Welcome back to Silver Spiral Stories. I am excited to be continuing our more mature-themed story “Blood & Oil.” This week, we see that T-wk has found the power cell he is looking for, but it is in a camp full of scrappers. Just what is he going to? We also have a question about gaming in the setting this week as well!
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On that note, we also have a question from the Discord this week!
Silver Spiral Gaming
Our question this week is from Ghostforge who asked about whether the Silver Spiral Galaxy had anything comparable to MMOs. On that note I am going to also go a bit broader here and talk about gaming in the setting. Gaming is very much an element of day-to-day life in the galaxy and video games as we know them (and beyond) are things that exist in the setting. They’ve popped in a few times. For example, Dash is a big fan of the series Romance of the Three Factions which is a combat simulator series made of historical figures. It is also a game he plays with Mara. Kracker, meanwhile, plays Scream Speedway.
As for MMOs, the big challenge with online-style gaming is latency. Most games utilize local networks for live gameplay and you’re more or less limited to your local network. Even gaming from ship-to-ship in the same system is virtually impossible with any form of live game. So MMOs tend to be played more regionally and cross-system features tend to be more abstract to account for packet time.
With a game such as Romance of the Three Factions, however, that game functions more like chess in that you perform your turn and coordinates are then sent to the opponent’s client to play out. So basically, any live-gameplay on a galactic-level has to be done with simple packet and it won’t be remotely live. Especially when you factor in proximity to GIN relays or jump-gates.
Silver Spiral Stories: Blood & Oil – Pg 2 Transcript
The following is a transcript of Silver Spiral Stories: Blood & Oil – Pg 2.
Panel One
T-wk is standing against a wall two a makeshift compound made by scrappers. They seem to be drinking and dancing in front of a bonfire. On a makeshift stage is a small object that appears to glow green.
T-wk (VO): “Where is it? Ah!”
Panel Two
Inset panel, a blown up view of the glowing item in the previous panel. We see a green, cylindrical battery cell.
T-wk (VO): “There.”
Panel Three
We see a green glint on T-wk’s remaining eye.
Panel Four
T-wk thinks back to his experiences until this point across four small scenes. We see his two artifici companions from Cosmic Dash 1.1 as well as T-wk squaring off with Mara in the same issue. We also see his meeting with Xeebo from “Reboot” and we get a new scene of a destroyed Xeebo from some unspecific point.
T-wk (VO): “My ticket off of this junk world is right there…”
Panel Five
We are near the edge of the compound as T-wk glares inside. It is getting dark behind him. There is a dancing shadow on the wall near him.
T-wk (VO): “This would be much easier if I still had my extension.”
Panel Six
We see Xeebo being destroyed by a hulking shadow’s swipe.
T-wk (VO): “I lost it to that… beast.”
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