If you’ve been around my Substack or podcasts for any amount of time, you probably know two things about me: I love science fiction, and I have a deep, probably legally actionable affection for whodunnits. Agatha Christie, locked-room mysteries, suspicious villagers, inheritance arguments, people glaring over cups of tea — inject it directly into my veins!

So when The Sheep Detectives came along promising a very British, very Aggie, very Aardman-adjacent murder mystery about a flock of sheep trying to solve the death of their beloved shepherd, George, I was more or less the target demographic. I may not have been the only target demographic, because I took my kids and my mom, and they all had a great time too. But still. This movie walked directly into my cozy-mystery-loving heart, wiped its hooves, and made itself at home.

The premise is exactly as wonderfully odd as it sounds. George, played by Hugh Jackman, is dead. His sheep, who have absorbed a certain amount of detective fiction through bedtime reading, realize they are the ones best equipped to solve the crime. This is, naturally, ridiculous — yet, it is also somehow completely reasonable once the movie gets going.

That is probably the biggest trick The Sheep Detectives pulls off. It does not treat its absurd premise like a throwaway gag. The sheep are funny, yes, but they are not just one-joke cartoon animals wandering through a murder mystery. They have personalities, grudges (big ones), misunderstandings, loyalties, fears, and, in a few moments that surprised me, actual emotional weight. The whole thing works because the movie understands that this is not really a story about realistic sheep solving a realistic murder. Thank goodness. This is a story about stories. About how we understand the world through the roles we have been given. The shepherd. The detective. The village eccentric. The suspicious outsider. The grieving friend. The idiot policeman. The secret-keeper.

And yes, everyone is a little bit of a caricature. But that is part of the joy of it. Agatha Christie characters are often caricatures too, at least at first glance. The stern lawyer. The nervous heir. The overlooked servant. The officer who is somehow always three steps behind Hercule Poirot. The fun is watching those familiar shapes slowly reveal sharper edges.

Nicholas Braun’s Officer Tim was the one I expected to annoy me. At first, I thought, “Oh no, we’re doing the complete idiot constable thing.” But the movie wisely lets him become more than that pretty quickly. He is still funny, and still outmatched by the woolly amateur detectives around him, but he is not just a human idiot in a police uniform. He won me over, which I was not expecting.

Chris O’Dowd is always a welcome presence for me, and hearing him as Mopple was one of those little pleasures that kept the movie humming. He has that perfect “I’m confused, but I’m doing my best” quality that works beautifully here. Sir Patrick Stewart is also a delight, because of course he is. You do not put Patrick Stewart in a sheep mystery and then have me complain about it. I am only human.

Conleth Hill, a Game of Thrones alum that I tend to watch for, is wonderful as Ham, and Brett Goldstein — Roy Kent himself — as the twin rams Reggie and Ronnie was one of my favorite bits of casting. There is something very funny about that voice and energy coming out of a pair of argumentative rams. It is not subtle, and it doesn’t need to be subtle. The movie knows exactly what toy it has been handed, and it plays with it properly.

The humor worked better on me than I expected. My kids laughed out loud enough for the entire row, which always helps. There is a special joy in sitting next to children who are completely bought in, especially when the joke is just silly enough to crack them wide open. For me, a lot of the humor was more charming-smile funny than constant belly laughs, but I did genuinely laugh out loud several times. I went in expecting to be charmed, I didn’t expect to be surprised.

And I was surprised by the emotion. Not in a manipulative drivel “here comes the sad music, please deposit tears here” way, but in the way good family films sometimes sneak up on you. Toward the end, I had actual light tears in my eyes. I will not spoil why, because the mystery deserves to be experienced cleanly, but the movie earns more feeling than its marketing suggests. Beneath the sheep jokes and cozy murder trappings, there is something sincere about grief, memory, loyalty, and the stories we tell ourselves when someone we love is suddenly gone.

It is worth noting, especially for families, that this is still a murder mystery. It is not terrifying, but there are a couple of scary moments. My six-year-old ended up on my lap at one point, which honestly feels like a pretty good content advisory. This is not nightmare fuel, but it has enough shadow around the edges to remind you that, yes, the entire plot begins with a dead man.

As a family theater outing, though, this was a huge win. We brought my mom, who basically never goes to the theater. The sheep angle helped. She is a knitter, lover of wool, and she makes sheep plushies specifically — so clearly this movie had been doing deep demographic research on my family. But that is part of the charm. It feels like the kind of movie you can take multiple generations to see. Kids get the animal antics and adults get the murder mystery machinery. British TV weirdos like me get the cozy village atmosphere, the faint Wallace and Gromit energy, and the joy of watching a very silly idea be executed with complete seriousness.

And yes, if you love Wallace and Gromit, there is a decent chance this will hit the same part of your brain. It is not Aardman, and it does not have that handmade claymation texture, but it has some of that same “British countryside nonsense treated as life-or-death drama” quality. This is Wallace and Gromit-level sheep rustling, and I mean that as high praise.

My only real knock is rewatch value. The mystery is good and it plays extremely fair. It gives you the clues in proper Christie fashion, and I did not find it insultingly obvious. But once you know where it is going, I am not sure this becomes a movie I revisit often on my own. I can absolutely see myself watching it again with my kids, my sister, or my nieces, because half the fun would be showing it to someone new. But beyond that, I do not think it becomes a comfort rewatch staple for me.

Still, that is a small complaint for a movie I enjoyed this much.

The Sheep Detectives is clever, charming, funny, surprisingly heartfelt, and far better than a movie about sheep solving a murder had any right to be. It is a proper family film without feeling like it was built by a committee (which too many family films feel like these days). It’s a cozy mystery without being stale, and a comedy that remembers jokes land better when you actually care about the characters.

Go see it. Take the kids. Take your mom. Just maybe prepare the younger ones for a little murder-mystery tension along the way.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

I’m having a weird feeling today.

Not the “I forgot where I put my coffee” weird (though… also that). More like the “I’m about to ship my first real open-source package” weird. Which is funny, because I’ve been writing PHP for over twenty years. I’ve shipped production systems, integrations, warehouses full of business logic, API’s, eCommerce platforms, and literally hundreds of brochure webpages.

But releasing a package? Publicly? With a README and everything? That hits a different part of the brain. The part that whispers: What if someone opens an issue and… they’re right?

Or worse; what if I don’t know how to fix it!?

Anyway —

Hi. I built something, and I want you (especially if you write fiction series) to take a look.

It’s called Series Wiki, and it’s basically a wiki designed specifically for storytelling in series form. This is for stories where spoilers are real, continuity is fragile, and your “simple note about that side character” becomes a 4,000-word lore entry at 3:33am in the morning.

The problem: normal wikis are a spoiler minefield

Traditional wikis are incredible… and also a little ruthless.

They’re perfect for encyclopedic “everything at once” documentation. But fiction series aren’t consumed that way. Readers arrive mid-journey. You’ve got first-book readers, caught-up readers, and the occasional brave soul who wants to look up a planet name without accidentally learning who betrays whom in Book 4.

And if you’re an author, you’re juggling two very different needs:

• A private-ish place to keep the canon straight

• A public-facing space that doesn’t casually detonate spoilers

Series Wiki is built around that tension.

What makes Series Wiki cool (the reader-facing stuff)

Spoiler-aware pages that don’t ruin your life

This is the core idea: content can be shown based on where the reader is in the series.

So a character page doesn’t have to choose between:

• “safe, bland, useless”

• “comprehensive, but now you know who dies”

Instead, it can be progressively revealed.

A reader early in the series gets the version that makes sense for them. A caught-up reader gets more. And you, the author, don’t have to maintain two separate wikis or a blob of redacted black lines that people don’t know what it spoils … until it actually spoils it for them.

Timeline and “when did this happen” clarity (without forcing you to write history textbooks)

Series fiction loves timelines. Readers love timelines. Authors… tolerate timelines.

Series Wiki is designed for story timelines as a first-class concept, where entries can be tagged or scoped to a year/era/range. Your timeline becomes navigable instead of a single mega-page that grows until it becomes sentient. If two characters share a timeline, and you want to see where their lives were when they intersected… timelines to the rescue.

Factions / variants (because canon isn’t always one straight line)

Some worlds have competing perspectives. Some series have multiple editions, reworks, or “this is what the empire says happened” versus “this is what actually happened.”

Series Wiki supports that concept cleanly: the same event or entry can be presented through different lenses. It’s not “fork the wiki,” it’s “switch the view.”

This also applies to two groups using the same equipment, or multiple factions controlling a place. Swap between the variants, see the item from “a certain point of view.”

It’s built for series-writing workflows, not just fandom archaeology

If you’re building a universe while you write (instead of after you’re done, like a responsible adult), you need something that works during creation:

• quick entries

• consistent structure

• a way to keep notes and canon from drifting

• and ideally something that doesn’t punish you for not knowing everything in advance

Series Wiki is meant to be that workspace, whether you’re writing a three-book trilogy (the rarest creature) or a 12-book saga that started as “just a fun idea.”

What it feels like to use (aka the part that matters)

The best compliment I can imagine someone giving this is:

“I looked something up, got exactly what I needed, and didn’t learn anything I didn’t want to know.”

That’s the dream.

For readers, it means curiosity doesn’t come with risk. For authors, it means you can actually invite readers into your worldbuilding without turning your wiki into a spoiler trap.

And if you’re building a fandom hub? Even better. Fandoms will build the wiki anyway. Series Wiki just helps keep it sane.

Okay, fine. The hard programming stuff (for the fellow nerds)

I saved this for the end because authors should not have to care about implementation details unless they enjoy that sort of thing (and if you do, welcome, we have snacks).

Series Wiki is designed around a few principles that are deceptively painful to implement:

1) Content that’s filterable by “reader progress”

This sounds simple until you try to model it.

You need content blocks that can be:

• always visible

• visible only after Book X

• visible only within a range (Books 2–4, years 120–160, etc.)

