WELCOME
OSTRAVA COMBINE · OFFICE OF THE CHARTER
KPR-6 SHIP MANAGEMENT SYSTEM · REV 4.07
VESSEL HAULER 17 · OLM-H-0017 · CHARTER 0417-G
HULL ........ NOMINAL
REACTOR ..... NOMINAL
LIFT ........ SIX FIELDS UP
CONTRACT .... NONE ON FILE
KEEPER IS LISTENING.
> WHAT IS MY MISSION?
MISSION PARAMETERS ARE HELD BY THE OFFICE OF THE CHARTER.
> WHERE AM I?
YOU ARE WHERE THE COMBINE LEFT YOU.
> WHAT DO I DO?
SURVIVE.
Prospectus for charter holders · OC-0417-G
A first-person ship game set in the fog of a terraformed world, under a dim red dwarf. You live aboard Hauler 17, a cheap and patched OLM Yards hauler, and keep her alive in the Grey: storms, drifters, salvage, hydrogen and scrip.
KEEPER boots, a swarm of drifters comes out of the dark, a storm takes the lights, and Hauler 17 runs for Dredger Seven. Every picture is the real game, captured frame by frame. Every sound is made in code: the guns, KEEPER's console, the radio's squelch and the score.
A rocky world a little smaller than Earth, about 0.8 g, under a red dwarf. Terraformed by the Ostrava Combine. Held under charter.
A century ago the Combine raised atmosphere processors on this world: towers that stand from the ground to the high air and crack water and rock into air, hydrogen and heat. Crews call them the giants. The Combine also put a fleet of mirrors in orbit to warm the planet.
1.2 · Present conditionThe processors were to be shut down when the work was done. The cause of the delay is . The mirror fleet is . The Combine has withdrawn its people from the surface and continues to hold the charter.
1.3 · Life by heightEveryone lives in layers. Going down is going into danger. Coming up into the light is coming home.
A dead Combine hydrogen works the size of a town, standing on three legs from the Floor. People built on it with what they could salvage, got the refinery working again, and now ships come for the hydrogen. The Quayside, the Market, the Stacks. Safe, not cozy.
A huge machine that trawls the deck for anything that fell, with a foghorn and magnet fishers. You can set down on its landing deck and ride along. "Match our speed. We don't stop for anyone."
The Combine's mirror fleet, dead, and the wreckage of what serviced it: a banded arc across the sky, seen properly only above the fog. Now and then a piece comes down, and the rumble arrives seconds later.
The colony's towns and farms under the murk. The giants' feet, the Rookery's legs, pylons chained into the mud. Black but for your lamps, the vents and the odd beacon. The best salvage is here.
Your ship is your home and your headquarters. You walk her in first person, build her out room by room, wire her up, and take her into the fog.
Hauler 17 is OLM Yards' H-class workhorse: the bridge in the nose, the crew deck, a cargo hall over the hold, the reactor and engine room aft, and a roof walk along the top. Two hydrogen mains push her. Six gravity repulsors hold her up, with a blue glow on whatever is under her.
Her lights are your safety. In the fog the world drains to grey and black; your floods push it back in a bubble of colour. Low power shrinks the bubble. A storm that kills your lights turns everything grey until you fix it.
| Name | Hauler 17 |
|---|---|
| Registry | OLM-H-0017 |
| Charter | 0417-G |
| Class | Medium |
| Length × beam | 28.6 × 9.8 m |
| Crew | 2 to 4 |
| Lift | 6 gravity repulsors |
| Drive | 2 hydrogen mains |
| Full burn | about 24 m/s |
| Hold | 600 units |
| Ship computer | KPR-6 "KEEPER" |
| Hard points | F1F2A1A2B1B2D1L1 |
SOLD AS SEENDelivered with a K-30 twin autocannon on D1, a GJ-75 gyrojet on the roof strip and a K-12 rotary on A1. The rest stand empty.
OLM Yards' ship management system, on a green phosphor terminal on the bridge. All capitals, terse, a little old-fashioned. It reports power, lift, fuel and hull, keeps the log, lays in routes, works the radio and runs the drones. There are things it won't talk about.
KEEPER STIRS. THE OLD MACHINES ARE WILLING.
A tab for every part of the ship, live on the flight deck's four CRTs and clicked where they are.
Breakers by hand, camera feeds in normal, night vision and thermal, the strike risk, the storm on the map.
At Drydock 3 beside the Rookery's quay: pick a hull, lay out the inside, fit the outside, run the checks, and launch. The part in your hand is a see-through ghost, green where it fits and red where it doesn't, with the reason at the pointer.
LAUNCH THE T-1 TICK
Fixed, gimballed or turret mounts, bought apart from the guns. Power, heat and ammunition; the crew services them from the roof walk between fights. The gunner's seat looks through a periscope. Shield emitters take the first hits.
THE GUNS ARE AWAKE.
The Mite is OLM's tethered work drone: a ribbed shell like a beetle's on a repulsor disc. Its cable carries power and data, because radio is poor in the fog. The wing adds collectors, defenders, repairers and lamp drones, each with its own callsign and orders.
A winch and a control stand at the foot of the hold's stairs. The probe pays out into the black on its cable with a lamp and a camera, and grabs what it finds.
A hologram of the sea projected over the bridge: the islands, the giants, the storm cells. Point at a place, lay in the waypoint, and the crew flies her there.
A rugged unit strapped to your arm. Raise it on foot to see the ship, call her down to you on the Floor, or light her up from the roof walk.
Plating, holed tanks, a torn roof, gun mounts, hull cameras: each has a price and a time. Repairer drones weld the breach while you fly; the Rookery's own drones come out to the pads.
