Campaign Diary

Game date 22nd February 4998 AD

We rejoin our heroes on the Vril-Ya landing field as the Vau haul away the shapeshifting impostor who had been impersonating Provost Ezra.

The Vau mandarin Slee'Wau Vim instructed the cadre and their Imperial Eye minder to board their own ship ('The Nocturnal') and lift to orbit, where the Vau would arrange for the human vessel to be transported to Shauduveen (The world known as 'Vau' by the Empire).
On reaching orbit, the Nocturnal shut down her engines and was approached by a mid-sized Vau warship that took her under tow with a frankly ostentatiously powerful tractor beam. The tug-tow combination then made for the gate at over twice the speed that Nocturnal could make under her own power.
"The Vau are showing off..." remarked Antonio DeMosto (Our cynical House Masseri noble).
Four days later, the Nocturnal was cast off into Shauduveen orbit and directed to home in on a beacon down on the planet's surface. Shauduveen appeared to be a pleasant Urth-like world with one major continent, small seas and a comfortable climate.
Landing on a small and isolated patch of tarmac in the middle of a forested region, the cadre could only see a small marquee and cluster of figures waiting for them.
Sensors indicated 'unidentifiable trace elements' in the atmosphere, but the party eschewed the use of space suits (although their minder wore her own breather masks).
The atmosphere as it entered the air-lock... STANK. A nauseating stench filled the nostrils of the unprotected party and they were only halfway across the tarmac to the marquee when Tarhana Annissa Al-Malik of Aylon fell to her knees and spewed her guts up all over the floor. This amused Antonio DeMosto who, despite his own rising nausea felt that this showed her effete high-born nature and that he was made of sterner stuff.
As the party reached the marquee and the waiting group of Vau Warriors, they noticed that the remaining figure was, in fact, a human. The surprise was somewhat muted by Dame Alectrona Xanthippe and Guild Lft Musa Faruq throwing up perilously close to the dignitaries.
The human introduced himself as "Yonn Gwin" and explained that he was a member of the Hegemony's human population... the fact that there WAS a human population within Vau space was something of a surprise.
The elderly human was concerned that the visitors lacked protection against the atmosphere and quickly led them behind the marquee where he showed them a series of maniquins that seemed to be wearing a network of fine silver wires. These, he explained, were 'sheaths' - Protective devices worn by Hegemony citizens, the Vau and their fellows did not believe in altering worlds to suit them and instead accommodated themselves to the worlds on which they lived.
At a touch to the central boss of the network, the wires retracted and the 'jewel' could be placed on the chest and activated to fit the wearer. Two of the wires enter the nostrils, one enters an ear and a tendril rests near the mouth. The activation is disconcerting at first but as the cadre had the sheaths activated for them, the stench from the air vanished and their nausea swiftly abated.
The sheaths would also translate any words spoken in the Vau 'Middle Speach' for the wearer and could transmit a translation of Urthish to the sheaths of any Hegemony citizen, allowing free communication.
Yonn Gwin explained that the Mandarin whom he served waited at 'The Palace of Fortuitious Chance' some distance away and that he would explain many things and answer their questions there.
The Palace was visible on the horizon as a slender tower.
The party were a little put out to discover that the palace was several days walk away and that they were expected to cover the distance alone and on foot. Fortunately, Ezra had his survival gear with him and the party were, as ever, armed to the teeth. Yonn Gwinn also provided some berries that he said would provide sustenance.
The Sheaths would detect toxins in food or water and could filter any water drunk.
The path through the forest would lead to a river crossing, where transport would take them to the palace.
Setting off through the forest, Lady Annissa pointed out that as the first Known Worlders on this planet, they could name the local flora and fauna as they saw fit... which led to several unsuitable suggestions for animal names.
They encountered a flock of carrion eater bird analogs with long and brightly coloured feathers, which Antonio described as "over elaborate and snappy... like Annissa".
The birds seemed friendly and even tried to play with shiny objects on the party's person. Annissa said they reminded her of a gaudy friend she had once had, who always wanted to play with other people's shiny possessions (which led to Ezra, the priest one must point out, suggesting to Antonio that he invest in some 'Willy Glitter' and meet this friend).
The group were 'highly focussed' and ignored and interesting looking roadway that crossed the game path they were on, and the sound of trees being felled and the hunting calls of intelligent aliens in the nearby forest.
Sadly they could not ignore the rabid apex predator that tried to gore Ezra to death but blew it to pieces in the flurry of blaster fire.
(almost unnoticed, Antonio interposed himself between the creature and Annissa, and was lucky not to get accidently shot in the back for his surreptitious chivalry as Annissa blazed away).
Antonio asked if it was edible and it was pointed out that edible or not, the mad staring eyes and froth around the mouth might indicate something about the quality of the food.
After two days journey, the group arrived at a Vau village on the shore of a massive river. There was a brief period of wonderment as they observed ordinary looking Vau going about their daily routine and the sight of Vau children playing before they were heads down and heading for the biggest building in the hopes it was a town hall.
The building transpired to be some sort of refinery and disappointed, the party went straight to the docks. Lady Annissa spied what looked like a market but Antionio said that as they had no local money there was no point trying to shop and it was a waste of time.
Arriving at the docks, they found a group of Vau Soldiers with a sort of flying disk. The soldiers were expecting the party and after checking that the party were finished in the village, they escorted them aboard the disk and flew them across the river and marsh to the palace. The 'palace' was in fact a small floating city with a central spire. Awaiting them were three Vau mandarin...

The evident leader of the deputation of Vau introduced himself as Yoma Zahl and welcomed the humans to the palace, leading them into an ornate dining hall. In the dining hall was an oak table of evident Urthish design and seemingly made of oak. It was explained that the human colonists who settled a world within the hegemony brought it from Urth. The colony was founded during the Diasporan era and lost to history. The Vau contacted these humans and took them into the Hegemony long ago. They kept their existence secret from the Known Worlds for reasons of their own.
Also present was a Vau worker, evidently very old. Zahl explained that he was the last remaining member of Zahl's own clutch, prompting Antonio to make the incredibly tactless comment : "Toffs always get the best medicine." Fortunately for Human-Vau relations, Zahl did not seem to understand the sarcasm and merely explained that the worker caste had a shorter natural span than the mandarin caste.
It transpired that not all the Vau on the ruling council favoured contact with the Empire but that of late, those who did had carried the day and thus the embassy visits had come about. The cadre were selected because they were not diplomats, perhaps a truer reflection of their race than those who would have been sent had the government had a choice in the selection.
Zahl explained that he intended for the cadre to explore and interact with the palace with him. Annissa surmised that this was all some sort of test.

After a fine vegetarian meal of food cooked to human tastes, Zahl led them into the palace. The first 'room' was an Escher-esque room of stairs that turned in defiance of conventional expectations of gravity. Zahl explained that Vau did not use stairs, using tailored gravity fields and that this room was a way of illustrating the difference. It seemed to serve merely to make several of the party feel unwell.

"This place is too much like a hamster maze for me..." said Annissa

Next came an aviary of sorts, in which two of the party caught glimpses of a bird that Zahl said was an omen of good auspice called a 'gleeb'.
After the aviary, the door led into a replica of the chapel on Mars where the Prophet first took holy orders, Zahl explained that he used the room to help understand the human religion. Zahl and one of the other mandarins seemed upset to find a piece of graffiti on the wall : A broken jumpgate symbol and the Latin word "Elabi" (Escape). The other mandarin left with the soldier escort, leaving Zahl alone with the cadre.
The cadre were shocked when what appeared to be the prophet walked into the room, although it was quickly discovered to be a Vau 'solid hologram'. Zahl demonstrated the fast-forward and pause functions and said that the hologram could converse on many topics related to the prophet's life as recorded in the archives, but none of the party really wanted to talk to it.
A hologram of Benjamin Verden was also conjured up, although nobody seemed interested in talking to that either.
After the chapel, the palace door opened into what appeared to be a menagerie of sorts - Distinct biomes separated from the corridor by forcefields. As Zahl explained the purpose of the room, a gap formed in the forcefield to one of the biomes, the hole took the shape of a jumpgate cross and a large predator leaped out and savaged Zahl.
The party opened fire on the predator and soon dispatched it. Zahl's sheath began to cocoon him, presumably some emergency function of mandarin equipment. He managed to speak briefly :

"Saboteurs… more clever… than I imagined. They will
try to poison your minds…. Leave this room… before they
come. I… wanted to judge you before… I gave you this…"

A slender key rose from the lifecocoon.

