LOST AMONG

THE STARLIT
WRECKAGE

SEAMUS CONNEELY
LOST AMONG
THE STARLIT
WRECKAGE
GAME DESIGN BY: SEAMUS CONNEELY

EDITING/ADDITIONAL WRITING BY: LESLIE TRAUTMAN

ART BY: JJ ARIOSA

Lost Among The Starlit Wreckage takes mechanical inspiration from

The Chained Oak by Starshine.

Lost Among The Starlit Wreckage is copyright 2021 by Seamus

Conneely (www.cannibalhalflinggaming.com) and is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Card Icons by aussiesim and Delapouite, provided under a Creative

Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License and available at Game-
icons.net. Additional assets adapted from Graphic Archive 01 by Lone
Archivist, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Internatial
License.
 Dedication

To the pilots of the 11th Autonomous Corp, Helios

Squadron, and the Joint Strike Force, for all the stories
we told together.

To every mecha pilot who never got to monologue

before death, here’s your chance.
 Contents

Intro 7

Safety Tools 9

Setting Up Your Characters 10

Setting Up Your Mecha 11

Mayday, Mayday 14

Playing The Game 15

• Making Repairs 16
• Transmission 17
• System Failure 20

Lost to the Stars 22

Rescued From the Wreckage 25

Prompts 27

Optional Rules 28

Example of Play: Unlucky Clover 30

 7

You are a mecha pilot. You have piloted your humanoid

machine across the surface of the earth, through
the void of space, and among the shattered hulls of
space colonies. You have fought a war that has seen
cities consumed by fire, fleets of ships struck down
by energy weapons, and mecha immolated by their
own stricken reactors. You have survived all the way
to today, the last battle of the war, waged in the void.
Now, your survival is more uncertain than it has ever
been.

The visual cacophony of both sides tearing into one

another has faded, replaced by the silence of wrecked
machines, an open grave of floating bodies, and
the last gutters of fire as atmosphere and fuel are
consumed from broken ships. Your mecha is laid low,
its diagnostic screen awash in the black and red of
dead and dying systems as you drift among the debris.

All you have is a dying mecha, an open communications

channel, and your thoughts and memories - and the
vague hope that someone will find you Lost Among
The Starlit Wreckage before it’s too late.
 8

Lost Among The Starlit Wreckage is a storytelling

game of war, loss, hope, and reflection from the
cockpit of a deteriorating giant robot. When played by a
single player, this is a journaling game. Your character
is talking over an open communications channel,
speaking their mind into the void, and you will record
what they say. Either your signal will guide rescuers to
you, or your words will be your last testament.

When played with two players, one remains the

stranded Pilot, and the other takes on the role of a
Rescuer trying to find them among the wreckage of the
battle. You’ll tell your story through your conversations,
keeping the talk (and the hope) alive as death and
rescue race to see which reaches you first.

WHAT YOU NEED

To play this game, you will need:

• A Deck of Playing Cards, including two Jokers

• A Six-Sided Die (d6)
• A journal or other way to keeps notes
• 10 Tokens
• Enough space to lay out a 5x5 grid of cards
 9

SAFETY TOOLS

While the setting may be fantastical, the themes

of Lost Among The Starlit Wreckage can be quite
serious. At the very least, the characters have fought
in a war, with all of the potential issues that entails. In
the context of the game they are trapped, isolated, and
with death lurking behind every card.

The point is to have a compelling experience, not

a harmful one. Don’t be afraid to back off and re-
evaluate if the subject matter becomes too much. In
single player, you have full control over the text - use
that backspace button or walk away as needed.

For two players, there are many safety tools you

may consider using. Lines and Veils helps establish
boundaries before play. X-Card and Script Change can
help you once the game has started.
 10

SETTING UP YOUR CHARACTERS

The Pilot

Pick a name for your character - if you have trouble,

why not use your own? By now you’re an (in)famous
mecha pilot. Pick your call sign and/or a nickname
that you’ve been given. Spend a bit of time thinking
about why that name has been given to you. Examples
include Revenant One, Spectre Six, Paladin Leader,
Headhunter, Black Fox, Ghost of Dahvil, Deadeye, Steel
Reaper.

