Underrail: Expedition is releasing on July 22nd. Which of the expansion's features are you most excited about?

Not any feature in particular, but I'm very excited to see how people experience the new content as a whole. New mechanics and goodies aside, we put a lot of work in improving the quality of the content itself - the overall world design, dungeon design, dialogs, etc, so I hope that it bears fruit and that the players recognize it. Also, due to how the campaign is structured, players will have a lot of freedom on how and in what order they approach it. Will they side with this or that faction or no faction, will they rush into dungeons, wage war on the natives or maybe just explore the waters on their jet ski? It will be a lot of fun to watch people play the game on the internet.

The original development schedule for Expedition was around six months long, with the expansion slated for a 2017 release. What made you decide to extend development? Was it an ongoing process of adding new elements, or did you underestimate the time it would take to realize your original ideas?

A bit of everything. The project was overly ambitious to begin with and as we started fleshing out all the things we wanted to implement it turned out it'd take a lot more time to implement them properly. At this time we began raising the standards of the content that was being produced so zones started coming with more custom visual pieces, mechanics, lore, etc so it took a lot more time to make them than we originally anticipated.

Also we did a lot of work on the base game, some of which we considered prerequisite to the expansion itself - such as the water areas that connect Underrail and Black Sea. And now that we had those areas, we had to fill them with some content and quests and have this or that faction have its presence there and add narrative elements to support/recognize this… and so forth. We also added new creatures to the base game, fleshed out the difficulty levels, added the global map, which in turn required us to make the game (more) geographically consistent, which required adding more areas… you get the picture by now.

And also, sometimes we just get a cool idea how we can spice up some part of the game and we can't help but work it in, even though we are fully aware that we're being subject to feature creep. In the end I think that, despite waiting, you guys will be the end beneficiaries of our questionable project management.

Are there any major changes in terms of quest design in Expedition? Can we expect more choice and consequence than the base game, or is it more combat-focused?

Those are not mutually exclusive. The game will be as combat-focused as ever and this is never going to change. However, we did improve on C&C aspect of the content as well and also gave the player a lot of freedom on how they will approach the content. They can take an active part in the workings of one of the factions of the Black Sea (expedition or pirates, but not natives) and their conflicts, resolve certain events in favour of one or the other or just keep to themselves and let the factions go at it themselves.

Why did you choose to develop a mid-game instead of post-game expansion? Was it hard to balance it with the content of the base game (ie, ensuring players don't end up with overpowered characters in the endgame)?

It was probably a mistake. If we just made Expedition as a separate stand-alone campaign, I think we could have made it even bigger and saved up a year of development or so. We'd also be free from a lot of lacklustre design and mechanical constraints that are a result of having to keep the entire game world consistent. Aside from improving the difficulty spectrum during the development of the expansion itself, we didn't really do any balancing in that regard, so it wasn't hard at all. We might, at some point, go back to DC and up the challenge there for the playthroughs that went through the DLC. It will be development time well spent, since it's everyone's favourite part of the game.​

We’re happy to announce that The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut will be arriving digitally on Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass (PC and Xbox), and PlayStation 4 on August 27!

If you already own the game on PC when the Director’s Cut arrives, you’ll receive the update for free with the game’s release on August 27, and it will show up as a new product in your games library listed as The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut.

For the digital Director’s Cut we’re making the choice for new purchasers much clearer with new Standard and Deluxe Edition. Because the Director's Cut is a free upgrade for current owners, anyone who owns the base game will receive the Director’s Cut Standard, and those who own a current license for the Premium, Platinum, or Ultimate versions will be granted the Deluxe Edition. For our backers who may have retrieved digital rewards through CrowdOx before, you will be receiving The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut Deluxe Edition and all your digital items will now be tied to your Steam/GOG accounts.

A reminder for Mac & Linux users: your Steam and GOG keys are already available via CrowdOx if you haven’t redeemed them yet. The keys are universal, meaning they work with whichever system you are running Steam/GOG on (Windows, Mac, Linux). There are no Mac- or Linux-specific keys needed.

Digital versions are available to pre-order/wishlist today on Steam and GOG, and for the physical version you can pre-order at Amazon and Gamestop, as well as other regional shops in the coming weeks. Head over to our updated The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut page on the inXile website for links.

