Owe My Soul to the Company Store is the Greatest Political Module Ever Made
The densest 27 pages I’ve read since Hegel.
Not by virtue of its breadth - five factions, sixteen major players - but because of the complexity of the relationships within. A corrupt government struggles to regulate a ruthless mining corporation, as two opposed labor groups and a smuggling ring complicate their escalating power grabs. This module took three cover-to-cover reads to sit comfortably in my head.
Sam Sorenson, the editor and layout lead, deserves at least a third of the credit. Fitting this setting into the “24ish pages” Luther wanted was a bonkers goal. It’s a miracle that the heaps of slightly-too-small text are legible, terse, and evocative throughout. He makes liberal use of familiar Mothership layout conventions (description-as-map, page color association, footer commentary) to encode more information than the space permits.
As an example: this is the only time the word “crabs” is used in the whole module. A lesser book would spell out what Luther trusts you to infer - that both words are slurs directed at the labor bodies, picking at their resemblance to horseshoe crabs.
The above eleven-and-a-half foot tall terror is included as a player class option, including random loadout and tool-arm tables. Allowing players to roll up a sentient forklift would be out of the question in most Mothership modules, but in this scenario strength alone cannot solve your problems. Monstrosities too can be oppressed.
These labor bodies are the ethical core of the scenario. Orbital white collar workers sold their brain scans to use as templates for pseudo-clone labor bodies. These faceless duplicates retain all memories and are built to purpose with a five year lifespan. As a cost saving measure, the bodies are often incapable of speech.
Lived experience proves them slaves. Corporate policy deems them property.
From the moment of their birth the crabs are saddled with the debt of their creation - a debt that canonically takes 100 times their lifespan to repay.1 Even if they somehow repaid it, where would they go? Their bodies do not fit through most doors.2
Observing how these forked personalities deviate by virtue of circumstances alone is consistently fascinating. One mind grows to be a desperate killer, while another stays fat and complacent on bribery spoils. Some find their clone revolting. Others exchange letters. It’s just so heartbreaking.
My honeyed words notwithstanding, you cannot go into this module expecting a satisfying read. The recent trend of literary pacing and novella-like reveals in the NSR space (The Isle, Crown of Salt) have spoiled us. The maps, encounter tables, and daily escalation timeline are only legible after a full read - it’s a forest of proper nouns and elided motivations otherwise. I have never read a TTRPG product that trusts the reader’s memory and intelligence this much.3
Though flattering, this is easily the module’s biggest stumble. The constraints Luther and Sam go to herculean lengths to circumvent are self imposed by the page count. I pray this zine sells like hotcakes, because a Melsonia-stye second edition hardcover with a smidge higher word count and a doubled page count would be in GOAT contention. I’m particularly wishing for:
- A larger room-by-room map of both halves of the station.
- Expanded random encounters (“A member of the reading group takes bolt cutters to a lock” - what lock? Why?)
- The evergreen improvements — fewer typos and more of Locheil’s art.
Like Tide World of Mani, this module cares for the human soul. Its relationship map depicts individuals, not organizations. Loyalties shift day by day. Some villains have hearts, some civilians do not. The world changes too fast for your players to control. It’s messy in an all too familiar way.
The monsters wear little hats.
It helps them remember why they’re more than monsters.
$8 Digial, $15 Physical. Peak transhumanist horror.
Please buy it, I need that hypothetical hardcover so bad, pleeeeease pls pls pls I love you plEAse~
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This, too, is implied but unstated. 1,000,000cr debt, 5cr daily pay. The Concern undoubtedly touts the substantial discount cloned workers receive off their body’s 2.5mcr market price.↩
Both the strength and practical difficulties of the labor bodies make me a touch concerned about permitting them as a player class in a multi-module campaign, however. Another Bug Hunt isn’t as appealing if one player can rip a Carc in half barehanded. I also foresee a lot of ‘centaur problems’.↩
The adoration I hold for this brevity is slowly creating a complimentary distaste for modules that over explain their premise. Returning to Apocalypse Keys after this is going to be rough. There is a place for accessibility in the hobby, and that place is no longer on my shelf. I crave confident, inscrutable art.↩