based Darius Gilroy.

Most of Darius’ work was of little interest to Fahr – physics research aimed at cataloguing frequencies of dark matter present on Earth. What caught George’s eye, however, was the physicist’s development of a device capable of transporting ordinary matter to a parallel world where his preliminary experiments suggested time flowed at a faster pace than it did in our own world.

Fahr immediately saw the potential manufacturing advantages – factories that could produce more quickly than their competitors. Fahr bought out Darius and focused the project on sending humans to and from the world George humbly dubbed “Fahr”. Darius resisted human experimentation so early in the process, and George ultimately dismissed him in favor of scientists and engineers less encumbered by ethics.

Preliminary Expeditions: The first human-led expeditions to Fahr established that it was habitable and not immediately dangerous. In many ways, it was a mirror of Earth as it might have been before the emergence of hominids. Over the course of a few months of Earth time, the first explorers discovered that time in Fahr flowed at approximately one thousand times the rate it did on Earth. This was complicating, for while Fahr factories could churn out products orders of magnitude faster than their competitors, it also meant even next-day resupplies from Earth would take nearly three years to arrive. Self-sufficiency was a must.

First Fahr Colony: George determined to establish a colony. Fahr Industrial Partners recruited hundreds of workers, gathered a large quantity of supplies, and expanded the transport platform so that all of it could be sent to Fahr over the course of a single hour, which would still take four months as Fahr reckoned time. The colony ran into several problems. First, while the workers’ tour would only be five days long on Earth, this would be nearly six years on Fahr, and they weren’t going to quietly accept a week’s pay for that – radically increasing the company’s labor costs. Second, each trip between Earth and Fahr carried a small risk of triggering Divergence, and many of those Broken by the trip went Renegade where they weren’t immediately Ferals. Third, Fahr was not as empty as it had first appeared. It had animals, including large predators. It had sapient inhabitants, and while their technology was not on par with Earth’s, the natives had supernatural abilities. Within a month on Earth (85 years on Fahr), the first Fahr Colony had ceased to exist; the fates of the colonists can’t be known with certainty, but it was likely some combination of violence, local diseases, and assimilation into the local cultures.

The Lull: George returned to the drawing board. The presence of native inhabitants changed the calculus considerably, for it meant a workforce unused to modern, first-world luxuries (and labor laws), although it also meant potential competitors for land and other resources. This time, Fahr Industrial Partners would go big. The company spent a year gathering resources and recruiting personnel – including a private army. They still sent scouting expeditions to Fahr, since they knew a lot could happen on Fahr in a thousand years, and one of these brought back the seeds of a legendary plant thought to hold the secrets of immortality. From this plant, Fahr Industrial Partners developed the Visitor Serum, which would slow down the effects of Fahr time on human visitors so that it stayed in sync with Earth time.

Second Fahr Colony: Fahr’s second colonization attempt involved thousands of colonists. Most made the transit without issue, but the incidence of transit Divergence was much higher, potentially a side-effect of the still-experimental Visitor Serum. Over the course of the three months (250 years Fahr time), the colonists replayed all the greatest hits of the Spanish conquistadors. Native populations who resisted the colonization faced extermination. Those who cooperated enjoyed trade relations for a time before the colonists subjugated them.

Current Age: The Fahr Colonies cover an area the size of South America and are continually expanding and contracting in waves as they conquer new lands and is forced to abandon colonies overrun by native people or cut off by (super)natural disasters.

Conspiracy Traits

Standing: 10

Principles: Explore; exploit; expand

Virtue: Adaptable

Vice: Condescending

Attributes: Power 8, Finesse 10, Resistance 8

Conspiracy Actions: 5

Association: 11

Hierarchical Node: Fahr City, Fahr Mansion, Near Colonies

Temporal Node: Colonial Army, Fahr Police, Game Hunters, Outer Colonies, Overnight Prisons, Recruitment, Specialty Unit

Exploitative Node: Broadcast Media, Fahr Natives, Fahr University, Outlands

Structural Node: Clinics, Fahr Factories, Fahr Resorts, Mid Colonies, Mining Operations, Plantations, Railway

Icon: Alien Anatomy, Multi-Frequency Transport, Time Dilation*, Transport Technology, Visitor Serum

Nodes

The Nodes of this conspiracy exist on Earth, on Fahr, or both. The time dilation effect is an inherent quality of Fahr but is treated as one of the conspiracy’s Icons.

Fahr City (Hierarchical): Three months (250 years) after its founding, the colonies’ capital city has 100,000 residents, roughly half of them human, and has skyscrapers, a mass transit system, and other familiar features of a modern city. Its Transport Square is the main point for arriving supplies and reinforcements and departing materials and goods, but the city has many smaller transport points used by passengers or for smaller scale deliveries.

