INTRO
SATAH: Welcome to Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. I am your host, Satah, and my goal is to showcase multiple possible experiences of self paced games by inviting guests to play them alongside me so I can compile our stories together. You can support the show financially at patreon.com/foliopod, or you can join there as a free member to get access to the bonus podcast feed. This month, paid patrons voted for me to stream Highway Haunt, a game by Jaclyn Lewis about sinister and surreal encounters on the long haul road. You can sign up at any paid tier now to see the VOD of that before its public release next month.
This is episode one of our games of Immanence, a game on a colony ship a thousand years in the future about "exploring our individual and collective relationships with Earth, each other, ourselves, and the greater universe" by Marcus Hose.
The other two passengers blearily blinking the stasis out of their eyes with me are Jam Edwards and garbageface aka gnostic front aka Karol Orzechowski. Tell you a little bit more about them at the break.
In Immanence, you begin having just woken up from cryo sleep during a long journey across space. You play out a series of events across the days of your trip, which for our purposes, I asked to be exactly a week long. The ship can be on a longer journey, going somewhere that takes more than seven days to get to, but no matter what, we are only awake for those final seven days.
To start off, we have to figure out why we left Earth, where we're going, and generally what our deals are.
GAME: SET-UP
GF: Um, I guess I should introduce myself. My name is garbageface aka thee gnostic front.
JAM: Hello! You are now hearing the voice of Jam Edwards, who is a writer, librarian, podcast co-host, and also game player and sometimes game designer.
GF: And I'm playing the game Immanence for Satah's Folio podcast.
SATAH: [Hitting the last syllable with an extended hiss] Immanence…
JAM: And today I am playing Immanence by Marcus Hose, which can be a multi-player game or a solo game.
GF: I'm really excited that Satah asked me to do this. I have never, ever, ever, ever done something like this before.
JAM: I do podcasts all the time, but I'm already so self-conscious because I never ever do them alone.
GF: So I'm hoping that for all the listeners out there that you'll be gentle with me as I, uh fuck around and then– or as I– sorry, I can't remember if I'm supposed to swear or not– as I frig around and find out.
JAM: I haven't played a ton of solo games either, and I also usually don't have to talk through my thought process when I play a solo game.
GF: With all of that said, let us get started. I might add a little arpeggio here if that's acceptable.
SATAH: "Immanence is a game for 1-5 players about the passengers of a colony ship that has left Earth in the year 3020 in pursuit of a new home. Each player controls a human passenger of said ship as they are awoken from stasis sleep."
JAM: "The game is primarily driven by the interactions and emotions exchanged between multiple players or the reflections of a single player."
GF: "The purpose of Immanence is to explore individual and collective relationships with Earth, with each other, ourselves, and the greater universe."
JAM: I have my paper, I have my pencil, I have my 20-sided dice, and I think I'm ready to go.
GF: I've been reading through all of the rules and I haven't read the prompts because I want those to be a surprise.
JAM: The rules up top are "No violence of any sort,"
SATAH: No violence.
JAM: "No lying,"
SATAH: No lying.
JAM: "and feel free to break the rules if all players are comfortable doing so."
SATAH: Break rules as a team. Great.
JAM: This game did come with a character sheet which I foolishly did not print out, but I have a piece of paper. It's not a terribly complicated character sheet, but I can choose a name and pronouns for my character. And then the other details, I think we are mostly going to be rolling from tables here using our 20-sided die.
GF: [Defeated chuckle] I was just talking for the last, gosh… 15 minutes or so. I really had some good shit goin' and uh… for some reason I was not recording. These things happen, of course. Nothing too much to be sad about. I'm going to– rather than doing all the establishing again, what I am going to do is just tell you the establishing stuff that I did.
SATAH: So the very first thing that we decide, part one, is departure.
JAM: "The game begins by rolling on the following table to decide the inciting incident that prompted humanity to leave Earth and picking a name for the colony ship." So I'm going to go ahead and roll on this table that will tell me why I'm leaving Earth.
SATAH: [Die clattering] Rolled a fourteen. Eleven to fourteen is "New neighbours: a previously undiscovered sentient race has made contact with Earth from another planet, established friendly and generous relations, and invited humanity to participate in a massive cultural exchange." Hmm…
GF: I rolled for destination that I'm on a cultural exchange with a nearby planet.
JAM: Oh, I got a thirteen, which is "new neighbours."
SATAH: Yeah, that's interesting for sure because that doesn't really speak actually to a mass migration, right? This could be that we're just sending folks off to meet some aliens.
JAM: I will say… I listened to Satah's example of this game Satah sent me, just like an example of their setup and first day or two of play, and I know they got the same one. And so I'm a little tempted to re-roll.
SATAH: Do I want to re-roll that because I want a little bit more drama behind it? No, I'm going to see how that plays out. It's interesting because that's a very different type of anxiety than the others. Like– not all of the others, but for instance, "complete climate catastrophe." This has a very specific, different feeling to it of, like, why you're on this journey.
JAM: But I'm also tempted to soldier on and see how differently we play the same prompt. Yeah, I really like new neighbours as a prompt.
SATAH: So I'm going to stick with new neighbours. I'm going to go meet up with a bunch of other aliens and whoever's out there in the galaxy.
JAM: So this is not necessarily a scenario where we're being forced to leave Earth. This is a scenario where we are choosing or at least compelled to travel beyond our home to make new friends, which, you know– feels very appealing to me, especially in this kind of game where it seems set up to be more utopian and less cynical.
GF: I called the planet Poseidon, and, uh, the… inhabitants of the planet Poseidon, even though there are probably many different types of inhabitants and they go by many things, the name of those inhabitants are Aquamenis.
JAM: One of the other podcasts I co-host is a holiday music podcast and, uh, the only– the only way that this and that podcast are related is I've been obsessed this year with a particular holiday song by a band called Christmas Aguilera. Um, and it's Christmas on Mars, which is a song about leaving Earth for Mars for climate reasons, but then arriving on Mars and making new friends and celebrating Christmas together. I'm an absolute sucker for that kind of thing. I don't think I'm going to include Christmas in my story, but you know, who knows?
