Floatpoint Playalong
 

Floatpoint is a science fiction story in which the player must decide the best diplomatic outcome for Earth and its lost colony. It took first place in the 2006 IF Competition and received XYZZY awards for Best Setting and Best NPCs of 2006.

1st person to post may decide the next move in the game.

It is night on this side of the planet. Settled areas are lit: a jagged crescent in the tropics, lining the island sea. The bright splatter along the top of the curve is Tanhua, as bright from space as New York. The north continent is darker, sprinked finely with small lights, where the falling climate makes it hard to survive a winter. And the northernmost point, almost lost on the slope of Mt. Cordia, is the original Aleheart Colony, where the first settlers from Earth landed. It is your destination as well.

Altogether, the population comes to two hundred and thirty-seven (237) million not-quite-humans, most likely doomed if they stay here. The ice comes faster every year. It would have been more convenient if they had had this crisis twenty years ago, but Earth can still use it.

Your job is to make an arrangement acceptable to both sides, to bring the Aleheart population home.

The shuttle drops.

Please press space to continue [SPACE]

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/up...loatpoint1.JPG
32.1*KB

Lakeshore 10:25AM
When Aleheart Colony was choosing landing spots, Cordia Peak was deemed a good source of geothermal and hydroelectric energy. This lake, snug under the mountain, is the oldest manmade thing on the planet, you have a poster of it at home.

In the early pictures, the lake is whitish, silty water in a bowl of bare rock, fed by a trickle of glacial runoff, and dammed at the south end with concrete. Now it is deep blue. The glacier has progressed so far that it forms a wall across the north end of the lake, tall enough to block any view of Cordia Peak except the summit. Icebergs float on the water. Fine black grass, rippled like velvet, grows on the bank. At the south end, the concrete too is gone; the water simple seems to stop.

The arc of Aleheart's ring system crosses the southern sky, much the same pale white as the moon in daytime.

A narrow path climbs west through a low point in the ridge and continues along the face of the glacier towards town.

Examine.

What do you want to examine?

>think (I'll do this from time-to-time to help the players)

You run over the things you still need to get done before you can settle in:
- go to the Clearing to meet Valenti
- show up at the Embassy

go west

>go west
You climb the gravel pathway. On Earth you would be struggling more with this slope; the lighter gravity and richer air are a great help. Even so, it's a trip of some minutes.

Aleheart's Edge
This is as far north as you can come without ice-climbing. The glacier is chunks and patches of ice at first, but soon solid beyond that. There are rocks on the face of it, and twisted metal, and scraps of buildings, which were formerly the northern part of town.

You can feel the frigid air coming off of it, and hear the rumble of breaking and shifting ice -- the danger is obvious -- but somehow it gives the impression you could start walking now and in an hour come to the summit; stand at the top of Cordia and turn around, and see the rings filling the sky and the visible curvature of the world, the western ocean green with engineered algae, the patches of land made fertile and those still barren rock.

From this direction the rings frame the outline of town, off toward the south.

A narrow path descends east along the side of the glacier towards the lakeshore.


>

>examine rocks

>examine rocks
Carried down from higher up the mountain, presumably.

You have a little time to look around, but you shouldn't drag this out for long: you're supposed to meet your predecessor, Ambassador Valenti, in the center of town, as soon as possible.


>

go south