Transport Technology: The colonies rely on an apparatus that transports all material in an area from Earth to a corresponding point on Fahr, or vice versa. Although it would work anywhere on Fahr, the conspiracy has forbidden colonists from building transports outside the city limits for fear that the technology will fall into the hands of rival companies or that it will enable an invasion of Earth by Fahr natives.

Privileges: +1 to Resource Denial effect of Manufacture Complication, +1 to Weight of Numbers effect of Send Agents

Fahr Mansion (Hierarchical): George Fahr ultimately owns Fahr Industrial Partners, which includes all its colonies, and it has made him unimaginably rich. His mansion covers 100 acres and is heavily guarded by a combination of Devoted and Baselines PMCs. Some Fahr natives serve on his staff, ostensibly as advisors, although George regularly assigns them household chores to keep them humble.

Privileges: +1 to Armory effect of Send Agents, +1 to Create Distraction effect of Manufacture Complication

Near Colonies (Hierarchical): The colonial settlements near Fahr City don’t have the capital’s skyscrapers and transports, but those who live there are comfortable and wealthy, with sprawling estates and lavish homes in beautiful natural settings. Representatives of the colonial legislature spend most of their time here, and the air is thick with politics.

Privileges: +1 to Accelerate Project, +1 to Focused Action

Colonial Army (Temporal): The colonies maintain a standing army made up of a mix of Baseline colonists, Devoted, and Fahr natives. Although volunteers are always welcome, compulsory enlistment is common during times of war (which is most times, given the conspiracy’s expansionist tendencies). The army provides for defense, but its primary purpose is expanding the colonies’ borders.

Fahr Police (Temporal): Fahr Industrial Partners maintains direct control over the colonies’ police force. They’re primarily peacekeepers, patrolling city streets and countryside to maintain order and investigate crimes. They also incorporate some of the functions of secret police, identifying and arresting Fahr natives they perceive as making trouble, as well as any colonists who speak too loudly in opposition to George Fahr’s vision and management style.

Game Hunters (Temporal): Many large predators and dangerous monsters live on Fahr, picking off colonists opportunistically. The colonies employ hunters to bring these creatures down in exchange for generous bounties. While most of them are Earth natives seeking excitement and glory (to say nothing of money), game hunting is one of the few ways Fahr natives can earn the privileges of citizenship in the colonies. Nor is their prey necessarily monsters and predators. Some specialize in bringing back sapient targets (whether alive or dead, depending on the bounty), while others are treasure hunters seeking loot from whatever sources and by whatever means their consciences allow.

Outer Colonies (Temporal): These colonies exist at the fringes of the Fahr Colonies. Colonists live in fortified communities built to weather monstrous attacks, while Fahr natives are largely forced to live in ramshackle houses in slums. The colonial military patrols actively in these areas and enforce safety measures meant to keep citizens safe from external threats.

Overnight Prisons (Temporal): Uprisings by Fahr natives against the colonial authorities aren’t unknown, and inconvenient Earth people can trouble the conspiracy from time to time. Fahr Industrial Partners maintains prisons on Earth and on Fahr. The one on Earth is a short-term jail used to take Fahr rebels out of circulation for a few years or decades while only requiring they stay locked up for a few days. The one on Fahr is a squalid long-term facility to which Earth natives are banished for long periods to be interrogated and brainwashed for decades before returning a few Earth days later, having aged decades in detainment.

Recruitment (Temporal): Whether it’s targeted ad campaigns that attract former soldiers and specialized workers on Earth or press gangs that conscript Fahr natives as laborers and auxiliaries on Fahr, the conspiracy’s growth depends on a steady influx of workers.

Specialty Unit (Temporal): Every transit to or from Fahr carries the risk of accidental Divergence. Although transit seldom kills travelers, those changed by it suffer all the usual complications of Divergence – but many also receive its benefits. The colonies coax these Remade into service as Devoted with a combination of financial remuneration and emotional manipulation. The exact services vary widely and depend on a Deviant’s specific abilities, but they tend to be all-consuming.

Broadcast Media (Exploitative): Fahr doesn’t have a means of communicating with Earth through phone or internet, and it hasn’t yet developed a private internet or satellite network of its own. However, broadcast radio and television provide entertainment, news, and targeted propaganda throughout the colonies. Fahr Industrial Partners largely gives these media outlets a free hand to report as they like, but it wields censorship authority when necessary.

Fahr Natives (Exploitative): The colonies have forged alliances with many of the of Fahr’s kingdoms and countries and maintain trade relations with many more. Even in the absence of formal diplomatic relations, they orchestrate and prolong wars using false flag tactics or by supplying both sides with cast-off military resources. Fahr natives are not humans, and many have capabilities and vulnerabilities unique to those who share their heritage, whether it’s a short stature and dragonfly wings or the ability to change shapes.

