“Worlds Beyond Number” has returned with an all new long form sci-fi campaign, “Solari.” Following the grand fantasy epic, “The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One” the “Worlds Beyond Number” crew explored new stories and worlds in a number of short form campaigns. This included the Clue inspired murder mystery “Hint,” science fiction adventure “Flight of the Icaron,” and more.

Now founder Aabria Iyengar takes the reins as Game Master for “Solari” a space spanning science fiction epic. The cast includes fellow founders Brennan Lee Mulligan, Erika Ishii, and Lou Wilson. In just the first four episodes our protagonists have not only been introduced and become tentative allies, but found themselves embroiled in a deadly mystery tied to the larger political machinations of the galaxy. During a time of flux these characters must decide what role they would like to play in history and how it could impact the galaxy at large.

In an exclusive interview with Temple of Geek, Iyengar discusses her love for science fiction and how history influences her world building. She teases how each of the characters are embroiled in the larger story and praises the players. Iyengar also shares insight into why she wanted to build this type of sci-fi world for “Worlds Beyond Number.”

Aabria Iyengar Explains The Connection Between Science Fiction & History

Aabria Iyengar: 

I’ve been so nervous and excited about this. We’ve known that it was going to be a sci-fi campaign since six months after “The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One” started. So it had a lot of buildup over years. I think there is something about how wonderful, and precious, and amazing “The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One” was that started to make me genuinely nervous for my turn up at bat.

And then, once we finally got in the saddle and started, I was like, “Oh, I forgot that this is why these are my favorite people in the world to play with.” It was just immediately fun and funny from minute one when Erika really pushed the stakes and was like, “Cool, we’re going to start in flagrante delecto.” And I was like, “Oh! Let’s go! Alright, this is what we’re doing. This is how we are.”

And all of those character conversations, and setting conversations, and world conversations suddenly became real in the moment. It’s just so fun, and it’s been so much fun since minute one. I’m excited! I’m a little sad that we’re going to have a bit of a break because I decided to make a child, but as soon as we’re back, I’m so excited. I can’t believe I get to do this for an extended amount of time. I feel very, very lucky. 

Temple of Geek: The thing I was curious about with the game mechanics is when you picked the system, you specifically mentioned in one of the Fireside Chats that it was how it approached history. Why was that the thing that stood out to you?

Aabria Iyengar: 

So if you actually dig into what Wythe Marschall built into his setting, which for the record, “Solari” is a departure from that, but I think one of the things that got me so excited about the mechanical system, the grit system, that sits underneath it, is just how much he thought about the explosion of historical, European-centric imperialism and colonialism on the world during the age of exploration. And what that would look and feel like.

That idea that humanity struggles to not replicate its own systems at scale. That is just a thing we do historically and the fact that it is so normalized to us. There are a lot of very fun names that harken back to the very long, very royal, and regal names for guilds that took place with the Dutch East India Companies. There was something about the fidelity to what human history has looked like even at its most exploitative that felt real in a way.

When I think of the things that I love about this kind of genre. Speculative fiction, take one thing about the world and explode it and explore it out. What does it say about what it means to be human? That idea of looking at, how does history effect the future? And Wythe playing with that inside of this campaign setting was really a fun kicking off point for me to look at that and go, “Ok, that but more.” How do we go from a couple hundred years of a thousand years of human history and say, what do we do with ten thousand years of it?

What do we do when our functional memory of Earth and all of our human civilizations are about as well understood as the Levant and Mesopatamia? Where you’re like, “Oh, there’s no part of this that my brain holds fealty towards. It’s an interesting set of stories. I read the Epic of Gilgamesh, but that does not drive my everyday life because it’s so ancient that it’s been mythologized.”

Let’s take that and then move it to the future and see from our perspective here. The future is just as mythologized as the past. We can sit here and play in a very fun space, in space, about what history and mythos and humanity mean to us when you have to keep driving forward into an ever-expanding future. 

Temple of Geek: Another thing that’s very cool, and I think Brennan touched on it, usually in sci-fi the world is or time period has strife going on, but it’s still somewhat on track. But this felt to me like when dropping into a show like “The Mandalorian” realizing, “Oh, we’re in a flux era of this world.” Why did you want to set in in that sort of time period for this setting?

