Sightseer

The ACE Tourism Board is offering an exciting job opportunity for a small, select group of people. Chosen applicants will film on location for an upcoming ad campaign celebrating the best sights Ace’s World has to offer. Participants will receive all necessary training for handling film equipment, free of charge. If you’re looking to develop your professional skills in media, marketing or personal protection, this could be the job for you! Please submit an application to Chief Marketing Executive Nine Bold and await further instruction.

[Disclaimer: All freelance work undertaken on behalf of ACE is done at the individual’s own risk. ACE guarantees no compensation for any injuries sustained from, e.g., wildlife, plantlife, environmental hazards, malfunctioning equipment, or bandits.]

• Beloved Fortress - Phil
• Threes Charmed - James
• Head Empty - Cameron

[Folks, it takes me more mental energy to trim Mission Reports down to bullet points than it does to do a full write-up. Forgive me.]

Beloved Fortress, Head Empty and Threes Charmed meet Nine Bold at ACE Soundstage 2 at the crack of dawn. She briefs them on their task: to visit and film on location at a select list of attractions, with the aim of building a more wholesome, family-friendly image for Ace's World and its stagnating tourism trade. After suffering through a load of marketing buzzwords and practicing their ability to set a good scene using some virtual actors, the party leave with PIXIE, a camera on a mobile robotic rig.

Their first stop is the historic Mount First Shot, said to be the location of the very first gunshot fired on Ace's World. After some dramatic posing for the camera and some friendly fire mishaps, the party are suddenly set upon by a pack of clicky prairie mutts. They defend themselves successfully and Beloved Fortress investigates the physiology of the beasts before they move onwards to the next location: the Big Blast Bonanza Shooting Range.

There, the group tackle a few waves of jerky animatronic razormonkeys while PIXIE films. After dealing with some blazermonkey variants (with flamethrowers strapped to them) and finding that the animatronics are not bound to any particular track and can continue to trundle out of the shooting range and into the wilderness, Threes Charmed asks a member of staff if they could perhaps reduce the number of enemies in the third and final wave, a mob of animatronic bandits.

With footage of the group “having fun” obtained and the morning almost over, the group progresses to The Largest Playing Card in the Galaxy, where they encounter Odds Plain, a down-on-their-luck Chirrid in ACE uniform who has been recruited to steady the card each time the wind blows dangerously strongly. The filming of an admittedly quite boring attraction is livened up when the card spontaneously ignites, and Odds Plain flees. The group elects to cut their losses and move on.

Threes Charmed contacts Nine Bold to tell her about the fire incident, and also to voice his concerns about the state of tourist attractions on Ace's World. She assures him that the next item on the list will be much better: Clubs' Club, an upmarket gambling establishment operated by Clubs Chance. Unfortunately, entry to Clubs' Club depends upon adherence to a strict and bizarre etiquette, enforced by two bouncers. After a lot of guesswork, negotiation and being batted around by the bouncers, the group finally makes it inside.

Unfortunately, their filming of an odd memory-based card game they witness inside is interrupted when security bots descend upon them and they are accused of using their camera to cheat. Beloved Fortress and Head Empty are taken to a detainment cell; Threes Charmed despairs. Fortunately, the group gains an audience with the eccentric Clubs Chance, whom they convince to let the group go free.

Three next attraction, Keterpark Amusements, is not nearly as snazzy as Clubs' Club. They find several tacky rides, including one that Beloved Fortress takes particular issue with: a Hive IV themed rapids ride featuring both native and imported creatures dressed up and modified to fit the owner's idea of what a Hive IV creature might look like.

Head Empty agrees to ignore every red flag pointing towards the inevitable, and boards the Wheel of Fortune, a Ferris wheel themed after Ace's World. Surprising nobody, the ride falls apart and Head Empty plummets to the ground. Meanwhile, Threes Charmed races after the fleeing ride operator, identifying them as Odds Plain, the employee formerly stationed at the Largest Playing Card. Threes Charmed interrogates Odds Plain but finds little to suggest they are to blame for either incident.