The Rescuer

Pick a name and, if you feel it’s appropriate, a callsign

and/or nickname for your character. Then, decide what
your relationship with the Pilot is. You might be their:

• Family Member
• Mentor
• Battle Partner
• Love
• Archrival

Feel free to combine some of these, or make up your

own. For instance, a Rescuer who is both the Pilot’s
Love and Archrival would be a Star-Crossed Lover,
while a Family Member and Mentor could have trained
the Pilot since childhood.

If you really want to improvise, have them only know

one another by callsign or reputation, being either
strangers or only revealing a relationship in play.
 11

SETTING UP YOUR MECHA

Remove the Jokers from the deck, and shuffle the

remaining cards. Place one Joker face up on the table,
and then deal and lay out 24 cards from the deck,
placing them face down in a 5x5 grid with the Joker in
the center. Once all the cards are placed, flip the rest
of them over so that you can see each card’s face as
shown below.

This is the diagnostic board in your cockpit, displaying

the status of all the machine’s systems, with the reactor
in the center. Everything is either lit an ominous red or
is about to get there.
 12

Next, roll 1d6, and draw that many cards from the
deck. Compare these cards to the cards on your
diagnostic board. If the face value matches a card
on the board, remove that card from the board and
discard it - if there are duplicates, you choose which.
This represents the damage that crippled your mecha,
as the blare of warning alarms fade to the ominous
silence of complete system failure. In the example
below a 6, Queen, 3, and 4 (which had no effect) were
drawn. If you only discard one card, then it was a lucky
shot - if you discard six, then your machine is pretty
mangled already. Either way, the damage is spreading
as the mecha’s systems deteriorate.

After this is done, shuffle the second Joker and all

drawn and discarded cards back into the deck.
 14

MAYDAY, MAYDAY

As the Pilot, establish the scene by writing out or

saying something as seen below.

Mayday, mayday, this is [Pilot’s Name/Callsign].

My mecha has taken damage, and I am adrift.
Systems are failing. Anyone on this frequency,
please respond.

Is anyone else alive out there?

If there is a Rescuer, they respond as appropriate,

such as below.

[Pilot’s Name/Callsign], this is [Rescuer’s Name/

Callsign]. Stay alive, I’m coming. Just keep
talking, I’ll follow your signal.
 15

PLAYING THE GAME

The game consists of 10 rounds of play, after which

the pilot is found and rescued. Each round is split into
three parts.

Making Repairs - The Mecha pilot makes repairs to

their machine, trying to slow down the cascade of
system failure and stay alive long enough for rescue
to arrive.

Transmission - The pilot talks over an open channel,

trying to fill the silence that has followed the battle
and now threatens to swallow them whole - either
speaking to a line full of static or, if they’re lucky,
another pilot racing to find them.

System Failure - The mecha has been severely

damaged, and the toll on the system from the strain is
causing failures to spread through the system. Think
of it as junctions burning out, capacitors exploding, or
panels going dark, cut off from the reactor. This is the
step that ends with adding a token to the table, which
will determine whether you begin another round or
are rescued.
 16

MAKING REPAIRS

At the start of each round, the Pilot draws one card

from the deck. Consult the Prompts table on Pg. 27 and
consider the questions presented. This will be used
during Transmission. The Pilot then makes repairs.
Repairs are denoted by placing this card face up over
any card on the diagnostic board that has the same
suit. You cannot repair a system that has already
been patched. If there are no cards of the same suit
on your board, shuffle the card back into the deck. If
you drew the Joker, place an additional token on the
table next to the board, then shuffle the card back into
the deck. If that is your tenth token, you may make
your Transmission, skip System Failure, and then
immediately proceed to Rescued From The Wreckage.
 17

TRANSMISSION

If playing solo, the Pilot writes down what they’re

saying over their open communications channel,
based on the prompt(s) offered by the card drawn
during Making Repairs.

Length and style depend upon your decisions about

the Pilot. Are they talkers, garrulous and rambling?
Or have they fallen quiet in their final moments? Their
story is up to you and the prompts as the Pilot tries to
fill the silence while drifting through the remains of
the battlefield.

For an example, the Pilot has drawn a 4 and decides to

answer “How did you get caught up in the war?”