SATAH: And I need to name the ship. "All ships have the prefix Terran Colony ship, TCS."
JAM: So the examples they gave are TCS Marsha P. Johnson, TCS Mae Carol Jemison, who was the first Black woman in space. They gave a bunch more. TCS Dracula, TCS Cold Side of the Pillow. I do like that these examples give you an idea of the tone they're going for, which is more positive because my first instinct for, like, "name the ship that's leaving Earth", um, name your colony ship, my first instinct is "the TCS Wonder sponsored by Disney Plus." [Laughing] But that's a different game. Yeah. So I do appreciate the tone setting that these examples are doing.
SATAH: Random word generator. The first one that came up was magnitude, which is great. Strap, liability, machinery, sphere.
TCS Magnitude feels great. And I love that it's… stupid. Kinda. Like, big ship. We call it Magnitude.
Maybe a bunch of these ships are named after, like, feelings that they– want to be inspired, like the idea of like the TCS Awe. I know that's not quite the same type of word of Magnitude, but I think that's fun. So.
GF: The name of the ship that I'm on is the TCS Lone Ranger.
JAM: Yeah, I did think about this before I sat down, which feels a little bit meta gaming, but here we are. I think I'm going to name my ship the TCS- right? TCS Ay-da… possibly Ah-da. The TCS Ada Limón. But we call it the Ada for short.
Ada Limón is a poet who was poet laureate of the US and… possibly still is? I don't know how often they choose poet laureate, but it was a poet that one of the young people that I work with in my daytime life introduced me to who did write a poem for space, and I think– "a poem for space." A poem to go on a, like, NASA mission to space. And I do think we have a culture of space exploration that does that kind of thing, that– that values poetry in a way that I think lots of other, y'know, sciences doesn't necessarily.
So I do think in this utopian or semi utopian future, it makes sense for ships to be named after poets and maybe even specifically after former poet laureates of the United States, if that… I mean. In my utopian future, the United States is not a thing. However! I'm keeping the name, the Ada.
SATAH: For the podcast, I've asked everybody to have their journey be seven days long, which doesn't necessarily mean that the ship is going somewhere that is only seven days away, but that they will only be awake, regardless, of the past– the– for the last seven days. So I'm going to roll and see where we're headed to and see if I'm awake for the whole time.
[Die clattering] I rolled an eight, which is Mars. Fourteen days.
JAM: So we know we're going for new neighbours. Where are we going? It would be wild if I roll the moon. They've just been here! Or, you know, that's the meeting spot. They're being really kind to us. Let me roll.
The moon, for reference– we've got different planets here that I could get for this role for where we are going and how long the trip is, and the moon is seven days away. So let's see.
No, I got an eleven. So Saturn is where we are going. The trip is forty-nine days. We are just going to be playing the last seven days of that trip.
SATAH: So I'm going to say my destination is Mars and my duration is seven days, but out of fourteen. So I'm up for the last half of the trip.
JAM: Saturn is a good one for this plot, I think. It's a good landmark to meet at, you know. It's a pretty distinct looking planet and further out in our– in our own solar system, so we're putting a little bit of effort in.
SATAH: For emergence, basically why I've been awoken, it says roll for or choose the circumstances of their awakening, but there doesn't actually seem to be a list? Uh, I'm not sure if maybe I should try rolling on something else…
JAM: On the one hand, I think it's unfortunate because I would I would like to see what the creator of the game intended here, what kind of different circumstances they were imagining– if they were all like, you know, you get woken up for your birthday! Or if there were some like, something hit the ship and you had to like, emergency be woken up. Um, but I also think it will be really interesting to hear how Satah and I handle this piece of it differently.
SATAH: I think I'm gonna roll again on the departure table and see if I can just interpret the prompt in a way that makes sense? Let's see.
JAM: I think how I'm going to handle this is since this is a 20 sided die based game, I'm gonna do what is called a luck roll and just roll the d20 and if it is closer to one, that is a bad reason, a bad reason I was woken up or, you know, unplanned, negative. I want to keep it vague because I kind of want to do more fleshing out of this character and maybe even play through a day or two before I decide specifically why I am awake, especially if it's a bad reason. And yeah, twenty is, is– planned, perfect, ideal wake up.
If it is– if I get a bad result, so like anything under ten, I want to roll again and see if it that means I was woken up early or I was woken up late. Because I think for a trip of forty-nine days, that is like just long enough for either of those to come with different sort of interesting baggage. Okay.
SATAH: [Die clattering] Got a seven, which is "complete climate catastrophe." And… and what if that means that I was woken up because… there's been a systems failure of some kind? Not, uh, in a way that endangers the life of everyone on the ship, but maybe it's like… I've been in stasis, breathing, like, a very specific– everyone in stasis is like breathing a specific concoction of like, uh… whatever medicinal air, right, to keep them kind of alive despite their like kind of artificially comatose state. And maybe something got into… the air?
Yeah. So it's– it is an artificial climate catastrophe, but specifically only for certain sections of people who are in stasis.
JAM: So, first, the luck roll. Oh, funny. Okay. I rolled a 10. So the exact midpoint. Huh. Yeah.
I mean, I will roll again and… I think for this one, if it's closer to one, I was woken up late. If it's closer to 20, I was woken up early.
I know I didn't get the bad result, but I just want to see if I get 10 again, I was woken up exactly on time, but maybe something else was not ideal.
Okay. Nine. So just ever slightly late. Um, so I had a real middle of the road emergence, neither ideal nor like extremely unplanned.
So I think the fact that I was just slightly late is maybe part of what was bad about it. I just missed like a couple of days that I was supposed to be awake and maybe I missed something that I had been looking forward to on those days. Yeah. I don't want to get too specific. Maybe I came up with seasickness, space sickness. Um.