Alien Anatomy: All Fahr natives have up to 10 Magnitude of Natural Variations and entangled Natural Scars that reflect their heritage and upbringing. These follow the rules for Root Traits of the Outsider Form (Clades Companion, p. 15).

Fahr University (Exploitative): Fahr funds two universities – one on Earth and one on Fahr. Scientists on Earth study the way samples from Fahr respond to Earth’s conditions, while those on Fahr check every known scientific principle to confirm whether it remains true on Fahr. The rules seem the same in most cases, but this is far from universal. Social scientists and linguists study native Fahr cultures to better manipulate them to the colonies’ advantage. The universities also provide education to Fahr natives destined for professions that demand it, although this education is liberally sprinkled with propaganda meant to foster loyalty to the Fahr Colonies. Beyond these mandates, George maintains a hands-off attitude towards these institutions, giving the scholars the freedom to write papers on Fahr literary traditions, catalogue their religious practices, or do all the other things scholars do when they’re not studying anything more immediately useful.

Multi-Frequency Transport: Having successfully transported people and materials between Earth and Fahr thousands of times, the university has developed an experimental transport that achieves the same feat across many different frequencies – into the lands of the dead, the world of animistic spirits, the dimension of dreams, and more. The first human tests were successful, but the conspiracy has only begun to explore the possibilities of other worlds beyond Earth.

Outlands (Exploitative): These communities of Fahr natives are not part of the colonies, but they are within their sphere of influence. Outland communities are places where trade takes place, but colonists are advised to be mindful of their behavior and to hire a good guide familiar with local laws and customs, as there’s very little the colonies can do to aid those who are arrested for violating them.

Clinics (Structural): The conspiracy synthesizes and administers doses of its Visitor Serum at these facilities. The clinics can also perform basic medical services, including trauma surgery, although they lack the equipment or staff for anything more complicated than a broken bone or a gunshot wound.

Visitor Serum: A single injection effectively renders a person immune to aging, disease, and pregnancy while in Fahr. In fact, it simply locks their body into Earth’s temporal paradigm, so, for example, pregnancy can occur but takes 800 years to bring a child to term. This will also work on Fahr natives, but this is forbidden and the strongest terms.

Privilege: +2 to Improbable Escape effect of Manufacture Complication

Fahr Factories (Structural): The colonies have built and operate refineries and factories that provide it with everything from construction materials to consumer electronics to military hardware.

Privilege: +1 to Accelerate Project

Fahr Resorts (Structural): Even busy people need a break, but taking a week off without constant interruptions. Thanks to the time dilation of Fahr, a Saturday afternoon getaway becomes a year-long vacation in the entertainment districts of Fahr City and the idyllic resort towns. Transport itself is cheap – rarely more than $500 for a 6-hour trip – but they get you on food and beverage service, as they say. Additionally, those expecting to spend more than a few Earth hours in Fahr (or who have made more than three short jaunts) are required to receive an injection of Visitor Serum at a slight upcharge; it’s bad PR for a traveler in her 30s to come back from a weeklong vacation looking 20 years older!

Privilege: +1 Focused Action

Mid Colonies (Structural): Located between the upscale Near Colonies and the wild Outer Colonies, these are the homes and workplaces of the Far Colonies’ middle class. Although some Fahr natives have residences here, they face additional scrutiny from police.

Privilege: +1 to Manufacture Complication

Mining Operations (Structural): Fahr Industrial Partners’ first revenue stream, the company has expanded its operations into Fahr, where native miners labor under harsh, dangerous conditions to bring gemstones, precious metals, and ore out of the ground for transport to Earth and sale on the open market.

Privilege: +2 to Armory effect of Send Agents

Plantations (Structural): The colonies need to eat, and shipments of food from Earth can’t possibly keep up with the demand. Most of the laborers on these plantations are Fahr natives who range from well-compensated farmhands to sharecroppers to outright slaves, depending on the region and plantation.

Privilege: +1 to Send Agents

Railway (Structural): Air travel in Fahr has proven unviable, as planes attract large flying predators, and antiaircraft batteries, although effective, littered inhabited area with spent munitions and unexploded ordinance. The colonies have instead built an extensive system or railways connecting notable settlements. Bandits occasionally target the railways and the trains that run on them.

Privilege: +1 to Improbable Escape effect of Manufacture Complication

Optional Nodes

For each additional player connected to this conspiracy, add one of the following Nodes:

Imperium Colony (Hierarchical): George Fahr’s ambition grows to megalomaniacal extremes, and he hatches a plan to use the Fahr Colonies to conquer Earth. He constructs a massive, fortified estate beyond the edges of the colonies that will serve as both a prison and his permanent residence in Fahr. By rounding up tens of thousands of day laborers, migrant workers, and refugees, he establishes a satellite colony whose colonists have not been given the Visitor Serum. He sets himself up as an immortal and autocratic emperor with the intention of spending the next thousand Fahr years building an army capable of conquering Earth.