Nobody else got out of Orbital Seven. Damn

rustbucket, only home I’d ever known, caught
in the crossfire just because someone had been
smuggling beam capacitors to the black market
that both sides wanted. Revenant pulled me
out, and after that, I had nowhere else to go. So I
hopped in a cockpit, and that was that.
 18

If playing with a Rescuer, the Rescuer chooses and

asks the Pilot at least one of the questions presented
as part of the prompt. The Pilot answers, and then
asks the Rescuer the same question. You can go back
and forth for as long as you want.

So, what are you going to do after the war?

Aside from maybe my own funeral? Uh, well,

I don’t really know. Never got to think about it
that much. Suppose I’ll just re-enlist, stars know
there’ll still be pirates in the Outer Reaches to
hunt. You?

Won’t find me inside a mecha cockpit again,

that’s for sure. There’s this mechanic on my ship,
cute as hell, I’m going to ask him to marry me,
then buy a bar on some tropical colony for the
rest of our days.

Take a few notes about what you discuss, so you can

build off of them when answering future questions -
especially if you draw the same prompt later. After you
have finished your transmission, proceed to System
Failure.
 19

Transmission Etiquette

Several of the Prompts involve more than one question

- you don’t have to answer all of them at once the first
time you draw the associated card. They are there to
provide multiple starting points for each Transmission,
and can build on one another. In two-player mode,
keeping to a single question is actually advised, as the
back and forth nature of play can lead you to expand
on any given question as much as you wish.

Also, feel free to personalize the questions or create

new ones if it would help follow a line of inquiry you
wish to pursue, or if you feel you have exhausted the
questions for a given card.

While making your transmissions, never forget how

much danger the Pilot is in. Your formerly mighty
war machine is a dying wreck, the repairs you can
make from the cockpit are patchwork at best, and you
are helpless and alone - even more so if there is no
Rescuer responding to you. For the Rescuer’s part, you
are aware that you are in a race against time - as the
next part of the round will show, every moment could
bring your efforts to an end.
 20

SYSTEM FAILURE

The Rescuer (or the Pilot if playing solo) rolls 1d6, draws
that many cards from the deck, and then compares
them to the cards on the diagnostic board.

If the face value matches a card on the board, remove

that card from the board and discard it, prioritizing
repairs first; if the drawn card matches to a card
covered by a repair, it has no effect. If there are
multiple cards of the same value, you choose which
gets discarded. If the Joker was drawn and the reactor
eliminated, immediately proceed to Lost to the Stars.

The Joker helps keep risk levels high, but it can

also strike on any round - including the first. You
may want to check out Stable Reactor on Pg. 28.

Continue until all drawn cards have been resolved.

After that, check for cut off systems. If any system is
cut off from the reactor entirely - meaning that a path
cannot be traced, vertically and/or horizontally, from
that card to the Joker in the middle - then that card is
also discarded. A diagonal path does not count.

In the example on the next page, you can see the Jack
in the upper rightmost position is still connected to the
reactor, following a path horizontally and vertically.
Even the 9 of Diamonds is connected through a
roundabout path. The 8 and King in the lower right
positions are completely cut off, and the Ace in the
lower leftmost position can only follow a diagonal path
to the reactor; all three will be discarded.
 21

✓ ✓

X
X X
If the reactor is ever isolated from all of the other
systems - meaning all 24 other cards on the diagnostic
board have been discarded - proceed to Lost to the
Stars.

If you have checked for cut-off systems and have not

died, place a token on the table next to the board, and
shuffle all discarded and drawn cards back into the
deck. Return to Making Repairs for another round or,
if there are ten tokens next to the board, proceed to
Rescued From The Wreckage.
 22

LOST TO THE STARS

The reactor has failed. The mecha is suffering total

system failure. Life support is gone, and explosions
cascade throughout its frame. Any chance of rescue
vanishes. The Pilot makes their final transmission,
and they know it is going to be their last one. You may
draw a final card to act as a prompt. Whether speaking
to the void or their forlorn hope of rescue, that should
color what the Pilot (and the attempted Rescuer) say.

If you have any goodbyes, now is the time.