Aabria Iyengar: 

I find that the edges of historical eras fascinate me. Those messy borders between, like, the end of the age of piracy and the world’s industrial era. So, there’s something in that idea that so many things could happen that could prevent or shape or form or delay important eras of human history. Once you’re inside of an age, it’s really hard to tell stories about the disruption of massive empires without getting into Star Wars-level fantasy storytelling. Of toppling machines at the height of their power.

But there’s something so fascinating about being there before the machine’s been turned on. What can you get away with? What can you build for yourself? And if you are so inclined, what can you stop, delay, form, or shape to your own will? This is one of those tender moments before the Durally this big federal collective. I don’t know if you can have a thing in space that doesn’t involve a giant space UN. Even I was like, Ok, it’s hard to get away from the Star Wars of it all. Factions gotta come together. Twilights gotta imperium. Everyone gets together to have big conversations.

But at the advent of whatever this new way of life is going to be for the galaxy known as the Forty Suns, whatever that’s going to be hasn’t quite gelled yet. So, now we’re in this very fun wild west end of the age of piracy age where you can shape your own destiny a little more before all of the big factors come in and carve up the universe. And then, what are you?

Just a little guy inside of an incredibly powerful system. And you need something as fantastical as the Force in order to dismantle and destroy it. I wanted everyone to feel like they were enough. Or they can join the bad guys. I don’t know. 

Aabria Iyengar Deep Dives Into Brennan Lee Mulligan’s Solari Character XL-ZL

Temple of Geek: Gotta love a bad guy.

Aabria Iyengar: 

I love a bad guy! Look, if they all end up breaking bad, nothing would be funnier to me. It’d be like, “Ah, bfff, ok. This is cool too. Let’s do this.”

Temple of Geek: XL-ZL is the one, to me, it’s like you’re either the most terrifying thing ever or a little guy. There’s no in between. 

Aabria Iyengar: 

Yeah! Right?! Right? It’s so fun because everything is just so sweet and looking at the most interesting angles of observe humanity. But there’s something so insidious at feeling observed by something that knows it is not you. Oh my gosh. It’s like what if a flock camera sang a little song sometimes? And you’re like, “I don’t know if that makes me feel more comfortable. I don’t think so.”

Temple of Geek: There’s also this moment, because he had talked about on the Fireside, “Yeah, there’s this religion, but they’re not trying to get other people to join it.” And then when Erika’s character Chee asked the question, “Oh, what is it about your religion?” And XL-ZL just goes, “We don’t talk about it.” I go, “Oh, I don’t love that.” 

Aabria Iyengar: 

“I love it because it’s both really good fidelity to the fact that they don’t know each other like that yet. And asking someone kind of point-blank about their religious and philosophical underpinnings is a deep end of the pool question, Ame. What are you doing? Make some small talk first. But also, I love the idea that the character with the strongest religious coding and background, having it not be inherently evangelical, is again simultaneously it takes the pressure off of we immediately see strong religious institutions, especially evangelical ones, as inherently insidious and predatory.

So, is Xl-ZL’s reticence a thing that creates ease or creates tension because you actually don’t know what’s sitting philosophically under his motivations? It’s so fun! Brennan has made the coolest choices. Everyone’s made the coolest choices! XL-ZL as this angelic coded robot. Chee as everything you’ve wanted from wet neon cyberpunk space epics. She’s playing Han Solo and absolutely tearing it up and eating it up from the very beginning. And god Ze’doven. I could go on about Lou’s character choices even though we haven’t seen some of my favorite ones at all yet.

But he just came out of the gate so strong understanding a high status and high power figure who is staring down what that means going into the future. It’s just such a lovely character playing the person version of the arc of, you are staring down the barrel of history. What do you want to do and how much do you want to be a part of it? It’s the question that everyone is gonna have to ask themselves over the course of the narrative, but just having it live inside someone’s heart and their very name is so cool. It’s so cool from the jump. No one here doesn’t understand the assignment to the “T”. It makes my job incredibly easy and fun. It’s just been such a gas. 

Aabria Shares Insight Into Developing Worlds Beyond Number: Solari

Temple of Geek: I think one of the things I found most interesting about Lou’s character is how unbothered he is about things you would expect him to be. And then the things he is bothered by is like, “Your mom called.” He’s like, “Agh!” It’s like, “That’s the issue?”