SATAH: I'm not even totally sure why I would be in stasis for a two week trip? But maybe it's… it's probably been longer, but maybe people are largely only awake for those two weeks? I'm not sure how long it would take to get to Mars. It's longer than fourteen days, right? But is that true in the year 3020? I don't know. But anyway, I'm going to say… I was woken up because there was a breakdown in the artificial conditions of my particular block of stasis pods.
JAM: Okay, next I am rolling my bunk number…
SATAH: by rolling a 20 sided die until I've got five digits. So two, nine, nineteen, twenty.
JAM: That's a twenty. That's a six. That's a four. And that's a fifteen. But all I need is one more digit so we'll just take that one.
GF: And my bunk number is 18107.
SATAH: So my bunk number is 291920.
JAM: So bunk number 20641.
SATAH: The wifi password is password!
JAM: Which is a silly fun detail. And I'd say not very secure, but I guess since we're going to meet new aliens, we want– we all want to be able to remember and offer them the wifi password. Assuming they know what that is.
SATAH: For character creation… definitely not the focus of this game, which makes, uh– makes sense. Just like it kind of seems like it wants to throw you right into the sort of interpersonal stuff. So it just basically– it says like your character can be and look like whatever.
JAM: "Personal traits and appearance, your character can look and act in any way you desire. The entirety of human behavior and morphology are fair game, but bear in mind the game doesn't have built-in rules for confrontation, physical altercation, or deception." I do appreciate that the game is explicitly like, don't bother min-maxing because you're not going to be– there's no stats. Don't try to build Dwayne the Rock Johnson. It doesn't matter.
Um, I do tend to like more structure for character creation, uh– even, you know, just a few questions here would be great.
And there is a spot on the character sheet for name pronouns, birthplace, and a picture of the passenger ID photo.
SATAH: I… think that I am okay going in with a– with a pretty loose idea of what I'm up to. Hopefully kind of the first day I'll get prompts that somehow shape more of a person? Like, might– maybe there will be requests made of me or something that makes my purpose, as it were, a little bit more obvious, but I do want to come up with a name.
GF: My name is Terrence Halbersham. It's a rather old sounding name, especially for the year 3020. But that's the name that came to my mind.
JAM: I think my character was born in Providence. That is a city that is close to my heart. Providence, Rhode Island. If I'm writing, it is probably about Providence. There's also a lot of universities there, um. And I… want to say maybe my… maybe my character is an academic of some kind, since this is, like, a cultural exchange trip.
Do I want them to be on the academic or cultural side or do I… well, yeah, I don't know that I would have been in stasis if I was part of the, like, technical crew of the ship, if I had a more practical role.
What is my name? And my pronouns. I mean, I'm going to make a they. I'm going to put a they in space. That's what I do.
GF: I am a quartz, uh– I– because this is a cultural exchange, I assumed that probably the biggest slash most important aspect of it was the culture part. So I decided that I was a quartz painter. Now what is a quartz painter? Well, let me tell you.
Terrence Halbersham developed a… I guess, proprietary, although it's never been copywritten or anything like that… developed a new kind of painting called quartz painting. And usually the way paint pigments– or at least back in the day, the way paint pigments were made was by taking a medium such as linseed oil and suspending pigments, usually in the form of a powder in that medium and then mixing that and using it to- using it to paint.
The way that my painting method differed, and I believe the reason that I've been asked to be on this cultural exchange, is because what I would do is take pulverized quartz– quartz that's been ground into a really, really fine powder, and mix that with liquid– a proprietary form of water, a particular liquid form of water. And that would create the medium in which you could suspend, uh, suspend pigments in.
Now you might be saying to yourself, who cares? Well. The reason that this was remarkable is that one, it had never been done before. And two, it resulted in a kind of shimmering, very real, very alive look in the paintings that I've done. I've often created both portraits and landscapes that represent the people and places that I love. And these paintings are, um– they glow with a certain- a certain je ne sais quoi, thanks to the use of my very special and heretofore unknown quartz paint.
JAM: Is this– is this too wild? I mean, um… okay. The thing that's coming to my brain for what my character, the sort of field that my character is in as part of this cultural exchange is that they're a puppeteer? Which is slightly less wild because there is– there are some, like, large puppeteering troops and traditions in New England, like specifically the Big Nazo troop in Providence is who I'm thinking of. And I have definitely met, uh– I used to work in Providence, and in the neighborhood where Rizdi and Brown are, and had students who were, like, interning with Big Nazo come in to the library where I was working, looking for books to inspire them. And it was, you know, it stuck with me because it was a really fun ask. It's really fun just like, "Get me a book with weird stuff that I can build a puppet about."
Um, so– would- would we put Big Nazo in space? I mean in an ideal world, yes.
That implies to me that this is a fairly– maybe not a fairly big crew, but maybe a fairly diverse– they- they are– like, the prompt I think said "a massive cultural exchange." So I think they have chosen people from lots of different fields with different skills because they don't really know what is and isn't going to translate. You know, they, we've got poets, we've got writers, we've got visual artists and dancers and- and singers and songwriters. But, like, if our- our new connections– if these, these folks that we're meeting up with, their brands just don't process music the same way that our brains do, if it turns out music is something unique to our planet, then I mean, A, that's cool. But B, they- they, I think, want to explore lots of different possibilities to- to connect culturally. Um, if… if music is not clicking… maybe puppets! Maybe puppets.
This is happening. It's a they. They're a puppeteer. And I think maybe even specifically, they, uh, make puppets. And there maybe is one or two other people from their troupe with them? Um, maybe just one. I think maybe they sent one designer and one performer and this character is a designer. And so, is coming to like support the performer, like to- to, you know, has some experience with- with the performing part of it, um but in their day to day job on Earth, they are mostly doing the design aspects and- and working with materials and- and creating new- new puppets. Or repairing puppets. And they may have a hope of make– if- if it turns out puppets really click with the new, uh, the new extra extraterrestrials that we're meeting, making them a puppet would be– would be the dream.
