Tartarus: Countdown to Pledge Manager (8)

Today we are continuing our look back at ISS Vanguard over the past months to help prepare us for our monumental decisions we will need to make once the Pledge Manager arrives! Our countdown to the opening day of Pledge Manager continues! Yesterday we started the countdown at 9 with Lone Wolf. Today the countdown is at 8 with Tartarus!

8

While yesterday we looked back at a single crewmember scenario (Lone Wolf), today we look at their first announced full scenario: Operation Tartarus! This scenario will also be included in the Core Box free to all backers. It is slated to be part of Wave 1 shipping.

This is a tense mission with several twists and turns that take place on TWO player boards! Plus things for this mission operate in a slightly different way than missions to regular planets. It comes with it’s own 4 page book to supplement the Planetopia book in the Core Box! Rather than a planet, you will be landing on and maneuvering between two huge discs that are part of a megastructure unlike anything you have seen before! Plus there MAY still be an advance civilization living there (but don’t ask any more about that so as to not spoil it). Operation Tartarus will be integrated into the campaign as a special, optional mission with unique rewards on completion.

Here is the audio/video (followed by transcript) for you to remember and enjoy again:

Planetary Mission Debriefing 48-C, Classified

…as you can see, the structure is of a truly cosmic scale. Each disc’s diameter is approximately five thousand miles, giving this megastructure a habitable area of roughly nineteen million square miles – almost half the size of Earth. Short of Eye of the Void, we have not yet seen alien megastructures of this scale. This station could once support a large civilization, though it seems they are long abandoned.

Both discs were once covered with domes, most likely ensuring the correct pressurization and atmosphere. The top dome is broken, and there are no signs of attempted repairs. The bottom one is damaged but still functional. Until we better understand its function, we do not want to approach it with landers or probes.

The discs are connected with some sort of a gravity beam. What’s interesting, the communication is one-way only. We’re noticing particle streams flowing from the top disc to the bottom one – but nothing ever comes up.

Your mission will be to land on the top disc survey the structures and the dome’s remaining parts. We need to understand who lived here, what happened to them – and most importantly – what can we learn from their tech.

This is a “code orange” mission, people! We can’t rule out contact with automated defenses, and there’s some worrying activity still going on in the bottom disc. The thick dome makes it difficult to gather data, but thermal imaging indicates something is still working down there. Take care and stay safe.

The codename for this operation is ‘Tartarus’.

Do you remember all that is included as part of the Tartarus mission? Me neither! So, I double checked and here is what Tartarus includes:

Four new pages added to the Planetopia book (now 50 pages total)
An Operation Booklet with 18 new logs and setup rules
Two more unique discovery cards
Four more unique injury cards
Five more scavenged equipment cards
Sixteen more Point of Interest cards
Eight more Mission and Event cards

PLUS it sounds like one more miniature has been added to the game as part of Tartarus: Steles:

Read more about the Steles in the official Update #3!

Remember that both Tartarus and Lone Wolf are ADDITIONAL scenarios to the already huge ISS Vanguard game! And remember that there are even more additions that were added (you did notice that we are only up to the official update #3?)

This Update #3 also let us know about an upcoming part of the game which sounds very interesting indeed: