May 4, 2020
The camera pans to the open vastness of space, nothing as far
as the eye can see save for the inky blackness of the void. Then a
flash of blue phosphorescent light shatters the silent gloom of the
void and an oval-shaped planetoid about the size of Earth’s moon,
plus or minus a hundred kilometers, appears in frame. Crackling
rays of drift energy cascade off the surface of the rocky moon into
the void of space as it settles in a self sustaining stationary
orbit.
The camera pans out and one by one a multitude of vessels from
all manner of ports of origin pop out of the drift with a
resounding CRACK and begin descending upon the planetoid while blue
drift lightning streams off of their hulls. The camera focuses even
closer, revealing a sprawling city nestled in a deep crater on the
planetoid’s surface, with a large mountainous pillar jutting
outward from the center. It glitters softly with neon lights from
the multitude of palatial estates built into the rock of the
pillar, each with their own colorful heraldry like an audacious
middle finger to good taste.
The camera holds upon the pillar, zooming in to focus on wild
parties full of bacchanalian delights, the high stakes games of
fortune, and tense battle planning committed by savage-looking
individuals even though they sport rich finery of a civilized
world. The camera pans down below the lofty estates to the lower
quarters, winding its way through a rat's nest of dirty, twisting
corridors filled with bustling markets offering all manner of
foreign finery, all of which are being hawked by loud and
braggadocious criers. It stops and focuses on a fight that breaks
out between two of these criers, two whose competitive barbs have
gotten perhaps too personal. In their struggle the larger crier
screams and clutches his chest, grabbing at the dagger plunged
within. He drops to the ground and the smaller, six-limbed crier
resumes hawking his wares as if his competitor’s blood was not
staining the streets a few feet from him. The camera pans through
shops full of exotic wares and creatures that can’t find anywhere
else in Near Space, past aliens whose home planets have not yet
been catalogued by the Star Finder Society, past brawls and fights,
past dirty dealings of all kinds, until we pan out to view the city
of scum as a whole once more and words begin to phase into the
screen “Welcome to Providence”.
And to you, my listeners:
Welcome to Starfinder.