Chapter 2.4: Commissions and Crews

The crew is your unit of play and the Empire's unit of work in the field. Chapter 2.1 defines its authority; this chapter covers how crews form, accept commissions, and operate between them.

Building a Crew

A crew is a few of the Starborn who decide to work together. Nobody holds rank inside it. Somebody leads, by agreement and by who is best for the moment, and the lead can move from one job to the next: whoever takes point through a ruin might hand it off the second the crew sits down to negotiate. A crew stays together as long as the work and the company are worth it, and it breaks up and re-forms as people come and go. Anyone who wants a season off takes one, and their Standing keeps until they are back.

At the table, this means your characters are colleagues who picked each other and the work. The ties that hold the crew together are the ones you build in play, and who leads a given scene is yours to sort out among yourselves.

Mission

Jobs reach you through Mission, the Synthetic who leads the Commission Service. Mission matches open work to willing crews whose records and available ships fit the responsibility.

The institution authorizing the work supplies any Mandate beyond the Charter. Mission authenticates that authority, states its limits in the commission, and routes any later request for a wider Mandate to the people who can grant it.

Mission offers a job; you accept, decline, refer another crew, or pitch something you would rather pursue. Work proposed by a crew enters the same authorization and matching process as any other commission.

What a Commission Is

A commission carries three layers at once, and you keep all three in view.

• The standing work. The Doctrine of Response from the last chapter, the same on every job: help whoever is in front of you and leave the place better. It rides along whether anyone writes it down or not.
• The commission. The specific job Mission hands you, with its objective, its limits, and any Mandate for work that runs past the Charter. It is what you signed up for, and the first thing a Board of Inquiry reads if a call of yours ends up under review.
• What you find. The thing nobody briefed, because nobody knew. A survey of a dead station turns into a rescue the second you find someone alive aboard. The Charter is what lets you act on what you find without stopping to ask, and judgment is what tells you when the thing you found has outgrown the commission and needs a bigger Mandate.

Most sessions start on the second and turn on the third.

The Ship

Your crew flies an imperial ship, pulled from standing inventory while you are starting out and, as your Standing grows, built to your own design at the Celestial Foundry. Its weapons support the dangerous work described in Chapter 2.1, under the same civilian accountability. Visible projectors also give pause to anyone sizing up the ship.

Every field ship provides habitation, an ordinary clinic and workshop, general stores, and at least one small craft appropriate to its Scale. Specialized surgery, laboratories, relief cargo capacity, secure containment, and similar capabilities are Facility Traits chosen during ship creation or supplied as Prepared or Mandate Assets for a commission (Chapters 2.6 and 5.1). The ship is your home and your toolkit, and the clearest measure of the Standing you have earned. A crew with a name for hard, clean work flies something built to its hand. A crew just starting out flies whatever the inventory can spare.

Standing

Standing is the crew's cumulative record. Chapter 2.6 governs its awards, Ranks, Commission Tiers, Prepared Assets, and ship Scale ceiling.