• or hidden entirely depending on the chosen “lens”

And you need that without making authors write their entries like they’re assembling a legal document.

So the system is built around the idea that visibility is a property of content blocks, not whole pages. That lets one page serve multiple reader states cleanly, without duplicating the article.

2) Story-agnostic design (because your universe is not my universe)

I didn’t want this to be a tool that only works for my projects. It needs to be flexible enough for yours.

That means the system can’t hard-code “books,” “empires,” “factions,” or any of the stuff that feels obvious when you’re deep in one setting. Instead, you define the structure, the filters, the lenses, and the terminology.

In other words: the wiki adapts to the story, not the other way around.

3) Factions and variants driven by data, not code

This one matters more than it sounds.

If you want different perspectives (or versions), you can’t bake that into templates without creating a maintenance nightmare. So faction/variant switching is driven by a factions table and related configuration, not some “if ($faction === ‘Empire’)…” spaghetti that I would absolutely regret later.

4) It’s built as a package on purpose

The “weird feeling” part.

I’ve built a lot of apps. I’ve built a lot of internal tools. But packaging something means thinking in a different dimension:

• sane defaults

• extensibility

• documentation that doesn’t assume telepathy

• upgrade paths that won’t ruin someone’s weekend

It’s humbling. And, annoyingly, good for the soul.

If you’re an author, here’s why I think you’ll like it

If you write series fiction, you already know:

• readers love your world

• readers want to explore

• readers will google a name

  — and the internet will gleefully spoil them

Series Wiki is my attempt to give authors (and readers) something better: a place where lore can be rich without being reckless.

Authors, if that sounds like your kind of tool, let me know. Right now, its a core with a bring-your-own frontend vibe. I will be building my own Stellar Empire front end, but if other authors are interested, a vanilla front end wouldn’t be too far an ask. Imagine what your setting would look like with a wiki that’s actually safe to read, and let me know if I’m barking up the wrong tree.

And if you’re a developer reading this: yes, I know, twenty years in PHP and this is the thing that makes me nervous. That’s how it goes. Shipping is vulnerability and I had to start somewhere. But please, kick the tires. Browse around. Let me know what I’m missing, and if you see something, PR something.

More soon.

Andrew

Chapter II - The Tumor on the Line

T+06:44 — CONTAINMENT POSTURE: OX-4 AUTHORIZED
AO: EUROPA / THERA-POINT / SURFACE ZONE
ASSET: SSTV PEREGRINE (Surface Support / Transfer Vehicle), callsign “NEST”

The return trip was supposed to be the calm part.

You go down, you do the work, you come back. That’s how the human brain kept itself from chewing through its own wiring. It built little ceremonies out of procedure – checklists, callouts, “green” statuses – because if you did the ritual right, you got to believe the universe responded in kind.

Mace Kieran floated up toward the Peregrine’s belly like a bead of mercury on a wire, tether singing faintly in the suit’s tension sensor.

Above him, the Peregrine hung under the Constitution on a short docking spine – an ugly, utilitarian thing built to do one job: take people and gear from vacuum into a controlled volume without contaminating the flagship.

It looked like a pillbug: armored shell, stubby thruster pods, a single airlock blister at the bottom. The blister was called the nest, because the engineers had a sense of humor they kept carefully locked away from commanders.

“EVA team, stack on the nest,” Al-Khatib ordered. “No cross-talk. Buddy checks only.”

“Copy,” Vonn said, already moving. She was good – quick without being messy, a soldier who could make speed look like patience.

Tsu came up slower, the instrument pack hugged tight like it contained his organs.

Mace kept his view off the ice below and on their own gear now. He didn’t want to look back at the bore collar. He didn’t want to watch the chalk line look for its next target now that it had flattened the warm infrared beacon like it had found a throat.

Behind them, the Melt Lance still steamed.

Ahead of them, the nest waited with its iris shut.

“Peregrine, this is Constitution,” Col. Havel came over the net. “Confirm readiness for external decon cycle.”

A different voice answered – older, nasal, a woman who sounded like she kept her anger balled up and unleashed it on subordinates who annoyed her. “Peregrine confirms. Nest’s cold. Pressure differential stable. Decon sprayers are hot.”

“Proceed,” Havel said. “No internal cycle until I authorize.”

Mace’s HUD blinked a new instruction set:

=> OX-4 SURFACE RETURN PROTOCOL: EXTERNAL DECON, FULL TELEMETRY REVIEW. NO DIRECT BOARDING.

He hadn’t seen a boarding hold since training, when the instructors made you wait in the vacuum of space, just to make you sweat.

These rules were crystal clear; You don’t touch the flagship. You don’t breathe her air. You treat her like the last clean thing in the entire solar system, if not the galaxy.

Vonn reached the nest first and slapped her magnetic boots to the hull plate beside the airlock. “Stacked.”

Tsu arrived and anchored on the opposite side, careful to keep his pack from bumping the hatch.

Mace came in last and locked his boots. The three of them hung there like ornaments on a christmas tree.

The nest iris stayed shut.

A nozzle array around the airlock blister rotated into place with a soft mechanical squeal that traveled through the hull and into Mace’s bones. He hated that sound. It wasn’t fear of machinery. It was the fact that the sound meant we are about to wash you.

“External decon in three,” the Peregrine’s ops tech said. “Two. One.”

The sprayers hit.

The fine gelatinous mist of heated solvent exploded across their suits on impact. Tiny impacts like rain that had finally been let free from their jelly prison before the microgravity pulled it away. Along the coldest edges of their suit the chemical mix froze into translucent film.

Mace’s visor fogged for half a second as the suit compensated.

His humidity ticked up again.

HUMIDITY: +0.8%

He kept his breathing slow and forced his eyes down to his wrist seals.

There it was.

Not on the hull. Not on Europa.

On him.

A chalk dusting at the edge of the neck ring! Just a hint of pale residue where the solvent had beaded and then dried into frost. It wasn’t thick. It could’ve been nothing. It could’ve been suit grime, manufacturing dust, a smear of ice.

Except it was arranged.

A little curve. A tiny arc.

Parenthesis, delicate as punctuation.

Mace stared like his eyes could burn it away. The arc didn’t move.

Fear gripped at his heart as he fumbled with the external diagnostic toggle. It took a second that lasted to eternity and finally his suit beeped softly.

PRESSURE MICRO-LEAK: NONE
SEAL INTEGRITY: NOMINAL
PARTICULATE COUNT: RISING

“EVA One,” Al-Khatib said. “Status.”

Mace swallowed. “Decon complete. No visible breach. Minor residue at neck ring.”

“Define residue,” Al-Khatib said carefully.

Mace knew the rules about words and he knew if he chose them poorly, there would be consequences.

“Chalk film. Consistent with what we saw on the surface.”

A beat.

Havel interrupted, answering for Al-Khatib, “Copy. Hold position. Peregrine will take you into the nest one at a time. No manual override. No shortcuts.”

“Copy,” Vonn said.

Tsu didn’t speak. His breathing was the loudest thing in the channel, and the nest iris finally dilated.

It didn’t open like a door. It unfolded, petals retracting into the hull and exposing a dark throat with faint indicator lights. The airlock cavity looked too small to hold a human, but it always did until you were inside it and the walls were an inch from your elbows.

“EVA Two, in first,” Al-Khatib ordered.

Vonn pushed off, controlled, and drifted into the nest. The iris petals rotated behind her and sealed with a wet metallic click. The tight enclosed space would pressure wash her clean in what little microgravity it could generate.

Mace waited, still anchored to the hull. He watched the frost film on his visor edge shimmer as the Peregrine’s heat bled through the nest frame.

The tapping returned.

Not loud. Not even definite. A faint, rhythmic interruption under the comms carrier, like someone brushing a wire with a fingernail at steady intervals.

Mace stared at his comms icon.

COMMS: DEGRADED flashed and cleared again.

“EVA One,” he started.

Then his channel filled with Vonn.

But Vonn’s voice was wrong. Not her cadence. Not her breath. Not her little habit of biting off consonants like she was chewing glass. This was a cleaner version, too clean, like a recording cut from better days.

“-- open the hatch.”

Al-Khatib snapped, “EVA Two, say again.”

Silence.

Then Vonn’s regular voice, a little strained. “I didn’t say anything.”

Mace’s stomach tightened. In microgravity, the body had fewer ways to express fear. It went straight to the gut anyway.

“Peregrine ops,” Havel cut in. “Confirm internal audio.”

The ops tech sounded shaken. “I’m not seeing a mic transmitted from EVA Two. No vox. No keyed channel. That phrase –” She stopped herself. “That phrase didn’t originate from her suit.”

“Source?” Havel asked.

“Unknown, ma’am.”

“Geeez –” Tsu whispered, “-us.”

“Watch your language,” Al-Khatib said automatically, but there was no bite in it.

“EVA Two, status in the nest,” Al-Khatib demanded.

Vonn answered after a breath. “I’m… in. The Nest is cold. Sprayers cycling internally. I see—”

Her voice cut.

Not static. Not drop.

Muted.

Mace’s comms icon flashed once: CARRIER COUPLING DETECTED and then cleared like it hadn’t happened.

Vonn returned, voice lower. “I see residue in here. Same chalk film on the inner ring. It’s on the metal.”

Havel’s voice stayed calm, but there was a new weight to it. “Do not touch it.”

“I’m not,” Vonn said. “But it’s – it’s not just dust. It’s… set. Like scale.”

“EVA Two, hold,” Al-Khatib ordered. “No suit doff. No pressure equalization to cabin. You stay in the decon tube until told otherwise.”

“Copy,” Vonn said, and her professionalism held for a second.

Then she said, quieter, “It’s on the drains.”

Mace’s eyes flicked to the nest seam around the iris. The spot where solvent runoff would collect. The place where warm moisture met cold metal and turned into ice.

Al-Khatib’s voice shook Mace back to the moment. “Vonn, evac the tube, we need to get out of the vacuum.”