Aabria Iyengar: 

Right?! It’s so good. Even in the conversations that we’ve had I still find it deeply surprising when it’s like, Ok, I’m going to walk into this room with my cool big guns and I know that he knows what a pull and cull are because we’ve talked about some of the things that are “normal” inside of the five families.

Including this very gentle assasination and kidnapping protocol, but having him be so nonplussed was so funny and says so much about his character and where he is in the moment that we meet him. And gives you the opening volley of how he’s reached that sort of, is it zen? Is it burnout? Is it a secret third thing? Man, I don’t want to give away. Lou is so good at understanding character deeply and not feeling overly pressured to get it all out right away. I get genuinely nervous speaking about Z just because he’s set up so many beautiful little tiles and moments.

And he will wait until the exact right moment to start knocking them over. But gosh from the very beginning being infinitely more stressed by your mom’s generic intervention than by several men with guns is a thing you need to know about Z. And about the house of Iverex and about the Five Families and the Forty Suns. It’s just the funniest and true to life choice he could have made in that moment. It’s so good.   

Temple of Geek: I love how ingrained everyone is in this world. Like you have Z where the pull and cull is like, “Yeah, this is a Tuesday, no worries.” You have XL-ZL with everything with the former hive mind and all that. And then you have Chee, and like it’s brown coats and “Firefly” moment where it didn’t go well for you. This was not fun and you’re now using this as you need to, to survive.

Aabria Iyengar: 

I think it’s a little reverse there because all of early conversations were, what do you love in sci-fi? What do you like to do in space? What can I build for you? Because this galaxy can be anything. And the fact that Brennan immediately wanted to be, his realization that he likes knights and robots for some of the same reasons. And that’s in part due because they’re covered with metal is amazing.

But I think he likes having a cause and a reason to approach a strange world as an audience surrogate with openness and not too many predispositions towards, XL-ZL gets to walk into these spaces and greet all of them as friends and then find out what the world is like. And that’s a really, really beautiful gift. The fact that Chee is like Han Solo, Ex Machina, Brown Coat “Serenity,” Sci-fi kind of way. Is someone who is alittle more jaded by the systems of the world and has to find her specific way through.

I think it’s not quite, they lost the battle of Serenity Valley and Ghenopaar is the consolation prize, but it’s definitely a, “Hey, you were an exploited class years ago and through a great act of revolution, managed to find yourself a way out and a little piece of peace that you can guard and keep for yourself. But once again the world and all of its systems and powers and that insatiable greed that exists everywhere humanity exists is once again turning it’s eyes towards you. So you need to do what you’ve had to do your whole life, which is figure out another way to survive.

I think Erika lives so well in that cunning back door back deal vibe that it’s exactly what she hoped for and I hope that in setting up sort of the factions that everyone will be working with, the more we learn about the factions that she both works with and negotiates with will give a lot of the fun that I think you find in charming scoundrels.

Again, having this be a bit of a love letter to my husbands love of “Twillight Imperium” and big faction play. And my love of “Dune” and these great houses. Having Lou sit from a high-minded view and power and prestige becomes a really easy way to make sure you’re being shown what all the big levers are and all the big movement is. Having it as an individual character whose relationship to his own potential and his family’s workings will allow you both to see it and then how he chooses to react and act with and/or against that from any given moment to moment.

Everyone did just such a wonderful job allowing me to have portals into the scales of the world and the stakes of things that they can interact with now. And some things that are so big that are like, yeah, you can see a little bit of the elephant in this room right now. Right now you’re just getting a little swish of the tail, but eventually you will have eyes on the rest of this giant puzzle.

But I’m only able to show you it as clearly as I can as early as I can because you all made these really interesting character choices at these different scales. So, the world and the world building has always, for me I find it more fun to chase my players fun and build a world that makes sense given what they want to do. And yeah, that’s what we’re doing.

Temple of Geek: You mentioned in the Fireside Chat that this is not a sci-fi with aliens in the traditional sense. What inspired that decision?

Aabria Iyengar

I think the moment you get into straight-up aliens that have predated human expansion into the galaxy, you immediately come up against the problems of imperialism and colonialism and exploration as inherently…you have to fight really hard to make exploration in space with alien life forms be not problematic in the ways that, like, European exploration into the new world and across Africa and Asia was.

