Suspicions on Sarna

In last Wednesday's entry, I was starting to get into creating a plotline that would tie the events of Ten Years on Terra to the Fourth Succession War, specifically, the Sarna HPG Attack. After some consideration, I decided to go with the Sarna Attack Hoax (Word of Blake's version) as being the real version of the attack -- ComStar filmed the Sarna HPG attack on Terra at a mock-up station, and then released the video to the public as if the attack had really happened. Incidentally, Alexander Black's parents happened to work at the Sarna HPG. In the aftermath of the attack, ROM had to eliminate all the people who would've been working there, but Alexander's parent figured that out first, and fled. Alexander spent his whole life thinking he was on the run from the Capellans, never knowing that his parents knew to hide in a place right under ComStar's nose, but one place they would never think to look: the Belters' habitats.

How to draw David Cho into this line is a bit more difficult -- by the time he's out of school, Alexander's parents are ten years dead. He was, however, on Sarna at the time of the attack, albeit as an infant. It is entirely possible that when Alexander's parents snuck off-world, they do so aboard the MAC DropShips that also carrier away Wei Zhang's family. That might give their parents some connection. It is relatively simple, though, to take advantage of the considerable redacted sections of David Cho's record to place him eliminating "Enemies of ComStar", who are actually surviving personnel of the Sarna HPG purge. Although he wouldn't have gone after Alexander's parent specifically, he might have a better understanding of why they were targeted.

Finally, I need to draw the HPG station into the main plot; resisting the Word of Blake. For that, inspiration came from Null Set (FASA 1672), which describes the use of an HPG as a weapon, specifically, a ranged EMP weapon. The Sarna HPG arc will culminate with the Word of Blake retrofitting the HPG station they built to replicate the Sarna HPG in 3029 into a weaponized HPG station capable of disabling on-orbit WarShips and DropShips. As a potentially decisive advantage, the players would be able to explore the station, discover their backstory, and advance the main plot at the same time. The issue, of course, is that I need them to take a plot hook. More on that in future entries.