He could still see the chalk line on Europa. How it had kissed the consumed the beacon.

How it had thickened.

“EVA One, you’re next,” Al-Khatib said.

Mace released his boots and drifted forward.

The throat of the nest looked darker now. Like it was watching.

He told himself that was stupid. There was no watching. There were no eyes. There was only chemistry and procedure and the physics of heat exchange.

He slipped inside.

The iris closed behind him with a gentle, final sound.

The walls were closer than he liked. The nest lights painted his suit in dull amber. A nozzle array rotated and began the internal spray cycle, warmer this time. The solvent mist struck his visor and ran in slow beads, sliding down the curve like tears.

His suit beeped.

HUMIDITY: +1.2%

His particulate counter climbed.

His lamp caught the inner ring of the nest hatch.

Chalk film, exactly where Vonn said it would be. A dusting at first glance.

Then he saw the edges.

Those little arcs.

Parentheses marching around the ring like a warning written in a language that wasn’t language – just repetition, boundary-seeking discipline.

And threaded between two of the arcs, almost invisible until his light hit it.

A filament.

Not hair. Not fiber. Too straight.

A thin, glassy strand anchored to the metal and stretching toward the nest drain grate. It trembled faintly when the sprayers hit, not from water pressure but as if it had tension like a wire.

Mace’s throat made a sound. Not words. His mic picked it up anyway.

Al-Khatib’s voice hammered in. “EVA One, report.”

Mace forced his voice into the permitted lane. “Non-random deposits on inner ring. Possible filamentous structure present. Anchored to hatch metal.”

The ops tech on the Peregrine whispered, “Oh god.”

Havel didn’t whisper. “All stations, confirm: CBRN defense intact.”

“CBRN intact,” Engineering said. “Negative pressure stable. Pass-through sealed.”

“Good,” Havel said. “Do not bring that nest atmosphere into Constitution.”

Mace stared at the filament.

He wanted to touch it, but he knew better. In his bones, he knew not to touch it.

But the sprayers kept washing.

Warm solvent ran toward the drain.

The filament brightened slightly, caught the light like wet thread, and then, impossibly, seemed to tighten, drawing itself closer to the drain edge as if it preferred the path water wanted to take.

Not alive.

Active hazard.

Growth vector.

Systems coupling.

Words you used when you were trying not to say the other words.

Mace’s comms ticked.

A faint tapping under the carrier.

And then, right in his ear, that too-clean voice again; almost friendly now, like it was learning how to fit itself into their bandwidth.

“-- open the hatch.”

Mace froze, every muscle locked inside the suit’s servo assistance. His heart slammed against the chest strap sensor. His CO₂ scrubber spooled up like it could outrun fear.

He didn’t answer the voice.

He answered his commander.

“Captain,” he said, and his voice tried to crack but didn’t, “we have a comms artifact repeating instructions to break CBRN. It’s not coming from us.”

Silence.

Then Al-Khatib, clipped and cold. “Copy. Nobody opens anything. Nobody overrides anything.”

He paused, and Mace could hear the captain thinking in real time. Calculating what she had to do, what she was allowed to do, what she might be forced to do.

“Havel,” Al-Khatib said, voice lower now. “We need to cut the Peregrine loose.”

The words landed like a gunshot.

The Peregrine was their only warm pocket between Europa and the flagship. Their only nest.

But nests, Mace thought, were also where parasites started.

Col. Havel didn’t answer immediately.

A commander’s silence was never empty. It was a room full of dying options.

Finally she said, “Not yet.”

“Ma’am—”

“Not yet,” Havel repeated, harder. “We do this by protocol, not panic. We still have three people in that airlock chain and four more outside. We cut loose too early and we turn a contamination event into a crew loss event.”

Mace swallowed. The filament trembled again; subtle, patient, mapping the drain flow.

Somewhere outside, Europa waited under ice, and under that, the filament field still arranged itself around the ROV like a plant turning toward a lamp.

The filament didn’t care about protocol.

Just humans do.

“EVA One,” Havel said, “hold. You are not coming aboard. You are not cycling into cabin atmosphere. You remain in the decon until I give a direct order.”

Mace stared at the chalk arcs around the ring.

Around a door.

Around a boundary.

“Copy,” he said.

His suit beeped again.

HUMIDITY: +1.5%

And from somewhere in the Peregrine’s internal ducting – so faint it could’ve been imagination – came a sound like a distant electrical crackle.

Like something waking up and learning what it could do.

Chapter III - Filtering

Chapter III - Filter

T+07:02 — INCIDENT DECLARATION PENDING
ASSET: SSTV PEREGRINE (“NEST”) — DOCKED TO USSF CONSTITUTION
CONTAINMENT POSTURE: OX-4 (ACTIVE HAZARD)

Mace floated in the amber-lit throat of the airlock, boots braced on a pad meant to keep you from pinballing into the walls. The solvent mist had stopped. Now the air was still, cold and faintly metallic, like he had an old coin in his mouth.

The thought of a dirty warm coin on his tongue kicked in his gag reflex.

Read more

READER NOTICE:

This dossier includes recovered logs, transcripts, and medical telemetry from OPERATION KATABASIS.

Several first-hand accounts describe events as “non-human,” “not language,” or “systemic.” These descriptors are retained because no better terms exist in the record.

If you are reading this for historical review: You have the version we were permitted to write.

If you are reading this because you have been assigned to the Galilean moons: Submit a request for reassignment. If it is denied, resign.

JEC/OOA After Action Incident Report (Recovered / Half Redacted)

UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE
JOVIAN EXPEDITIONARY COMMAND (JEC)
OFFICE OF OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENT (OOA)
----------------------------------------------------------------

USSF//JOVEX//NOFORN
CONTROLLED DISSEMINATION
Declassify On: 2074-11-19 (Extension Authorized: JEC/CC)

DOCUMENT:
AFTER-ACTION REPORT (AAR) — OPERATION KATABASIS

MISSION TYPE:
EUROPA SUB-ICE PROSPECT / RECOVERY / CONTAMINATION CONTROL

PRIMARY PLATFORM:
USSF CONSTITUTION (ESC-01) “CONSTITUTION”
Expeditionary Sustainment Cruiser — Deep Space Task Force Flagship

SECONDARY ASSETS:
- IPS-9 “MELT LANCE” (Ice Penetrator System)
- QMOD-3 “CASKET” (Quarantine Module)
- EVA SUITS: MK-IV “SABLE” (Cryo/Rad Hard)
- REMOTE VEHICLES: ROV “NEREID” Package (x6)

MISSION WINDOW:
2049-10-03 to 2049-11-19 (UTC)
AO: Jovian System, Europa Vicinity — Sector J-4E, Surface Site: THERA-POINT

COMPILED BY: JEC/OOA (Maj. E. Vance, USSF)
Inputs: 3 ESG, 12 FST, ENG/CONSTITUTION, SDA Det. 6, JEC/S-2

DISTRIBUTION:
JEC Flag / USSF S-2 / USSF S-3 / USSF S-4 / USSF JAG
(Selected annexes withheld under authority of JEC SAP-11 “COLD LANTERN”)

CODENAME NOTE:
“OPERATION KATABASIS” approved by JEC/S-2 (ref: memo JEC-S2-49-771)
Selection rationale: “Descent profile; objective recovery.”
Prior candidate names: [REDACTED]
----------------------------------------------------------------
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.1 Mission Intent
Establish a controlled melt-through access point at THERA-POINT, deploy ROV package to survey sub-ice interface conditions, recover pre-identified anomaly-bearing samples, and return payload to CONSTITUTION under QMOD-3 containment for transport to Mars Forward.

1.2 Outcome
OBJ-1 (Access): PARTIALLY MET
OBJ-2 (Survey): NOT MET
OBJ-3 (Recovery): MET (payload mass 41.3 kg)*
OBJ-4 (Containment): FAILED
OBJ-5 (Return Capability): MET (at cost)
*See Annex 10: Intelligence Addendum. Payload classification updated post-event.

1.3 Casualties (Summary)
KIA: 11
MIA: 4
WIA: 9
Exposure Disposition (quarantine/termination): 7
Total Mission Personnel at risk: 38

1.4 Key Determinations
- The incident exploited normal shipboard functions (fluid circulation, humidity control, and standard decon cycles).
- Containment posture assumed a passive hazard. The hazard was not passive.
- Tactical response options were constrained by pressurized-habitat risk and mission return imperatives (Mars resupply dependency).

1.5 Single-Sentence Readout (Leadership)
“We did not lose control of our team; we lost control of a system that was built to keep us alive.”

2. MISSION OBJECTIVES & SUCCESS CRITERIA

OBJ-1: Establish sub-ice access aperture and stabilize bore geometry ≤ 0.4 m drift.
OBJ-2: Deploy NEREID ROV package; acquire 6 hours of interface survey telemetry.
OBJ-3: Recover anomaly-bearing samples into SCC-12 series containers; transfer to QMOD-3.
OBJ-4: Maintain Containment Level OX-3 throughout (Outer System Unknown / Active Chemistry).
OBJ-5: Retain return-capable propulsion, comms, and life support redundancy.

Success Criteria:
- Return payload ≥ 20 kg
- Crew exposure ≤ OX-3 thresholds
- No cross-contamination beyond QMOD boundary
- No internal comms degradation beyond Class-II interference

3. ORDER OF BATTLE / PERSONNEL ROSTER

3.1 Task Force Command (CONSTITUTION)
    TF Cmdr: Col. Mara Havel, USSF
    XO: Lt Col. Isaac Renn, USSF
    Chief Engineer: CWO4 S. “Gantry” Okoye, USSF
    SDA Det 6 Lead: Capt. J. Park, USSF
    JAG: Maj. L. Corbett, USSF

3.2 Mission Science Cell (Contracted / Interagency)
    Science Lead: Dr. L. Sato (JPL Liaison)
    Cryo/Geo: Dr. P. Varric (Mars Forward Institute)
    Biohazard Specialist: Dr. R. Anand (JEC Special Advisor)
NOTE: One specialist credential set later reclassified. See Annex 10.

