Plot Outline:

• You [Zach] wake up from cryosleep and are made aware by the bureaucratic nightmare of a governing body that all your memories and personal information which were stored in a separate payload have been lost due to a “technical accident” (The temp was fired.)
• You are re-briefed on why you were put into cryosleep, and told that your home world was being evacuated due to loss of habitability. (Whatever that might mean.)
• But they let you know that thankfully they have a solution for this influx of unemployed working age space immigrants and plan to offer “civil servant” positions as easy and accessible entry jobs.
• You are assigned to be a “Junker”, which is the title associated mostly with the scrap collection taskforce who have lost their memories, and are “pretty much forced” to take out a loan on a junker ship and pay for rent so that you can stay on the space station and survive the rest of your life in this new grunge space age mixture between a cyberpunk junkyard and ramshackle civilization that is trying to build itself up after an emergency evacuation to a more habitable star system.
• Meanwhile: You have no idea who you are, and at first the protagonist could care less about their past.
• As you go out to collect space debris to turn into the CDI (Cosmic Debris Initiative.) You begin to occasionally find memory fragments that can be loaded into your ship and sold or traded to the Memory librarian. There are also 4 other main shopkeepers that you will be interacting with. That all have their own individual minor stories and quest lines.
  • MEMORY FRAGMENT QUESTLINE
    • You have been briefed that memory files may be spread out across certain zones due to the main payload body being potentially damaged by space junk as it continues to float along on its path to wherever it may be now.
    • If you see a memory fragment you are expected to try to retrieve it. You can trade in a set of 5 memory fragments for a small cash bonus and a few points toward getting a salary increase.
    • You can view these memory fragments by taking them in pill form from your apartment bathroom.
• The mechanic Shopkeep can eventually help you upgrade your ship which will enable you to travel further into the universe
  • MECHANICAL UPGRADE QUESTLINE
    • The main overview of this questline is that the mechanic themselves is a metaphorical ship of theseus. Parts likes being a mechanic, but feels inadequate in their profession. They want upgrades to become more efficient, and their self-doubt means they’re willing to sacrifice an unnecessary amount of themselves to achieve something that only feeds their self doubts. The player can either feed in to this for their own benefit or help them realize that their passion for the work is what makes them good at it.
• Quest 1: Any attempts to talk to the mechanic fail, their head prints messages too slowly to maintain any conversation. You can find a head upgrade that will allow for them to communicate faster. They are grateful and promise a small reward for your gift.
• Quest 2: The mechanic starts getting frustrated at their limitations. They believe they aren’t efficient enough and request you go and find more upgrades to themselves. This quest could probably have multiple mini-quests. It becomes clear as the mini-quests progress that the mechanic is no longer looking for upgrades to make their life good, but to make it solely more efficient. They’re erasing parts of themselves for an unattainable goal of perfection.
• Quest 3 A: The player refuses to assist the mechanic any further, and by picking the correct dialogue options can convince them to let it go. This quest requires the player to find special scrap (perhaps in a wormhole) that reminds the mechanic of their passion. The mechanic reverts, becoming less efficient but being far happier with themselves.
• Quest 3 B: The player continues to upgrade the mechanic, soon the robot no longer acts as they once did. They’re cold now, solely worried about upgrading ships as efficiently as possible. It's clear they’ve lost who they are.
• The pirate Shopkeep will be part of a larger space pirate syndicate which will threaten you as you collect scrap of value, you can sacrifice some of your high value scrap to deter them/throw them off your tail. (You can buy back the pirated items from the pirate shopkeep.)
  • PIRATE SYNDICATE QUESTLINE
    • This questline is heavily related to her relationship with Adanna’s syndicate leader father who is currently on “business”, codeword for probably in jail. The father has a good relationship with their kid, but she has mixed feelings toward her Dad because she loves him and secretly thinks he’s really cool, but due to how he has to raise her considering his occupation she has learned to only really rely on herself and generally does not rely on faith/trust in others. The player will help the pirate learn to trust people again/cope with the flawed father.
• Quest 1: Retrieve an item that the pirate (Adanna) lost. The item is of great importance to them, and likely ties in to their parents. It could be evidence to free them, a map to treasure, or anything that the parent would consider important. The player finds out about it by accident, eavesdropping on a call the pirate is making with the people who they hired. The pirate is initially hostile when the player returns the item, but begrudgingly thanks them.
• Quest 2: The pirate calls you while you’re out on a mission, warning you about an attack*. When the player survives the pirate demands the player pays them back for their assistance. The pirate sends them to deliver a package (potentially to another important NPC to help connect all the NPCs). The pirate is thankful, and has a meaningful conversation with the player.
• Quest 3: Adanna asks you to help them visit their father. The father is initially happy to see them, but freaks out when they find out you took them. They spit out painful threats/insults to you, until the little pirate stands up for you. The pirate then runs away after the confrontation with the father, where the player can follow. You can help remediate their relationship or encourage the pirate to separate from their father.
• The Occult/ancient artifact shopkeeper will take any strange otherworldly artifacts at high value and will help you progress the eldritch horror narrative.
  • ELDRITCH ITEMS QUESTLINE
    • The primary goal of this questline is the advancement of the player’s knowledge of the eldritch forces that guide the universe and additional world building constructs by allowing players to glimpse into already dead worlds through Scotoplanes by channeling the artifacts that you bring to him. We also set up that this shopkeeper is from one of those already dead worlds, and his failures as an ex-cult member led to his world being destroyed. After his world was not preserved, he became obsessed with learning if any world had been preserved so far, and more jaded and indifferent toward being able to change fate and the ability of ANY world to be saved, after not finding that any. The player can discuss their interpretations of why the worlds failed and if there was ever any potential ability for them to be saved, revealing the jadedness of Scotoplanes. After finding an artifact from a dead world the occultist will reluctantly tell you what went wrong with each of the dead worlds that led to its eventual destruction, from the notes he made while studying each case.
• Quest 1:
  • Scotoplanes establishes and explains the damages happening to your star system explaining that he once dealt with this too, trying to find worlds that wouldn’t be destroyed, but it took too much of a toll on his body and sanity that he had to stop moving since he’s now too reliant on stationary machinery to escape even if he wanted to. So he’s just kinda accepted his fate in a nihilistic way since his world was destroyed and he doesn’t have anything to try to live for.
• Quest 2:
  • The second artifact is registered by Scotoplanes as coming from “Tellus Null” which is the new registry name for what once was Earth. It’s an assassin’s teapot. Protagonist is confused a bit, but they feel like they have some connection even though they can’t prove that’s where they actually came from since they don’t have their memories back yet. But more importantly this quest tells us about how Scotoplanes analyzed earth, and what his perspective on it as an outsider was.
• Quest 3:
  • The third artifact comes from Scotoplanes world, some kind of jewelry or crystal that implies a kind of bond between the two users of the artifact. Something that would potentially split the damage (not necessarily mechanical damage) but like mental emotional physical ailments so that one person would be able to descend into misery with another who is basically someone who you really care about. He warns you not to put it on after he touches it, because even passing off half of his pain would surely kill you.