So for me, I think the most interesting thing you can do is have a conversation about what it means to be human and say that with enough human history, with enough divergent evolution, what it means to be human can begin to, like, we’re so quick to find reasons to other, other people. That getting to play this game at a slightly bigger and longer scale of history feels more interesting to me than going, “Here’s the native Kursblax. Do you want to take all of their resources?” And you’re like, “Oh god. This is going to feel weird.”

There are different ways to approach this sort of political idea of what it means to be human and what it means to find cooperation when self-interest rules the day. And I thought it would be more fascinating to talk about divergent human evolution over inventing a bunch of weird aliens. Also I feel like alien life would be so wildly different to humanity that you’re doing more things with ceptopods and sentient viruses then you are with other people that are just—they’re humans, but their skin is blue.

So, it felt a little less interesting to me to tell a big long story with fidelity to that kind of alien life. Where you’re like, “You have to figure out how to communicate with the bacteria that’s trying to like creep into your lungs right now because they are species and their lives matter too. Felt like a weirder story to tell than I wanted to give in my love of sort of space opera, epic-scale stories.

Aabria Iyengar Shares The Difference Between Short Form & Long Form Campaigns As A GM

Temple of Geek: I realized this is the first time that I and a lot of audience members are getting to experience you do a long-form campaign. Is there a difference for you when you’re doing the beginning set up aspects? Is it a difference in how you’re approaching it when it’s longer form?

Aabria Iyengar: 

I think the biggest difference is having to remind myself, and this is a conversation that I’ve had several times with the players at the table. Reminding myself that we aren’t in a 10 episode crunch to get all those big ideas out. Reminding myself that I have time to set up and develop pieces. Brennan and I both love belaboring a chess analogy when talking about developing story for actual narrative play. Knowing that you don’t have to kind of come in screaming your deal. Do make three big choices, change the world at a sprint, and then get out with a fun bow and shuffle off to Buffalo.

When you have time, there is that little bit of a reminding yourself that you’re not under a clock. That it’s like, “Ok, great, here is a little plot hook that I don’t have to make sure if you ran past it the first time; I don’t have to suddenly go and drop it in front of you eight more times other ways to make sure you grab it because we have to hit a Rick Perry map or we have to get to this particular beat because here’s the way our episodes are going to plug into a bigger system.

Getting to forget about all of the logistics that sit outside of the story for once and just say the story takes as long as it takes and approach it with your care and curiosity and not with your concern about hitting timing, and that goes for me as well as everyone at the table, has been such a gift. But again, a thing I do have to remind myself of. Like, “You got time. Take a breath. It’s all good.” Don’t worry about that yet. It exists. The fans will remember and wonder. And we’ll get back to it when it feels correct to get back to it. That’s such a gift.

Temple of Geek: You’ve mentioned a few of the sci-fi stories that have been really influential for “Solari”. But I’m curious if there’s any that maybe are sci-fi or not that would surprise people? 

Aabria Iyengar: 

 Ooh, okay. Do I, I might have to save this question because we talk about it in my episode of “At the Well.” Yeah, I’m just gonna skip over this one real quick, and we can do like an addendum chat once that’s come out. Because the answer is yes, I think there are lots of easy answers for sci-fi that have created the north star for this. But the fact that I think human stories and anything that delves really strongly into character does all of that work too. I gotta save one thing for “At The Well” I’m sorry. 

Temple of Geek: Yeah, that was the thing I think that I found most interesting about it was the aspect of like it pulls so much from history and things like the age of piracy and stuff. And I was like, “Oh, like pulling things from that instead of just being like, okay, I picked this sci-fi and I picked this sci-fi and I picked this sci-fi”. Made it so much richer, and there’s more texture.

Aabria Iyengar: 

There’s just so much “Pirates of the Caribbean” as much as there is “Dune” in this, which is incredibly silly, but shout out to my boy Commodore Norrington. A weird crush I had when I was younger. Don’t know why that was, but was true. His head looked like an ice cream! I don’t know. Don’t judge me.

The first four episodes of “Worlds Beyond Number: Solari” are available anywhere you listen to podcasts now. New episodes debut every other Tuesday. Patreon members can also listen to Fireside Chats that reveal insight into the story.