3.3 Security Detachment — 3rd Expeditionary Security Group (3 ESG)
    Det Cmdr: Capt. S. Al-Khatib, USSF
    Squad 1 (EVA Security): 8 pax
    Squad 2 (Shipboard Containment): 8 pax
    Armorer: TSgt. D. Holtz

3.4 Medical — 12th Flight Surgical Team (12 FST)
    Flight Surgeon: Maj. H. Kim, USSF
    Med Tech: TSgt. C. Rivera
    Behavioral Health: [REDACTED]

Roster Note:
Personnel listed as “EXPOSURE DISPOSITION” are omitted by directive.
See MED Annex §9.4 (restricted).

4. VEHICLES / PAYLOADS / SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

IPS-9 “MELT LANCE”
- Reactor: compact thermal source with heat exchanger stack
- Bore stabilization: brine-circulation collar
- Status: LOST (site abandonment)

QMOD-3 “CASKET”
- Negative-pressure containment with independent scrubbers
- Pass-through decon vestibule
- Status: COMPROMISED (see ENG §8.2)

SCC-12 Sample Containers
- 12 units issued; 7 recovered; 1 returned sealed but later opened by order [REDACTED]

Special Equipment (Authorized JEC/S-2)
- Package: [REDACTED]
- Purpose stated: “interface conductivity mapping”
- Purpose observed: [REDACTED]

5. ROE / BIOSAFETY POSTURE

ROE (Pressurized Habitat)
- Kinetic fire restricted inside pressure hull. Approved munitions: frangible only.
- Thermal methods authorized under Containment Level OX-4 with TF Cmdr approval.
- Depressurization authorized only for imminent loss of ship OR to prevent
  uncontrolled spread beyond QMOD boundary.

BIOSAFETY
- Default: OX-3 (Outer System Unknown — Active Chemistry)
- Escalation Triggers:
  (a) unexplained “scale” formation on suit seals
  (b) humidity loop delta-P anomalies with organic signature
  (c) tissue response inconsistent with human healing
  (d) interference across comms/cabling without mechanical fault

6. CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS (EXCERPT)

T+00:00  IPS-9 begins melt sequence. Bore collar seated. QMOD-3 green.
T+03:12  First anomaly: water loop delta-P irregularities in Bay 2 humidifiers.
T+04:09  EVA Team reports “chalk film” on suit wrists and neck rings.
T+05:31  NEREID ROV feed shows structured deposits at interface (non-random geometry).
T+06:18  MED notes rapid wound closure on Capt. [REDACTED] (laceration from suit latch).
T+06:44  QMOD-3 vestibule alarm: particulate count rising despite scrubber increase.
T+07:02  Internal comms interference begins — intermittent, localized, then spreading.
T+07:11  First fatality (Bay 2) — cause disputed (asphyxia vs “scrubber inversion”).
T+07:14  Containment Level raised to OX-4. TF Cmdr orders compartment isolation.
T+07:19  “Do not open the hatch.” (Voiceprint mismatch; originated from line that should have been dead. See Annex 12.2.)
T+07:33  Squad 2 reports filaments in humidification ducting “like nerve.”
T+07:41  TF Cmdr issues Order K-7: thermal purge of Bay 2 despite pressure risk.
T+08:05  Bay 2 purge initiated. Hull integrity maintained. Contaminant response described as “withdrawing” (ENG log language flagged).
T+08:22  QMOD-3 declared compromised.
T+08:40  TF Cmdr authorizes Protocol BLACK-LATCH (see Annex 9.4 restricted).
T+09:10  CONSTITUTION breaks station-keeping and begins return burn.

7. CASUALTY REPORT (SUMMARY)

KIA: 11
MIA: 4
WIA: 9
Exposure Disposition: 7

Notes:
- Several MIA are presumed unrecoverable due to compartment status and return burn.
- “Exposure Disposition” category created under TF Cmdr authority; legality under review.

8. SYSTEMS FAILURE ANALYSIS (ENG) — HIGHLIGHTS

8.1 Failure Mode A — Humidity Loop Colonization
Deposits formed within humidification media and expanded along temperature gradients. Rate increased with standard decon cycles.

8.2 Failure Mode B — Conductive Interference
Unexplained bridging across cable runs in Bay 2 and adjacent trunks. Interference pattern resembled deliberate routing rather than random shorts.

8.3 Failure Mode C — Filter Media Conversion
Filters were found rigidified into structured deposits. Samples sparked micro-arcs under low voltage as if acting as a conductor.

Engineering Note (flagged for tone):
“The ship behaved as if placed into an environment that wanted to connect everything to everything else.”

11. BOARD OF INQUIRY FINDINGS (EXCERPT)

Finding 11.2:
Containment posture was designed for passive contamination. Evidence indicates the hazard exploited ship circulation as a growth vector.

Finding 11.6:
Codename selection and certain pre-mission authorizations (Annex 10) cannot be fully explained by stated mission objectives.

Finding 11.9:
The Task Force Commander’s decision to enact Protocol BLACK-LATCH prevented a worst-case outcome, but introduced unresolved ethical and legal exposure.

Recommendation 11.A:
Suspend further sub-ice recovery missions pending redesign of life support, quarantine architecture, and ruleset for “active contamination.”

Recommendation 11.C (Restricted):
Establish permanent JEC/S-2 oversight for all Galilean operations.

JEC/S-2 Memo JEC-S2-49-771 Excerpt (Recovered / Half Redacted)

USSF//JOVEX//NOFORN
JOVIAN EXPEDITIONARY COMMAND (JEC)
DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE (S-2)
----------------------------------------------------------------
DATE: 2049-09-14 (UTC)
FROM: JEC/S-2 (Col. R. Halvorsen, USSF)
TO:   JEC/OOA; JEC/S-3; TF Cmdr, USSF CONSTITUTION (ESC-01)
CC:   JEC/CC; JEC/JAG (Limited); Program “COLD LANTERN” Custodian [REDACTED]

SUBJECT: Operation Codename Approval — OPERATION KATABASIS
REF: (A) JEC-S3-OPORD-49-318 “EUROPA SUB-ICE PROSPECT/RECOVERY”
     (B) JEC-S2-RISK-49-771 “Outer System Unknowns: Active vs Passive Hazard”
     (C) SAP-11 “COLD LANTERN” Annex Authorizations [REDACTED]

1. PURPOSE. Approve mission codename for REF (A) and provide intelligence guidance regarding hazard posture and authorized instrumentation set.

2. CODENAME. “OPERATION KATABASIS” is APPROVED.
   a. Stated rationale: Descent profile; sub-ice entry; objective recovery.
   b. Noted: Candidate alternatives included “TRITON,” “NEREID,” and “HARBOR.” These are DISAPPROVED. [REDACTED] is not appropriate for distribution outside JEC special access channels.

3. HAZARD POSTURE. All mission elements will treat Europa interface conditions as ACTIVE HAZARD until proven otherwise. “Passive contamination” assumptions do not apply. See REF (B).
   a. The interface is expected to exhibit: [REDACTED] conductivity anomalies; non-random deposition; and behavior consistent with gradient seeking.
   b. In the event of uncommanded systems coupling (fluid, comms, power), immediate escalation to OX-4 is AUTHORIZED without higher approval.

4. AUTHORIZED INSTRUMENTATION. Per REF (C), the following package is authorized for deployment and shipboard retention:
   - Conductivity Mapping Package (CMP) — “LANTERN-3” [REDACTED]
   - Containment Enhancement Kit (CEK) — “BLACK-LATCH” [REDACTED]
   a. CMP stated purpose: Interface conductivity mapping to support ROV navigation and bore stabilization.
   b. CMP additional purpose: [REDACTED]
   c. CMP handling: Remains under S-2 custody chain at all times. Science cell access is limited to “need to generate data.” Data product delivery is controlled by S-2.

5. REPORTING. The Task Force Commander will provide S-2 immediate notification upon any of the following triggers:
   - structured deposits inconsistent with abiotic precipitation
   - interference patterns indicating deliberate routing/coupling
   - tissue response following exposure inconsistent with human physiology
   - any “voice” artifacts on internal comms (synthetic, replay, or otherwise) [REDACTED]

6. COMMUNICATIONS. Avoid descriptive language that implies intent or agency in preliminary SITREPs. Use “active hazard,” “growth vector,” or “systems coupling.”
   a. Do not use: “alive,” “hunting,” “speaking,” “thinking.” Those terms invite the wrong questions from the wrong offices.
   b. If compelled to use such terms in medical or engineering logs, route under Annex (C).

7. FINAL. This guidance is not an indication of foreknowledge. It is an indication of discipline. We are going down. We are bringing something back. The only question is whether the system we built to keep us alive will remain ours on the way up.

SIGNED,
[Digital Sig] R. HALVORSEN, Col, USSF
Director of Intelligence, JEC/S-2

CLASSIFICATION AUTHORITY: JEC/S-2
DECLASSIFY ON: 2074-09-14 (Extension Authorized)
----------------------------------------------------------------
[ENDORSEMENTS REDACTED]

Chapter I - Thera Point

T+05:31 — INTERFACE VISUAL ACQUIRED (NEREID-TWO)
AO: EUROPA / THERA-POINT / BORE COLLAR PERIMETER
ASSET: IPS-9 “MELT LANCE” (Ice Penetrator System) / EVA TEAM (3 ESG)

The first thing Sergeant Mace Kieran learned about Europa was that ‘true’ cold was silent.

On the Constitution there was always something filling the silence; pumps, fans, the faint complaint of metal that faced the black eternity of space. Even at night-cycle the ship breathed. Here, sealed in his suit, clamped into the external cradle of the ‘Nest, with his boots locked and his hands already numb inside pressure gloves, the soundscape collapsed to essentials: his own inhale, the soft whir of the suit circulator, the scratch of his mic against his chin as he swallowed.