"No time for such vanity. It is your legacy, not ours. Other Mandarins… do not agree. Hide it from them."
Ezra took the key and was astounded as it melted into his hand and formed a tattoo.

"Do not drink the intoxicants of others… draw from your own wells."

With that, Zahl fell unconscious and was enveloped in the lifecocoon.

Taking the door out of the room, the party found themselves in the first of a sequence of rooms : A giant 3d map of the universe, some experimentation yielded a hardcopy of the local jumpweb and Ezra took some pictures which may have been why the room soon reverted to a blank cube.

The cadre encountered a variety of rooms that randomly appeared beyond each successive door, examples included :

An artist with a mad mechanical statue
Some sort of Vau theatre where they were attacked by Vau soldiers
A room with strange gravitational effects where they were also attacked by Vau soldiers
A room lined with pictures
A corridor lined with mirrors that reflected the true self of the viewer "Don't go in there" said Antonio, "You won't like what you see"
A cave filled with a lake of some strange jelly like fluid.
A subway car that led to ... a random room

At seemingly random intervals, they would encounter graffiti on the walls accompanied by the symbol of the broken gate :

They began to weave curtains of darkness
They erected large pillars round the Void
With golden hooks fastend in the pillars
With infinite labour the Eternals
A woof wove, and called it Science

Several times, an image of the prophet appeared and said :

"Patience must ye have in times of quest. The end is
but the means, and the journey is begun only once the sun
sets. Break free! Escape the encircling Mind! Pass through
the portal on feet of Faith!"

This sequence of events was frenetic as the party opened and shut doors, desperate to find a way out, frequently encountering the same rooms and fighting a running battle with Vau soldiers who seemed intent on killing them.
Several of the party, especially Annissa found the experience nightmarish, increasingly desperate to escape the tower.

On the second visit to the "jelly-cave" the party decided to try and swim across to another door on the far side. As they did so, a giant jellyfishlike entity rose from beneath and tried to engulf individuals. Most chose to swim out of the way of the tentacles, but Annissa decided not to and reported that the creature was sentient, curious and interested in them. It was evidently some sort of telepathic alien.

Eventually they came to a catacomb with a group of humans in Diaspora era clothes sharing a chalice of bood in some form of religious ceremony. One of the cultists said to them :
"Quickly, for the Vau will soon arrive! You exist in a
false reality, manufactured by the Progenitors. The Prophet
knew this and pointed the way out, puncturing the veil and
allowing the Empyrean truth to leak through into this dark
world. The Vau seek to control the machines that control
this reality, to gain hegemony over the universe. They want
humans to be their pawns in unlocking the machines. But
there is a greater reality even they deny — that of the
Pancreator! Escape can be achieved only through faith. Look
upon Their Works and know that a greater reality exists!"
"Go now — we will try to open the portal for you that
you may finally come free of this dungeon!"
The cultist showed the party a door out of the catacomb and they entered what appeared to be the core of the tower - A room with a pillar in the middle of a pool of water, and floating atop the pillar, a hoop of alien metal. Three cultists stood in the water, holding the ring.

One of the cultists turned the party and said :
"And so you come to the heart of the matter. Here is the ring that encircles our world, binding us to illusion. Dare you grasp it?"
Ezra decided that he ought to try and as he grasped the ring, discovered that almost everything in the tower was an illusion sculpted from nano-crystal and holograms. With that knowledge he felt able to direct the passage through the doors to places they had already been to.
The Cultists urged the party to leave the tower and the planet a swiftly as possible.
Ezra guided the cadre straight back to the entry hall and thence out of the tower to the waiting disk, which they took to back to the landing field as swiftly as it would go.
At the landing field, Yonn Gwinn was shocked to see their return so soon and without Zahl, he was even more shocked when he was told what had happened at the tower. He told them that they should leave Shauduveen as swiftly as they could and as they left, secretly pressed a data crystal into Ezra's hand.
Back aboard the Nocturnal, Agent Alveda was also deeply shocked at the goings on and the ship made for the gate as swiftly as she could, every moment fearing Vau pursuit... which never came.

En route back to Bz-II, the data crystal was examined and was found to contain an extensive dossier on the Hegemony by Yonn Gwin.
The party were debriefed extensively aboard the Nocturnal and soon discovered that all their memories from Shauduveen were impenetrable to the Eye telepath who was truth-saying the interview. As it turned out, the party told the Eye absolutely everything...

A telegram waiting in the Vril-Ya system from Casey aboard the Osprey read "Hope trip going well. Also hope it is profitable. Have spent most of your money. Am on Aragon. See you there"

The discovery that the universe as they knew it was apparently controlled by ancient 'machines' built by the Progenitors and that the Vau knew the 'language' of the machine but not how to operate them came as something of a shock. There was much concern about the Vau's intentions toward humanity, a race that they felt might be able to control the machines... given 'proper guidance'.

"Perhaps the machinery that controls the universe should just be blown up..." said Antonio
"You are a cock" said Ezra

Back on Bz-II, they underwent still more debriefing.

Celebrities though they now were, the round of interviews and balls held little appeal for our merry band. They had a face to face meeting with the Emperor who insisted that they stick around for a few days and endure a couple of receptions and balls before they hared off to Aragon.
He also revealed that the Patriarch was not dead, someone had hacked the Church communication system and sent out the pre-arranged signal for the death of the pontiff, causing many clerics to rush toward Terra. Pirates had then ambushed several Church convoys.
Where things got really interesting was when it became apparent that all the ships involved were of a classic Li-Halan design but the wrecks of those ships destroyed by escorts proved to be brand new. This seemed eerily similar to the modus operandi of the Keddah-Masseri plot based in the Prime-Poseidon systems but using Li-Halan rather than Decados designs.
House Li-Halan could account for all their ships to the satisfaction of the Imperial Eye.
House Xanthippe had contacted their 'cousins' and the Selenites claimed not to know where the ships were from.
The party had a few ideas on leads to follow and felt that they would far rather be tracing a potential plot against the Church leading them into Vuldrok space or who knew where than spend their time being feted in high society.
Tissue analysis of the few enemy corpses captured showed that they did not match gene sequences typical for blood members of the Li-Halan.
Several party members did mumble about the Li-Halan's demon past however.
A swift trip back to Aragon on a passenger liner was in order, much of it spent in staterooms avoiding awkward questions and fawning adulation.
Annissa used some petty cash to turn a modest profit on a small cargo, just in case she needed more money on arrival.
Arriving back at the fief of San Daniel, Casey explained that she had had to stump up a fat deposit to secure Guild labour to repair the noble's fiefs, the chapel and also to pay off a 'Patent Violation' suit by the Engineers Guild for an unlicensed Golem repair job.
On the up-side, the residences were looking much better and the farmland better tended.
Their local liege lord had also provided some more serfs (much to the chagrin of the closet and not so closet Republicans in the party)
A bitter sweet surprise was the presence of two friends from Madoc - Aquila (Annissa's former factotum) and Steve (Proprietor of 'Steves bar'). Some weeks back, a Li-Halan designed ship had landed on the atoll where the Ory'im tribe bred and the black clad occupants began to torture Steve for information about the party. When he went for a knife, they shot him and left him for dead. They also shot Aquila down into the sea. Fortunately for both, the Ory'im pulled them beneath the waves to an air-filled cave and applied medical attention.
The Li-Halan raider took off and scorched the island to the bedrock, wiping out the Ory'im breeding sands and a year's hatchings.

Casey also said that in the nearby town of Aguilar, there was a woman who looked like a relative of Alectrona and/or Annissa who was staying in the local inn (A travelling saleswoman of winery equipment allegedly).
Everyone in the party concluded that a Selenite field agent was waiting to have a word with them.

We leave our heroes once again deciding upon who, when and where to open a can of whupass

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Session 32

We pick up the action at the get together of the Questing Cohort and crew as they discuss the goings on in and around the Known Worlds while the PC's were away.
Casey announced that she had delayed taking Osprey to the Aragonian starport for an engine overhaul until the rest of the crew arrived home.
It was decided that the nobles and immediate entourage remain at the fief while the crew take Osprey in for maintainence (a trip that should take more than four days).
There was much discussion about what to do next, especially the mystery of the missing Masseri Duke.