We are incredibly grateful for your backing of the game, for your feedback, and (especially for our Mac & Linux backers) your patience.

We’re truly lucky to have been able to pour these additional months of work into a product we love, to have the ability to bring in these improvements and new content, and we’re looking forward to getting the Director’s Cut into your hands in under two short months!

Thanks from all of us here at inXile!
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Hi guys,

In preparation of the expansion release, we're releasing a new version of the base game (on which the current testing version is running on) to make sure that no major breaking bugs have been introduced.

To play experimental branch on Steam, you right click the game in your library and go to "Betas" tab. To do so on GOG, you select the game and choose More->Settings. Make sure you don't override all your live version saves just in case something goes horribly wrong.

Here are the patch notes:

General

• Added the ability to speed up the game while out of combat
• Added achievements to the GOG Galaxy version

Nice Things

• Containers that you opened once will now have darker labels
• Organic enemies that die while burning will now be smoking and appear charred
• HE grenades and some other explosions will leave temporary marks on the ground
• Gas clouds will now fade in/out
• New barrels

That's it. Let us know how you like the changes.
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The Dark Crystal Games team that never leaves its office is once again with you, and we have some news.

The first one: we are forced to postpone the early access game release (we’ll tell you a bit later why).

The second one: we are releasing a restricted access version of the game for alpha backers on Steam. And if you are an alpha backer, then perhaps the access key for the alpha version is making it to your email inbox right now, and the alpha build itself is being uploaded to Steam!

[...] “Alpha”, that is coming out in the next couple of hours, is an unfinished version of the game. The content of the first official version of Encased is very limited, all that the game consists of, including graphic assets, render, role-playing system, sound, interface, plot, et c. is in the non-final state and will be finalized by release date.

The alpha version of Encased is not intended for public display and sale, and is distributed exclusively for kickstarter-backers. But what is waiting for you in this “alpha”? An early version of the character editor, several large locations and quests, a lot (really, a lot!) of loot. As well as the opportunity to fry a cockroach, climb into the ventilation, make a bat with nails and look at the gloomy sands of the Dome, covered with fog.

In fact, this closed alpha is the first official release for us as a team. And we, like you, want this game to be of high quality, interesting and exciting, and hope that the adventures under the Dome will be remembered by everyone who happened to get into it.

Aside from the delay, our plans remain the same: shortly after the alpha, we will release the beta, which will be available to a much larger number of players. After eliminating bugs and polishing the content, the long-awaited EA-version will be released.

We cannot announce the release date yet, but be sure that this will happen soon enough. The Spire accepts shipments, the White Wing examines relics, the team works, and Encased moves towards the early access.
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Naturally, this deterministic approach has a huge influence on mission design. As everything is hand-placed and nothing in terms of the mechanics is random, Druidstone has to rely on a number of key measures to make sure that the player isn’t able to plan a successful route to victory from the very first turn. Some of them work, some are questionable, and many are quite annoying.

What works well are some of the abilities available to monsters, which can make the course of battle somewhat unpredictable, and which also make you consider your progress through a mission. These include wraiths that can resurrect dead enemies as skeletons an infinite number of times, mage-killing spiders that can steal your spells for a while, or an assortment of foes with healing spells. Obviously there’s more, and they are too many to list, since the majority of enemies have some unique quirk that gives them a specific and characteristic role on the battlefield.

Another aspect which I’d consider well done is the general way maps are structured. I’ve seen “full deterministic” tactics games before that were more or less glorified puzzlers, with only one obvious/optimal way of getting through each encounter. And while some levels in Druidstone also fall for this trap, most of them are broad or open enough to invite multiple ways of approach.

[...] As for the annoying bits, there’s a lot to talk about here. Let’s start with enemy reinforcements. I don’t think there’s any level in the entire game that doesn't have them, and they are always used in a very cheap and irritating manner.

Reinforcements are typically announced one turn in advance by dropping “teleporter beacons” on certain squares. These are pre-placed, they can spawn at any moment and in any square (including right on top of your party), and you have absolutely no way of telling when, where and what they will spawn. A reasonable approach would be to adapt the spawning points to the map design somehow – like make skeletons rise out of graves or have wolves run out of dens. But Druidstone disagrees, and it keeps deep striking seemingly random enemies into seemingly random places at seemingly random intervals, while you are left scratching your head, thinking who the hell thought this was a good idea. I dare say this feature is bad from the very start and never becomes less bad. At some point you kind of learn to live with them – because they become a simple fact of life, like mosquitoes, cars freezing in the winter and AIDS – but much like the doomsday timers, eventually they grow really old, and the only reaction they get from you is “not this crap again”.

