Bastion is full of broadcasts. The very air you breathe is filled with transmissions waiting to be received. Radio, telly, machines silently pinging their plots to each other.
Lately everyone seems to be enjoying the telly. Wind out that aerial and flick on the screen. Tap the glass if it doesn't look right.
Current models come with nine of the most popular channels tuned in.
1: Video Nasty Sedate general-interest programming by day, the most deranged filth you've ever seen by night. They switched their name from "Good Times" when they realised how few people were watching the daytime broadcast.
2: New Rural Broadcast Intrepid far-transmission teams head out into Deep Country, finally giving a voice to those poor marginalised communities. Most Bastiards treat this as a comedy.
3: Civil Information Urrrgh... I mean you're supposed to watch this on the hour twice a day if you own a telly and want to keep your license, but nobody ever does.
4: Remembrance Solemn sepia imagery memorialising significant people who died recently. A panel of fame-hungry personalities discuss each life, ensuring they promote their own work in the process.
5: SeeText Machine-printed text projected onto the screen, turned to new pages at irregular intervals, with relaxing background music. Like a more irreverent newspaper updated almost instantly.
6: The Starry Gates A bunch of cults banded together to fund a non-stop broadcast of wildly conflicting ideologies. Only worth watching for the awkward handover segments that occur between sects on the hour.
7: Numberhouse Just a bunch of numbers sung over and over. Stick the kids in front of it and leave them to it.
8: The Open Broadcast Anybody can get a free slot on this, but there's a bit of a waiting list. In principle this should be home to creative, independently minded programming, but then the sort of twit who has time for this doesn't usually have much interesting to say.
9: Free Alternative Telly This started out as a slightly edgy Mockery-led channel, but then everybody realised that you can perform all manner of improper, immoral, or illegal behaviour if you film and broadcast it. Looks like utter anarchy, but everybody on there has an agenda.
0: If you know the right tuning you set Channel 0 to something strange, including:
Scrambled Channels Looks like a bunch of flashing shapes and falling snow to me, but I heard Machines can make sense of it.
Personal Channels The lonely rich seem to get something out of earnestly talking into the camera and imagining there's an audience.
Warped Channels I knew somebody who watched the wrong channel for too long and it turned them Alien. Honest!
Roll to Doubt looks at whether the D&D really fits into the Western genre.
Void Admiral (which now has a neat expansion) has really caught my attention lately, which I’ll expand on next week. Still, if you’re looking for a good space fleet wargame then check it out (also available in print on amazon).
Coming Soon
Over on Patreon I talk about a miniature challenge I set myself for the start of the year.
Expect the full post here and on the blog next week.
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real happy to see ceefax in here!
you and Rev. Joey Royale should do a crossover