Antonio : "We should let the Imperials deal with it..."
Annissa : "We -are- the Imperials!"
Antonio : "We should let some -other- Imperials deal with this?"

"What do we do about the Celery things?" (Antonio on the Symbiot issue)
Annissa sent an encrypted email to the Imperial Eye to ask what they should be doing.
The nobles reviewed their fiefs, Annissa meeting her new serf families (sold to the Muster by an impoverished Hawkwood lord on Leminkainen and shipped to Aragon for Baron Allisandro who gave them to Annissa).
The nobles decided to go into to town and pick up some supplies for their peasants, including a magic lantern disk to show by way of a treat. The journey was not quite as dignified as it might have been, given the only available transport being the estate flatbed truck (three seats up front with everyone else sat on haybales on the back).
The local Scraver boss was solicitious in the extreme, seemingly glad to put the 'unfortunate misunderstandings of the past' behind them.
Antonio sat in on a poker game with the senior Scravers and Hector, a travelling Reeve trade advisor.
Annissa and Alectrona visited the Xanthippe who was staying at the local vintner guildhouse, ostensibly negotiating franchises on Xanthippe wine processing equipment and exchanges of grape varieties. Astarte Xanthippe was plainly one of the Selenite field agent clone caste, the dead spit of Annissa and Alectrona's aunt Hecate.
Astarte promised to catch up with Annissa and Alectrona later, when there were no prying eyes or other ears around.
Antonio managed to 'take' the Reeve for 20 FB in the course of the poker game and left in a good mood.
Halfway back to the fief, Steve radio'd the truck to tell them that he had a mob of outraged workers and peasants seeking to lynch Aquila because one of the workers had been eaten by a giant flying creature.
Annissa told Steve to tell the mob that the nobles would deal with the problem as soon as they got home and to make sure Aquila was out of the way to prevent his being burned at the stake.
On arrival, Annissa singled out the mob ringleader, the foreman Guido and asked him to explain what was going on. It transpired that some flying creature had been seen swooping over the workers encampment and when some workers ran to the sound of a scream, they found a severed human leg, some feathers and a lot of blood.
Examining the feathers, they did appear to be from an animal native to Grail and did resemble some of the primaries from Aquila's wing.
Aquila, however, had a cast iron alibi, having been with Steve all evening.

Ezra : "Well, I'm stumped..." - Holding the severed leg.

It was also obvious that Aquila would not be strong enough to carry off a man the size of Frederick (the missing worker).
A bit of research led to the conclusion that it may have been an animal known as a Nakuut, originally from Grail but now present on a number of worlds including Aragon. Nakuuts run to over 120kgs and were more than capable of this manner of kill. Although no Nakuuts had ever been reported on this part of the planet.
The mob were still unsure but were a little reassured by the noble's promise to bring the head of Frederick's killer before them.
Antonio spent the whole of that night sat up getting the radar unit on the tower working and awoke from his four hour catnap feeling rather ill.
Alectrona had a series of nightmares featuring blood, terror and darkness.
Annissa's suspicions were aroused as Antonio was hardly ever ill, hungover yes... ill, no.
Alectrona could find no causative agent for Antonio's symptoms which worsened over the course of the day. Suspecting some occult agency, Annissa asked Ezra to contact the Bishop and ask for a Theurge to come and investigate (Brother Lucas had no Theurgic ability and Ezra's limited talents did not lie in that area).
Suspicion pointed to the poker game, Ezra recalled a text on the cult of Mammon, a branch of Antinomism that dealth with the power of money. Annissa asked the Scraver Don to track down Hector the Reeve so that they could question him.
Ezra cast Holy Light over the coins and they flouresced in an unpleasant fashion.
Once the coins were removed from Antonio's possession, he began to improve.

Later that day, an unmarked black skimmer approached the fief, landing in the courtyard. Three clergy disembarked – Two Avestite pilgrims (complete with flamers) and female priest in Avestite robes and (as Ezra soon observed) the badge of the Kalinthi demon hunters.
Sister Paulina was a fearsome woman of diminuitive stature who seemed short on sympathy with Antonio, unhappy that he had spent the preceding night repairing Godless technology and had received the cursed coins as proceeds of a card game in a casino. Antonio was repeatedly struck about the face with a switch and upbraded for his a) Foul language b) Lying protestations of innocence c) Sinful ways.

(Yes, yes... it's 'The Penguin' from 'Blue Brothers' – Sue me).

Sister Paulina located a stone in the courtyard that caused her to explode with rage : An Ukar rune carved pebble, evidence of the worship of 'Unreflective Gods'. As none of the party were responsible (even though they suspected it was Casey's) they were able to maintain an air of innocence. Paulina decided that this was not directly relevent to the matter at hand but the human heart carved with occult sigils buried outside the main gate... that seemed to have a bearing.
Sister Paulina declared that the fief was cursed, that someone had bound a demon to the local area and that it would return to feast on human flesh until its vessel was slain.
The Kalinthi would seek out the warlock before he could do more harm and the party would defend the castle.
The plan was this :
Musa and Steve would man the flak gun on the walls while Annissa, Alectrona and Antonio would wait in the radar room in the lords tower and Ezra kept watch in the observatory in the top of the tower. The peasants would be in the main hall with Brother Lucas.

Shortly before sunset, Astarte arrived on horseback and joined the group in the tower.
Some time after sunset, the beast attacked. Unfortunately the demonically possessed animal had supernatural powers that were not expected – Invisibility to radar and a disruptive effect on nearby electrical appliances.
The beast did not obligingly attack Ezra, rather it dove for the door of the hall and began to try to force its way in to get at the peasants within.
There then followed a pell-mell charge down the stairs to get to the hall before the beast broke through. Annissa, Astarte and Alectrona took up firing positions on the balcony overlooking the door, Ezra stood in the center of the hall with a globe of Holy Light and Antonio tried to take a shot out of a first floor arrow slit at the beast.
The beast reacted badly to being shot at and smashed its way in through the window covering the arrow slit to get at Antonio. Antonio fought a running retreat back toward his compatriots on the main part of the balcony, taking several minor wounds on the way. The fight that followed was intense and savage, close quarter blaster and pistol fire against the creature as it clawed at the four nobles on the balcony. The creatures physical form was blown to shreds and for a moment it seemed that they had carried the day but a dark smoke billowed from the creature's throat and into Alectrona whose eyes rolled back into her skull...
Possessed now by the entity that had controlled the Nakuut, Alectrona emptied her machine pistol into Astarte at point blank range. Astarte was thrown backwards like a broken doll in a spray of blood and gore.
Annissa tried to club Alectrona with her blaster pistol but when this was unsuccessful and Alectrona came for her with a knife, jumped over the balcony, overloading her shield but landing otherwise unharmed before seeking out a blunt instrument...
Antonio began to brawl with Alectrona, but was getting the worst of it until Ezra arrived, hampered by his desire not to harm his friend. Ezra put his electro-whip to good use and Alectrona soon went down in a flurry of blows from Annissa, Ezra and Antonio. The Demon tried to seek out another host but Ezra's Holy Light drove it into oblivion.
Alectrona regained consciousness soon afterward and was distraught at what she had done.
Ezra was astounded to detect a weak pulse in Astarte's neck, he and Antonio applied field dressings to her until Alectrona recovered her wits enough to apply an Elixir injector.
Astarte, like Diana seemed to have dispersed internal organs and sub-dermal armour, a level of biological technology practically unheard of in the Known Worlds and certainly not popular with the Church.
Once the numerous small fires were extinguished (more tapestries to replace) and Astarte stabilised, Ezra hacked off the head of the beast and put it on a pike to show the peasantry. He also hacked off one of the wings of the creature and nailed it up over the door to the hall.
Annissa slumped down on the throne in her hall and drank heavily, Alectrona also drank heavily to blot out the horror of yet another possession.
Hangovers were the order of the day the following morning which probably helped the air of seriousness when the Kalinthi returned, having failed to apprehend the warlock.
Sister Paulina had discovered that the fief was at the center of a pentagonal binding rite, the points anchored by five human sacrifices. It seemed that the warlock had gone to some effort to make trouble for the nobles.
The departure of the Kalinthi was something of a relief, the prospect of their being present when Osprey returned was not a welcoming one. When Astarte regained consciousness, she explained that she was in the area to pass on some news from her 'employers'. The pirate cartel that had been harrassing the party had been persuaded to back off (apparently the Selenites had some influence and dealings in this area) and also, another group was going to make an approach to the party with an offer before too long : The Symbiots. An offer that would be of some interest to Antonio...

Roleplaying note – There was a lot of spirited debate between Annissa and Antonio concerning the rights and wrongs of serfdom and slavery. Annissa advocated the orthodox view that social status was divinely ordained and that teaching serfs to read only gave them increased scope for unhappiness whereas Antonio showed his distinctly Republican leanings and advocated universal privilege.

Session 33

"Oh Dear God..."
Operation 'Near TPK'

I'm going to write this one up in a bit more of an analytical GM post-mortem style than normally as this session was a bit of a doozy all told.

We pick up the action with our gallant heroes picking up the pieces after the homage to Beowulf last session.
With several pieces of high tech equipment in need of repair, a trip to the Aragonian capitol was decided upon in the short term with the longer term intention of heading into Vuldrok space for the alleged meeting with the Symbiots. Ezra was keen to follow up any leads on Madoc but acknowledged that the trail might already be too cold.
Astarte would be convalescing for some time to come and took the offered berth on Osprey rather than remain at the fief or make her own way to a moonhaven.
'Stuck' in town for a day while various items were repaired, Antonio proposed a night out in a club or similar and our heroes headed out for a night of dancing, drinking and entertainment.
In the course of the evening, Antonio was the recipient of a "brush pass" - Noticing that someone had slipped a data crystal into his pocket amid the throng at the bar.
Slipping into a booth and examining the crystal, he discovered that it was a message :

"Dissident Masseri rendezvous – Criticorum system – 10 days time – XYZ spatial co-ordinates – secrecy essential" (*)

Annissa voiced caution but the group seemed intent on following up the clue and were unwilling to countenance the idea that it might be a trap (**)
Once all the gear was repaired, off went our gallant band to the Criticorum system...
Examination of the co-ordinates in the data chip showed that the co-ordinates were at the edge of the system about a day from the gate, amid the fragments of a dead comet or icy moon (***)
With 24 hours to spare, the Osprey approached the cluster of debris and asteroids, nosing in through the clutter at slow speed. Casey insisted on battle station drill, although only Annissa showed more than a touch of paranoia, believing that they would have a day to find a hiding place before 'the conspirators' arrived.
It was at this point, that things started to go wrong...

[GM Note : Casey, on sensors and piloting totally cocked up her rolls to spot what happened next before it actually happened.]

Audible alarms and alert lights lit off and the calm voice of the A.I. began to reel off a damage report :

"Shield one, down. Shield two, down. Battle shield alpha, down. Fire in port gun-deck, atmosphere loss in port gun-deck. Dorsal turret not responding. Port side laser one, destroyed. Port side laser two, destroyed. Port side grapple gun, destroyed."

Frantic rescans showed three 'Slayer' class raiders (a Li-Halan design) coasting around the large planetoid that the Osprey was approaching, a classic line of battle that had crossed Osprey's "T" and scored first blood. In one volley, Osprey had lost half her total weapons.
Casey used Ospreys superior manoeuvrability to roll the ship and unmask her undamaged starboard broadside while Antonio launched missiles from the chin turret and ventral VLS (Vertical Launch System).
In the close confines of the debris field, Osprey's speed advantage was negated, resulting in a close range knife fight. Laser after laser slashed Osprey, doing further damage to her gun-deck, opening her cargo bay to space, smashing her subsidiary craft hanger to scrap metal and severing the auto-link controls to her remaining lasers (forcing Musa to run down to the gun-deck to take over a laser on 'local' control).
It was not all one sided, two missiles from Osprey scoring critical hits on two raiders, blowing their bows to smithereens.
[GM note – Antonio managed to empty all 6 missiles in the launcher magazines, 12 missiles in total and managed to miss with most of them BUT two of the missiles scored genuine double damage bridge hits – knocking two of the three raiders out of the fight in a single shot and killing most of the crews including the marines the ships carried – These two rolls probably saved the party]
With all the missiles in the magazines expended and only one operational laser, Ezra and Musa headed to the cargo area to grab the trolley to carry missiles to reload a launcher.
"I ache..." - Osprey
The remaining enemy craft fired into the drifting hulks of her companions as she turned around to head toward Osprey on an intercept course. The wrecked ships exploded, perhaps due to the fratricidal fire or perhaps from scuttling charges aboard.
A low speed game of chicken ensued – Slayer class raiders lack forward firing weapons and with the damage she had received, so did Osprey. Osprey also lacked a forward shield...
At the last possible moment, the raider adjusted course and with a flare of thrusters and a resounding 'Clang' fired her grapple into Osprey's dorsal surface, locking the two ships together.
Osprey sounded an alert that had never echoed down her companionways before... "All hands – Prepare to repel boarders!"

Annissa : "Do we have any weapons that fire inside the ship automatically to repel enemy boarders?" Antonio : "Yeah, right! Because giving an AI internal weapons is SUCH a sensible idea!" Osprey : "That's a very hurtful thing to say..."

(For those who want to visualise the layout of Osprey, she has an upper and lower deck with access between the two via ladders at the front and rear of each deck.
The upper (command and accommodation) deck has corridors in a T shape, with the bridge at the top of the T, the airlocks at the ends of the two arms and the engine room at the base of the T.
The lower (weapons and cargo deck) has its corridors in an upside down U shape. The two arms of the U leading to the engine room. The gun-decks being accessed from hatches along the sides of the U.)

Osprey's external sensors detected three groups of boarders moving outside the hull, two pairs making their way around to the lower deck, one pair on each side and a third group of three boarders headed for the port airlock on the top deck.

[GM Note : I'm not one to screw over the party without being utterly open and above board about things, I make pretty much all my rolls in front of the players and will generally get a player to roll fateful dice. In this instance I said "Right, I have these guys skills all sorted out but their level of equipment is a bit variable. Roll d100 and the higher you roll, the better the gear they have". Sadly, poor old Antonio managed to roll about 87. This meant that they were facing :

Four marines with a basic goal roll of about 16 on combat tasks, wearing armoured space suits and carrying blaster shotguns.
Three gunners with a base goal of about 12 on combat tasks, wearing basic space suits and carrying ordinary shotguns. In game balance terms, the marines were about a fair match for PC's but with 8 dice of armour verses the party's 3 dice, the gunners were distinctly 'the b team' and not much good toe-to-toe with PC's]
The party realised that their usual near invulnerability due to the Synthsilk armour under energy shield combo was utterly negated by having to wear space suits. It was nice to see a genuine look of "Oh God... we could all die here" on their faces.
The party were mostly on the bridge (Annissa, Antonio and Alectrona – All "A"s which made my battle map a little confusing at one point) with Ezra and Musa down below.
The defense plan was for Ezra and Musa to try and take on one pair of boarders at a time, while the remaining party members held the bridge T-junction against the more numerous attackers at the airlock (at this point they had no idea which boarders were which).
The boarders blew in the airlock and gun-deck access hatches with breaching charges, opening Osprey to vaccum.
Osprey - "I suppose sounding the decompression alarm would just be an insult to everyone's intelligence at this stage. It's in the regulations though (SFX – AWOOGA AWOOGA)"
Ezra and Musa did pretty well on initiative roll and got to fire first as the armoured boarders burst through on their side of the ship. The bad guys rolled through the hole, one facing for'ard, one aft. There was a volley of fire exchanged and the defenders cut the first boarder down but his companion was able to get a shot off and it took Musa full in the chest (and straight down to 'very nearly dead').

GM note : I use a house rule that so long as a space suit armour rating protects against 1 or more points of damage e.g. doesn't roll all 5's and 6's on the 3d, then it doesn't decompress.

