MAXCHΞX

The World

The Alstroemeria was a deep-range nuclear-powered vessel on a centuries-long mission to seed a distant planet with life. She was named for a long-lived perennial flower. Something that returns season after season, long after the hand that planted it is gone.

A dormant virus embedded in the mainframe before launch went undetected and activated mid-transit, tearing through every critical system. The crew did not survive. The mission was never completed. The seeds never arrived.

The Conflict

The Alstroemeria drifts through deep space, dark and silent. Except for two systems still drawing from her nuclear core:

The Ship AI is loyal to a crew that no longer exists, fighting to protect what remains out of purpose, duty, and something that might be grief.

The Virus knows nothing of what it destroyed. It simply expands. It wants the grid. All of it.

The Game

The board is the ship's power distribution grid. Every cell is a corridor, a cargo bay, a cryo chamber where someone once slept. The pieces are the last functioning components of a dead mission.

Max is the Ship AI's core process. If Max falls, the virus wins. The Alstroemeria goes dark forever. If Max holds, the lights stay on. For no one.