GF: For me in role playing games, it's not difficult to be a different kind of person, but the thing that's difficult for me to imagine is being in a different body. I'm not sure what that is. I'm sure there's a psychological… something to it, um, but I find it really hard to imagine what it would be like to live, uh… let's say as a very tall person. Um, but I'm going to try it anyway.
I am– Terrence Halberstam is very tall. And that is especially remarkable in this context because for, for spaceships, space agencies actually usually pick people who are quite short and who… I mean, essentially, don't take up a lot of space. [Laughing] Every inch and every centimeter counts when you're talking about space storage. So the fact that I'm on here is pretty remarkable.
SATAH: Still looking at my random gerner [Stumbling over words]– I went back to my random word generator. Random germ generator? Is that what I nearly said? I don't want that.
JAM: And their name… I have to choose. That is what I've been doing here.
Is there– I mean, I love a name that's also a noun. Obviously. My name is Jam.
SATAH: Forum Urgency. My name is Forum Urgency and I think most people just call me Four. Or Jen. That's funny. Urgency– Jen being short for Urgency is great. I'm a huge fan of regular name that is short for not-regular name.
JAM: So is there like a… not puppet specific, but I'm thinking like textiles and… this is a person who maybe, like, really loves expressing, you know, art through texture and shape… and what would their name be?
I think Stitch is really literal. I don't know if I can do Stitch. I guess there's also… a really famous alien named that. [Laughing] So I– and I do like that Stitch is also a verb. I love a verb as a name too.
Is their name Wrinkle? This is– this is the hardest part in gaming for me.
SATAH: Urgency. Jency. I think Jency actually is a– is a more fun nickname. So, For– Forum Urgency, most people just call me Jency.
JAM: I just sort of paused and I was like, I think I'm thinking too hard about puppets and textiles when I don't know enough about that. What is something that reminds me of Providence? And the first word that I thought of was Hill. And so I think this character's name is Hill. They/them. Okay.
BREAK
SATAH: I just want to provide a like small detail about sort of the production process of the show because Jam mentioned it. When I invite guests on the show, I give them access to just the first part of whatever my recorded playthrough was so that they can listen to it to understand like what I'm looking for and have sort of a better sense of what I mean when I say, "Hey, sit down and play a solo game out loud." [Laughs]
It's really important to me that I don't influence people's playthroughs too much because the whole point is to hear what different people do with the same game. Give a general shape, I want people to know what they're doing and feel good about being on the show. My basic scenario was
And it's so funny to me that we all ended up with the same basic scenario. In a way, it's sort of, um the podcast concept concentrated? Like, not only playing the same game, but playing the same basic plot or at least large structure and still doing very different things with it. So very exciting.
Generally very excited about these guests. They are both incredibly dear friends of mine and from very different areas of my life. I love it when there are weird coincidences across playthroughs, and there are a couple of things that both of these guests mentioned. A certain sport being illegal comes up organically. And they also both, when I asked them, "Hey, anything you want to plug?" Decided to tell me just sort of a concept, rather than a project. This was in completely separate email threads, never having interacted with each other as far as I know. I live for that shit. It makes me so happy. Coincidences, patterns, they're fun!
Jam Edwards is a librarian, writer, and general creator of things. At their website, rjmakes.com, raspberry jam makes dot com, you will find cool published sci-fi stories, podcasts, including one about holiday music that has nearly 400 episodes at this point, and a bunch of games that they designed. We met on Tumblr something like 15 years ago. One time in response to me threatening to make very stupid business cards, they said, "Maybe millennials could afford mansions if they didn't commit to so many bits," and I still have the custom t-shirt that I made with that quote on it. I love them. And I am so, so happy that they could be on this show.
garbageface, aka gnostic front, aka Karol Orzechowski is a musician, photographer, and writer of a fantastic full moon newsletter. His playthrough of this game came to me accompanied by a full improvised synth soundtrack, which you'll hear small snippets of through the interstitials in this series. We met in the Peterborough music scene about a decade ago. One time, for reasons that I have literally no memory of, he said to me, "life is a dog's wet nose in your armpit." And I freehand cross-stitched that onto some fabric alongside a representation of his dog's nose. I don't know who that object is now, but I know that I love him and I'm so, so happy that he was willing to try something very new to be on this show. If you are interested in the themes and vibes explored in this game, I think you should particularly start with any and all of these three garbageface albums: No Future, Dymaxion, [Stumbling] Enantiodromia. Anti– oh my goodness. Enantiodromia. You will find stuff that you like in there. And then you should listen to Plague Mechanic, because it's just my favourite right now.
As for me and the show, hello, I'm Satah, this is my show! Thank you, you're listening to it. I am a game designer, editor, and musician. You can find a bunch of my work at gaygothvibes.online– which, by the way, is a domain that was originally given to me by Jam and features a bio written for me by garbageface! [Laughing] Uh… I released an EP at the end of last year called it's really only. You can find it at peopleyoumeetoutsideofbars.bandcamp.com as well as your preferred music rental service.
Now let's get into the main loop of the game. Day in the life. A series of days in the life. Each day in Immanence is divided into four chunks of time. Morning, afternoon, evening, and the dead of night. For every chunk of time, you roll a random event and react to it. Let's see how our passengers' first days awake go.
GAME: DAY ONE
MORNING
SATAH: So day one begins. [Chuckles] Have some kind of rude awakening early in the morning.
GF: The first action that I rolled. I'm waking up on the morning.
JAM: I am awake and was maybe supposed to be awake a day or two before this, but. Let's find out what's going to happen on our first day here.
SATAH: Each day has- has four six hour segments that you roll for like a little event that happened at some point during.
