Intro: Fahd Zaki
(To be clear, written by [redacted] for Assignment 1 – Storyboard)
(Inspired by the game ‘Space Station 13’, and written as though it was turned into an ‘RPG’ with such things as cutscenes, choices, and even actual employees)
Any narration meant to segue from the previous gameplay should play either before or during the first shot, then the rest should be done by Fahd.
(Note for dialogue-scripters/voice-actors: For the sake of clarity, ease up on his accent; The player will listen to him for several minutes straight, which might already push their patience. Maybe make a point of him slipping back into it and having to repeat himself at times.
But keep the third-person speech and rolling R; He’s still a Naoki.)
The camera glides along the space-station over a light-blue (‘arctic’ blue) planet. (Note for Designers: Keep a band around the equator mostly unfrozen, as per the lore, and make sure the landmass doesn’t match Earth – The players will check, in depth)

The narration should specify that it’s a Vioplasm Station (show the emblem and number on the side) and give a short explanation of how it’s there to export cheap Naoki labor and even cheaper natural resources (this would be a good spot to have the characters react to previous choices/scenes if the player has shown a clear opinion on VC)
Most ships that leave the station head into one of several floating constructions that look vaguely like giant jewelry rings designed to have the stone go through to touch the skin; Round, with it getting thicker and more complex around a sphere obscured by a strong blue light.

As they line up, the ‘bluespace’ (teleportation) system charges up (brighter light, maybe some sound – no sound in space, but we can handwave it as blue-space vibrations hitting the ship or such) and the ship suddenly disappears in a flash, then the next in line gets in.

Have the camera follow the thinner line of ships that goes towards the only part of the planet that has any noticeable ‘light pollution’.

Possibly have a character ask Fahd about the rest of the planet looking uninhabited, so he can explain that no, his kind lives everywhere, but between the low-tech infrastructure and
After showing off the power of the visual engine and our variety of designs to the player by flying between ships and through clouds on the way down (or skipping past this if time does not permit, but it would make a good scene for trailers/ads), slow down to let them take in the large city where the most high-tech areas look like what they’ve seen previously on human planets (not just as high tech, these are the same designs) but they’re mixed with simple and practical buildings that would have been outdated even before the humans ever went space-born.
Fahd mentions how this is the only city that has almost as many humans as Naoki, it’s even almost ‘civilized’ by human standards because of all the business that’s easier to do on the ground than in space, and that he’d likely have lost more than just an arm and leg without the local hospitals.

‘Catch’ a few Naoki in clear view to show the race as essentially cat-people, in the sense of having rather feline-looking fur, tail, ears, whiskers, and so on, and a lot of the ones walking around are smiling and giving short greetings as they pass each other.

Pause the shot on the VioCorp logo on the space-port while he apologizes for going on about the planet when the topic was himself.

Then transition over to his childhood home, which is about twice as big as the ‘single-family’ buildings in the previous city, but which is clearly placed somewhere with room on either side and hills behind.
He explains he wasn’t born ‘Fahd Zaki’, but won’t give his original name, and as the camera shows a Naoki boy running out of the house to play he points out the lack of any missing limbs.
A brief (2-4 scenes) montage of him both playing with other kids and working on schoolwork (have their clothes generally be simpler than his, and have a couple look a bit scrawnier and unkempt than him – think ‘alley cat’, but the unkempt sort you see on TV rather than the usually-still-decent real kind) – His father was the management/paperwork side of VC’s local archeological team, and with the value of archeology on the planet it makes Fahd essentially the son (and likely heir) of minor nobility (a lot of items of cultural and/or scientific value are left buried in the ice and snow after the race that used to enslave the Naoki suddenly disappeared a few hundred years back)


It’s not certain he’d even been allowed to finish his education if he hadn’t been.
As a youth, he says, he was fascinated by what he saw of human technology – Naoki tech was fun as well, but there was almost always some human device that did the same thing but better, and was more complex (and so more interesting) as well.
More than once, he’d gone with his father to visit the ‘digs’ – something VC’s policies discourage, but it’s hardly the only time their policies are ignored by their employees, and Fahd was always extra careful – and while most of the archeologists (or other role on the team) were exactly the sort you’d expect to choose a career with minimal outside contact, a couple were ‘friends of the family’ of a sort and occasionally took a moment to explain a tool or recent find to him.
Most of the finds were uninteresting; A bowl or ancient knife had no scientific value, and so no interest to the young Naoki, unlike the strange devices called ‘anomalies’ (xeno-anomalies, by VC’s definition, but they’re native to Fahd’s planet, so just anomalies to him) that functioned by such literally-alien systems.