And beyond that; Europa, the smallest and least massive of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons.

“EVA One, comm check,” came Captain Al-Khatib in his ear, tight and clipped, the voice of someone who’d repeated the same sentence enough times to file it down to pure function.

“EVA One, green,” Mace said. His voice sounded too close, like it belonged to someone crouched behind him. He glanced out of habit, which was stupid; the suit collar and helmet rim gave him a stable horizon but stole his peripheral vision. “Audio’s clean. Pressure steady. CO₂ scrub nominal.”

“EVA Two.”

“EVA Two green,” Corporal Sera Vonn answered. She was a pale dot of suit light on the other side of the cradle, a geometry of carbon composite and hard points and tether lines, attached to the outer hull of their surface support vehicle, the SSTV Peregrine, callsign “Nest”. Only her helmet lamp moved, sweeping across the black-to-gray curve of the moon.

“EVA Three.”

“Green,” said the tech from Engineering, Warrant Tsu. “Radiation monitor’s reading ugly but within mission tolerance.”

Al-Khatib exhaled into the channel. Not a sigh. A release. “Copy. Stand by for external hatch cycle.”

A low thunk traveled through Mace’s boots as the outer hatch mechanism unlocked. The Constitution – even in a tethered hover, even with her belly turned away from Jupiter’s radiation belts – felt massive and alive. Her hull panels were matte and scarred with micrometeor pitting, her radiators folded like black wings, her maneuvering jets arranged around her like the pores on the skin of a giant.

The Constitution was the Space Forces first large-scale “naval vessel.” She was officially a Task Force Flagship, Deep Space (TFF-DS), but every Guardian called her a battleship, if only to rub it in their water navy brethren’s faces.

They weren’t landing. Nobody “landed” on Europa unless they were trying to die in a specific way. They hovered low over THERA-POINT with their thick belly radiation plate shields pointed toward Jupiter and their RCS thrusters kept the ship ready to shove off the moment anybody said the words we’re compromised.

Those words had been in the OPORD. So had active hazard.

The hatch iris opened and Europa hit him with a diffused light that originated from the gas giant it orbited.

It was reflected sunlight from a sun 484 million miles away, filtered through the pallor of ice and the faint auroral smear that Jupiter threw like a bruise across the sky. Everything looked rinsed and faded. Like the world had been bleached.

A few kilometers away the Melt Lance was already down.

IPS-9 sat on the ice like a squat, purposeful tower: a heat stack, a bore collar, brine circulation lines coiled and secured, the whole assembly surrounded by a skirt of shielding that looked too thin to keep the cold at bay. A plume of vapor drifted away in a lazy arc and froze into glittering dust before it could decide what it wanted to be.

It was clean, efficient, and a marvel of human engineering. A drill team’s dream.

The Melt Lance had left Earth long before the Constitution had broken station at Mars. Using the most advanced AI and billions in private contracts, the Lance had launched, landed, set-up, and begun drilling without any human intervention.

“Mace,” Al-Khatib said, using his name like a tether. “Eyes on the collar. You see anything that isn’t supposed to be there, you call it. You don’t touch it unless I tell you to.”

“Roger,” Mace said. With a new cold war brewing over Mars, there was also a chance the CNSA or Roscosmos had sent their own AI buddies as well, one could never assume they were alone – even in the darkness of space.

Mace released from the cradle. His boots let go of the magnetic locks with a soft clack that barely registered. The tether line paid out, and for a moment he floated between ship and moon, a helpless bead of meat and water wrapped in a pressure suit.

Europa’s gravity pulled at him like a slow decision, finally winning the tug of war.

This was Mace’s first free-fall since leaving Earth. The descent was almost mindboggling slow with only a thirteen percent pull of Earth’s, he was ‘rocketing’ towards the surface at a lazy 1.274 m/s². Finally, Mace gave the suit’s thrusters tiny puffs of nitrogen, gentle as breath.

He drifted down toward the surface, following Al-Khatib’s pace. The ice below was not smooth; it was ridged and shattered, a frozen sea that had been hit with blunt force and froze. Repeatedly. Since creation itself.

He touched down and the ice took him without notice.

No crunch. No give. Just the hard certainty of a world that had never been warm.

“Contact,” he said, digging the crampons on his feet into the ice. “Down and stable.”

Vonn landed beside him, her boots scuffing up a whisper of frost. Tsu came last, carrying a soft-case instrument pack and looking like a man about to perform surgery on a god.

The Melt Lance’s heat stack radiated a faint shimmer in Mace’s visor HUD – false colors mapped over reality, a trick of the eye, giving the ice a fevered aura. The bore collar was anchored, brine lines snaked out to a skid module, and the access vestibule stood upright like a coffin someone hadn’t bothered to bury.

The AI had set up the drill perfectly.

The quarantine modules, the QMOD’s, had arrived with the Constitution and were still attached to their racks on the side of the hull. Each pod was waiting like a mouth, ready to engulf whatever the Melt Lance dug up.

“EVA team, form on me,” Al-Khatib said. “You’re in the red zone from this point. Discipline tight. ROE as directed.”

They moved in a tight triangle around the collar, slow and deliberate, tethers managed, suit telemetry running. The Melt Lance had been melting for over a month. Somewhere below them, thermal energy was convincing molecules who had been joined since time itself to stop holding hands, and break free their secrets.

As they made their final turn, Mace’s arm shot up. Silently, holding the team’s advance.

A seam of darker ice ran through the collar’s perimeter like a vein.

Mace crouched. The suit servos hummed, translating his bent knees into a slow mechanical fold. He brought his helmet lamp down and watched the seam.

It wasn’t a crack.

Cracks were natural and had jagged edges. This had… boundaries.

“Looks like brine infiltration,” Tsu said, voice muffled by his own caution.

“Yeah,” Vonn said. “It’s probably just a wet line, follow it back to the brine tank.”

Mace stared. The seam shimmered faintly, a thin film catching light.

A brine bloom was plausible. It was a safe answer that didn’t get memos from S-2, and didn’t keep them on the surface longer than their nerves would let them.

They weren’t the first humans to set foot on Europa, that honor belonged to Satnam Tsurutani of the ISRO, they weren’t even the hundredth. But they were the first humans to step on the moon in over a year, and they were alone.

Mace’s visor tagged the area: TEMP: 129 K. RAD: HIGH. PARTICULATE: LOW.

He zoomed the helmet cam.

The seam resolved into a line of granular deposits. Salt. Minerals. Fine chalk.

But not scattered. Not random. Not natural.

They formed tiny, repeated arcs along the boundary, like a series of parentheses marching in a disciplined row.

Mace felt his mouth go dry inside the helmet.

“Constitution, EVA One,” he said, and the words came out flatter than he meant. “Seeing deposits at bore collar seam. Chalk-like. Patterned.”

There was a beat of silence. It felt like when the comms dropped, but this wasn’t that. This was breath bated.

“Define patterned,” Al-Khatib said carefully, finally breaking the quiet.

Mace swallowed. His throat clicked on the mic.

“They’re… organized. Like repeated shapes. Regular spacing.”

“Engineering,” Al-Khatib snapped.

Tsu didn’t answer right away. He’d leaned in too, lamp almost touching the ice. He raised a gloved hand – and the suit’s proximity sensor chimed, causing him to snap his hand back.

“Not precipitation,” Tsu said. “If it were abiotic it’d be… messier. This looks like intelligence. Like it decided to set a boundary.”

“Language,” Al-Khatib warned.

Tsu paused. Corrected himself. “This looks like a boundary effect. Non-random deposition.”

That, at least, was allowed.

Mace forced himself to breathe slowly. Like any career soldier, he’d been trained to treat panic like a chemical leak of the mind. Identify it, isolate it, don’t let it into your system.

Eurpoa didn’t care about his training.

“EVA One,” Al-Khatib said, “mark it. No contact. We’ll let a QMOD eat it up.”

“Roger.”

Mace reached for his marker puck – an adhesive beacon with a blinking infared strobe. He pressed it to the ice three feet from the seam. It stuck with a soft tap.

As he pulled away, the chalk line shifted.

Not much. Not like a snake. Not like a creature.

Like powder settling.

Except there was no wind.

No air.

No reason for it to have moved.

Mace froze. His helmet lamp was steady on the seam. The tiny parentheses – those repeated arcs – had tightened, as if the line had drawn itself a fraction closer to the infrared light of the beacon.

He stared hard, searching for the lie. Looking for a trick of light. A visor artifact. A compression glitch.

His suit telemetry pulsed.

HUMIDITY: +0.3%

He frowned. Inside the suit? That didn’t make sense. The scrubbers regulated humidity, kept it comfortable. A three-tenths spike meant one of two things: his own sweat rate had changed, or something in the system had changed.

“Mace?” Vonn said. “You see that?”

He didn’t answer right away because if he said yes, it became real.

Tsu’s breathing picked up. A subtle rasp on the mic.

“Constitution,” Mace said. “We’ve got a—”

His words cut out.

Not like a failure. Like somebody had muted him.

He blinked, startled. His HUD flashed COMMS: DEGRADED then cleared.

He tried again. “Constitution, EVA One. Comms glitch. Say again – deposits appear to have shifted slightly toward the beacon.”

Static whispered, then Al-Khatib’s voice returned, sharper now. “Copy. EVA team, back it up. Two steps. Slow.”

They moved back from the off-color line as a unit, careful not to snag tethers. Mace kept his lamp on the seam.

The chalk line did not follow them.

It followed the beacon. It was a straight line from the collar to the beacon now, pooling slightly.

It crept in tiny increments, a lazy migration toward warmth, toward metal, toward the place where a new form of heat had made its acquaintance.

Mace’s skin prickled beneath the suit liner. He hated that reaction. There was no air to raise his hair. No cold to gooseflesh him. It was all in his nerves, an animal part of him trying to tell the rest of him something without knowing the words.

“ROV feed?” Al-Khatib demanded.

“Spooling,” someone said – Dr. Sato, up on the ship. Her voice had the careful brightness of a person who had spent her life around dangerous things and still believed they could be understood. “NEREID-Two is at the interface. You’ve got video now.”

Mace’s visor flickered and the world split.

On the left: his helmet cam, Europa ice, the collar, the creeping chalk on its long march to the beacon.

On the right: NEREID-Two’s feed – a descent into a tunnel of steaming brine and darkness. The ROV’s lights painted the bore walls in sickly blues and whites. Meltwater swirled and froze in wisps. The camera jittered as it passed through the collar’s shadow and into the throat below.

Then the ice ended.

Not abruptly. It softened into a semi-transparent layer, a slush that gave way to water that looked more like a spoiled jello. It looked thick. Heavy. Like it had been waiting a long time to be disturbed.

At the interface, something glimmered.

A field of deposits clung to the underside of the ice like frost on a window. They weren’t the geometric shapes of ice, but the parentheses of their new chalk line anomaly.

The same arcs.

Repeated.

Regular.

And threaded between them faint filaments, almost invisible until NEREID’s light caught them just right.

They weren’t floating like organic strings. They were anchored, routed, stretched with purpose across the interface like the wiring on a board.

Mace heard Vonn whisper, “No.”

Tsu made a sound that might’ve been a prayer or an engineer’s reflexive protest against the universe.

Dr. Sato spoke softly, almost reverently. “Look at the pattern, it’s perfect.”

Al-Khatib’s voice cut through them all. “Sato, don’t—”

But she was already going. “This isn’t random. It’s not precipitation. It’s— it’s arranged.”

Mace watched the ROV drift closer. Its thrusters stirred the water, sending a lazy current across the field.

The filaments responded.

Not violently. Not like a predator lunging.

Like a plant turning toward light.

They tightened, drawing into a pattern that mirrored the ROV’s movement, mapping its approach in silent, patient adjustments.

“Constitution,” Mace said, and he forced every syllable to stay inside the lane of permitted language, “active hazard confirmed. Interface exhibits non-random structured deposits and filaments. Request posture escalation.”

This time the comms didn’t cut out. Instead, the channel filled with the sound of the ship – distant, filtered, urgent. People moving. A chair scraping. A hiss of someone taking their mic off mute too fast.

Then Col. Havel’s voice came on, calm in the way good commanders were able to be.

“EVA One, this is Havel. You have eyes on the interface. Confirm: are those filaments anchored to ice, or free in the water column?”

Mace stared at the feed. The filaments weren’t drifting. They were routed. Anchored at one end, stretched across, anchored again. Like a net. Like nerves. Like –

He stopped himself.

“Anchored,” he said. “They’re… attached. Routed along the interface.”

“Copy,” Havel said. “All stations, raise to OX-4. Initiate containment discipline. EVA team: no further proximity. Prepare to withdraw to ship.”

The words should’ve been relief. Instead they were a door closing behind him.

They couldn’t stop the Melt Lance. Its AI computer was in full control.

As it kept melting, the interface below them was waking up.

The chalk line at the collar had fully encased the beacon now – kissed it in a neat, delicate curve – and began to thicken, as if it had found what it came for. The infrared light had already been extinguished under the chalk crust.

Mace backed away with the others, slow and controlled. His tether tugged gently at his waist. The Constitution hung above them, a dark protective shape against Jupiter’s distant storm eye.

As they withdrew, his suit beeped again.

HUMIDITY: +0.6%

He frowned.

Swallowed.

Listened.

In the background of the comms, barely audible under the clipped confirmations and procedures, there was a sound like faint tapping.

Not on his helmet.

Not on the ice.

On the line.

A rhythmic, patient interference, like something testing the circuit the way you test a door handle before you commit to opening it.

Mace didn’t tell anyone.

Not yet.

He just let the tether pull him backward, away from the collar, away from the creeping chalk, and toward the hatch that would take him back into the warm safety of the Constitution.

Chapter II - The Tumor on the Line

T+06:44 — CONTAINMENT POSTURE: OX-4 AUTHORIZED
AO: EUROPA / THERA-POINT / SURFACE ZONE
ASSET: SSTV PEREGRINE (Surface Support / Transfer Vehicle), callsign “NEST”

The return trip was supposed to be the calm part.

Read more

I’m a fan of the artwork, so it’s time to light a fire

I don’t want to let the Wilderness Dice brand go. Despite the powerful push at JAMR towards producing more Stellar Empire content, I’ve been ruminating on an updated set of rules that will put playing in even more direct conflict than in the original game, and also let players make their own personalized decks.

Hence, Wilderness Dice Duel…

While it’s said in jest, it’s true. The proliferation of “Duel” games in recent years has taken these large multi-player games, and compacted them into a box that travels well and plays with just two people.

Just to name a few; Duelosaur Island (from Dinosaur Island), 7 Wonders: Duel, Splendor: Duel, Cosmic Encounter: Duel, Azul: Duel, King of Tokyo: Duel, Cthulhu Wars: Duel, Tesla vs. Edison: Duel, Furnace Duel, even Catan has Rivals for Catan.

Disclosure: These links contain affiliate links that help support JAMR, llc. Your cost does not increase using affiliate links, they help support the work of JAMR as we receive a small commission, and you get a sweet game to play with your significant other.

That’s not even an exhaustive list, it’s just the ones I knew of when I still owned Jakrew Games, or that I’ve seen advertised recently.

Now, let me be clear, as a person who plays games with his spouse … I love this trend. That being said, I don’t want Wilderness Dice Duel to be lost in the wake of "just another game turned ‘duel’.”

What is Wilderness Dice Duel?

This isn’t a cash grab at a fad. It’s an intentional attempt to revitalize a game that I’ve enjoyed designing and had fun playing.

One of the issues with Wilderness Dice came from our relaunch of the Bring Your Own Dice edition. While it allowed us to sell smaller boxes of the game at a reduced cost, it ended up costing us sales.

But, who wants a dice game without dice?

That was my problem. Ultimately, I think that’s the problem with Wilderness Dice as it stands now. With access to a new box supplier, I’ve been able to make card games that rely on up-to four dice (see Landing Party). This set the framework that I had to operate within. So with that structure I began designing Wilderness Dice Duel.

The Plan

Thus far, I have redesigned the game, given it a new branding and have designed a box that holds the four dice for play. Additionally, I have put together a play testing guide that I am making available below to paid subscribers of my Substack.

We’re also going to revisit and off the original Patreon Exclusive packs again, updated for Wilderness Dice Duel.

In January of 2026, I am planning on launching a Kickstarter or Gamefound (still trying to weigh the pros-and-cons of each) which will help me fund the box and card printing. Both the card and box printing is USA based, so we will avoid tariffs on those items.

As an independent game studio, JAMR doesn’t have the resources to do full print runs overseas. So while we avoid the tariffs our cost-per-unit is higher.

Keep an eye here and on my Bluesky for more information as we get closer to January of 2026. If you want to help in the play testing and get a play testing credit in the game (plus I’ll send you a copy of Wilderness Dice to use), please consider a paid subscription to my Substack to unlock the instructions below.

Read more

Sometimes you just need something fresh to work on, do you know what I mean?

So, I’ve put Stellar Empire into their capable hands for the moment and tried my hand at re-writing chapter 1 of Phantom Starlight, this is actually the third complete rewrite (not counting the original chap book), and probably a hundred plus minor rewrites and edits.

Chapter 1

Sunday, August 1st, 2077

Atsawin drifted at the edge of sleep, eyelids leaden as if something unseen pressed against them. The steady murmur of the shuttle’s rotating drum filled his compartment, a subterranean rumble that shivered through the aluminum frame and hummed in his bones. Artificial gravity was supposed to be comforting, a sign of order and safety, but tonight it sounded almost like a lullaby sung by something mechanical and unfeeling. The air was sharp and cold, regulated at eighteen-point-three degrees Celsius, just enough to raise the hairs on his arms.

Shuttles Limited sold this voyage as luxury. BoeingX’s Argosy-class was advertised as a palace in motion: five concentric rings, each sliced into three private cabins, every one a neat wedge of comfort bolted into a machine meant to survive the void.

Fifteen passengers. Six crew. Atsawin’s team of eight. And six NASA engineers heading to a Venusian research station. Twenty souls in total.

Twenty. He had accepted that number long before he stepped aboard. Numbers were simple, obedient things. On paper it was tolerable. But in the lounge, watching faces break into smiles and nods, hearing laughter carried by the recycled air, it had become unbearable. The numbers had names. The names had eyes.

He should have stayed in his cabin.

The only relief was the absence of children. He knew with certainty he could not have gone through with it if there had been children.

His hand crept to his scalp, scratching as if the guilt itched beneath the skin. His stomach turned over and over, boiling itself into knots. He told himself he wasn’t a murderer, but the thought rolled through him like a stone through still water, leaving only ripples of nausea.

A scream tore through the cabin walls. A woman’s voice. “Gun!”

He sat bolt upright. A muffled pop followed, unmistakable. The peculiar, flat crack of a zero-gravity pistol.

The decompression alarm began immediately. A shrill wail rose from the walls, accompanied by a pulsing strip of blue-green light that threw long shadows across the cabin. The air itself seemed to thin as he breathed.

Atsawin reached for his mobile computer. The screen glowed with sterile icons: diagrams of survival suits, instructions for sealing hatches. No messages. No override. Just safety protocols, looping endlessly as though mocking him. He flung the device onto the cot.

The door burst inward. Markus Drake filled the frame, rifle raised. His tactical black fatigues made him look like a phantom cut from darkness, his square jaw and hard stare illuminated only by the emergency light.

“El jefe,” Markus growled. “We’ve got a problem.”

“The gunshot, the decompression, or the idiot screaming?” Atsawin asked, voice sharper than he intended, the sarcasm almost brittle.

“Apparently, Winnie had caught her boyfriend, the co-pilot, screwing the junior steward. When we armed her, she marched in and shot him.”