JAM: "To figure out what happens day to day, starting with the day the passengers emerge, all players will roll for the day's events four times a day." First day, let's start with our morning roll. "This is the core of the game." I'm reading now, "Rolling or choosing days events and acting them out, discussing them, or jus ruminating on them," since we're playing solo.
GF: So my first morning prompt was– I rolled a one. And the prompt is "a group of passengers is heading to the gymnasium block and they say they're short one player for a team game. What are they playing and do you join them? Is it fun?" Um… [Laughs] It's going to feel weird saying this all again, but that's okay.
What I described was that the players in the game are playing a game of Galactic Pickleball. Galactic Pickleball is… uh, by 3020, Galactic Pickleball is the only… sport. It's the only sport. The reason it's the only sport is because most other sports have fallen out of favour for various reasons.
For example, football was essentially canceled culturally because of just, um… further traumatic head injuries that just never stopped. You can still watch football, but the leagues that exist are all renegade and extralegal. Hockey did exist until preparing ice on planet Earth became untenable. Baseball, uh… has never been a good sport and therefore just went away naturally. Soccer, even though it was watched by billions of people, that was before World War V and ever since World War V, no one has been able to look at a soccer ball ever again.
So people play Galactic Pickleball. And what is Galactic Pickleball, you may be asking yourself? How is it different? Well, the answer to you, dear listener, is that it's not different. It's the same. Pretty much everything has the word Galactic in front of it now because we're in 2030, so, uh that's why it's called Galactic Pickleball.
I will note, however, though, that one of the ways that this- this particular game is different in the pickleball arena is that this gymnasium block actually has, uh, gravity enabled, and so the ball more or less moves in the way that it would move on Earth. While there are some versions of Galactic Pickleball where people just allow the ball to go in a straight line from where it is hit, in this game, the ball goes up and down, just like a regular ball with a regular gravity.
That's what the other- that's what the other passengers are playing. I noticed that my friend, uh… and I'm using a name generator here. This person's a doctor. Their name is Dr. Juno Zorander. I noticed my friend Juno in that group, and it's, uh… Juno's one of those people who really– they don't take no for an answer. They really can convince anyone to do almost anything, and the way that they do this is through the classic mechanism of guilt, of the kind of like, "C'mahnn. What are you doing right now? C'mahnnnn."
But in spite of Juno's entreatises, I don't join, and the reason for not joining is because I'm just waking up from stasis, man, and I have not stretched. It's been a very long time being in stasis. I am extremely stiff, and if I don't do my stretches in the morning, I am just no good. So.
That being said, I'm feeling a little social. I've been holed up in stasis for a while, and I actually join them at the gymnasium block, and I watch them play Galactic Pickleball as I do my stretches.
Juno is playing with our friend Dr. Tudor, Dr. Jago Tudor, and our other friend… Dr. Zhao.
I'm going to write down some names here. Everyone's doctors, apparently, because we're on a… we're on a ship that is, uh… y'know, I don't know, you've got to be like a science-y type.
They're all playing Galactic Pickleball. They're playing, uh– they wanted to play doubles, but now they're playing a third two-on-one, which is, you know. It's totally fine. They're not bummed, and they actually don't even… you know, after they bugged me a few times to join them, they stop, and I just watch them and do my stretches.
And one of the things that's remarkable to me about watching them is… gosh, y'know. Galactic Pickleball is a really fun game. If you like being annoying, and you like being a stickler for the rules, and you like to occasionally yell and make your feelings known in a boisterous manner, Galactic Pickleball really is the sport for you. It's also remarkably uncontroversial, despite all of the controversies that we endured in the early 21st century… twenty… 21st century? Yeah, 21st century. [Laughing] Tune into Folio this week, and listen to garbageface try to figure out what century we are in.
Despite all the controversies about Pickleball in the 21st century, this game is just beloved by everybody now, and they are just having a great time. They're shaking off their stasis and feeling good. I don't join them, though, and you know what? I feel totally fine about that.
SATAH: Because of the sort of artificial climate breakdown, whatever it was, it's not quite as gentle of a wake-up as you'd usually want. They had to kind of go quickly just to make sure that everything was okay, and I probably was like, hustled right along to the med bay just to be checked over. And I imagine that unless directly contradicted, I'm going to be kind of coming out of the med bay back to my room here.
I rolled an eleven. "There's a number of former professional kitchen staff among the passengers, and they're taking orders for breakfast. Order anything you'd like, including nothing."
This is… my first meal! After however long, seven days it seems like, of- if subsisting off of– I assume that people in stasis are, like, intubated in some way. And this is my first meal. And I think… yeah, I was gonna- I was gonna lean– because of that, I was going to say something super hearty, but I think actually I was warned, uh, "We had to wake you up really quickly… you're going to want something a little bit light." And so I asked just for like… some toast… and stare wistfully at everybody eating, like, beautiful… eggs benedict and all that kind of thing.
Ugh, god. It's been a while since– there was a place in Peterborough where I used to live that made this incredible vegan eggs benedict that I haven't had since before the pandemic. And… god, I miss that.
So yeah. I just– I have to keep it super light because my stomach's still kind of weirdy from being woken up from stasis so quickly. I just have some toast.
And I think that one of the things here is just that like, it's a little strange to just slip into the world like this. Usually there would probably be an announcement of like, we're going to wake people up, but they had to do this in the middle of the night really unexpectedly. And so I just kind of am a new person. And I think there's like an excitement in novelty there. But I think that there are enough people on the ship that it takes a while to notice. And so it's a little- it's a little bit lonely.
JAM: So for the morning, what is happening between 6am and noon? A twenty. Wow. "You overhear a conversation. You catch a phrase out of context, a phrase that someone you love is or was fond of using. What was the phrase and who liked to use it?" Oh man.
I like this- this fairly simple one for the first prompt. I overhear a conversation. This is the first day I've emerged, so I think I'm feeling pretty groggy.
