Whispers

A live-action role-playing game for 10 players.

Questions to Brandon at starshipedsel@gmail.com

Through alien eyes, you gaze at the wonder that is Proxima Centauri 4c, also known as Prometheus. For now. 

You remember the day you first heard the news: a planet had been found that had macroscopic life. More, it had a lush, vibrant biosphere and sentient aliens! You fought for the chance to join the ExoScience Project and explore the mysteries of this new world, and your striving was succcessful. Earth is old, overpopulated, and exhausted; it has no secrets left to uncover. 

The first expeditions met with tragedy: Prometheus proved to be utterly poisonous and populated with aggressive animal life. But the aliens, the Me'ro (pronounced "may-row", with a tiny stop between the syllables), proved to be the solution. Hybrid bodies were grown from your genetic material spliced into Me'ro clones; married to the brain-mapping technology called the Link, they enable you to walk through the no-longer-hostile landscape in a your own alien body, while your human form lies safely asleep behind walls. 

You hoped for novelty; you encountered diversity and strangeness far beyond expectation. You did not expect it to be so beautiful. 

For the better part of two years you have immersed yourself in the wonder and mystery that is Prometheus. It proved to be a treasure beyond reckoning, both in scientific data and enchantment. And then disaster struck.

A probe had found niobium, the rarest of the elements needed for the power generators that feed the great mass of people on Earth. And it was not a small find, oh no: it was everywhere. Its recovery would mean a better life for billions on Earth, and the utter destruction of Prometheus's biosphere. 

The Project fought bitterly to stave off any mineral extraction. For a while they prevailed, but it was a delaying action at best, and recently you received word of Earth's final decision. Soon huge robotic mining factories will arrive and strip-mine what you have come to think of as your paradise.  You had planned to make Prometheus your career. You were supposed to have ten years; you got two. 

The last months have been very hard. Everyone has been under great stress, doing as much work as possible before time is up, coping as best you can and trying not to dwell on what will soon be gone. 

For it is not merely knowledge and beauty that will be destroyed, but community as well. For nearly two years you have lived and worked crammed together with some of the best minds you know, all passionately engaged in the same quest for understanding. Soon you will scatter to the four winds. 

When all is said and done, who will understand what you had and lost here? Only these few. No one who has not experienced Prometheus through alien senses can possibly know what this place meant. 

Preserve your memories, the poet has said, they're all that's left you. 

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Whispers is a game about loss, community, and revelation; about things unsaid; and about the joy of belonging and the pain of parting. 

Here are some notes about the game to help you prepare.