Alectrona sprinted across the T-junction from the bridge to the aft access ladder with covering fire from Antonio and Annissa. The boarders on the upper deck seemed content to keep the defenders heads down at this stage.
The starboard side boarders headed aft to the engineering access hatch.
Alectrona provided first aid and an Elixir injection to Musa, getting her fully conscious and stable, although her suit was as much patch as suit at the front and therefore further combat might be suicidal.
Winging the remaining boarder, Ezra prepared to advance on the engine room.
The exchange between the defenders and boarders on the upper deck was more inconclusive, no serious injuries on the defending side and some hints that one or more attackers had been wounded. Antonio volunteered to go assist Ezra, leaving Annissa to hold the fort.
Ezra and Antonio steeled themselves to storm the engineroom as Ka'ra reported that one of the boarders appeared to be doing something to the jump-drive singularity containment system.
Annissa had Casey cut the lights on the corridor, which seemed to inconvenience the attackers more than her. Attacking fire slackened off and eventually stopped as Annissa blazed away with her pistol.
Ka'ra cut the power and gravity in Engineering to try and give Ezra and 'toni an advantage as they would be expecting it and the boarders would not.
As the lads stormed in through the hatchway, blasters firing, it all went a bit 'Wild Bunch' – The wounded boarder was blasted again and in an near simultaneous exchange of shots, one of the two remaining enemies cut Antonio down. Alectrona sprinted aft from her position with Musa as Antonio's telemetry went flatline...

GM note : Antonio took enough damage, past armour to take his damage track to down to 'dead'.
Call me soft, but I was happy to use the house/off forums rules for the Wyrd stat. Wyrd in Fading Suns is the battery for Occult powers but is also meant to have a relation to someone's destiny and 'inner foo'. So, the rule went like this : Antonio sacrificed 1 permanent Wyrd point for each point he had gone 'below dead' (1). Also, for every point below dead, he lost a permanent point of Endurance (1), unless he could roll a 6 when rolling his Wyrd pool (after the deduction). Antonio started with 6 Wyrd, so rolled 5 dice and failed to roll a single 6 so the Endurance loss stood.
We then rolled on my improvised hit location chart (including, at Ezra's player's request the location #13 for groin). The location of the permanent damage was randomized as 'left side, abdomen'. I was hoping for a limb shot off myself, but hey ho... you don't win 'em all.
So, rather than a dead PC, we've got a guy who's now short a kidney and will probably need some cyberware.

Ka'ra reported that from her vantage point, she could see that the boarder was placing a charge on the jump drive...
Ezra's blood was up (He had discovered the 'Incite passion' rules and having his best friend gunned down beside him seemed a fair circumstance for a roll – He did pretty well, gaining a +3 to goal rolls).
Gunning down the opponent facing him, Ezra charged the remaining boarder, drawing his combat knife and stabbing him through the face plate. The mine attached to the drives was armed and the clock counting down. 30, 29, 28...
Musa advised that from the description of the mine, that pulling the explosives away from the device would reduce its effects (+)
With the timer approaching zero, Ezra wrenched the explosive blocks free of their detonators and dove clear as the detonators and the partially enabled anti-removal charge went off.
The explosion took out main power, taking Osprey's AI offline.
Musa dragged herself to engineering to assist Ka'ra in damage control as Alectrona frantically worked to save Antonio.
Casey decided that she was going to counter-board, assuming that the raider would have a skeleton crew, hopefully reduced by battle casualties from the ship to ship fighting.
Annissa seemed happy to come along and Ezra, still full of most un-ecclesiastical battle rage, was more than happy. Ezra, Annissa and Casey made their away along the boarding line from the raider, passing three drifting enemy corpses.
The ship resounded with another clang and scrape as the raider disengaged the grapples, leaving the boarders with the choice of jumping for Osprey or pressing the attack. They elected to press the attack.
The solitary defender at the airlock only served as a momentary delay as the trio stormed aboard. Ezra headed aft to engineering and Casey headed forward to the bridge with Annissa. Casey and Annissa charged in with drawn pistols, but Casey was hit almost immediately, hit square in the chest and incapacitated.
Annissa engaged in a pitched gunfight with the enemy pilot, both ducking behind cover and trading shots at point blank range.
Ezra ran into engineering, discovering the remaining crewman obviously sabotaging the reactor. Ezra quite calmly shot him in the back with a blaster rifle. Unfortunately, momentum carried the corpse forward and pressed the fateful switch...

"Warning, warning... reactor coolant shutdown, you now have ten minutes to reach minimum safe distance..."

So, to recap – Osprey is weaponless and drifting with no power, one player character mortally injured and the vessel open to vacuum.
The enemy ship heading away from Osprey with the reactor turned into a bomb. Casey, the pilot of Osprey lying unconscious, alive only because Ezra knows one end of an Elixir injector from the other.
The only way to save the day would be to get the raider close enough and on the right vector to jump from one ship to the other but have the raider carry on clear before it exploded.
All in all... pretty close to TPK time.
Now, those of you who've read the whole campaign diary (masochists) may dimly recall Annissa taking piloting lessons from Casey way back when...
Frankly, managing the manoeuvre would be tricky at best with plenty of variables that could lead to disaster.
Perfect time for Annissa's player to roll a critical success on her piloting roll then... :-)
Tying Casey to himself, Ezra handed Annissa one of the fire extinguishers he grabbed from the wall. As the raider coasted gently past Osprey, the trio jumped across, aided by jets of CO2 from the extinguishers.
Casey was rushed to the infirmary, where an emergency airlock was rigged to allow access until pressure was restored to the hull.
The raider drifted on and struck an asteroid before exploding.
The next few hours were spent in damage control, trying to restore power and manoeuvrability.
Osprey limped back to the Criticorum gate, requesting an Al-Malik escort back to Bz-II which they were able to get on the strength of their fame as Questing Knights.
Deciding to chance the risk of a damaged Sathra damper and jump drive rather than a fortnight long trip to Criticorum, they jumped for Bz-II.
Fortunately the drive held up, as did the Sathra damper.
At Bz-II, they picked up an Imperial escort and headed for the throneworld. Osprey made orbit and was placed in the Imperial Eye docks at the space station orbiting the planet.
A medical shuttle conveyed the party down to the palace, where the wounded were taken to the palace medical wing.
Ezra prepared one of his now famous powerpoint presentations for the Imperial authorities.
Annissa didn't mention her piloting of the raider, but Ezra did.
We leave things with several people in hospital and the ship in spacedock. It's a tossup whose repairs will take longer.
(*) Translation : "Meet me alone by the well at midnight, oh... and tie a millstone around your neck, please don't tell anyone you're going."
(**) Yes, because NPC's never lie...
(***) The interplanetary equivalent of a lay-by on an isolated road, or an isolated wood miles from anywhere, you know... where no-one would hear your screams.
(+) Yes, well... Nothing says inter-party trust like pulling a mine apart on the basis of a rapid over the radio summation of the problem and advice from someone who only has the demolition skill as a self-taught 'hobby'.

Session 34

The Truth will out...

We pick things up on May 31st 4,998 AD as our party debate quite what to do now that they are on Byzantium Secundus.
Lady Annissa decides that it might be a good idea to try and influence the authorities to expedite the repairs to 'Osprey'.

"Stick with me Alectrona, I might need an extra pair of boobs to convince them of our case..." - Annissa.

Vo Karm, the Emperor's left hand counsel was happy to speak to the Imperial Eye yard controller without any 'extra inducements'.
Antonio awoke from sedation in the palace infirmary with Annissa's raccoon sleeping at his feet, unsure of quite how he got there. The Amalthean surgeon filled him in on the nature of his injuries and prognosis. Antonio was depressed to learn that he would need extensive surgery to fully recover.
Alectrona, as Antonio's physician, learned that the medical team had downloaded the logs from Antonio's cyberware. Apparently the cyberware had exceeded its design specifications and acted to save Antonio after he was shot – Shutting down blood flow to the damaged area of his abdomen and acting as a kind of defibrillator.
Antonio also consented to being referred to a psychologist to deal with stress trauma, both recent and not so recent.
Casey remarked to Alectrona that having been shot in the chest yet again and had the wounds reconstructed with nanites, she was beginning to wonder if her boobs had always been their present shape. She was more irritated that she would have to have her Ba'amon re-done once again.
Annissa decided that Antonio should be taken to the planet Artemis for the best possible medical care.
Tanalu reported that an irritated yard official had objected to the 'rush' order on the repairs and stuck to the letter of the law, thus sticking the crew with a bill for some of the missile reloads.
Aware that Antonio would need expensive treatment, Annissa decided that the time had come to break her personal objection to carrying paying passengers ("I can't take the guilt if something happens to them... the letters, the explanations to grieving relatives...").
Rejecting Tanalu's first potential set of passengers (a Decados retinue), a family of Guildsfolk taking their ill child to Artemis.
The cargo bay was converted to a passable second class passenger facility, the passengers were well behaved and accepted being kept out of the rest of the ship.
Casey managed to bribe her way past her flight board to get a 'fit to fly' certificate. Ordinarily she would be happy to sit on her backside and wait to get better but as the crew wanted to get a move on and there was a rather good auto-pilot, why wait?