Trait Increases: +2 Resistance; +2 Association

Privileges: +1 to Accelerate Project, +1 to Focused Action

Iconoclasts (Temporal): The colonies’ main advantage lies in their technology, but some Fahr natives have learned how to reproduce much of it. Worse, in some areas their technology now surpasses Earth’s. Fahr recognizes the potential danger; with the time dilation effect and a huge advantage in numbers over colonial scientists, the native civilizations could rapidly develop superior technology and even invade Earth with no chance of successful retaliation. The Iconoclasts are a special force that sabotages scientific research by Fahr natives and assassinates their scientists and key backers.

Trait Increases: +2 Power

Xenology (Temporal): Humans aren’t the only alien civilization with Fahr in its sights. At least two spacefaring factions have the world in its sights, as evidenced by the lengthy confrontation between two battleships that takes place in the space above Fahr. The victor limped off and vanished beyond the horizon, while the loser plummeted to the earth, leaving a massive crater strewn with alien technology, which the conspiracy’s scientists are studying. Attempts at reverse-engineering the technology have not borne fruit yet, but what little the colonists have already learned of the aliens’ capabilities is already sobering.

Trait Increases: +2 Power

Demigods (Exploitative): Despite the conspiracy’s efforts to control access to its Visitor Serum, some of it falls into the hands of Fahr natives and makes them virtually immortal. Many use their longevity to establish themselves as seemingly immortal despots in lands beyond the colonies’ direct control. While the conspiracy comes into conflict with some, they have reached an understanding with others, forging mutual protection alliances and other treaties that benefit both parties. These demigods serve an important function in addressing large-scale threats to the colonies’ interests in Fahr, whether it’s the migration of dragon herds into colony territory, a plague that turns locals into zombies, or a wizard organizing a powerful magical ritual fueled by the deaths of millions of people.

Trait Increases: +1 Finesse, +1 Resistance; +1 Association

Priesthood (Exploitative): As the Fahr Colonies expand, they come to the attention of the beings featured in the natives’ tales of gods. At first, the gods thwart the colonies at every turn, but Fahr’s diplomats ultimately learn how to placate these beings and even appeal to them for aid. The colonists construct glorious temples in honor of key deities, who help Fahr further his vision.

Trait Increases: +2 Finesse

Using Fahr Colonies

The Fahr Colonies are an iceberg of a conspiracy. Their presence on Earth is relatively small – barely regional power – but they can bring tremendous resources into play if they need to. Travel to Fahr opens up a literal world of new possibilities – from a Renegade-focused chronicle set in an alien world to a portal chronicle using the Epic Fantasy systems (Black Vans, p. XX). For chronicles that will involve a lot of movement between Earth and Fahr, we strongly recommend that members of the cohort receive the Visitor Serum either before or shortly after their first time in Fahr.

Time Dilation (Icon): To represent the 1,000 to 1 time dilation effect, consider the following systems:

• If all members of the cohort are in Fahr, consider time on Earth paused until they return unless the timescales involved are very long (each day that passes on Fahr is only 86.4 seconds long on Earth).

• If the cohort leaves Fahr and returns to it later, the nature of some of the Nodes in Fahr change by the time they return. For each day they spend on Earth, apply a use of the Modify Node, Relocate Node or Transfer Icon Project to one Node based on Fahr. For example, the plantations the cohort visited on a prior excursion might no longer be there, having long since been absorbed into Fahr City or burned to the ground by a workers’ revolt, but the conspiracy still has plantations somewhere else in Fahr. Similarly, Fahr might decide to take direct control of the University (making it a Temporal Node), or its scholars might become much more influential (making it a Hierarchical Node).

• If the cohort splits up, such that some are on Earth while others are on Fahr, keep the narrative focus on Earth, but allow those players with characters on Fahr to describe what they’re attempting to accomplish on Fahr. For each Earth day, they may take a conspiracy action on Fahr, rolling a dice pool chosen by the Storyteller based on what they’re attempting to do and how. As with any conspiracy action, failure doesn’t mean the action fails, only that it comes with a complication. This conspiracy action may include producing 1 Effort towards a Project. After determining their intent but before calling for a roll, play out a scene or two that is representative of the actions they’re taking to achieve their goal, with the result of that scene granting a bonus or imposing a penalty to the conspiracy action roll.

For example, if they intend to disrupt relations between a Fahr kingdom and the colonies by assassinating a native diplomat and pinning the blame on the colonists, the Storyteller might choose the assassination itself, the aftermath when they’re doctoring the evidence, or some other key turning point in the assassination plot.

Pay careful attention to the amount of spotlight time each character receives to ensure that every player’s actions have an impact on the overall events of the story.