A game set on Modern Geba

VESSELBORN: Contractor

Contract work on a planet that never runs out of it. Take postings through the Solarn Contractor Registry, deploy into dangerous regions, and build a professional record one job at a time.

In development

Follow development The Contractor Registry

The work

The board never says no. The corridor does.

You are an ordinary registered contractor with a thin record, a little varens, and the cheapest gear that still works.

Every posting on the board can be accepted, including the ones you are nowhere near ready for. The registry records your history: contracts completed, contracts failed, the clients you have worked for, the regions you have come back from. It never measures strength. Whether you were ready is something you find out in the corridor.

A posting that pays 500 Auren is priced for expected loss.

How a contract runs

From the board to the corridor and back

  1. I

    Review

    Compare the client, region, risk, payout and conditions of every posting. Some leave the board if you wait too long.

  2. II

    Prepare

    Buy, repair or replace gear before you go. Most of what you want costs far more than you have.

  3. III

    Deploy

    Move into partly unknown ground. You see only what your contractor can see, and careless movement ends contracts quickly.

  4. IV

    Return

    The registry records the result and the varens land. Finished contract chains open new regions, routes and clients.

Who posts the work

Every client wants something different

  • Joxi Industrial Holdings

    Industrial work everywhere, from safe support jobs to dangerous corridor security, depending on where the posting sits.

  • Sentinel Division

    Professional security and heavy protection, with clear expectations and postings that say what the work is.

  • Solarn Legacy Engineering

    Relay work. Engineer protection details that pay well because the engineer has to live long enough to finish.

  • Haavu

    Clear tasks in very dangerous places. Recover the asset, hold the route, secure the crash site.

  • Zhikhan Manufacturing Collective

    Rail, bridgeworks, depots and routes that have to keep working across impossible distances.

  • Brena Propulsion Designs

    Registered postings that look normal on the board and feel less clean once accepted.

Terms of the contract

How the client expects it done

Open engagement
Fight openly, as long as the objective is completed.
Low visibility
Force is allowed. Alarms, exposure and escalation are failures.
Covert
Stay unseen. Being identified ends the contract.
High-profile guarding
Protect one person or asset. You can survive and still fail.
Specific target removal
One target, then leave. Turning it into a general fight is a failure.

Harder contracts stack them: protect the engineer, stay quiet, remove one hostile, and extract before the route closes.

Where it begins

A quiet first job

A new contractor takes a warehouse job. That night, a force from the Church of the Infinite Maw assaults a relay far outside Maw territory, and the Maw does not behave this way.

The war the rest of the game takes place in starts the same night your career does.

Everything is set in Modern Geba, after the events of the Geban Chronicle, with the Energy Wars keeping the boards full.