. . . hey, if you’re hearing this, and you find me,

and I’m . . . already gone, I have a favor to ask.
There’s this pendant, hanging on a hook in my
quarters on the Helios. It was my mom’s, you
know, last memento of home, and all that. I
managed to hang on to it through everything,
even got it off the Vanguard before she blew. If
the Helios is still intact, get that pendant. If you
tell the Captain the Headhunter sent you, she’ll
understand. Drop it in the Orbital Seven debris
field.

That’s all the memorial I’ll need.

 23

If the second Joker was drawn during the System

Failure phase, then the mecha’s reactor suffers a
sudden critical failure and explodes, destroying the
mecha and killing the Pilot. Make one final transmission,
although the prompt you draw is optional. The Pilot may
be speaking normally (or as normal as it gets when
you are in a giant mangled robot in the void of space),
oblivious to their oncoming end, or they may have a
moment of panic as they realize what is happening.
Either way, their transmission cuts off mid-sentence.

If there is a Rescuer inbound, they see a sudden flash

of light among the wreckage that looks for all the
world like a fleeting sun lighting up the void. They hear
the Pilot’s final transmission, and can respond as they
wish, but...

Alright, alright, that’s thruster two stabilized,

that should - oh god. Oh god tell Matthew I’m
sorry! Tell him I-

Sentinel Four? Sentinel Four, come in! Sentinel

Four, please respond! Lyndsey!? Are you there!?

The Pilot never hears it, and the failed Rescuer never
gets a response.
 25

RESCUED FROM THE WRECKAGE

Once the tenth token is placed on the table, rescue

arrives and the Pilot is saved.

If playing solo, write out an epilogue, using the contents

of your transmissions as inspiration, for what the
Pilot’s life looks like after the war - it could still be in
the Pilot’s voice, or it could be a ‘where are they now’
style entry.

Communications logs show that James Ennis

- known to the Confederation as ‘Headhunter’
and the Colonial Republic as Revenant One -
was found by the Helios in the aftermath of the
final battle, but further details remain sparse.
According to rumor, someone matching his
description was seen with two people matching
the descriptions of Alex Shostak and Marte
Stirner - Revenants Two and Five - boarding an
expedition to the Outer Reaches. Other than
another sighting near the Orbital Seven debris
field, they’ve vanished.
 26

If playing with a Rescuer, roleplay one final scene

between the two characters after the war. The
Rescuer’s relationship to the pilot may make a huge
difference here, but continue to use what you brought
up during your earlier conversations.

It’s after the war. The treaty is signed, peace

reigns... and Mariana is in a cemetary on Desia
Two, standing in front of Commander Soral’s
grave.

Derek sees Mariana and approaches slowly to

lay flowers on the grave.

They look at the tombstone of the man one

pilot tried to save and the other managed to kill.
They stand apart in the artificial rain for a time,
nod to one another, and go their separate ways.

They never see one another again.

 27

PROMPTS

2 How did your mecha get wrecked? Has it ever been this
bad before? What other bad situations have you
survived?
3 Where are you from? Why can’t you go back there?
What did you leave behind? What did you take with you?
4 How did you get caught up in the war? Why did you
stay? Do you think your side won? Is victory worth it?
5 What was becoming an ace mecha pilot like?
Training, fighting, killing?
6 What were your hopes and dreams before becoming
a mecha pilot? Which dreams do you still cling to?
Which dreams have you lost forever?
7 What was the war fought over? What were your
opponents like? What were your allies like? Do
you still think you fought for the right side?
8 Who have you flown with? Who have you flown
against? Aside from pilots, who has hindered and who
has helped you over the course of the war?
9 Who did you lose along the way? Who did you save?
10 Despite everything, what’s a fond memory from
during the war?
J If you don’t make it, what words would you like
to pass on? How would you like to be remembered?
Q How has the war changed you? How have you
managed to stay the same?
K What are your biggest regrets from when you
first stepped into the cockpit to right now? What’s
something you know you’d regret if you hadn’t
stepped into the cockpit?
A What will you do after the war? Where will you go?
Who will you be with?
Joker What gives you hope? For survival? For your
friends and loved ones? For what happens after
the war?
 28

OPTIONAL RULES

The following are ways you can modify your game

of Lost Among the Starlit Wreckage for a different
experience.