However, Druidstone likes its monster deep strikes so much that you need to watch out not only for the telegraphed ones. Monster death squads can also spawn out of nowhere on top of your party unannounced, though fortunately this doesn’t happen as often.

The unannounced monster spawns are a part of Druidstone’s number one most annoying aspect. The “gotcha!” moments. This game really, really loves to pull absolute nonsense out of its posterior, rub it all over your face and strut around, yelling “I totally fooled you!” In my experience, triggering a gotcha usually results in immediate turn rewind or even a restart of a level, because more often than not, it puts you up against a battlefield reshuffle that makes most of what you’ve done until that point moot. Typically, the gotchas are of a “bait-and-switch” variety, where accomplishing an intermediate objective suddenly unleashes all hell, in a way that you could have never predicted.

My absolutely favourite example of the above is a big bossfight against the avatar of a god of fire. The avatar is basically a time bomb – after X turns, it will explode and collapse the dungeon. Your primary objective is to escape by unlocking the exit and leading all your characters to it. But there’s also an optional objective to kill the big boss. Since he has a lot of health and quite the numerous entourage of goons, with more that keep spawning, a reasonable person would assume that killing the boss is a challenging way of winning early. Imagine my surprise when vanquishing the wicked foe made one of my characters yell (literally), “oh no, the dungeon is going to collapse anyway!” and set the countdown even lower than it was before. Needless to say, my heroes were too far away from the exit at that point. Truly, this was the gotcha of the freaking century.

This is just one example, and while it might be the biggest one barring the final boss (and I’m not gonna discuss that one), smaller ones are no less annoying. Even further, they are so plentiful that they might even form the core of Druidstone’s difficulty, and that, dear reader, is not very good at all.

That’s because not all levels stoop to this kind of ludicrous and downright unfair design. Sometimes the game does have you face a properly outlined challenge that keeps chipping away at you through attrition and clever enemy composition and placement. In times like these, Druidstone can be loads of fun, and it gets your noggin joggin’ when you analyse your every option multiple moves into the future to escape from a perilous situation. One of my favourite levels that reflects this perfectly is a mission where you have to break through an army of the undead guarding the entrance to an ancient temple, all the while protecting another weak character from harm. The map is big, it gives you a number of paths to consider, it mixes strong dark knights with a horde of cannon fodder skeletons, and also drops a few of the necromantic wraiths along the way. No gotchas, no nonsense, pure planning and attrition.

Unfortunately, just when you think you’re starting to have fun, Druidstone goes out of its way to kick you in the balls with something stupid again. And while in the final tally I’d say that the fun-to-bullshit ratio is roughly 50/50, bullshit is much more aggravating by its very nature.​

PARIS, FRANCE – June 25, 2019 – French independent developer Tactical Adventures announced today its latest project, tactical role-playing game Solasta: Crown of the Magister, is coming to Steam. Solasta: Crown of the Magister embraces the ruleset of the world’s greatest role-playing game where a player’s choice dynamically changes the adventure. The journey begins with creating a team of four explorers, selecting their race, class, background story, abilities and roll for abilities and personal stats. Players will journey through the mystical realms of Solasta, unravelling a story that spans multiple worlds.

The dynamic and mysterious world of Solasta features brand new elements of verticality, allowing players to use their surroundings as an element of strategy. Position ranged characters on high vantage points or send your thief down into shafts and caverns to scope out what’s ahead. Utilize light as a tool to explore the depths and hollows of dungeons or use it as a weapon against the creatures of the dark. Solasta is a unique team-based adventure where each character plays a critical role in the campaign and can be a hero. Players must take advantage of each character’s strengths and weaknesses if they are to succeed.

Players will have the opportunity to get in on the adventure before it even starts when Tactical Adventures launches its Kickstarter campaign at the end of summer. Players will be able to back Solasta: Crown of the Magister on Kickstarter and link arms with the developers, joining the Solasta community and being rewarded for doing so!