The words sank into Atsawin like stones into deep water. “You armed her? Are you insane? We could have pinned this on her. You’ve destroyed our cover.”

Markus didn’t waver. His eyes were steady, cold. “Captain didn’t see it that way. He called it a hijacking. Locked down the pilot house.”

Atsawin closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. He could feel the plan slipping, unraveling like fabric eaten through by moths. “Get me a gun,” he said at last. If they lost the gate, the Laughlites would find another way. They always would. He needed to take the Kido-Sowah device entirely out of the equation.

“Cole and Stout have taken engineering. They took it from the flight engineer—”

“Lon Barron,” Atsawin whispered, as though naming the dead might honor them. He had memorized them all.

“Yeah, ok, him.”

The radio on Markus’s vest hissed. Cole’s voice crackled through, jagged with adrenaline. “Marko, I just had to shoot the engineer. He tried to bleed the fuel lines.”

Atsawin’s eyes snapped open. His hand rose and pointed, every syllable sharpened into command. “Get control of this ship. Get us into the gate. Nothing else matters.”

~ ~ ~

Nicole Loughlin adjusted the stylus on her podium, lining it precisely with its edge. The hall was black and heavy with silence, every breath of the audience folded into the same stillness. Their attention pressed against her skin, an almost physical force.

When she spoke, the music rose beneath her voice, a slow crescendo of strings and brass.

“We have chased the dream of warp since our forebears first reached for the stars. They had only fragments of the truth, and yet they imagined us walking between worlds.”

The screen behind her brightened to reveal Sergey Krasnikov’s stern face.

“It was he who gave us the Tube and the Shadow. And it was under the cloak of the United States Air Force” — the word States hung, heavy, pulling shouts and cheers —“that he built the Milner Gate. Humanity tore a hole into the outer system and passed through.”

The roar that followed struck like a physical wave. She let it swell, let the sound feed her.

“When they stripped away our states, they promised us freedom. What we received was chains made of bureaucracy. Politicians who sell themselves for power. Votes bought like indulgences.”

The chant of her name began again, rolling through the crowd like thunder. Nicole raised her chin, her smile subtle, controlled.

“It is long past time we take our America back.”

The audience shook with its answer.

“They waste billions on toys that win hearts on social feeds. They elevate a trust-fund child in Capital Hall who worries more about the cut of her hair than the survival of our people.”

The spotlight crowned her in fire, turning her curls into a halo. She leaned into it, her eyes burning with the certainty of her myth.

“Two-score and eight years ago, Sergey Krasnikov made the human race interplanetary,” she said, her voice rising to fill the chamber. “We will make America interplanetary, we will make America rise again, I will bring back the glory of our Republic to the Stars!”

The roar shook the hall, her name pounding like war drums in the dark.

~ ~ ~

The pilot house smelled of iron and ozone. Blood globules drifted in the weightlessness, scattering like red stars across the air. Bone fragments clung to the viewport, thin white crescents haloed in crimson. A single dart sat in its nest of sealing gel, surrounded by the mess it had made.

Beyond the glass, the black dome of subspace loomed, encased in the carbon nano-fiber ring of the Star6 station. The void shimmered like liquid obsidian, drinking every stray glimmer of light. The sight of it seemed to reach inside him, pulling at his breath, demanding awe and dread in equal measure.

“How’s the Kido’s output?” Atsawin asked, his voice hushed.

“Five-oh-five by sixteen,” Soboleva murmured. Her braid floated loose, strands drifting as though underwater. “Twenty-two percent. The links may still hold.”

His hand touched the cardboard ring that sat on the console. Five cans of soda. One hidden device.

The circle of the Meisner Gate felt almost ceremonial, a ritual offering waiting for fire.

“We’re synced with the gate,” Marjorie Gardner reported from the controls. Her voice trembled despite the blood drying on her hands.

Xie Laong shook her head, lips tight. “No. I can’t confirm fluctuations from the Kido.”

“We cannot know how the Kido will react at the event horizon,” Atsawin said, though he no longer cared. His true plan would end just inside the gate, no matter what the device chose to do.

“Take us in. Venus may already be watching.”

The ion drives burned. A faint gravity stirred, pressing bodies against restraints. Atsawin reached for Laong’s hand. Her skin was warm, soft, human. He silenced her fear with a smile. It was the only mercy he had left.

Crossing into subspace felt like piercing a membrane. The fabric of reality stretched thin, the containment ring straining to hold the galactic wound together.

“No change in the Kido,” Soboleva said. “Breaking horizon now.”

“Full power,” Atsawin whispered. He lifted a can from the ring. The metal was slick in his hand. “Embrace destiny.”

Gravity lurched. Atsawin slammed against the ceiling, the can spinning free. Cole screamed as he tumbled, limbs flailing. Soboleva and Laong collided, bodies entwining in weightless chaos.

Marjorie caught the rifle, her knuckles white. The pilot’s couch groaned, metal tearing against strain.

The weight reversed. Atsawin struck the deck, his skull cracking against steel. Light burst behind his eyes. Shots cracked through the chamber. One found his thigh, tearing through muscle with fire.

“Marjorie!” he shouted, voice raw.

Cole’s next round took her in the skull. The back of her head burst open, blood and brain splattering against the glass. The breach tore it outward, vanishing into the void.

The decompression alarm shrieked again, its voice thin against the storm of blood and steel. Atsawin’s body slammed against the co-pilot’s chair. Darkness surged up from below, swallowing him whole.

1. I am a self taught programmer.

2. I have made a good living programming despite point one.

So, this all starts with a funny little thing that happens when you start building in Laravel.

At first, you’re the princess who’s found the enchanted forest of Otwell: elegant syntax, easy-to-use MVC, magical Eloquent relationships (to borrow an Apple parlance) that 'just work’.

It’s literally sunshine and rainbows and php artisan

But…

But then… somewhere in between your fifteenth migration rollback and an Alpine.js meltdown, you realize the truth;

It’s not an enchanted forest, it’s the Hunger Games.

Shocking. Brutal. Unfair?

No, because even when Laravel hurts me, I keep coming back. Under all the frustrations and Stack Overflow tabs lies a framework that’s still the best thing that’s happened to;

My codebase.

My skills.

And, to be honest, PHP itself.

If this were an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, I would start out as a headstrong WordPress kid thinking he knew the world, and I would transform into a gremlin screaming at foreign key constraints. Even while loving every minute of it.

So, Mr. Webber, on with the musical;

Act 1: The Honeymoon Phase

When I first installed Laravel, it felt like I’d been handed the keys to Taylor’s Lamborghini.

Routing was built in, you could serve a dev server from inside the code base, the authentication scaffolded out with a single command, Laracon was an awesome conference. I was like a wizard in that aforementioned magical forest.

To say the least, I was flying. Flying in the proverbial Lamborghini of PHP frameworks. I was going to make the cleanest API backend, and I was going to build it all in a weekend!

Cue the “This is fine” dog meme…

Act 2: Foreign Invaders (aka Foreign Keys)

The first cracks start to appear, and our protagonist starts to hunch just a little… just a bit gremlin like…

I had a grand idea, break addresses into;

• States table

• Countries table

• Address table, referencing both (a polymorphic relationship for any other model).

Dead simple, right?

Wrong.

Dead on arrival.

SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation

I felt like the guys from Office Space.

Me: “Integrity constraint violation, what the **** does that mean!?”

I’d properly used foreignId()→constrained() — they were supposed to be MAGIC!

Fine, I’ll run php artisan migrate again, maybe I just need to turn it off and turn it back on again (side note: that IT trick doesn’t work in programming).

SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation

Me: “What constraint? They’re magic constraints. I am constraint-free. I AM A CONSTRAINT-FREE ZONE.”
Laravel: “lol nope.” (This is where in the musical, Laravel becomes a character that torments me)

What followed was three hours of rolling back migrations, reordering seeders, and asking myself deep philosophical questions like:

• Why do circular dependencies exist?

• Am I accidentally recreating the plot of Inception in my database?

• Should I switch careers and become a barista like my wife?

(Spoiler: I fixed it by seeding states and countries first. And I didn’t become a barista.)

Act 3: Logic from the Depths of Mordor-Math

In the application I was building, specifically for the musical, it included payroll calculations. So it was time to figure out how to track overtime.

Thunderclash! And maybe a musical number about union rules, holiday pay, and let’s say minimum call-in hours, just to reopen old wounds.

How hard could overtime be? If you work more than a Forty (lol), you get overtime.

This is where the Witch King of Syntax unleashes his black riders of math.

And I love math. I’m good at math.

But apparently I’m bad at writing logic, because I end up with these travesties;

if ($this->location->minimumCallIn && $workedHours < $this->payrule->minimumCallIn) {
     // Just pay them minimum call-in
}

Except the final code is fifty lines longer and filled with proprietary code (IYKYK), but it was capped off with my crowning achievement… a commit note saying simply;

“Don’t touch this unless you enjoy pain.”

It’s obviously in jest.

But seriously, once you get something working, breaking it again can be heartbreaking.

At one point, I made a tiny tweak to handle holiday pay and accidentally triggered double overtime on Thanksgiving. My test employee made $4,200 in one day.

Good for them!

Bad for me.

Here is where I get my sword of PEST. For those who don’t know, PEST is a testing framework written by Nuno Maduro (who I am looking forward to seeing at Laracon this year), a Laravel Core member.

PEST writes its test kinda like Buffalo Bill, “it has a welcome page, or it gets the hose again…”

(This is a sample from the PEST homepage)
it(‘has a welcome page’, function() {
     $response = $this->get('/');
     expect($response->status())->toBe(200);
});

Now, when I do a 2am code fest instead of sleeping, I’ll know instantly if I broke my code, and I don’t have to leave threats in my GitHub repo to future me.

Cue the heroic fight against the orcs of broken code!

Act 4: Tailwind Tailspin

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! We’re not getting rescued by eagles, we’re getting bounced.

