ION Heart Solo
[This is a transcript of a play-by-post solo TTRPG experiment I’m currently doing. I’ve created a simple lo-fi science fantasy setting with several planets and races for people to join and play in using their system of choice. I’m currently using ION Heart. Concerning the setting, all you need to know for this transcript to make sense is that Scaglia are large reptilian-like humanoids (think space lizardmen), and the planet this takes place on is called Harvest, due to its constantly autumnal looking forests. It’s a frontier planet and one among several where ancient alien ruins have been found recently; Hearth is its largest city and capital.
Ion Heart is a lo fi solo mecha exploration TTRPG made by Parable Games. It has an easy system using d6s for its rolls, plus modificators; but it’s mostly just a single die being rolled. It includes tables for settlement, planet and system generation which I have partly utilised here, as well as so called Story Circuits: Very roughly pre written adventures, that include 5 story beats and a finale. To advance to the finale, you need to finish three beats. I’ve played through two story circuits here, so I’ve also done a level up at the end. There is also a system in place in which you have limited activities you can do in a single day, which is why my playthrough takes place over three ingame days. I’ve scrubbed out all the die rolls I did in Discord and made the transcript more readable for this post.
You can find ION Heart here: https://www.parablegames.co.uk/pages/ion-heart
There is also a solo and MP prequel to ION Heart in the works with a succesful crowdfunding campaign, which you can find here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/parable-games/ion-heart-multiplayer-a-lo-fi-mech-ttrpg]
Day 1
Fwoomp, fwoomp, fwoomp. It's a nearly endless cacophony of footsteps on a treadmill. Well, my footsteps. If you'd have spent several weeks in space with zero and minimal gravity and you like staying decently in shape, your first stop after landing would have been the gym as well. Luckily, Hearth is large enough to have a number of those to choose from, so I went ahead and took the smallest, and most inconspicuous one I could find. It's not the cleanest. Or brightest. Or most modern. But it's cheap, works and I have most of it to myself at this time of day (and being a large Scaglia, having space is a huge plus).
It takes me a long while to really feel satisfied with the training, and even when I'm done, I feel like I could have done more here. Doesn't matter. I hit the sonic showers to clean my scales of debris and dirt (I obviously don't sweat, yuck), get dressed and head out. Hearth is just a first stop, and finding a place to stay isn't a priority (if need be, I can sleep in Arras' cockpit), so I head on over to the local council hall, to check if there's a blackboard of sorts to find some rewarding work. Naturally I walk, so that people can see me, while Arras follows me slowly behind. Running around needlessly in an old combat frame tends to make people a smidge nervous. Arriving there, I'm immediately swept up in pure chaos. Took me a while to sort through all the shouts and kin running back and forth, but what I understood is that a local energy corp screwed up big time, and a power plant not far from the city is malfunctioning and about to explode. Serves them right, for relying on energy sources that can explode this catastrophically. Use solar and wind, people. Sigh.
Or that's what I would have said if there wasn't work to be done to evacuate people. I immediately volunteered us and set off towards the power plant, with Arras going at a fast-paced sprint as soon as we've left the city.
While sprinting towards the Power Plant east of Hearth, we spot a lone frame, just standing around at the side of the road. Having another pair of mechanically enhanced hands would be, well, ... handy, so we stop to see if they're able to help, but no matter what language modulation I try out, even opening the cockpit and trying hand signs, the other frame just watches us, and never responds. It's kind of unnerving. If it's still there when we get back, I'm toppling it over. Creep.
When we arrive at the powerplant, the mayhem there is dwarfing the one at the council. With the evacuation of the surrounding worker's settlement in full swing, I get out of the cockpit and head over to the camp that has been set up to coordinate the effort, while Arras goes off to do what he does best. It's mostly a small convoy of trailers, with tents in front. 'I’m here to help, anything I can do?' I tell the dishevelled worker at the other side of the planning table, and he stares at me like I'm a ghost. Then he nods. 'Yeah, go over to the old man, Hanson, and get him to finally pack up and leave. He's refusing, the crazy old bastard.'