“Tactical Adventures is a small team comprised of Tabletop gamers, many of whom have been playing pen and paper games as well as D&D videogames for over 30 years,” says Mathieu Girard, founder of Tactical Adventures and Creative Director of the game. “We have always dreamed of creating our own game, so we set out to create Solasta, taking the best elements of our favourite games and enhancing and building upon them. Additionally, we have added new features such as light, verticality, team-based adventure, dice rolls, etc. We are using the actual rulesets from Tabletop games to finally bridge the gap between Pen and Paper and videogames.”

Solasta: Crown of the Magister Features:

• Verticality: Solasta is a three-dimensional world rather than a series of flat maps. Locations can be explored by climbing walls, flying, teleporting, crawling through tunnels, finding secret passages, or falling through unstable ground, and allow the player to use the environment to take on encounters in multiple different ways.
• Team Based Adventure: Players will have many options to choose races, classes, backgrounds, and can even roll for stats as they create their party. All members are essential - together you will adventure through Solasta as a group, where you must work together in pursuit of your quest.
• Tactical CRPG: Each encounter can be handled in multiple ways. Will you use the high ground to strike your enemies from above as a Darkweaver Rogue, or shove your enemies into deep chasms as a Mountaineer Fighter? Your choices alone will determine the destiny of your party.
• Light: Light will not only help to see your surroundings as you explore deep underground or in a dungeon. It can also be used as a weapon against dragons and creatures you encounter along your journey. Careful, though - light can also give away your position.
• Created by Tabletop Players: Tactical Adventures is a team of highly experienced Tabletop players and veteran game developers who are passionate about the genre, striving to create the best Tactical RPG videogame.
• Kickstarter: Tactical Adventures is giving players the opportunity to be heard by joining the community and backing Solasta on Kickstarter. The campaign will feature an amazing tiered reward system and the team is already working on a demo of the game.

Solasta: Crown of the Magister will be available to support and back on Kickstarter soon. Media interested in learning more about Tactical Adventures and Solasta: Crown of the Magister should email Premier Communications (TacticalAdventures@premiercomms.com).
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Hi guys,

We've been wrapping the DLC up and the development is finished now. We're moving into the final stages of testing. First we'll do some internal testing on the new version before releasing it to our testers (we're accepting additional testers now, so if you're interested apply here) and then finally releasing it for everybody on July 22nd 2019.

Sometime between now and the release, there will also be a new experimental version of the game (that will be pushed to the main branch before release).

Thank you all very much for being patient with us and I hope you'll find it worth the wait.

Cheers.​

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Three years ago, I decided to try my hand at game development. Prior to that, I had graduated from university with a Multimedia degree which was more or less useless. It taught me a few things, but in hindsight I probably could have just googled most of it.

That said, my end results were mediocre at best as I was just too preoccupied with gaming. After all, I've been gaming all my life, I was about 6 or 7 when my parents bought me a gameboy to play Pokemon, since I had traded away all my tuckshop money at school for Pokemon cards. This was only the start though, my first foray into PC gaming was Age of Empires which I fished out of a cereal box. Cereal has never quite been the same since then. I remember spending hours in the scenario editor creating "spectacular cities" which were really just a load of houses arranged on a square grid and then I remember having my childlike mind break down when my beautiful walls were destroyed by catapults.

Then when I was about 12, my parents finally bought me an Xbox and through a friend I got my hands on a little game called Morrowind. I honestly didn't know what I had gotten my hands on at the time. However, I had also been simultaneously playing Runescape, spending my days in world 2 trading rares, hoping to one day get a party hat and grinding it out on mudcrabs through the scorching Australian summers. Then one day, my account got hacked, I lost my santa hats, I cried and then I quit in a fit of rage.

I then set my sights back on the Xbox and I decided to finally delve into Morrowind. Prior to that, I had never truly played a game like Morrowind before let alone held an Xbox controller in my hand. The trip from Seyda Neen to Balmora felt like the journey from the Shire to Mount Doom as I was so uncoordinated that I couldn't even figure out how to navigate with the map. I also had a penchant for stealing from shops and then promptly getting killed by guards.

I played Morrowind alone for nearly a whole year. Morrowind left a lingering desire in me for more, so I played most of the games that Bethesda released after that and I delved into modding when Fallout 3 came out. I made a few private mods and then gave up on them and repeated this cycle for New Vegas and Skyrim.

