I spent the last 30 minutes to an hour of the game having a heart-to-heart with "Gerald". He had the perfect cover, once he had taken care of his crimes. The post-game discussion was... interesting, to say the least.
I love Space Station 13, because of moments like these. When a story just... naturally shows up on your door, so perfectly made. I started out as just a drunk Civilian, who would go to the bar, drunk until unconsciousness took over, get dragged to medbay, and go back to the bar once I could stagger my way out of medbay awake, without getting caught by the doctors.
Over time, I started talking to the Bartender more and more, and as I did, I began to drink less and less. We had a heart to heart, about how we both wanted to leave the station, and how much we hated it, how much the people drove us crazy. Eventually, he had to go, so he went into a long-term cryo, and I went to the medbay to get surgery before I died of liver failure. He left the keys of the bar in the hands of one of the other regulars, and gradually, the two of us began to chat, about life, about alcohol, about addiction and toxic relationships. Then, he put a revolver on the bar. He had an offer. Russian roulette, just the two of us. My character, a homesick suicidal Irish drunk, was simultaneously excited and deeply reluctant. He went first. He pulled the trigger, and the bullet took out half of his brain and skull when it went through to the other side of his head.
As I lay there, having a mental breakdown over what just happened, an old man in a wheelchair showed up, and gave me a cup of hot chocolate. We talked, for a while. He asked me my name, which was Cormac, and I asked him his, which was "Gerald". We talked. And talked. And talked. We agreed on a lot of topics. My character had prosthetics on all his limbs, and we discussed the ways we had lost the use of our respective body parts. I thought he was paralyzed from the waist down. But the original Gerald had no legs, as I discovered after the round was long over.
As the spiders spread through the ship, and in turn the rest of the crew began to hunt them down, we evacuated to the emergency shuttle. His health deteriorated rapidly. I tried to get help, but there was a disease in the air, and the medics were already out of cures. There was an explosion at the front end of the ship. And another at the back. He panicked, he began to talk about how he was going to die, about how this was the end. I comforted him, or tried to, and told him that it would be okay, that we would be at Central Command soon and they would have better facilities. As the ship was torn apart and people died around us, I told him that I was glad I met him. He said that he was as well.
But then, as the ship came into dock, he looked me in the eyes... and he said "NOT REALLY, BECAUSE I'M A CHANGELING!"
This is what I came to SS13 for, half a decade ago. This is what I play this game for, to this day. It just made me so happy, that this tiny story had arisen from the game. I talked to the Changeling, and even the original Gerald, after the game on the server's Discord. I'm glad I took part in that game, for so many reasons, on so many levels. It... it just genuinely filled me with joy, that story did. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Author
Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 15867921 times)