“Construction will finish at some time prior to game wrap for the final run.”
Life Support
Comfortable life—or at least comfortable breathing—in Makalu Station is dependent on the life support system, the Dual-phased Ergonosphere System Monitor and Energenetic Transducer. See this example of a typical system display.
The main station building has two levels: the Crew Level (containing the Galley, Mess, CCIC, Lounge and Crew Quarters), and the Operations Level (containing the Medical Lab, Maintenance, Storage and Utility, Staging Dock and Drill Head for Shaft # 5). To ensure that any breach in one area of the station will not be catastrophic for the entire facility, sections are separated by pressure and atmosphere sealed hatches. There are five hatches: on the display, they are indicated either with a green bar when they are sealed or a red bar when they are open. In the example above, the hatch at the top of the gangway and into the maintenance area are open, but the remaining hatches are all sealed. So the Crew Quarters, Storage and Utility, Medical Lab and Maintenance are all sharing the same air supply.
The gauges indicate the air reserves in each section of the station. Readings in the 900-1000 range show that the reserves are full; readings of 0 or less indicate that the section is open to Titan’s methane atmosphere. If the life support system is on backup, the air reserves will dwindle as inhabitants breathe the air.
The Galley is a self-contained section: it is the entry from the Main Airlock and contains the hibernation pods–the Biological Environmental Atmospheric Thermal Temporal Insulating Enclosures–included in case of catastrophic facility failure. A pod is configured for each of the station personnel.
Mining Operations
When Makalu Station was built, four mining shafts for He-3 and hydrocarbon production were drilled, each about 5-10 kilometers from the station in opposite directions. A drill head contained within the station itself was also installed, with the plan that after the other shafts were at full production, Shaft #5 would be bored primarily for research, not materials production. [Presumably that was the reason it was placed within the artificial earth atmosphere of the station.]
Computer Systems
Life support, mining operations and the medical facility are all highly automated, with an integrated computing system coordinating tasks and performing analysis of operations. This system (K-VN, known as “Kevin”) was specifically designed for the objectives of this facility. For security purposes, access to “Kevin’s” analysis engine is restricted to those with clearance to enter the Computer Core Interface Chamber, or CCIC.
Killing a little time before pushing the website out to open registration…
We feel fabulously fortunate to have such an, ummm–what’s the word?–ENABLING audience of players. If we didn’t have players willing to spend an evening with our twisted imaginations/let us send Scary Monsters To Jump Out At Them, we would have stopped redecorating our house for Whately years ago. That might have been better for our sanity, but certainly not for our sense of creative satisfaction.
Some shout-outs to groups near and dear to our hearts:
- the “Alan and Aaron crowd” and the “Albany Street Gamers”–can’t remember now how either group learned about The Curse of Whately’s Mummy, but from a group of 2 and 3 people respectively, these folks have been coming back for more since the very beginning. And both groups have expanded to the extent that they expect to have more players register than we can hold in a single run!
- the East Coasties: both mid-Atlantic and Boston area. We feel humbled that folks–and a bunch of truly excellent players at that–make the effort to travel to Chicago for a 4-hour game.
- the Michiganders: another group that makes a substantial trek for Whately–and frequently drive back ~6 hours immediately after wrap!
- and too many individual players to point out, who have registered year after year and indulged our little obsession!
And there is of course our wonderful crew, but that will be the subject of an upcoming Minute.
Did you know that Zaya Rum is the official drink of Makalu Station?
Unless it’s onboard a smuggling vessel, don’t uniforms seem to be the rule in space, present-day or future, fictional or not?
Early on in the planning for The Curse of Whately’s Moonbase, we knew that our characters were going to include members of the military as well as employees of the corporation mining at the moonbase. While you can argue either way for uniforms on the corporate employees, one of the distinctive features of on-duty military personnel is that they are in uniform.
Once we decided we had characters we wanted in uniform, we had to consider the possible logistics of doing so. We quickly realized that providing them a) was not going to be that hard (using our warped definition of reasonable Whately effort, that is), b) would allow us to provide precisely the visual distinctions we wanted for the characters and c) would mean slime would be landing on the garments we provided, rather than players’ clothing.
Kelly O’Donoghue volunteered to serve as Moonbase Chief Costuming Minion. We gave her the basic requirements and worked through some ideas with her, and when she and Don came to Chicago for Under Angmar’s Shadow, she brought prototypes. Last weekend Don came down to work on “some props” and he brought with him a second round of prototypes. So Labor Day weekend, Kelly, Gail’s mom Barb and Gail will be firing up an assembly line of cutting and sewing.
This scheduling dovetails nicely with registration opening August 31st, because we should have a good idea by the weekend how many of each size we should need for each run. Therefore, we beseech you: please find a tape measure or a friend with a tape measure so your registration can include chest, waist and height measurements. The Uniform Minions will thank you.
* We must mention at this point that Anita Szostak has also contributed many hours towards the uniform project. Not mentioning what form her contributions took yet, though. 
A no-win scenario and/or death at the hands of unforgiving space is so much more enjoyable when shared with friends!
Way back in the dawn of Whately, we opened registration without much prior warning, and within a day or so, had sixty registrations listing the dates each person could play and the people they hoped to play with. This led to us spending a day sitting at the dining room table with sheets of paper labeled with dates and post-its with players’ names, trying to put together runs that would make the greatest number of players happy.
The next year, we sent out a “Registration Opens in A Week!” type announcement, giving the following instructions:
That year, we learned that we should have asked groups to contact us BEFORE registration, because we ended up with several large groups all waiting to play Halloween weekend. So now we add:
Up until Meddling Kids, every Whately held an even dozen players. Moonbase holds 10-12 (and, while you may ask, we’re not answering questions about the range). In order to better handle onesie-twosies registrations, we ask that your group not exceed ten players. Groups larger than that will most likely get cut off at ten anyway.
To recap:
- Coordinate with your friends your preferred/possible nights to play.
- If that’s 5 or more people, email us with your players and date preferences ASAP so we can head off any big-group-collisions.
- If it’s more than 10 players, be aware that we may have to cut you off at 10.
- Make sure that everyone in your group knows to register starting August 31st, what dates to indicate and what group to specify on the form.