Oh man. Oh no. Okay. Yeah. I think– I think I hear someone use a phrase… what was the phrase? I'm thinking along the lines of- of the- the rolls I made to decide the circumstances of my emergence and you know, landed on could have been better, was woken up a few days late. I think probably the thing that I missed, based on this first prompt, was maybe a few days ago, people got to call their loved ones on Earth, um, and… we were like in a really good, like, you know, clear spot for that where they're, we were going to have a really clear connection with Earth and, um… maybe has happened before on this 49 day journey? But, but yeah, there was one I was supposed to be awake for that I wasn't.
And I overhear someone using a phrase that… I think… I'm imagining Hill is, like, a late twenties they/them, sort of cropped short hair, white, a little shorter than I am in real life, works with their hands a lot, and… I think the person is… an aunt or an uncle that they spent a lot of time with growing up and that, like, nurtured their artistic interests and, you know, saw something in that. And the phrase feels less– like, the specific phrase in this case feels less important, but it is maybe some– something– some kind of encouragement that I overheard, using quite casually in a very low stakes situation, you know, for getting– while they were getting breakfast or something. Somebody else was trying to use the waffle maker, and I think it was something along the lines of like, "You get better every time," you know, "you get better every time you use that."
And it is maybe something that specifically– we'll say this this aunt growing up taught them- taught Hill how to use a sewing machine and would say this to them early on as, like, encouragement when they were struggling and later as like a very sincere like, "Gosh, you get better every time! Like, every time I see something new that you've made, I'm blown away." Maybe not that explicitly. But- but you know, that was how the tone of it- it changed through time.
And Hill didn't get to talk to this person yesterday, and um. I think Hill's having a rough morning on this first day. So let's see how the rest of their day goes.
AFTERNOON
GF: It's now the afternoon.
[Die clattering] "There's a number of former professional kitchen staff among the passengers and they're taking orders for lunch. Order anything you'd like, including nothing."
I'm always very careful about what I order coming out of stasis. This is my… I believe this is my fifth galactic trip? Intergalactic trip? And one of the things that I'm very careful about is the kind of food that I eat right out of stasis because, um… when your stoma– you know, you have to do essentially a kind of a flush before stasis. So you don't eat anything for 24 hours before that, and one of the big sort of challenges is not upsetting your stomach too much when you get out.
So what I'm going to order is mashed potatoes.
The mashed potatoes arrive 10 minutes later. I assume that they're made out of flakes. I don't think it makes any practical sense to bring potatoes up into space just to mash them. But joke's on you! I love flaked mashed potatoes. I truly, truly love flaked mashed potatoes. In fact, when I got my, uh, wisdom teeth out– when Terrence Halbersham got their wisdom teeth out, they ate a whole box of mashed potatoes. And when– because their mouth was so numb while they were eating the mashed potatoes, they actually ended up with a lot of potato on their face. Which is where the famous expression "You've got potato on your face, bud," came from.
JAM: So let's roll for the afternoon.
GF: Oh, by the way, after I ate a whole bunch of mashed potatoes, I took another little nap. And I know what you're thinking. Who needs a nap after they've been in stasis for… gosh, a year or more? Well, the truth is, uh… everyone needs a little nap sometimes. I bet you need a little nap right now. Wouldn't it be nice to take a little nap? I think it'd be pretty nice to take a little nap.
JAM: That's a nine. "The amateur aerialists club is heading to the gymnasium block for a quick turn on the anti-gravity courts. They're one member short and they invite you to join them. Will you? How long do you stay?"
I mean, of course we have aerialists. I just took a minute to be like, aerialists like– I was thinking aviators. I was like, where are they- are they flying like in VR? No, this is gymnasts, of course. This is like, I'm assuming similar to like acrobats or people who do gymnastics at high heights, um, and of course we brought them. We brought so many different kinds of artists with us. Uh, yeah.
Do I join? No. I think Hill does not join. Hill's having a rough morning. I think Hill– but they're one member short. Maybe I don't know what aerialists are. Maybe they need like a spotter or something, which is why they have invited Hill and- and maybe they're trying to cheer Hill up.
I assume that we all know each other a little. That there was some, you know, amount of training or orientation that we all went through together, and so there's maybe a little feeling on the ship of that, like… first few weeks of university comradery where you just are inviting people you don't know that well to go do things with you.
But yeah, I think Hill, they might do it if they were having a better day, but I think, having just woken up, still being kind of groggy and a little bit upset, they are not going to go here.
I'm just going to search to make sure I am– I do know what an aerialist is. Yeah, it's an acrobat. Okay. The amateur aerialists club. Well, we would also have expert aerialists, but I guess this isn't them. This is some, maybe, ground gymnasts who are trying out the trying out aerialism in the anti gravity courts.
Um, no, Hill does not go. Hill is going to be a bit of a loner for this first afternoon. They're still getting their space legs. I don't know that they want to be doing flips on the first day.
SATAH: I'm going to roll for the afternoon. "Another passenger has lost their way to their stasis suite and could use a hand getting back. You know where the suite they're looking for is. Do you help them?"
I can't see a reason why not? I guess I could want to avoid the suites because I had sort of a bummer experience last night, but… I'm also curious about why I know where it is.
I guess the thing that makes the most sense is maybe this is somebody else who was in my block who was woken up from the emergency. And I think there's sort of a range of symptoms of whatever weird thing was happening in our air supply. And this person is clearly much more sort of discombobulated than I am.
And yeah, of course I bring them back and explain that as far as I know… because the stasis suites are also just like our bunks and that kind of thing? So I'll just basically say like, there's no reason to think that they're unsafe to be in. That it was exclusively something that would be dangerous when you are in that stasis state. And… that was probably explained to me by the doctors. I'm just parroting that.
And yeah, that's- that's- that's it. I get them back and now I'm going to roll for my evening.
EVENING
GF: It's the evening. [Die clattering]
JAM: Okay, evening roll. Five.
GF & JAM: "Several bioluminescent plants and fungi are in bloom in the garden,
GF: "making a perfect low light walking path for a promenade.