Mind, he said he was careful, he never said he wasn’t clumsy.
Another dig is shown, with a somewhat taller Fahd carefully stepping around squares roped off by rope, where different objects are partially unearthed.
Just as he’s distracted by his father calling for him to catch up, one of the heavy ropes bump against his leg.
Caught off guard and now off balance, he jumps forward in reflex, right into the low-shin-height rope that might as well have been a trip-wire for its effects on his footing.
He gets knocked right off his feet, lands arms-first inside one of the areas, and slides along the soft ground.
Before he’s even stopped sliding, he’s screaming out in pain and curling up.
Blood trails from where he’d landed, and the clothes along his right arm and left leg are quickly turning red.
In narration, he explains he’d managed to land on an ancient sword stuck edge-up in the ground, and when he’d tried to push away from the sudden pain he must have cut his leg on a lower part of the blade.
It wasn’t a very sharp blade, but it was sharp enough that with about half his body-weight it could at least ‘bloody’ him.
Now, this is the ‘big city’; Even out in the wastelands like this, they have first aid supplies, and he was quickly disinfected and bandaged up.
They even got him to a hospital, for more disinfection and stitches by professionals – Yes, Fahd confirms, actual stitches, as in holding the wound closed with actual thread; They could have afforded ‘modern’ medicine, with the laser-disinfection, spray-able synth-skin, and so on.
But since he was just a student and could easily take it easy a month or two, it would have been an excessive expense even to them.
Show him leaving the hospital with a crutch and an arm in bind, with both him and his father looking tired but relieved, while the VO’s explaining how they had no reason to expect him to get so unlucky.

Then smash-cut, show him coming back out of the hospital again, but this time he’s pushed along in a wheelchair, and the limbs are bandaged stumps.

As Fahd explains it, there had been something on the sword, something very tough and stubborn that had gradually ruined his muscle-cells, and a fair few others while at it.
Parasitic fungus is one theory, based on other finds, and one that would fit into the mythology; If a tribe had managed to cultivate fungus that could coat the weapon in dormant spores, they might be the source of myths of ‘cursed weapons’ that dealt deadly wounds with every hit, but whose wielders would weaken and die while still young (because handling the weapon, especially while coating it in spores, would eventually mean getting them in your mouth, eyes, and every cut or scratch – Surviving to old age in that profession would be a miracle)
Whatever it was, it wasn’t discovered before it’d spread up into his shoulder and thigh.
The shoulder was the big concern, as the doctors weren’t sure what would happen if it could get to the neck, so there was no time to take chances on a cure.
Taking off the leg is a routine amputation – hardly fun, but as life-saving operations go it was almost safe.
But he’s still a bit unsure about the shoulder; They got it replaced with artificial bits awfully fast for something with so many muscles and veins – Obviously fast is better than slow, but he wonders if perhaps they weren’t as careful because he wasn’t a human.
Some basic cyborg-wiring was laid between the two limbs, of course, anchored in the spine – so he’s technically augmented along more than just the limbs, but it hardly counts.
Once he got the new prosthetics, after people’d measured him up and sent off the ‘specs’, things went a lot better.
When he was too big to use them, he started making his own – they were strictly inferior, of course, and by a large margin at that, but they were his – using the skills he was getting as part of his xeno-tech studies.
If his accident had taught him anything, it was that technology is literally vital, as in it can mean life or death – as life without both arms/legs wouldn’t really be living, it’d just be surviving.
A poster for VC’s recruitment is shown, and Fahd explains that this is when he became ‘Fahd Zaki’ – Two ancient human words he’d found in his studies, which roughly translates to ‘Cat Panther’. An inside joke at the expense of humans that insist on referring to his race as ‘cats’.

To everyone else, especially VC, he’d claim he was fascinated by xeno-tech and the possibilities of the various strange devices found (it was already several famous discoveries that would have been revolutionary if they could be reverse-engineered, and even a simple motor might use theories that could be used to improve human tech)
But in truth, his life from then on has been devoted to mastering the ability to reverse-engineer and control any arbitrary technology with the intent of stealing every human invention he can get his hands on from now until his retirement – He doesn’t have it yet, but he’s still young, and he’s already making himself useful both as a xeno-anomalist (as in, studying tech so alien no non-anomalist would know where to even start testing it) and in the R&D section (making and improving upon devices for the station.
His contract with VC, after he’d finished the fundamental schooling, was the standard 30-year longterm education-deal, where in exchange for higher education he is locked into working for them for the 30 years. They ‘graciously’ promised him prosthetics as well, as a ‘bonus’ because of his ‘exceptional’ grades (complete spin, of course; There’s a dedicated roboticist on every station, and while they’re mostly there to fix robots their license requires them to be able to install and repair bionic parts)
As he explains, VC tried to screw him on both the education and the limbs, surprising no one – they’re the ‘greedy corporation’ after all, the one other companies point to when explaining why whatever horrible thing they did wasn’t all that evil.
Split screen of him sitting bored in a make-shift classroom in an unused storeroom, alongside him dressed in garden gear and sitting in the hydroponic (‘garden’) area eagerly taking notes from printed-out papers as he waits for the plants to need him.

Another split-screen, of the crappy second-hand prosthetics he’s handed officially, alongside him in mining gear and with top-of-the-line brand-new limbs handing a small pouch of diamonds to a roboticist.

Five-or-so years of doing whatever grunt work there was an absence of later, he becomes a licensed xeno-anomalist.
There are no big anomalies on that station, though, so there’s another few years as a xeno-anomalist doing garden and mining work (occasionally prodding at the ‘anomal’ trinkets found in space-wreckages and such)
Then he manages to transfer here.
Then… Well, then the player-characters showed up and there was that whole mess with why and what and how, but they were there so he doesn’t have to remind them.