Firefly Alice- The Future Ain't What It Used To Be

There used to be a type of book called scientific-fiction that talked about how things were going to be someday. We'd leave Earth and find space aliens that spoke our lingo, governments would be all shiny an' bending over to give everybody all the happy freedom they could handle, nobody'd ever be in need of anything and space girls would be willin'. If anyone was dumb enough to try to write that stuff now, they'd be laughed at something fierce. Aren't any space aliens, we left Earth a couple centuries before we were ready because we screwed Earth up too much and most people know more about hitching mules to plows than they do spaceships. The government fought a war on the citizens to make sure they didn't think they had much of any freedom left and, well, my side disagreed. I ended up working behind enemy lines, training resistance fighters or being a guerilla. Not to brag, but there's lots of people that tried to stop me and I'm here while they's in the hereafter. Still, there was a lot of them and not too many of us, and they had almost all the ships and factories and hover tanks and so we gave up at Hera. The Alliance talked about how everyone was equal and there’d be no repercussions for the Indies, but they lied. The Rim started getting governed, which somehow always involves squeezing money out of poor folk. The Browncoats tended to get into trouble and get fines until they were forced to go into indentured servitude, the fancy name for five or seven years of slavery. Those with some luck or a little coin went further out on the Rim and more than a few decided that breaking the laws of the people that shot at you a while back was something they could do and still sleep at night. Among them, me.

Now for most of us, the war ended six years ago, when we got out of the POW camps and went home. I went home to my village and found my wife and daughter had died in a camp. Them responsible stayed in the government and were making their way up the ladder. I worked my way through them and did things, things worse than I did in the war. Don't talk about it none. After debts got paid, I went off and was a Dust Devil for a while, either a freedom fighter or a terrorist, depending on what side you were on. Things happened and I walked away from that. Seems that my wartime skills were useful to certain type of person so I drifted into taking and ending and settling disputes. Funny thing is, I started to get tired of doin' the things I was doin' and dealing with those I had to deal with. Last job was to find who was stealing from a smuggler; turned out someone took care of a untrustworthy smuggler first. Was me, though, that found his secret stash, enough bearer bonds to fill a small bag. Way I figure it, the 'verse hands you a bag like that, you should use it. Turns out that most bad guys will forgive you if you give them money. The others see things your way after you end a few of the holdouts. There's some places I'm not welcome and some people I'll avoid for a long time but I'm as free as a former Browncoat/freedom fighter/hired gun/troubleshooter can be. So, yeah, I look over my shoulder. A lot.

So now I own and captain a tramp freighter, a Firefly (cheap and ugly but it'll keep in the sky for a while yet). Some of what I do is running small shipments from place to place, usually places that don’t get a lot of traffic from big ships. Small settlements or habitats. I’ll also take on the occasional passenger. From time to time, I’ll do charity work; don't know much about karma but figure it might be good to bank some for a change. Charity work helps keep me under the radar and helps make me useful contacts. I also smuggle a lot, pretty much all the time, and people love to get stuff they need and screw the taxman over at the same time. Anyway, our boat is a welcome sight most everywhere we go, though we like a low profile. One coin out of three from my profits goes to some charity, whether bona-fide Shepherd orders or civic groups run by people that I smuggle for. I do as much good as I can, which I think is mighty respectable, but bein' good is kinda dull, truth be told. Caught myself getting involved in other people's messes partly ta help and partly ta feel that old excitement. Kind of worries me a tetch; having a boat and my urges ta be a hero like Batman an' his sidekick Robbin' Hood could lead ta more messes than I can handle. Still, harder to hit a moving target.


Firefly: Alice is a game set in the Firefly/Serenity universe around the time of the series and before the movie. It's part space opera and part horse opera with humor thrown in. Think Star Wars if Han shot Luke and Jabba the Hutt was Tony Soprano. Or maybe Star Trek if Scotty took out the command crew (“Och, those wee transporter gremlins!”) and hooked up with Uhura. There's lawbreaking and violence and (Chinese) swearing, but all with the best intentions. I'm looking for a diverse crew of interesting characters and players wanting to be in a high-posting game. The site's just been put together today, so it's not pretty but has a bit to look at.