I wave the clerk goodbye while running over to the habitat he's indicated, and knock five times at the door, with full force, hoping that makes my intentions very clear to the old man. He opens the door, expecting a human, and shouts a loud WHAT?! into my chest. Then he slowly looks up and I grin at him, exposing my sharp teeth. 'We're leaving Hanson. Pack your bags. I'm not asking. You're apparently old, and unbelievably stubborn, but I don't care. You're not dying here, not on my watch. Let's go!' I nearly shout the last words, and something inside the old man takes over, and his survival instincts kick in. I'm guessing he's an old veteran as well, and using a command voice is much more effective than trying to talk to him. I go inside as well, and start throwing stuff into bags haphazardly. It's impossible to fit everything into the three bags I can find, but while I throw in necessities, clothes and the like, Hanson focusses on stuffing his two bags with the more sentimental things. I see a glimpse of a medal, and then an old service pistol. No idea if he's still allowed to have that one, and I don't care. Depending on where he goes next, that one might as well be a necessity. Once everything is filled, I put one of the bags on my back, grab the other two and shove Hanson with his two bags outside. Five minutes later, he's finally on a transport that's ready to leave before it's too late.
Once I get back to the command post, somebody comes running up to me. They explain that the core of the power plant is about to explode, but they need more time. Somebody could vent the core to buy more time, but that's impossible without a frame with proper shielding. These corpos are useless. Well, I'm not interested in dying myself, but I'm the only one around with a frame that can get the job done. Time to move. I jump inside Arras again, and we move towards the huge blast doors we'll need to tear open to get inside to initiate the process.
Misusing and abusing the Fusion Axe as a lever, we manage to rip open the doors wide enough to grip them with both hands and shove them open to pass inside. Immediately, the heat outside the doors rises, and if I weren't inside Arras, this would be highly unpleasant, even for a Scaglia. And the heat is getting worse and worse, the further inside we go...
Once inside, the heat is getting unbearable fast, and I'm close to fainting when we're finally at the controls for the venting process. The clerk has tried to explain it to me, but using the controls while in a frame, instead of on foot, is going to be terribly precise work, and not much easier in my current condition.
Taking a deep breath of the superheated air streaming into the cockpit, I slowly, but precisely manage to manipulate the venting controls just like the clerk has shown me on his diagrams. Good for me that it's not a very complex process. Venting Process initiated. says a female sounding, robotic voice, and immediately the heat starts to fall and I push Arras forward to get out of here as quickly as possible. As soon as we leave the Power Plant through the ruined blast doors, the clerk comes up to me and shakes my hand by taking it into both of his. I just stand there, taking a long, laborious lungful of fresh air of normal temperatures. That was way too close.
Looking at the current progress of the evacuation, everybody including me was lucky that I managed to do the venting process in time. Even though I must have been in there for near to an hour, it didn't look like much progress was made at all. I was just lying around in the shade, throwing some water down my throat when I heard shouting and jostling nearby. Somebody wasn't willing to give up his 'priceless collection of memorabilia', which was in my humble opinion just a bunch of junk from c-movies, series nobody has ever heard of and bands that never made the cut out of their parents' garages. I shook my head and got up from my shaded crate. I was here to work after all, and maybe I could leverage my newfound fame around here to get the guy going.
Well, it didn't take me too long to actually get that done. As soon as I approached him, he wanted an autograph, so I told him he's only getting one if he gets on the damn transport out of here without his junk. He nodded, stashed as much crap as he could into his pockets, had me sign a photograph that he took of the powerplant then and there, and finally sat down in the transport. Job wasn't done yet, though and I had to jump in with some other problems as well. Apparently, people started thinking, just because the plant was vented, everything's all right now. But that just bought some time to finish the evacuation, not stop it or dawdle. And these guys were holding up the last transports from leaving, by trying to load literally everything onto the transports. I managed to talk down somebody from trying to fit their crates full of pets onto the transports, and instead got the pets loaded onto a cart Arras could pull once we were getting out of here. That last group though. Ugh. A bunch of young guys trying to save their crates of BEER. Unbelievable. The world was ending and they were trying to save their beer. I told them to shove off when they wouldn't listen, gave that transport the thumbs up to go and the drunkards started trotting away with their beer. If they're smart, they'll drop them and run like hell once the plant starts popping. We'll see.
