CBR Bingo: Friends – The Stardust Grail explores different types of relationships and the nature of what we owe to each other based on those relationships. Auncle and Maya are friends and their friendship has taken them across the universe together, but as they embark on this last adventure they grapple with figuring how whose needs get prioritized – Auncle’s desire to become a parent and ensure that the Frenro can continue existing or Maya and humanity’s ability to stay connected to the rest of the universe.
Fundamentally, The Stardust Grail is a found-family heist story. Maya is a doctoral student whose younger years involved a plethora of art heists that spanned the universe with her best friend Auncle, an octopoid alien. Now, Maya has put all of that behind her in order to focus on school on Earth. That is, until Auncle reappears to get Maya’s help with One Last Job, which oddly enough happens to be a job that the Coalition of the Nations of Earth (CNE) – the giant military body responsible for representing Earth’s interests in the universe – also want Maya’s help with. Auncle and the CNE both want to find a device that is somehow responsible for both keeping the universe connected through a network of fast-travel nodes and related to Auncle’s people, the Frenro, being able to have children – something Auncle dearly wants for xirself.
Maya and Auncle set out with two new crew members aboard – Wil, a retired CNE solider who relies on a mech suit to get around, and Medix, a medic robot who has picked up a habit of hacking himself to try and upgrade his various emotions and abilities beyond what is allowed. Together they bop around the known (and eventually unknown) universe revisiting old friends, following clues in old explorers’ notebooks, and engaging in multiple heists to varying degrees of success to try to find the Grail before the CNE gets ahold of it.
This felt like a D&D campaign to me. Auncle is probably a sorcerer, Maya definitely a rogue, Wil is a barb/fighter, and Medic is an artificer and maybe cleric, but has started taking levels in bard. Shortly into the story, the crew comes together – Maya and Auncle because they are friends and both want to find the McGuffin, Wil and Medix because they have been hired on by Auncle. Over the course of the story, we uncover different characters’ motivations and philosophies of the universe. Sometimes they align with their fellow crew mates, and sometimes not. Ultimately they’re all here because there’s a job to do. Similar to a D&D campaign, eventually the job ceases to be sufficient motivation and they are roped into trying to do “the right thing” even if they don’t agree on what that “right thing” might be.
All in all, I would highly recommend. The characters are excellent, the story is a lot of fun, and there’s a lot of heart.