The Combine accepts no liability for losses in the Grey. Every hazard has a tell, a cost and a counter.
Every twenty minutes or so a front forms three kilometres upwind and comes down the wind across the sea: a cell of storm 450 to 700 m across, moving at 5 to 8 m/s. You see it coming as a dark wall on the horizon with lightning inside. Ride it out docked at the Rookery or the dredger, or run. Hauler 17 makes about 24 m/s at full burn.
ALL SHIPS, ALL SHIPS. STORM FRONT OUT OF THE WNW, 5 MINUTES OUT. PADS ARE OPEN. COME IN AND TIE DOWN.
3.2 · LightningMost bolts land elsewhere: in the sea, on wrecks, on the giants' crowns. Now and then a charge gathers on your mast with a rising buzz and a violet corona. Whether the bolt takes the ship depends on how you fly.
STRIKE RISK = 0.34 × HEIGHT × POWER × GIANTS
Hauler 17 at cruise height on full power: about 46%. Silent and low: under 10%.
A hit trips the breakers and costs 6% of the hull. A lightning rod on the mast grounds it.
| Hazard | Tell | Cost | Counter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storm frontabove the deck | A dark wall with lightning in it; KEEPER, the map, the radio | Gusts throw the ship about; lightning | Ride it out docked, or run ahead of it |
| Lightningin storms | Strikes all round, then a hum and a violet corona on your mast | Breakers trip, 6% hull; a drone or the radio mast can burn | Dive, power down, stand off the giants; a lightning rod |
| Downdraftthe deck, near giants | A roar, the fog streaming down past you | Pulls the ship down | Spare repulsor lift; climb out |
| Rust fogbanks in the fog sea | Fog with a tan cast and a smell | Slow hull damage | Scrubbers, hull coating, go around |
| Icingthe high air | Frost spreading on the windows | Ice adds mass; the lift check bites | Heaters, stay low |
| Debris fieldnear wrecks | Pings on the hull, things in the lamp light | Impacts: hull damage | Shields, go slow |
| Bad airthe Floor | The respirator hiss | Three minutes of suit air outside | Suits, air tanks, the Mite to drag you back |
Mechanical jellyfish: an armoured head with a visor of cold eyes, eight bladed metal tentacles. Free herds are shy. Guards circle every wreck and perch on the hull, and a wreck can't be salvaged while they live. They notice you at 30 + 150 × your signature metres, so running silent lets you get close.
Glossy black, segmented, too many legs. Below the deck, colonies find your ship and eat the seals. The tell is a dry skitter on the hull. They let go above the deck.
Gliders that roost on the island cliffs like moths and drop off the rock when a ship comes near. Dog-sized scavengers that pick at wrecks and scatter. Harmless, for now.
Heard, and never quite seen.
The world comes first: hazards, then creatures, then rival crews. Some crews are the world's own, like Carrion Salvage. Some are other players. Bases on the Floor need defending from both, and the Rookery's guns fire on anything hunting a ship near the port.
One money, two names, and a barter economy the Combine would rather you didn't use.
Issued by the Ostrava Combine. Held as an entry in your account on the Ledger, or as stamped Ledger chits in a strongbox aboard.
What the Grey calls credits. The Rookery takes it only as cash, at the changer's rate and a quarter, and keeps some things barter only.
NORMAL TRADING.
| MATERIAL | BOOK LC | ROOKERY, SCRIP |
|---|---|---|
| PLATE | 2 | 2.50 |
| GLASS | 6 | 7.50 |
| CIRCUITRY | 8 | 10.00 |
| ALLOY | 8 | 10.00 |
| COMPOSITE | 40 | 50.00 |
Five materials buy goods and services all over the Grey: plate, circuitry, glass, alloy and composite. You get them by salvage: by hand on the Floor, with the probe, with drones, with the Wader's claw.
MATERIALS FIRST. SCRIP AT THE CHANGER'S RATE AND A QUARTER. NO LEDGER.
The dock-master's window, the Quayside
The changer in the Market lane is the only bridge between the Ledger and the Rookery: a wire cage, a strongbox bolted to the floor, and an old Combine pay-office terminal she taps into without asking. The armourer takes materials only. "Scrip doesn't stop a drifter."
4.2 · HydrogenHydrogen is the fuel. At a Rookery pad you walk the nozzle on its 24 m hose to the fuel port, lock it on and start the pump: 10 kg a second, 30 kg for a plate.
4.3 · On loss of the vesselWhat is on your person is safe: your account and what you carry. What is on the ship stays in the wreck for anyone to find: the cash aboard, the hold, her guns. She falls through the layers and lies where she hits, with an amber beacon on a stub mast. Her contents last two hours, her hull a day.
Every number in this clause is a starting number, tuned by playing.
Three makers build what flies in the Grey. The T-1 Tick and Hauler 17 fly today; the rest are on the drawing board.
Cheap and patched: exposed frames, boxy cargo, bolted-on fixes. Built to work, and repaired more often than they are built.
Sleeker: refined versions of the OLM ships, with a style of their own.
Heavy, fortified, industrial. Gothic industry at enormous scale, with the crews it lost remembered on its walls.
Frames from the game, captured in play for the trailer. In the fog the world drains to grey; point your light at one to bring its colour back.
OSTRAVA: Into the Grey is in development. There is no release date, price or platform yet.
The game runs in the browser, built in TypeScript and three.js. The models are voxel and hand-built kits with a separate pass for grease, rust and grime; the picture has a lo-fi finish of dithered darks, grain and a dot screen.
> FOLLOW DEVELOPMENT
CHANNEL NOT YET OPEN. UPDATES SOON.