After Skyrim, I went into a lull, I just couldn't find a game like Morrowind again. I also found myself slowing becoming detached from gaming and not finishing games anymore. I don't quite remember how but I eventually found myself playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown and when I discovered what "Ironman Mode" was, it reinvigorated me. I'm not sure what the exact connection was, but you could probably say it was the challenge that reminded me of my Morrowind days. XCOM then became the gateway that led me into digging up all the classic games and then I eventually hit Battle Brothers. To this day, I still haven't found a game that handles turn-based melee combat better than BB.

But I digress, all I really wanted to say is that I truly love gaming and it's a shame that the industry is changing too much for my own tastes. That is the main reason why I got into game development, I just want to do my part to better gaming for the future.

When the store page first went live, I mentioned that I was finally at the starting line. In hindsight, I was wrong. Only now, am I truly at the starting line, prior to that you could say I was just warming up.
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You take on the role of a Troubleshooter: someone whose job is to deal with any problems in Alpha Complex that may require a more personal touch than Friend Computers many drones and servo-arms are able to provide. In our demo, this meant investigating why one of the maintenance bots in a sub-basement level was behaving oddly.

It turned out that a group of Traitors - the designation given to anyone in the Alpha Complex facility that does not follow the rules or remain Happy™ - had sealed off a few rooms in the sub-basement to use as their personal LARP-ing grounds (they'd even reprogrammed security bots to shout "Lightning Bolt!" as they fire their lasers), and it was up to us and our three crew members to clear them out.

Combat in Paranoia is real-time, but you can pause the action whenever you like for as long as you want to give your squad of four commands, sending them to cover, attacking specific enemies or making use of their unique specializations. For example, while your Cleanliness Officer might be able to use disinfecting chemical to deal acid damage, or your Happiness Officer (basically the logical and horrifying extrapolation of Big Pharma and Social Media) could buff your team with psychotropic drugs.

What's interesting is that rather than failing and restarting a mission upon death with a different skill loadout, HiM features a unique take on permadeath. Friend Computer understands that accidents happen, and as such has issued Troubleshooters with a bank of clones that are activated upon a unit's accidental termination (or an intentional one, depending on your actions). What's interesting is that each time you activate a clone, you're able to re-spec your skills and attribute points, effectively creating a new character every time you die. Friend Computer only provides six clones that can be re-spec'd, though, so you'll have to choose wisely if you don't want to get stuck with a skill set you don't want. I'm told, however, that there may be a certain geneticist somewhere in Alpha Complex that could help with that - if you've got funds and are willing to risk the demerits...

Of course, it wouldn't be called "Paranoia" without good reason. While your team members may be under your control during combat and missions, they are very much not your team members. Even though your jobs will take you into areas where Friend Computer's scanners don't work, that doesn't mean your team members won't inform Friend Computer of any misdeeds you commit while on a mission. For example, when we found ourselves at a locked door, our tech expert suggested that I hack a nearby vending machine to gain access to the local network and unlock the door. It was a good idea, so I did - and the little weasel ratted me out as soon as we got back upstairs, which caused my Treason Level (a percent rating system that every citizen has indicating how concerned Friend Computer is with their Happiness™) to increase and change my citizen rating from Questionable to Suspicious.

We didn't see much of Alpha Complex beyond the couple of floors we visited, but the little bit of the world it showed us did a great job playing with this notion of omnipotence and mistrust, and how you have to deal with it. Wherever your character goes, security cameras track your every move - even the Friend Computer icon at the top of the screen (it lets you know when you're in view of its cameras) follows the motion of your mouse cursor with eerie, silent malice.

Though I only experienced a small portion Paranoia's world, I was immediately hooked by its witty take on the "robots gone awry" genre, and can't wait to see how my exploits play out depending on my choices. Will I splinter off from the other citizens to join a secret society and overthrow FC? Or will I remain a steadfast and Happy™ agent of Friend Computer's ruthlessly intelligent design? Happiness may be mandatory, but participation is entirely voluntary - and I'll gladly be throwing on my read overalls later this year.
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Game Informer
IGN
PCWorld
Rock Paper Shotgun
Screen Rant
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A Postcard Arrives
E3 is upon us—that special time of year when you learn about new games, or more about the games you’re most excitedly waiting for. We’re happy to be delivering some of the latter, with a new, pre-Alpha look at Wasteland 3 from an old pal and returning character from Wasteland 2. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

In addition to the return of Scotchmo and an extended look at the post-nuclear landscape of Colorado, we’re announcing a new launch window of Spring 2020. That’s down to the fact that, thanks to our relationship with Microsoft, we’re able to hire more staff and spend more time realizing our vision for Wasteland 3. All in all it means a little more time to get things right and deliver the experience we want, and the one we know you expect.