JAM: "Do you visit? Do any of the glowing flora catch your eye?"
GF: "Do you visit? Do any of the glowing flora catch your eye?"
Yeah, I do visit. 
JAM: Absolutely. This is I think much more Hill's scene, especially if they, you know, have kind of a low mood on this first day.
I should be clear: I don't think Hill was woken up late for any particular reason. I don't think anything went wrong. I think essentially the sort of equivalent of there was a network outage or something and the schedule got off for a day. Y'know, somebody didn't set the clock backs for Jupiter or whatever. [Laughs]
Or, you know, it might have even been a mistake that happened before they went into stasis where just, like, the date that they wanted to be woken up got written down wrong. Because I do think for a trip like this, people got to choose, within reason, how long they wanted to be in stasis and how long they wanted to be awake and engaging with other people, and I think a little over a week feels right for this character. Like, they didn't want to be awake the whole time, but they did want an adjustment period before they arrived.
And this evening prompt, "the bioluminescent plants and fungi in the garden," is definitely more of a quiet and reflective space that they would want to go and see.
And I think they're just walking through and I don't know if anything particular catches their eye. I think they're just looking at everything and in particular they're like walking but also like, stopping and kneeling down and, like, looking very close at- at some of the fungus. And if they think it looks hardy enough and no one is looking, will reach out and touch some of them, which maybe is not strictly allowed, but is for them, like, an important part of how they understand things, um, is touching them.
Um, and I think this is great for them because I think they had a hard day and have just been kind of moping. And being in this- this space, this like reflective space with all of this weird, glowing life, um… that is so beautiful and also, like, strange and different from what human life looks like? I'm, like, specifically thinking of- of the funguses.
Yeah, I think the fungus is what– they're drawn towards the fungi, because if they are a puppeteer who makes the sort of strange alien-esque puppets like Big Nazo does in real life… um, I don't think they're in Big Nazo specifically, but I think they do make that kind of, like, large strange puppet. You know, they're not a Sesame Street puppeteer. They are a weird, surreal, experimental puppeteer.
And I think they're feeling really inspired by the fungus, and- and it's a nice chance for them to, like, breathe a little bit and also remember why they were excited to be here. Um, and feeling excited to meet someone- meet someone so different from themselves. And are feeling more open now to- to, like, learning and trying new things, and are excited to both… do their part of that, to do their puppets, and also to see what other people are doing. They are looking around and reminded that like everything here is so different and that's good.
GF: I visit the garden.
After several rather ill-fated sort of intergalactic missions where the space agencies, the United Space Agencies of Earth sent people up without gardens, what they realised was that… you need contact with living things to survive and not just other people. You need contact with other living things to survive. You need…
In the early t– in the 21st century… [Laughing] in the 21st century, one of the th– one of the insults that people would hurl at each other was that, you know, when someone was acting too online, for example, you could say to them, "You need to go outside and touch grass." Even though it sounds kind of silly, Terence Halbersham has been told to touch grass many times. And any time that they're asked to touch grass, they do it.
And so that's what I'm doing. One of the species of grass in the garden is actually bioluminescent, and when you touch this grass, it unfurls in a beautiful kind of, um… it's not unlike a fiddlehead in that it kind of… the tip of the grass unfurls into a really gorgeous kind of, um, tendril. The tendril glows green and red… green and red… green… orange… red…
I try and make sure to touch grass at least once a day.
After I do that, I head back to my cabin.
SATAH: [Die clattering] Thirteen. "There's a non-denominational holiday mixer being held in the many recreation rooms of the Library Block. You don't know anyone there. Do you attend? Do you stay? Do you mix and/or mingle?" Ooh.
I think I try.
I mean… I don't know anyone there. That's true. I don't really know anyone, which makes me think… I don't think I don't have any friends or family on this, but I think that they are all still asleep and they will be kept asleep for– until, like, I was supposed to be woken up, which is, like, at the end of the trip.
But- so- so I attend, thinking I'll try and meet people after being kind of sad at breakfast, but I think it's just… I'm just tired. It's just kind of exhausting. And for whatever reason, nobody is kind of making the connection and taking the opportunity to talk with me. They're all, like, going into their sort of traditions and I'm just feeling a little bit lost and I don't really know how to break that seal.
And so… I leave. I am there for, like, ten minutes and then just head back to my bunk.
DEAD OF NIGHT
JAM: So the last roll of the day is dead of night. I got a ten. "The fusion reactor shut down temporarily for routine maintenance. The ship's black hole drive supplies emergency power. Strange happenings occur around the ship. What unearthly things do you see and where?"
Okay. I've been speaking about Hill in third person and I- I may want to switch to first person. Just because the game is addressing me in second person. It's not saying "your character," it's saying "you," um, and I maybe want to get more into that headspace for the next several days, um.
So "strange happenings occur around the ship" because we're on emergency power. "What unearthly things do you see and where?"
Um– yeah. I mean… I think maybe it starts– I guess it is the dead of night, but I think I– I stay pretty late in the garden just, like, exploring the plants and fungus and getting really close up. Like, maybe even taking out a little notebook and taking notes of little details I might want to incorporate into puppets or projects in the future.
And, um, I think I am there late and that's maybe when the power switches. And I think I don't notice at first because it's dark in there, since all of the light is being provided by the bioluminescent plants, there's no electrically powered lights in the garden at that time. And so I think maybe the first strange thing that I see is in there.
And I want to say it's like a silhouette. It is a person made of nothing. It is not a shadow. It's not a figure. It is just the silhouette. It is just the absence of matter, but in the shape of a person or a being.
