Tonight’s game was special enough to bring to Mobunited.com because it ended in a peculiar triumph: Four of the five PCs committed suicide, and the fifth was murdered due the the machinations of one of those suicides.

It was a matter of principle, you see. The characters were on a mission to either steal or suppress force field technology that belonged to their culture’s rival, the hypercapitalist Universal States. Tough job; the research lab was in an Exthreat Facility, designed to contain experiments that might draw the ire of the Transapient AIs who built the Sphere. The facility was a tetraneutron bottle suspended by virtual particle switching, which made it indestructible and in emergencies, collapsible, whereupon it would release lethal radiation and sink into the Sphere medium.

Our heroes wanted to avoid the deathtrap and steal its data from an overhead dirigible that contained hard storage of the US’ research. They bluffed their way in but were eventually forced to kill a number of surgically engineered warrior “debtors” (the US underclass) and officer-interns, until a chase speckled with brain/network hacking got their asses lasered and stunned.

I woke them up on the USS Manifest Destiny, an local enemy destroyer under the supervision of intelligence officers. Their enhancements were gone and their “brane” neural implants had been hacked to hit them with epileptic seizures if they tried anything violent. Their host Major Yamazaki told them their ship had been captured and that unless they answered her questions now (before their thoughts were converted to data – not an easy thing to do fast in this setting) she’d kill 10 of the crew (a lie – the Antipodean was safely hidden underwater).

Now I expected the PCs to hatch an escape plan by using their common culture and wits, or shift things forward to leave them on a prison colony in US territory, able to escape (or lead a revolt) and deal with the reshaped politics that came about due to their actions.

Instead, they chose to die. They viewed the situation as an abomination, against everything they stood for, and three of the five believed that any future duplicates would be them, even if they were out of date, memory-wise. One more believed she’d die, but her double would be “good enough” for the cause of total liberty.

Let me emphasize one thing: This wasn’t their reluctant last choice. They started killing each other after about three minutes of discussion, and were happy to do it. And another: It wasn’t a fit of pique, an expression of anger on the meta-game level.

Steve’s character Buck thought that was bull, but he didn’t interfere as Kearsley’s Mikhail, our anarcho-Kirk, rapidly broke three of his comrades’ necks and stomped on their skulls to ensure data recovery would be impossible, even as he shuddered through an oncoming seizure.  Major Yamazaki ran in with guards and dragged the three bodies away (Sita, Aviva, Anton – the medic, XO and helm, respectively) in a futile attempt to suck some information out.

Yamazaki was going to salute Mikhail for his iron will, but Mikhail and Buck mocked her (a good thing – it was her gambit to get them to calm down, stun them while making them think she was killing them, and just suck the data out) but they mocked her and with the last of his strength, Mikhail threw her across the room. The insults cut so deep she put the brig in private mode and vaporized them.

They won. Holy fuck.

See, I had a certain vision about their culture and values, but I was gloriously wrong – I couldn’t have been right, because I set up an atmosphere where individuality was sacred and bound in a common hatred of bondage. They saw the debtors. They didn’t want that. After the session they talked to me about influenced ranging from historical anarchism to the Ramayana and were supremely satisfied with their decisions, from giving their necks to barehanded death to the sarcastic barbs they hurled at Yamazaki, where they disarmed even the notion of dignified last words.

Their successors – clones with out of date memories, half-compiled from public records and spun into a fragile algorithm of consciousness – are ordinary crew now, their own legal heirs, preparing as the Antipodean joins the Fifth Battle Collective to answer for the decisions of their forebears.

Freedom. Grim, incredible freedom.

We’re taking a break, watching a movie next week. Then Star Wars to lighten things up, while I figure out how we can possibly top what happened tonight.