"Silly Church and its rules about AI..."

The itinerary was set as : Bz-II -- Pentateuch -- Holy Terra -- Artemis for the outbound trip with the same route on the way back but with a stopover at Pentateuch to allow Ezra to spend time at his home monastery.
Antonio was a very naughty boy and persuaded Alectrona to analyse a sample of DNA he provided to see if the person concerned was more than they seemed. What he failed to mention was that the sample was from Alectrona herself. The analysis failed sadly.
Antonio found his sessions with a counsellor quite productive, and if not cured outright felt that his feet had been set onto a healthier path.
A week on Bz-II spent recuperating and off our heroes head...
The passengers were excited to see the glimmer of Sol through the porthole as the ship transited the Holy Terra system.
Antonio spent some time with his cyberlink connected to the ship network, Osprey was positively coy about whether or not she had modified the cyberware.
Eleven days after setting out, the Osprey entered Artemis orbit.
With Antonio, Astarte and Casey booked into the hospital for assessment and Musa signed up for some more physiotherapy, the rest of the group set out to enjoy the cafe culture Demiopolis, Artemis' capitol city.
While in hospital, Antonio decided to have another attempt at DNA analysis. He convinced an Engineer at the hospital that he wanted to find out if one of the serfs he was considering taking on for his fief was Changed or not and whether it was related to another. He gave the Engineer a sample from Astarte and Alectrona (bribing him 100 FB)
The results were : Alectrona's ethnic makeup was 90% Xanthippe and 10% Al-Malik. That she had some genetic engineering in her ancestry but not for several generations. The second sample was of a close female relative of the first (probably an aunt) and had extensive genetic engineering.
Antonio concluded Astarte was a clone of Hecate and that the Selenites were being deceitful with their claim of only having contacted the Known Worlds in the last decade.
Antonio spoke to Annissa about the war between their two houses, hoping that something could be done to end the hostilities. Annissa pointed out that they would need to start living the court life to try and gain influence if that was their aim. Not a very pleasant prospect.
Annissa paid the lovely people at the hospital 500 FB to have a cybernetic kidney fitted to Antonio, which seemed to have an interesting side effect. On the entire trip back to Byzantium, he and Annissa did not argue once.
The same however, could not be said for Antonio and Alectrona, but of that, more later...
For the next month, Antonio was told he would have to abstain from alcohol. His counsellor advised that perhaps he might want to look his drink intake in general.
Pentateuch was a pleasant enough stop over, Alectrona accompanying Ezra on a visit to his monastery and met his old mentor, Shohan.
Ezra was a little embarrassed as Shohan did the Magus equivalent of bringing out the baby pictures (remarking that Ezra's affinity for battle would have made him almost at at home on DeMoley).
Shohan also taught Ezra the basics of a rather useful Eskatonic Rite : 'Rending the Veil of Unreason'
Astarte took her leave of the party on Pentateuch after passing on the long delayed briefing concerning the Symbiots. - The Symbiots were aware of Duke Claudio Masseri, he had landed on Daishan and set up some sort of base. Rather than just eradicate it and risk provoking the human Empire, they contacted the Xanthippe/Selenites and asked them to find a suitable set of agents to investigate the problem.
Antonio took Annissa aside and expressed his concerns about house Xanthippe and the Selenites, revealing his secret analysis of Alectrona's DNA. Annissa felt that he should level with Alectrona as soon as possible before he compounded the breach of trust much further by not telling her.

Which Antonio did...

Over breakfast on Osprey two days out from Pentateuch.

Buying Annissa and Alectrona flowers probably sent the wrong signals.

"To a woman, flowers spell guilt." -- Annissa

He had a list... On a piece of paper and everything.
Xanthippe. Have been up to a lot of dodgy stuff lately.

Discovered FTL communication and told no one.
Established communication with Selene and told no-one
Have access to bases throughout known space.
Have new access to a very modern ship-yard.
Have access to highly dodgy genetic engineering tech.
Have been infiltrating known space with geneered agents for an unknown purpose - Astarte.
Have established contact with the Symbiots – this urgently needs checking out.
Have established contacts with pirates.
Possible geneering wrt symbiots – alectrona seems to be susceptible to them.
Anissa/Alectrona's aunt Hecate – copy or original? She's 50 and yet contact with Selene is allegedly only 10 years old. Gene sequence transmission down the FTL line?
Head of Imperial Eye is Xanthippe – trustworthy? Qui custodes ipsos custodiet?

Alectrona knew the things on the list and, trusting her house and the Selenites, did not worry about them that much.
She did not take Antonio's admission that he had got her to analyse her own DNA under false pretenses.

"You... BASTARD!" -- Alectrona

Antonio blustered and tried to put a positive gloss on things. He somehow managed to slip the phrase "I was worried you might be a sleeper agent" into his attempted defense.

And then she hit him your honour...

Alectrona's a stoutly built young woman (Which is the way Casey likes her) and packs a mean right hook. (Full damage to the face - =whack= that'll be three points of vitality please)
Matters calmed down with the mediation of Ezra and Annissa, both of whom felt that in addition to the usual explanation of 'Antonio is a cock' he was also coming off a long list of medication and nanite healing robots and might be a bit... paranoid.
Ezra employed his rite to check for any negative occult influences or heavy burden of sin. He was pleased to see that no-one appeared to be a symbiot. He did feel that Alectrona could do with increasing the power of her inner flame to fend off demons.
Annissa suggested that it would be polite to let people know when Ezra was planning to use that rite. Ezra agreed.
Alectrona and Antonio eventually began speaking, but Alectrona said she would take a while to get over the breach of trust.
Casey requested that if there was "Any sweaty, angry make-up sex... just shower, okay?"
Speaking to Antonio lately, Casey teased him about not asking her about Alectrona. "She's sleeping with a telepath, you know?"

"I love you dearly Toni, but bloody hell... you really make an arse of this" -- Casey

"Getting her to analyse her own DNA? Classy... Devious bastard." -- Casey (impressed)

Alectrona analysed her own, Astarte's and Annissa's DNA – discovering some interesting facts :

l Astarte was indeed genetically a very close relative.
l Astarte was definitely a clone of Diana.
l Diana/Astarte were identical to Hecate in every physical respect
l Alectrona's female line seemed to have a chain of Hecate-like individuals going back four generations (examination of family photographs showed that her grandmother was basically Hecate with contact lenses, hair dye and a nose job).
l Annissa carried some of the same genes as Alectrona and Diana/Astarte, perhaps due to the marriage between their bloodlines (Annissas father's family and Alectrona's maternal line).

We leave our not so happy band as they approach Bz-II, hoping to speak to their superiors about a potential mission to Daishan.

Session 35

We rejoin our heroes on or about the 23rd of June in the year 4,998 AD as they disembark on Byzantum Secundus to make their report to the Imperial authorities.
As the party settle in to their guest quarters, there is some debate as to their general plans after this stop.

"Should we go directly to Madoc or do the problems of the Ory'im not count highly enough?" observed Ezra testily (worried that once more, the natives of Madoc would be overlooked in favour of another problem).

Ezra pointed out that Anam had been killed 4 months ago and the Osprey had yet to return to Madoc to explain matters to his tribe directly.
Antonio was very curious as to what Annissa, Alectrona and Musa had been upto on Daishan, it being his ancestral homeworld and everything.
Annissa and Alectrona reported to their 'handler' at the Questing Order HQ and asked whether or not a decision on the Daishan mission would be immediately forthcoming as they had business on Madoc that they had been putting off for some time. Lady Paula Juandaastas said that she would report to the privy council directly and have an answer on when an answer was due within 24 hours.
Alectrona and Annissa when hunting for clothes to replace an increasingly bloodstained wardrobe, whereas Ezra bought several hundred rounds of .40 calibre ammunition to resupply the Ory'im of Copes Atoll with clips for their Capek aquatic carbines (the naughty gun runner that he occasionally is).
Antonio went on to ask the veterans of the first Daishan mission for any pictures they had of the planet. Annissa pointed out that a blank white sheet of A4 would serve the same purpose as the place was an icy wilderness.
Antonio also visited the Imperial land registry and asked for a map showing the locations of his family holdings on Daishan. Sentimental bugger.
Lady Paula informed Annissa that the privy council would meet to discuss the matter of Daishan in a few days but any decision might be a week or two in coming. With than in mind, the Osprey was prepared for immediate departure for Madoc.
Landing at Copes Atoll some 12 days later, the party were pleased to see that the island was healing itself of the worst of the damage from the raid. It was however a sad sight to see the blackened timbers of "Steve's Place" sticking out from the white sand. The scorched mangroves and palms were already putting forth new shoots and the sea had carried away much of the blackened sand.
The Ory' put in an appearance after an hour or two and solemnly received the detailed explanation of how Anam had met his end. The news about Akata and the Ark Ship fleet provoked a minor ripple of reaction.