And I think I don't know that the maintenance is happening. And so I don't know that we're on backup power. And so I don't know that this is going to be happening. And I think maybe the feeling, seeing it, like… is… weirdly positive? Um, I think, y'know– it sounds like a night terror demon, and I think that's probably how some people on the ship are experiencing similar occurrences. But I think for me, it just feels like part of this sort of revelation that I'm having in the garden, um that– after spending the whole day feeling like I missed out on connecting with the familiar things that brought me comfort, that I'm in now experiencing the unfamiliar and maybe even risky and dangerous things, um, but finding inspiration and excitement in that.
And so I think there is a moment where I see that silhouette and just feel my heart swell because my brain interprets it as, "Oh, they're here. They got here early." And then I think it flickers away and it's more like, oh, maybe I– maybe this is a side effect of waking up. Maybe I touched the wrong mushroom too many times."
I think maybe– I don't think that it was a hallucination based on the light. I think I know that it was actually there. That is maybe what makes me realise how late it has become and that I should– even though my sleep schedule is surely all fucked up from being in stasis, that I should go back to my chamber and at least try to lie down and get some rest.
And I think on the way back there, I may also see some similar things in the halls. And not all of them are in the shape of people, but it is that same kind of like just silhouette, just that- that weird absence. I don't think I see another person-shaped silhouette, but I think I see maybe some of the plants that I just saw, but,  like, replicated in the hallway. and other things from around the ship. The waffle maker or the ice cream machine or, you know, just a window or a chair or– it's- it's shapes from within the ship being projected to different places.
And I think that's when I maybe put the pieces together that this is– you know. We would have been prepped on this kind of thing before takeoff so that we didn't panic when it happened. But. I realise that there is an explanation for what I saw. But- but am still going to bed with that feeling of– that it was still meaningful for it to have happened the way that it did, and feeling both excited and- and comforted in a way.
GF: It is now… the dead of night. [Die clattering] "All of the isolation suites are empty. Feel free to use one."
I don't actually think I want to use an isolation suite. As much as I… I'm quite amenable to sensory isolation, but I don't feel peopled out yet. So I'm not going to use the isolation booth. So instead, I'm going to go back to my bunk and I'm going to go to sleep.
SATAH: Roll for the dead of night event. [Die clattering, hums a little tune] A six! This is from… midnight to… six am. So yeah, very much in the middle of the night, great. And a six is, "Your favorite major metropolitan center is being rendered in the pan-civic simulator, but no one is present. Will you go explore the empty simulated city? Will you be alone?"
And the pan-civic simulator– scrolling down there: "The simulator is a civic counterpart to the arboretum in that it replicates any location created by humanity, from major metropolitan cities to remote villages. The simulator contains all the same interactive features and safety measures as the arboretum," which are that… "Everything can be interacted with. Water will soak clothes, but dry instantly. Fire and electricity will feel warm, but won't burn. Anything ingestible will taste and smell real and doesn't have adverse effects." And "there will not be unprovoked attacks." And in fact, they will, anybody… any violence will make the potential target disappear. If I were to attack.
Okay. Favourite metropolitan center. And why isn't anyone there? [Chuckles] Oh, I mean, they're all at the holiday party, right?
Yeah, this is difficult. I think… mostly the thing that I'm struggling with here is, like… with the new neighbours departure, right– that we're going off to participate in a cultural exchange. It isn't clear to me that going home wouldn't be an option?
I guess it makes sense that maybe… I'm part of a group that is being sent explicitly to live here. Like, almost- almost forming an embassy type thing, you know? Or we're- we're- we're sending people to each other's planets to… settle in and, like, have open borders and whatever. And I need– I'm part of a group that is like, we've been invited to be- to establish habitats that are amenable to the continued life of human beings.
And so yeah, this is- this is a city that I'm unlikely to go back to. And I think, like, I– I chose to leave. That makes sense to me just with the setup of- of what we've got going on. And so I think I go and wander around, and I think that it's going to provoke nostalgia in me, but instead I just kind of turn corners and realise like, "Oh, I'm already a ghost here." Like, this already- this already isn't my home anymore.
And- and so I do– I explore a little bit– probably wander to stand outside of my apartment building and stare up at it. And I'm unsure whether, like– if I went in, what would it look like? Would it be my apartment? Or– when- when was this created? Would it be the people– would it look like the place before I moved in? Would it look like the place after I moved out?
But no one else is really there 'cause they're all at the holiday party, and the people who would know this place, my like friends… I think- I think just friends. I don't think I have any, like, family or very close connections here. Just thinking of, like, packing up and leaving. It's, like, me and a few friends who all just kind of went through this, like, major life events at the same time and were like, should we fucking go to Mars? [Laughing]
They'd all know. But they're all still asleep. They're all in stasis. So I walk around for a little bit. And then– on the way back from the party, I think. I go to the- I go to the party quite late, and I don't like it. I see this on the way back. And then I go to bed.
JAM: That was an exciting first day, I think. For me as a player, and for Hill. But okay, I will see you on day two.
GF: In a thousand years from now, people are still going to be having a little nap after having their little mashed potatoes. And I think that's great.
OUTRO
SATAH: This has been Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. To find where you can find the show, check out foliopod.carrd.co. Sign up as a paid member at patreon.com/foliopod to vote on games and participate in live streams or join for free to get access to the bonus speed with edited audio-only versions of the streams a couple of weeks after they happen and occasional other bonus stuff.
You can find the games, sci-fi stories and podcasts of Jam Edwards at rjmakes.com. That's RJ like raspberry jam makes dot com. They'd also like to plug the concept of touching physical objects during trying times.
You can find the music and musings of garbageface aka gnostic front aka Karol Orzechowki at everyoneisdoomed.org. He'd also like to plug supporting DIY music, supporting DIY spaces and doing what you can to look out for each other. The music in this series was improvised live by him while he played the game.
You can find the games and music of Satah– c'est moi– at gaygothvibes.online and follow me on Bluesky at posatahchips.gaygothvibes.online. I would like to co-sign my guest's plugs.
Next week, Jam and garbageface and I will continue our games of Immanence by Marcus Hose. Everything I mentioned here is linked in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening, and take care out there.