Finally, the whole crew of volunteers and corpo clerks got up and moving as well. Everything was packed back into the trailers, I got up into the cockpit, with the pet waggon tied securely to Arras' waist. We got running as fast as we could without that waggon keeling over, and one of the clerks was feeding me updates how far away we'd need to get to be securely out of the blast zone, as well as constantly updating me how much time was left (which was going up and down constantly and was therefore useless). Still, we made it to a rise and finally to the other side of it where we could rest a bit, according to the calculations we were way out of the blast zone here, and I could stash the pets behind some large rocks. Just in time, too, because I had a first-grade view of the whole thing going up in flames. First, with some small pops and explosions (hoping the drunkards were now running for their lives), and then a big one. Starting out small and then suddenly going up in sheer chaos. Even back here, kilometres away, the shockwave hit us and I could only imagine the pain the families who had to leave their home behind where feeling. This really wasn't how I wanted to start my time in Twin Suns, but here we are. Damnit. Well, time to go back to Hearth, deliver the pets and find a place to settle down for the night.
Back in Hearth, I had a hard time actually finding a place to sleep, because the refugees where taking up a lot of the available accommodations. But the family I brought the pets to offered me a place in their barn. Well, actually the barn of their extended family they were staying with. It's not glorious, but good enough. I've slept in worse conditions when I was in the army.
Day 2
After yesterday’s very lively day, I decided that today should be much, much less exciting. Downright boring would be a good thing, actually. So, first of all, Arras went off to a local frame repair shop, to have somebody with some actual knowledge work on repairing the damage to armour and circuits the heat inside the powerplant had done. And I went back to that small and underused gym to continue to get back into shape. I still didn't fell quite like I want to, you know?
When I went back to the frame repair shop sometime in the afternoon, they were just finishing up the job. Apparently, things were looking much worse than I thought. That whole episode inside the plant really did a number on all kinds of systems. Luckily, the core that houses Arras' computing power and personality is pretty much impervious to anything except an aimed attack with high grade weaponry. We decided to spend some more time resting around Hearth before moving on to another job. Well, at least I did, Arras went off to a local construction site to lend his helping hands. It's hard to explain, but ever since he started gaining consciousness, he was fascinated with building things. I guess part of the reason for it is that it's the exact opposite of all the destruction he's caused as part of the military in the past, and it's also the opposite of what he was originally built for. Me? I went back to the gym for another round, and then found a nice, local sonic spa with all the amenities I could want for: Bartenders and waiters, sonic showers (the good ones, not the crap at the gym), heat pads, the works.
Afterwards, I decided to go by the council hall again, see if anybody needs me to do some actually paid work. I was getting a bit of a money influx from the military veteran's pension for my daily expenses, but nothing close to enough for actually buying anything large (You know, like a piece of land? Yeah, yeah, buying the farm, very ironic I know). And since what I did yesterday was a volunteer rescue mission, I didn't really get paid for that either.
Interestingly enough, nobody really has something specific to do. Or well, something that would make sense for us to take on, of course people needed small deliveries, farm hands, stuff like that. But nothing that would require an actual frame and veteran to do some work that others can't. But I did hear an interesting titbit about a local anomality: A pilotless frame wandering around a bit of travel outside of the city. Apparently, it can often be found roughly around the same area every day, and they've been there for A WHILE. Not really paying work, but worth checking out if they need some help. Arras might have ended up in a similar spot, if I had stayed in the military. But first of all, I went to the local library to read up on localised stories, geography and things like that. Preparation is always good, and information is ammunition, as an old warbuddy used to say.
Well, time to get going, I guess. We'll have to camp out in the wilderness, but that doesn't matter to me.
We were walking towards the position we've heard of, but stumbled onto another frame first. Obviously, at first I thought it wasthe frame we were looking for, but it was kind of moving strangely. Erratically. I tried calling the other pilot over radio, but they either couldn't hear me, or didn't want to answer. But as soon as we got closer, they pulled out their plasma blaster pistol and aimed it straight at us, pulling the trigger and luckily missing by a wide margin. Well, screw you, too buddy.
Before I could act, the enemy frame pulls the trigger again, but my luck seems to hold, and while Arras and I start to storm in, Fusion Axe at the ready, I fire off a volley of missiles, scoring a direct hit, scattered across the enemies' chassis.
Just when I was about to take a swing with the axe, the enemy suddenly pulls out an inconspicuous hilt - I thought they had only the blaster pistol and fists at their disposal. But the hilt belongs to a wickedly glowing beamsaber, that I barely manage to avoid. In retaliation, I swing the axe upwards and with a loud screech, flying sparks and a heavy jolt in the controls, I bash a large gash into the side of the enemy frame.