"These guys would make deadly poker players" -- Ezra

It was decided to leave out the fact that the ancient enemy of the Ory'im, the cephalopod Nizdarim were alive, well and swanning around in star ships over in Vuldrok space. Anam had known and it distressed him greatly.
There was talk of perhaps hiring another Ory' to look after aquatic cargo but with a mission taking them into Vuldrok space, the risk of the Nizdarim discovering that -their- ancient enemy were now a stone age race would be too great.
Osprey would make the return run to Bz-II with a cargo of dried seafood and some frozen instead of live fish.
The Ory' revealed that some of the raiders had the "taint of nidderdak" about them. Ezra was immediately intrigued as Althar the Necromancer on Hargard had a temple to this deity in his basement and the Nizdarim seemed linked to a cult of Nidderdak that was sprining up among fishermen of Hargard. Nidderdak was the Ory' deity of deep abyss and hungry darkness. Not a good sign all.
Casey announced that after the beach bar-b-q she would be off swimming in the lagoon, which prompted Annissa, Alectrona and Antonio to decide to join her.

"Great..." grouched Casey, "Now I have to wear a bloody swimsuit."

Antonio and Alectrona seemed happy enough with the idea of skinny dipping but Lady Annissa stuck by her high born principles of modesty and refused to abandon swimwear. Thus the moonlit swim was not 'au naturel'
The now traditional game of beach volleyball also took place.
The next day there was the solemn memorial service for Anam with the tribe.
Ezra vowed that the evil doers would pay for their crimes (if, indeed they hadn't already) and the party lifted off for the return journey to Bz-II
A day out from the gate, Osprey received a tight-beam encrypted transmission. Checking the code carefully, the party decided that this was indeed a genuine instruction from the Empire and followed its instructions : To proceed at best speed to the Leminkainen gate and await further instruction.
At Leminkainen, they received another communication that instructed them to proceed to a location a few au from the gate and rendezvous with an Imperial vessel.
Arriving at the location some hours later, the Osprey encountered an Imperial light carrier and were ordered to land aboard one of the hangar bays.
They were met at the airlock by The Honorable Leftenant Sir Victor Hawkwood, who let them to a briefing room and (as per usual) sworn to secrecy.
The Questing Knights and cohorts were to make their way in a vessel to be provided into the Hargard system and make contact with a known Symbiot agent who would provide the details of their infiltration and exfiltration routes into the Daishan system. Their contact was the interestingly named "Bjorn the woodcutter" who lived a few hundred km from Valheim (home of Thane Gudrun).
Osprey and her crew were to travel around the Known Worlds being visible so as to give the impression that the Questers were still in Known Space.
Annissa and Antonio both knew their way around the controls of a starship, Antonio was a qualified engineer and Musa was a gunner. With Alectrona as medical officer and Ezra as chaplain, this constituted a viable crew in the eyes of the Imperial authorities.
What constituted a viable ship seemed to differ from the view held by Annissa at the very least as they were led to the hangar bay containing their 'ride'.
"Hammer" was a rather battered looking Myrkwyrm class vessel, the explorer sized ships used by Vuldrok raiders as scouts or boarding ships (the ship is designed to ram others).
In best Q-division style, Victor explained a few 'modifications' – Reduced armour over the hull (save for the ramming prow) but some basic energy shielding. A blaster cannon in the dorsal turret (the ships sole offensive weapon) instead of the usual Vuldrok gatling gun and down in the cargo bay...

A cloaking device.

Antonio was handed a chip with the basic operating instructions and the codes for the rather large nuclear scuttling charge attached to the cloak. The cloak took up most of the ships small cargo bay and would eat most of the power of the main reactor when in use, leaving no power for shields or weapons but just enough for ½ the usual engine power.
The party were provided with 5 doses of the experimental symbiosis vaccine, should they decide to use it (it is a once per lifetime only vaccine and is only guaranteed to protect for 18 months).

"You are to proceed to Daishan and terminate the Duke's operation... terminate with extreme prejudice..."

The interior of the Hammer was basic, although the same tech level as Osprey (6) the Hammer was the result of someone straining to make a ship at the top of their tech level whereas Osprey was a ship designed at Tech Level 8 but built with TL 6 systems for ease of repair.
It was also somewhat cramped. No corridors and doors, just a long narrow internal space with bulkheads at intervals and curtained off alcoves containing bunks, a galley etc. Annissa made several trips back to Osprey to fetch as many soft furnishings as possible to make the 'bare metal and rivet' interior a little more comfortable, plus a large quantity of food to stock the galley.
(Essentially, the inside of Hammer is a U-boat)
Antonio, Musa and Ezra raided the Osprey weapons locker wholesale.
The Hammer launched from the carrier close to the gate and made the jump under cloak, then decloaked as it arrived in the Hargard system.
There was an unusual amount of military traffic in the system, signs of a buildup of Vuldrok forces.
Hammer entered Hargard orbit and hailed Valheim, leading to a rather comical exchange between Antonio and ground control.

"Hammer to Valheim. Permission to land." "Identify yourselves?" "Ello! It's us!" "Hello 'us' can you be more specific?"

Annissa made something of a fist of her first attempt at an orbital re-entry, bouncing hammer off the atmosphere. The first landing attempt also went somewhat awry as alarms sounded and the automatic voice repeated "Pull up! Pull up!". Hitting the 'abort' button, Annissa stood the ship on her tail and regained height to try again.
Landing with something of a thump in the south pasture, Hammer was met by Dan and some of the locals in a truck.
The reunion was emotional, although muted by Anam's loss. The party entered the Thanes mead hall to a rowdy reception and the sight of a heavily pregnant Thane Gudrun.
Dan passed on a message from Annissa and Alectrona's uncle Hakim, although it wasn't massively helpful "Interesting isn't it?"
The military buildup was explained by Dan and Gudrun as being due to Greolf the Grim preparing to attack the Known Worlds as a preemptive strike, believing that the Empire was preparing to attack the Vuldrok Star Nations.
The Nizdarim were increasing in numbers and trading more openly, landing their ships at the planet's starports rather than selling their cargo at isolated points to those villages and traders they favour.
The evening passed in tale telling and drinking, Antonio 'testing' his new kidney. Antonio also somewhat shocked Annissa by standing up and toasting his captain for her leadership and generosity in the battle against the three raiders and its aftermath.
The crew spent two happy days in Valheim before heading off in a borrowed truck to the hamlet wherein they were told Bjorn the Woodcutter lived.
Arriving at the hamlet, Bjorn was not hard to find – Out in the forest cutting wood. A seemingly normal looking man in his forties, but for the sensation of connection that Alectrona got from him.
Bjorn provided the party with a data chip containing navigational data for the rendezvous with the next contact.
The party traded for some wood and woodland produce by way of a cover for their visit.
The four hour drive back to Valheim resembled a bad tempered family outing as Antonio bickered with everyone except Annissa, his stress at being around a Symbiot and not shooting it making him a bit... fractious.
Setting off from Hargard, it was a four day trip to the rendezvous, some au short of the gate. As they approached the co-ordinates, Alectrona was aware of the presence of many symbiot minds.
Sensors showed a frigate sized Symbiot craft. Tentatively the Hammer approached and hailed the ship. They were directed to approach for docking...
A Symbiot docking tube is a disturbing thing to clamp onto ones ship, even more of a disturbing thing to walk through to enter a Symbiot ship.
The interior of the ship was devoid of servitors, a disembodied voice and biolumenescent light strips guiding their path through the ship to the equivalent of the bridge. Alectrona found the experience very odd, being literally within a living being and surrounded by minds, just out of sight.
On the bridge, they met Clara, sat in a biomechanical command chair, wearing nothing but her great cascades of hair.
Clara seemed genuinely pleased to see the party, exchanging pleasantries and small talk before getting down to business. She warned the humans not to trust the Nizdarim as they carried a scent that the Symbiots did not like one little bit.
Clara brought out a data chip, giving the path through the Abydos minefield and the jump codes for the Abydos <> Daishan route.
Clara wished good fortune to her rescuers and bade them farewell.
Engaging the cloak, Hammer jumped to Abydos, emerging into a busy stream of traffic threading its way through an extensive minefield. All symbiot... Alectrona was almost catatonic as she tried to make sense of the mentally deafening cacophany of Symbiot minds. The distant world of Abydos shone like a beacon in her mindscape, millions upon millions of minds.
Carefully following the course provided, Hammer was steered into position for the jump to Daishan. Antonio stayed in the engineroom, refusing to look out the portholes at the ships beyond.
On the bridge, everyone else was almost transfixed at the sight.
Emerging into the Daishan system, Hammer slid past the human space station before disengaging the cloak and accelerating for the planet.
Nearing Daishan, the cloak was re-engaged. As Hammer entered orbit sensors detected a human scout ship in synchronous orbit. The configuration matched that of the missing Masseri Duke's vessel.
Antonio requested that if at all possible, he would like to visit the site of his family estates.
Landing near the hidden valley, the party disembarked and made their way to the old Masseri research complex, passing the abandoned homes of the human survivors.
Entering the complex, the veterans of the last trip led the way to the hive lord's nest chamber.
Once again, no servitors were visible, perhaps a concession to human fears.
Jaz'eer was sat on his 'nest' and cordially greeted his guests.
The hivelord briefed the humans -