Stable Reactor

The Joker in the deck helps to maintain tension and

hammer it home that the Pilot is never truly safe,
no matter how many repairs they manage to make -
safety could be snatched away at the last second in a
cascade of radioactive fire. It could also, however, cut
the game dissappointingly short.

To set a minimum length for the game, establish that

the Joker does not count during the System Failure
phase until there are 5 or more tokens on the table.
Until then, when the Joker is drawn during System
Failure, discard it and draw another card instead.

Recovered Transmissions

One of the challenges of a game like Lost Among The

Wreckage single-player mode is not knowing
Starlit Wreckage’s
what prompts you are going to get, which makes it
harder to build a coherent story or do anything like
write an outline. There’s nothing wrong with that -
you’re a mecha pilot trapped in a dying machine, you’re
allowed to ramble - but if you find yourself struggling,
consider playing through the mechanical aspect of the
game first, then following the prompts. While you lose
some of the tension during the actual writing, you at
least have the full list of drawn prompts to act as a
guide.
 29

Two Lost Stars

For an alternate two-player mode of the game, instead

of a Pilot and a Rescuer, each player is a Pilot in a
wrecked mecha of their own. Their fellow stranded
pilot is the only contact they can make, so they talk
among themselves as they hope for rescue. You will
need a second deck of cards, which will be set up for
the second Pilot (you may find it helpful to use decks
with two different art styles).

During Making Repairs, each Pilot draws a card from

their deck, but they can choose to apply their card to
the other Pilot’s diagnostic board. If the repair is ever
destroyed during System Failure, it is returned to the
deck of the player who drew it. During System Failure,
drawing the second Joker does not count - discard
them and draw another card instead. If a Reactor gets
cuts off, the Pilot of that mecha may board the other to
survive. From that point on, both decks’ worth of System
Failure apply to the surviving mecha to represent the
increased strain on its life support systems.

During Transmission, each Pilot uses their drawn

Prompt to ask the other Pilot a question, instead of
asking one another the same question.

After the tenth token is placed on the table, the two

Pilots decide who is rescued first - through their
talks, who do they think is more worth saving? If the
Pilots cannot agree, then the Pilot with the most intact
systems is rescued. The remaining pilot must then
immediately play through the System Failure phase
one last time - and for this draw, the Joker counts.
 30

UNLUCKY CLOVER
BY LESLIE TRAUTMAN

Mayday, mayday - this is Caroline Carroway, pilot of

the Unlucky Clover. I’ve taken heavy damage, and I am
adrift. Systems are failing. Anyone on this channel,
please respond. Please respond. This is Caroline
Carroway - is there anyone out there?

PROMPT: 3

Can’t say I ever expected to end up like this. I’m from

a hydroponics station, for crying out loud. I was in
charge of a seed vault! Sorry, sir, I can’t dispense any
more tomato seeds to you, I have to stick my neck out
and get trapped in the vasty nothingness of space, but
surrounded by unstable, highly reactive debris that will
explode if sneezed on, have you, perhaps, considered
growing potatoes?

PROMPT: 4

I mean, come on. I clearly shouldn’t be here. I was

happy - well, no. Not happy as a clerk, but I was good -
no… I was okay, okay? I only got here following Danny.
This was his dream. Make it all a better place. Better
for everyone - not just the Betters themselves. I said,
“Danny, what good can we do?” And I followed to keep
him out of trouble, the jerk. Turns out playing hours of
Carob every week gave me good enough reaction time
to pilot one of these tin cans and then, here I am! Out in
the vacuum in an oversized power suit, trying to keep
more than just Danny alive. It was never my dream.
But it was their dream. It was theirs, and they...they
became mine.
 31

PROMPT: ACE

It looks like I managed to patch the cockpit shielding

this time. I think. I was never the best at on-the-go
work, but I can follow instructions, you know? And since
my main propulsion systems are, presumably, a trail
of unhelpful debris behind me, I have all the time in the
world to read the manual. Well, all the time in the life
support, I assume. That’s probably hours. Maybe less,
if I’m lucky. Void knows I’m not. If I survive this, it’ll
be the otherside that picks me up. That’s a lifetime of
hard labour. But who knows? Maybe I still have allies
out there? Maybe we won. Maybe Danny and Kaleo and
the lot are still out there. Are you? Can you hear me? I
don’t really want to die, you know. I just don’t know how
I want to live. I used to joke about playing Carob for
the league, but no cybernetics allowed. Maybe I’ll try
a planet. Instead of selling seeds, I’ll plant them. Just
a little farm in a little town where we get together on
the evenings and watch the games together. I’ll stick
with the Penumbra Station Hotshots, but someone
else will be with the G-Sector Waves, and we’ll laugh
and talk and fight like my mom and dad used to with
uncle Marn. Ha! Hotshots for life, right Uncle Marn?
And death, maybe.

