It’s been some time now since our last batch of Mission Dispatches, and that’s because our narrative team has been busy writing ’round the clock (thanks to time zones) to provide great stories on every station for you to explore. Today’s Dispatch covers three missions from Cirque Centauri, home of the Greatest Show in the Galaxy, and harborer of dark secrets.
Clean Slate
The theft of research into technology from Before leads to a station-hopping chase across multiple star systems. A desperate husband has a run in with a mysterious and dangerous adversary, and a neophyte hacker finds themselves in over their head. A scientist on the edge of a breakthrough that could lead to countless advances for humanity is counting on you. Clean Slate will test your speed, dedication, and resources as you hurl yourself across the galaxy in pursuit of a quarry that seems to always be one step ahead.
Poetic Justice
The class divide on Cirque Centauri can be brutal, and is as large as the expanses of uncharted space. Those who have live entirely different lives than those who have not. The have nots, the regular working class, and those who are barely getting by, can not conceive of the life of luxury others enjoy. Poetic Justice explores how being flush with credits can buy you a life of luxury, even if you’re supposed to be spending that life doing hard time.
Can there be justice for someone who has placed themselves above society, floating on a comfortable sea of blood money? A mystery about the location of a perpetrator of heinous crimes uncovers the dark secrets that Moissan Station holds, and underlines a social stratification that is nearly obscene in a universe where so many are still struggling to recover from the Catastrophe.
Everybody Loves a Clown
Cirque Centauri has its share of dark secrets as well. In the Employment Center, where anxious crowds wait their turn to access the job posting screens, among the listing for work and help wanted ads, are a surprising amount of missing persons reports. Mostly children, their ghostly images smiling from scrolls hung on the walls, and from their screen listings. Rewards are offered for any information, but none is ever forthcoming for the grieving families, until you offer help to a distraught mother. Can you solve the mystery of the missing children? Will you pry into the dark corners of the station, and get the suspicious residents to help you help them? Only by winning their trust, will you solve anything. But you are not Cirquefolk, and getting them to open up will not be easy. For the sake of a child, will you jump through the hoops?
As J.K. Rowling said, “There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place.” The stories on Cirque Centauri will take you on a wild chase among the stars, will give you insight into the social inequalities that some abuse and which others rail against, and will even allow you to step behind the curtain to interact with the hidden community of the station’s locals. Make sure you leave room for dessert though, and that your travel visa is valid, because the stories in the Tau Station universe are a bounty waiting to transport you to the future of humankind and the fight for survival.