I pull the axe out of him with another screech, and we bound backwards several steps to stay away from that beam saber. But just when I trigger another missile salvo, Arras gets hit in the left leg by one of the enemies' blaster shots. We really need to get this guy to stop attacking us. Now.
We jump back in into melee, just to get scored on the shoulder with an attack by the beam saber, weakening our own attacks. They just glance off of the armour, doing superficial damage, but better than nothing. Time to finish this, before it gets any worse.
Staying close to the enemy frame, Arras and I swing back the axe for a massive hit, accepting that the beam saber is going to score another hit itself, but the retaliatory strike is so brutal, that it chops through the dinged-up armour plates on the enemies' shoulder, into the core itself and nearly out the other side. It falls down dead immediately, and after getting out of Arras to check, I notice there's no enemy pilot inside. Something must have gone haywire with the other frames AI programming to simply attack a passerby at random. We drag it off of the road into a small cope of trees, before anybody else gets the idea to loot it once we leave. For good measure, Arras stomps the weapons into debris to make them unusable, and we continue on a bit, hoping nobody would come asking questions about the disabled frame in the woods.
Day 3
The next morning, we continued on, and soon found, well stumbled, on what we were looking for: A lone frame, walking through the autumnal woods of Harvest. The centre of the body was torn open and the cockpit clearly empty, so it is walking along under its own consciousness, but the way it moved felt robotic. Not quite as ... aware? ... as Arras. And the thing was absolutely ancient, no doubt about it. I couldn't recognize the make or model, and parts of it where covered in moss and lichen, as if it'd regularly just lay around for a long time. Doing nothing. We carefully followed it, and even though it must have noticed us, it didn't seem to mind at all. Well, probably didn't care at all. It made me a bit wary, because who knows what tricks and weapons a frame this ancient had up its sleeves. The fact that it was still going after who knows how long was a technological marvel in itself. I was starting to wonder if other people from the Arcadia Sector did come here much earlier than we thought, or if this frame was connected to all these ancient ruins that were popping up around the sector in recent times, when Arras foot hit something hard. Metal. We followed the strange frame for quite a whole, through the forest, navigating dense shrubbery and uneven ground, and now it was walking through a large, overgrown clearing in the woods. Looking down, it was very obvious, very fast what we were looking at: Pure destruction. While nature has hid it quite well from view, standing and walking through it, as a Veteran I could tell this was an old, long forgotten battlefield, littered with technology from the ancient past.
We started rooting around for a bit while following the strange frame, but it was moving straight through the battlefield without any stops, so if we wanted to keep up, we needed to stay on the move, too. Nothing here looked salvageable on first glance, but I made a note of the location on my map anyway, might as well sell this to some scientist or other.
Well, now I can tell you, if anything, that trip following that other frame at least did one thing: Show us just how damn beautiful Harvest is. We had an easy time keeping up with the frame and even got closer to try and talk with it, but it didn't react to us, at all. instead, we just strolled alongside them and it must have looked like grandfather and their grandkid going for a hike. Except for the fact that both were warmachines. Leaving the clearing behind, we started walking through a small glade, the stream bubbling along rhythmically, some of the local wildlife taking sips of water while eyeing the metal giants stomping through the woods. The mysterious frame walked up towards a cliff where a large waterfall joined the stream from above, turning it into a small, but fast flowing river. And it dove headfirst into that waterfall. Arras wasn’t too sure about doing that, but I managed to talk him into it and we were both glad I did. The waterfall hid a large system of caverns. I'm not a geologist, so I'm not sure how to describe what I was looking at. The stone walls of the cavern were shot through and through with ores, or minerals, or something that glittered when light hit it. Light from outside, fracturing by the waterfall, the dim emergency lighting the mysterious frame emitted and that wasn't noticeable in the sunlight, and of course the lights we were using to navigate the darkness of the caverns. It was a beautiful sight to behold, and luckily all of the caverns were large enough so that we didn't need to worry about scraping along or getting stuck. We simply enjoyed the view until the ancient frame left the caverns on what must be the other side of the cliffs, because we had walked quite a while. We followed, and after my eyes adjusting to the sudden sunlight, I looked down at a vast, rolling plain, dotted with copes of trees, large rocks lying here and there. It made me wonder where the frame was going, and why. It definitely knew where it was going.