We also have new screenshots to share over on our Wasteland 3 page on the inXile site so you can get a closer look at some of locations glimpsed at in the video.

Alpha, Early Access and Release
We’re pleased to announce two more release windows; ones we’re asked about almost as often as when the game itself is coming out.

Our backer Alpha will arrive August, 2019 to those who pledged in the First Access and higher tiers. Early Access (sometimes referred to as Beta) will be arriving in late Fall, 2019, and is for all backer tiers with the exception of the Correspondent tier.

The Alpha will be a first opportunity to play around with many of the game’s different systems in a guided experience, with the Early Access providing a bigger chunk of the game to check out. In both cases, they’ll be your opportunity to provide us with feedback that we can use to help make the final game that much better for everyone.

As mentioned above—but it bears repeating—our launch target for the full game release is now Spring 2020.

One Last Treat
Finally, we wanted to leave you with one last treat. We’re happy we were able to reveal Scotchmo’s triumphant return in the E3 trailer, and wanted to share a look at how we’re bringing Scotchmo back for Wasteland 3. show how the character originally evolved in Wasteland 2, the iteration work he went through in early production, and finally an extended video snippet of a player conversation with him. Again, please remember that everything you see, from graphics to audio to UI, are all pre-Alpha.

And here’s an extended look at the model, animation, and VO for Scotchmo. The dialog UI is very much temp in this video, but provides an example of the type of dialog options you might see in the final game. Our artists want to reiterate that this is of course an early look with temp UI, in-progress lighting, model, and everything else. However, we'd still love to hear your feedback!

Thank you again for your backing and support of the game. We couldn’t have gotten this far without you. We’ll see you again soon with some more Wasteland 3 goodies, including drill-downs on some of the core gameplay pillars and systems. Stay tuned!
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News from the front:

- Progress on the portraits and animations is still slow. Meet generic combat NPC 05 and 06. The helmets and goggles reflect the in-game headgear models. Ivan finished tweaking the rifles animations, going over the pistol animations now (over 200 animations).

- Programming and design are right on schedule, which is a lot more important as I'd rather wait for portraits and animations than for the programming tasks to be completed.

- Scott and I are working on dialogues for the side quests; I hope to have all the quests and dialogues for the Pit ready by the end of the month. Random snippets:

* * *

“What can I get you?” The bartender has spotted you looking over the assortment of unlabeled, plastic gallon jugs, each with its own unappealing liquid in some shade of brown. “We got Gutwarmer, Rat Poison, High Voltage, Firewater, and Absolution. Special on the Rat Poison right now, every third round is free for as long as you're able to drink it.”

* * *
Three men stand silently about a portable heater, the Ship equivalent of the frontier campfire, minus the good cheer.

“Do you have it?” the man in charge says in a voice hoarse and low. The left side of his face is disfigured with gruesome, saucer-sized scars, like vicious sucker marks. From one of these rippled craters, the angry orange light of an ocular implant is doing duty for a missing eye. You suppress a shudder thinking about the tentacle that must have delivered that kiss. Everyone’s heard the stories, of course, but you felt better telling yourself they were exaggerated.

1. Continue.

Chance hurriedly yanks a dusty old control module from his belt bag and passes it to Scarface. The Granger glances down at it, no more than a quick take, then tosses it to ground.

“What’s the deal?” asks Chance, his righteous indignation more than slightly overplayed. “You wanted a tower control module, I brought you a tower control module. Now where’s my money? I got shit to do.” He cuts his eyes at you, both in a naked appeal for support and to give himself a break from looking at his mark.

Scarface isn’t looking at Chance anymore, though. His implant is giving you a hard stare, and you’re guessing it’s not interested in your haircut. Judging by the design, it’s military hardware, already locked in and analyzing its target.

1. “The money, like he said. Best if you don't make us ask again.”
2. “What if I can get this module for you?”
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