PROMPT: JACK

Death isn’t such a big deal, right? It’s just an end to a

beginning. Death is always around, especially when
you work on a station trying to make life. Sure, it’s
just a bunch of crops, but the crops’ life and death are
life and death to all of the people who need to eat.
And it’s all so damn fragile. A million things can go
wrong and break it all. One faulty switch. One cracked
 32

casing. One mistimed shot. But what can you do?

It’s like Uncle Marn told me, like I told Danny. Danny
always worried about the picture - the big picture, but
you gotta do what you can where you can. You grow
beans on a ring in space? Grow those beans. If you
can, grow the best damn beans you can. You keep a
filing system that tracks and releases flash preserved
seeds for those beans? Better keep your files straight.
Leave your patch better. Fading light, I’m a dull body.
I almost hope nobody’s listening - I’ll have put you to
sleep!

PROMPT: 9

Damnation - that patch didn’t hold. Danny always told

me I needed to practice more. If he’s still out there,
he’ll probably tell me again some day. Following
instructions you read only gets you so far, he’d say. But
he had a knack for this crap. He and Cecily kept our
ring going. They kept our lights on, with tape and putty,
it seemed. Cecily is the one who started all this, really.
She’s the one who put this big picture in Danny’s head.
She lost her family to the machine, and she was tired
of it. So she talked a big game, talked a big dream.
Talked to me, too, but I was okay. I was okay enough not
to care. But Danny did. And when Cecily was taken...it
was like a light went out. Ha! Lots of ‘em did, really.
Danny couldn’t keep up without her. And her dream
ate Danny up from the inside out and...well. Here we
are. Cecily is long gone and probably dead. Danny’s
somewhere out there. And I’m...here. Obviously.
 33

PROMPT: 7

It’s not that I didn’t care that we were all just numbers
to the higher-ups. It’s not that I didn’t care about the
others, about the people lower-down, the people
stuck in the reactor cage, damned to die at twenty-
seven due to exposure. It’s not that I bought the lies
about the glorious whole of it all, everyone doing their
part and making the Station Chain the shimmering
diamond belt of the galaxy, adorning it with beauty
and progress. I just didn’t see how I could make a
difference...but others did. Someone was pushed too
far down the hole. Someone’s fingers were stepped
on one too many times. Someone looked around at the
shadows cast over us, at those in charge holding all of
the light, and people forgetting they were people like
us and that we were people like them, and someone
stepped up. Stepped out. Punched back. Someone had
to become the voice for everyone lost to the machine.
And with the nature of friction...something ignited.

PROMPT: JACK

Even now, I am a little ashamed to say that it wasn’t,

and isn’t me. I never fought for the shadowing, boiling,
roiling mass of the oppressed People. Like I said, I
fought for people. My people. They stood up - and I
think that they were right to do so - but I don’t want
to be counted among them or remembered as a hero.
I don’t even really want to be remembered but by
them, the people I stood with. If this box of exhausted
rambling gets out - and if they’re still alive - that’s all
I want. For them to know that what I did was for them.
Fading light - crying won’t help now, Caroline. It’ll only
smudge up your screens.
 34

WARNING: REACTOR CRITICAL

PROMPT: 10

We’ve had precious little to smile about since leaving

the station, but I can’t regret leaving. I’ve been burnt,
broken, and exhausted beyond knowing how to think,
but Danny was right. Cecily was right. I hope they do
find my box now, though, because they won’t find me.
I told him all I was good at was sitting and sorting. He
said I could do more. I said, yeah, I can stand, too. And
he turned it into an impassioned speech about “the
movement.” So I covered his seat in reactor sealant
and fused his undersuit to the chair. Sorry about the
maintenance shift, Galen. Not sorry about the sealant,
Da--