The final stop on the list is 5N 36W, a bandit settlement. Nine Bold's vision for this ad campaign included a touching scene where the group would befriend the resident bandits, proving once and for all that Ace's World truly isn't a hellhole of violence and criminality that any sane tourist should avoid.

To the group's credit, violence does not break out immediately. Beloved Fortress and Head Empty explain their task to the bandits at 5N 36W, and things seem to be going okay… that is, until one bandit, Big Blind, identifies Threes Charmed as her nemesis, and PIXIE begins spouting recorded lines about “stupid targets” and “taking out some of the bandits”.

When an offended bandit tries to smash PIXIE's lens, its rig unfolds into a monstrous robot which antagonises everyone who hasn't fled, repeating a number of cliche final battle lines and demanding MORE DRAMA. The group manage to stay alive while fending off prairie mutts (summoned by PIXIE's clicks which resemble the mutts' aggression calls), fires in the underbrush (caused by the focusing of PIXIE's lens) and finally, lashing electrical cables. The party emerge victorious, now faced with the task of retrieving the footage and explaining this to Nine Bold…

Beloved Fortress and Head Empty manage to retrieve footage from PIXIE's storage. By Beloved Fortress's assessment, PIXIE will need a good few replacement parts if it's going to function again, but ACE should be able to repair it if they choose to.

Threes Charmed, meanwhile, speaks to Nine Bold. She's not exactly thrilled with what happened to PIXIE, but doesn't seem to hold it against the group - she insists with a somewhat menacing amount of enthusiasm that she's willing to go to war against the ACE Media Circle if they kick up a fuss about their precious murder-camera. She looks nonplussed when Charmed suggests that the Tourism Board should invest in Ace's World's attractions: Darling, she's a marketing executive, she doesn't deal with acquisitions and maintenance!

Nine Bold's advert airs a few weeks later, consisting of a short video clip and some promotional images. Unsurprisingly, a lot of your adventure has been cut out, but there are some great clips from your first moments at Mount First Shot and Keterpark Amusements that make it into the cut. It's hardly the vision Nine Bold described, but it's certainly no disaster. Nine Bold sends each of you a signed copy of her concept design brief by way of thanks.

The first reported death by wild animatronic razormonkey follows a day later.

• 3 Clout with ACE (or 1 with another faction of your choice)
• Neutral contact with Clubs Chance
• A signed copy of Nine Bold's notes for this campaign
• Nemesis: an animatronic razormonkey which exists somewhere on Ace's World

You do some research into PIXIE's design using the broken bits you scavenged. Nine Bold wasn't lying, this equipment must be expensive. It looks like the design complexity goes beyond just the rig stability and automatic exposure control systems - PIXIE also appears to have some critical behavioural programming, though you can't identify the details of this. You would have to be prepared to make some big purchases, call in some favours, or simply cut quite a few corners if you wanted to build something on this scale. Still, you do have a better idea of the mechanics now!

• Once per Mission, you can remove a single consequence from your hand while attempting to tinker a camera directly inspired by this design.

You learn that Keterpark Amusements is owned by Cups Ludic, a reclusive entrepreneur who lives a few miles east of Luckworth. He seems to be the creator of quite a number of leisure attractions, the Big Blast Bonanza Shooting Range included, though he apparently has little to do with the day-to-day running of his properties these days.

Aces High generously makes five minutes to speak with you, and this gets better results than your chat with Nine Bold - that is, until the timer on her desk runs out and she shoos you out of the office. On a personal level, she finds the shittiness of some of the classic tourist attractions almost charming, but she acknowledges that they're hardly making the Tourism Board's job easier. When she talks about this, there's a strange tension in her voice; you get the impression that she has some complicated feelings around tourism. She makes it clear that this is far from her highest priority, but she'll look into it, eventually. Since you're keeping up the good work and all.