Suddenly, the ancient frame seemed to switch gears. It started speeding up and changed its direction slightly, moving towards a large indentation somewhere up ahead. For a second I thought it was planning to jump down into that hole and draw a weapon on us, but then I saw that it was focused on what is IN it. And things started to make much more sense now. Up ahead was a fox hole, made by some kind of explosion long ago, but now overgrown with moss and creeping vines. The frame stopped at the edge of it, and went down on its knees. We slowly moved up as well, standing right next to it, and looked down into the hole. There, on its back, was another frame just like it, but old, rusty and with a large, gaping hole right in the centre of its chest. Shot through and through, not just a ripped open cockpit like the frame next to us had.
Slowly, and comfortingly, Arras puts a hand on the other frames shoulder, and I decide this is where I take a backseat and just let him take the reins. Surprisingly, the other frame not only accepts that gesture, but leans into it, laying its head against Arras' sides, and then saying something in a language neither him or I understand the words of. But the intentions are pretty clear. Thank you. They were my friend. It takes a long time for the frame to get up and move on again, but we're there, standing silent guard.
Finally, slowly, it gets up from the ground again and starts moving. It now feels much less emotionless and planned than before. It's more of a meandering, as if searching for something. Maybe it's been searching around here for something specific, only knowing the general area, but not where exactly it was going? Suddenly, it tenses up, it's head like on a swivel, going left and right, left and right. Something has taken its attention. For a second again I tensed up as well, getting ready for some fight or another. But the ancient frame just dashes forwards, navigating through another cope of trees, just brushing them here and there, but not even breaking off a single twig. The way it moves is a marvel of engineering, and I'm suddenly very glad we don't have to fight it. It comes to a stop again not too far away, this time sitting down cross-legged in front of a pile of stones, smoothed as if they're from the bottom of a riverbed, but again overgrown with vines and moss, like the frame in the foxhole. There's an old, rusted out helmet on top of the pile of stones, definitely fitting for some kind of humanoid creature, but hard to tell what they might have looked like only from this. The retinas of the frame seem to start blinking rapidly.
The frame starts projecting moving pictures onto a slab of stone at the bottom of the pile of rubble. Memories, I wager. Memories of an ancient time long gone, of talks with tits pilot in their suit, of fights and battles. Of laughter, and of sorrow. It’s letting us participate in a time Arras and I would otherwise never see. It's humbling and an honour at the same time. It shows us the battle that was fought here long ago. A terrible fight against some kind of insectoid megafauna, that ripped and teared frames apart like they were straw, and that needed the most violent weaponry one could imagine to be brought against it. How one of these insectoids brutally ripped open the frames’ cockpit and killed the pilot. How they killed the insectoid without mercy in return. How it buried its pilot here, with stones plucked from the stream we passed earlier, that was much larger in its time. I can only imagine the pain it must be feeling. Being torn from Arras would tear me apart as well, and Arras would feel the same. After all these years, it is as if we're joined in a way that is hard to describe, mentally, nearly spiritually.
Then it shows us how it has returned to hunting down the remaining insectoids on the planet. How its reactor gave out for a long time. And it shows us how it has miraculously awoken not long ago, and how it had been searching for the grave ever since, with a jumbled mind in a landscape that has changed tremendously since it went to sleep. And with what seems like a last sigh, the projection ends, and the light leaves the frame once and for all. Sleep well, friend. You've found your pilot again.
Later at night at our campsite, I look up at the banged-up Arras and I smile. Sounds strange, being so attached to a frame, huh? But Arras and I have been through a hell of a lot more than this, believe it or not. I remember a time back in Sindri's Well, with us roughing it under the stars beneath a giant tree. A void tree, people call it, because it can grow in the void of space. This was on a dead piece of rock in the middle of nowhere, you know. That was when we talked it out that he'd be decommissioned soon. When he confided in me that he was more than just a machine with some helpful AI modules now. That he had developed a consciousness all of his own. Nothing unheard of for frames, you see. Just something some pilots hate hearing, because they'll have to get a new frame and start getting used to that. Me? I just rolled with it, and here we are.
[I'll be continuing this playthrough for a while yet (and might switch systems later when my character settles down), so there might be more on the blog. Overall, I really like the story circuit mechanic that ION Heart has, makes it very easy to get into the swing of things and just sit down and play for a while. The rulesset is a bit light for a mecha TTRPG for my tastes, but it does work very fluently for a solo game.]