Let’s talk about frontend baby, let’s talk about you and me.

Tailwind and Alpine (and Livewire for that matter) were supposed to by my lightweight buddy for interactivity. But somehow, they just kept making me more bald, and I’m already bald.

To start with, I couldn’t (still can’t actually) get Tailwind to build using npx, constant errors. It works fine when I let Laravel do the heavy lifting with installing — but part of learning and getting better is understanding how tools work.

Then, coming from the old days of WordPress, even early Bootstrap, and vanilla CSS, I constantly find nothing but frustration with Tailwind layout and alignment when using flex containers.

I usually get it working right, but it’s never a one-and-done kind of code.

Which leaves me, the gremlin shaped programmer, reaching up at the eagle that had dropped me screaming;

Me: “Why!?”
Alpine.js (the eagle): “¯\_(ツ)_/¯“

Every fix created two more bugs, like I was coding Hydra. And yet — I kept at it, because Tailwind + Alpine is still one of the fastest ways to build UI’s. As I powered through, and I learned more, I was able to master my issues.

This is the point where my gremlin grows wings? I guess?

Act 5: The Magic Returns to Laravel Land

Here’s the thing: Laravel didn’t betray me.

It was me.

I didn’t understand relationships and migrations well enough, I wasn’t writing tests, I clung to old ideals on how to style UI.

But every bug taught me something.

Every failed test made my app stronger.

Every misplaced <div> turned into an, “Ohhhh. That’s why.”

These are just three small examples, three middle acts of the musical, that highlight recent examples in my 9 years programming Laravel and 25+ years programming PHP.

In the end, Laravel didn’t just give me a framework. It gave me confidence, battle scars, and the ability to laugh at my own code later.

To end the musical, my warped and distorted gremlin spreads its wings, lifting the sword of PEST over his head. And a closing number includes something about cows, because I grew up in Wisconsin.

Lessons Learned

1. Try to plan out your application database first, so you build it in the right order. Planning helps avoid a three hour Stack Overflow search that ends in a head smack.

2. Write tests early, you will thank yourself later.

3. Be willing to lean into an learn new ways of doing things.

4. Take breaks. Even Laravel can’t save you from decision fatigue.

5. Laravel is magic. But even magic takes practice.

Final Thoughts

If you ever felt like a framework hates you: it doesn’t.

You’re just learning to speak its language, and when you do… that’s when you learn to make magic.

To start out, let’s be clear, Wilderness Dice (and it’s bring your own dice republish) might be one of my most popular games sold — but we’re still talking sub-thousand copies.

Since the vast majority of the games were sold via the game store I owned, a game store who’s owner I was friends with, or online, I kept very bad records of the actual sales of this game. That being said, I do have some production numbers and I know how many copies I have left (spoiler alert, virtually none).

So unless a bunch were dumped in a Wendy’s dumpster, I’ve sold somewhere in the seven hundred and fifty range amongst Defcon Dice 1 & 2, Wilderness Dice, and the four variants of Wilderness Dice: Bring Your Own Dice.

Compared to my other popular titles, Art Major and Monster Bash, this is a significant gap. Across its three editions (plus the anniversary edition) I produced around two-hundred copies of Art Major, and around two-hundred fifty copies of Monster Bash (between first and second edition). Each copy has around fifty to sixty games still in inventory.

However, in the seven years since Defcon Dice (the predecessor to Wilderness Dice) was released, sales have dropped off to virtually nothing.

Looking Deeper at the Games

As I took a look at the three games, I wanted to highlight what I thought were selling points for them. Each game was; 1. Portable, 2. Easy-to-learn, 3. Cheap

However, each game had some definite detractors. Let me dive into each game, independently.

Art Major

While this game has long been a favorite of mine, it’s been plagued by production problems ever since I lost access to Button Man Printing. The game itself was built to really embrace the strength’s of Button Man Printing. With an all paper stock game, even with our original hand-made cardboard boxes, our price-per-unit in 2018 was 97¢. That didn’t include labor, or machine maintenance, but in pure paper product cost, we were at less than a dollar a game.

Moving to new production, I settled on an elongated box (created by Print Play Games) and used a custom length card size for the paintings. But the box was not as deep as previous boxes and I had to cut the paint (and painting) count, which diminishes the playability of the game somewhat. These changes also saw an increase in cost-per-unit in materials (even if the labor cost was less). This meant a card-only game was around $11.99, and even at that price my margins are razor thin.

The future of Art Major

In 2025, as I’m looking to continue to grow my game catalog, I need to ask myself if Art Major still has a home in the catalog. As I noted above, I’ve always loved the game, and it pains me to see it on the potential chopping block. If I can reduce the cost, or rework the game to fit in a traditional tuck box, it might find new life — but does the game have the legs/hype to generate and survive a fourth edition?

Pickup a copy of Art Major from JAMR.fun

Monster Bash

This was an edutainment project I wanted to do for my kids. At the time they weren’t even performing basic mathematics and I had this idea to help them learn math and love games. Fast forward six years and my daughter is testing for advanced math and my son is scoring in the 90th percentile of math.

But neither of them played Monster Bash.

I couldn’t get them into the game when they were young enough for basic arithmetic and I was able to convey my love for math and numbers to them through other outlets. This has left me in a bit of a quandary on where to go with Monster Bash.

Ironically, it is my only game I’ve ever submitted for review, but it’s also probably one of my weakest from a mechanics standpoint.

The future of Monster Bash

Sadly, I think it’s time to let this one go. I think there is a market for educational kids games, and Monster Bash could find a home, but it was just never hit that critical mass that a game needs to survive.

I’ve always loved Rob Fike’s cartoon take on the classic Dark Universe monsters, and it pains me to see that retired, but Rob is apart of JAMR, and his artwork dots many of our other games as well.

Pickup a copy of Monster Bash at JAMR.fun

Wilderness Dice (Defcon Dice)

This was my first real game development I did with Button Man. Officially Intergalactic Inc was our first game, but Defcon Dice (predecessor to Wilderness Dice) was my first foray into building a game from a production prompt.

Jake had pounds and pounds of six-sided dice, and he needed a way to sell them in bulk — so I developed Defcon Dice. The idea was simple, rolling dice, matching them to cards, and playing hands. We had game nights every Friday and we tested the game extensively.

The first game was done with a Cold War theme, partially because I liked the alliteration of the name, and partially because I found a silhouette art set I really liked that reminded me of the Cold War era.

Eventually, as we wanted to add more players, and more deck designs, I realized I could only go so far with the Cold War design and I came up with the Wilderness Dice card design while browsing through silhouette vectors.

The new design opened our ability to create themes that fit people’s interests and they fit in our custom hand-built box with twelve dice and thirty-six cards.

But then Button Man Printing closed

The closure of Button Man Printing was an instant halt to my ability to produce Wilderness Dice. There was no box that I could find that would fix the cards and box like I had designed for Defcon Dice/Wilderness Dice.

At this point we were buying new pounds of dice to replace what we had sold, so I decided the next iteration of Wilderness Dice would be a “Bring Your Own Dice” version. Everyone had plenty of d6 dice I reasoned.

I’m not calling that move a mistake … necessarily. We sold plenty of copies of Wilderness Dice: BYOD edition, but the game lost a lot of its traction and it was becoming harder to make the sale.

The future of Wilderness Dice

As a game, Wilderness Dice: BYOD is fully retired. I don’t plan to re-release that game.

However!

I have been working on, and play testing, a new version of Wilderness Dice. Introducing Wilderness Dice Duel!

There will be more updates coming, stay up-to-date or subscribe to learn more!

Captain Richard Volm gripped hard against the handrails surrounding the central command table. He surveyed the Type-88 destroyer’s command deck with a withering gaze. The small vessel had been “confiscated” from the Rhyno Commonwealth by Volm and his compatriots after they had rejected the Commonwealth’s “offer” of admittance.

“Captain,” His First Lieute…

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He and Rogers wiped before me, a complete squad should’ve been dropped. Unless we’re out of reinforcements – no, still half a dozen left.

Clicking on my squad comm, I attempt to satisfy my confusion, “Why didn’t we drop?”

“We did,” Rogers replies over the comm. I know he’s in a drop pod similar to mine, a meter awa…

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Damn, I felt cool.

The rocket-propelled grenade pounded into the Devastator’s torso, punching its shaped charge through their chest into a brilliant fireball. The explosion tossed the, now scrap metal, arms and legs skittering across the permacrete.

“Nice,” Super Citizen Rhyno gripped my shoulder as I dropped the em…

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Dead again.

My organs inside me still felt frosty – somehow. It feels like my lungs are crackling as I breathe. As if to add insult to injury, my skull is pounding as I relive the memories of dying, twice over, as they are etched into my brain.

At least I got my beacon off before I tripped into that landmine. I don’t know how I didn’t see it. No…

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I don’t want to go back to Malevelon Creek.

I died there.

Not that I have a choice. The sadistic genius who designed the Super Destroyer made it impossible to be a coward. Situated at the front of the bridge, a pair of drop pods were located at the port and starboard of the observation platform. As you locked your feet into the pod’s foot bindings, you we…

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The weird sensation of my neural pathways being rewritten sears my brain as my fingers tighten, breaking the sheen of an icy shell.

The flood of new memories fills my consciousness, and I have to shake my mind clear. I remember Lucas’s last moments.

No.

I am L…

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1. Rob and I recorded an episode of I Freaking Love That Movie about Black Hawk Down.

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The Crown and Star design

I’ve stared at the first design the longest. I like the color contrast and the symbolism of the crown and…

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Cold. Emotionless. Efficient.

The mind of a killer.

That made sense; she was a kill…

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Grace only looked up from her breaching position as the squad comm

Flashed an alert. LT and Sergeant Jefford's heart rates spiked on the far side of the complex.

Tapping the comm stud with her tongue, she opened her command net mic. Before she could speak, an invisible wave burst from the hatch she was …

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