Some months previously, the Duke arrived in the system and began exploring the planet.
He left and returned with a second ship that landed and set up a base at the site of the old human city of Ektarinberg.
The city had been neutron bombed during the retreat from Daishan and subsequently frozen in ice when a nearby dam burst and flooded the area.
Servitors sent to investigate reported that the Duke appeared to be overseeing an excavation down to the skyscrapers that neared the glacier surface.
The servitors were either killed or driven off by an increasing taint that they could not approach.
Jaz'eer theorised that the Duke sought to recover bodies frozen in ice since the war and try and extract viable spores.
Jaz'eer provided an all terrain vehicle, formerly of the 'Daishan ministry of public works – Parks and gardens division'.
Antonio was shocked to hear the Hivelord mention the offer made to the Emperor that humans could settle Daishan free of the threat of conversion.
It was a long drive to Ekatarinberg...
Hiding the vehicle in a gully, the party approached the city on foot and reconnoitered from a distance.
Binoculars showed a cluster of bubble domes on the ice, one large enough to contain a starship.
Annissa proposed sending her trained raccoon in with a camera attached to his head.
[There then followed your trusty GM miming aspects of 'Raccoon cam' which had people in stitches and I leave to the imagination for those who weren't there]

A few hours later, Raki the Raccoon returned to the camp and the footage examined.

View of domes from outside as Raccon approached.
Paws opening an airduct cover
Entering an airduct
Paws closing the airduct again.
Airduct interior
Inside of dome, obviously a garage area. Access ways to 'Hangar' and 'Accommodation'
Outside of a lift cage.
Scurrying down a lift cable.
Emerging from a lift shaft
Access doors to "Lab 1" "Lab 2 / Morgue" and "Excavation"
View of an Ukar with a coruscating around his head, obviously looking for something that had aroused his suspicions, but finding nothing he goes about his business.
Various staff walking around looking busy, in either cold weather gear or biohazard suits.
Glimpse of the Duke working on a cadaver on a slab in lab 1, wearing biohazard gear.
Darting through access to the morgue, revealing ranks of body bags.
Closeups of the tags on each of the bodies. "Male, unconverted." "Male, converted, no viable spores." "Female, converted, viable spores, extracted."

Ezra freeze-framed a section of the morgue footage, zooming in on a table. There, partially covered with a cloth was an obsidian dagger. The dagger bore a distinct resemblance to one used by Althar of Hargard, the Necromancer. The conclusion was that the unhallowed corpses of the Masseri dead might be being used as Husks.
Antonio, viewing the footage was incandescent with rage. Vowing to slay the Duke with his own hands.
We leave things with our heroes debating what to do next.

Session 36

July 30th 4,998
GM Note – Writeups of combat heavy sessions tend to be a bit tricky as I tend not to note down the minutiae of every combat round and the time spend OOC gaming through it all covers really only a few minutes of IC time.
I also added that the raccoon stole a data chip containing some plot notes that I thought would add to the atmosphere a bit (see appended handout)

We rejoin our heroes as they debate the best way to deal with the Masseri base.
The data chip purloined by Raki the Raccoon turned out to contain a set of notes that led to a lot of speculation as to what exactly was going on down there and further increased the general resolve to shoot people.
Ezra and Antonio were concerned that their small stock of grenades might not be sufficient to the task at hand.

There was some debate over whether or not to return to Jaz'eer and see if they could get hold of more explosives. Eventually a plan was hatched based around Annissa's initial suggestion that they disable the communication relay outside the base.
The plan :
1. Knock out the relay
2. Wait for someone to come out to look at it.
3. Kill the repair man.
4. Sneak in the way the guy came out.
5. Storm the upper level
6. Immobilise the starship in the hangar
7. Work their way down level by level and shoot everyone.

Annissa threatened to shoot Antonio if he took his speculation about using her trained raccoon as a 'suicide bomber' any further.
As the party made their plans, a weather front rolled in and brought howling winds and whiteout conditions (GM Note : Jaz'eer thought that bad visibility might be helpful and unilaterally tapped into the world egg to play with the local weather).
Advancing under cover of the blizzard, roped together with two party members using IR vision goggles, the party dig in behind a berm and Musa readies a rifle.
Steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the plan go exactly to plan. The repairman goes down with a double tap from a sniper rifle and the two personnel on the upper level are fatally surprised as they stand around chatting in the garage work area (The ATV is swiftly but not permanently immobilised).
Antonio does the starship equivalent of removing the steering wheel and putting glue in the ignition key while the rest of the party cover the main chamber on the upper level. Ezra and Antonio open one of the large canisters in the cargo bay of the starship and swiftly close it again when they realise that it contains a plague bomb. Pausing only to 'salvage' any 'useful' items from the ship, they vacate the area.
Deciding that the ladder access shaft leaves one a little vulnerable, the consensus is that they pile into the lift and take out level two mob handed.

Down to level two they go…
Emerging into level two, they are startled by someone emerging from the accommodation section. The person looks the dead spit of their dead engineer (Deke) and this stays Annissa's hand for a moment. Ezra however, had never met the man and opens fire on the hapless looking scientist as a matter of principle. The scientist had a shield on and this saved his life, so he turned tail and ran screaming up the corridor back the way he came with Antonio in hot pursuit and Musa covering his back as they hurtled down the left branch of t-junction in the accommodation area.
Antonio shot at the scientist to no great effect (aren't shields great?) and elected to draw a knife and try and finish it that way. Cornered, the scientist pulled a syringe of evil looking green fluid and attempted to stick it in Antonio's neck.
A classic grapple with deadly pointy objects then ensued but ended quite quickly when Musa blew the man's brains out from behind (shields are no real use if someone puts a 9mm pistol at the nape of your neck).
The party very sensibly locked the morgue door with a metal bar from the outside.
Three base personnel attacked from the right hand branch of the T-junction, sadly for them, two of them did not have shields and were rapidly gunned down. Disturbingly though, the third attacker ducked out of sight and uttered some dark incantation before running off. As the syllables echoed off the walls, one of the dead attackers rose from the ground and staggered jerkily toward the party. The zombie was blasted apart in a fusillade of rather well motivated gunfire.
Ezra and Antonio set off in pursuit of the occultist but could not find him in any of the rooms up that branch of the passageway. Only when a full search was conducted by several people a minute or three later was an escape hatch discovered in the Ducal chambers, leading down…
Ezra and Antonio decided that reconnaissance by grenade was the best course of action, or rather, they hoped that the occultist was still in the room below and threw a grenade down the bolthole.
The occultist had rather foolishly not shut the hatch at the bottom of the shaft and the grenade went off in the not terribly large room below.

Ooops…

(GM Note : Chatting to one of the party later, I observed that we'd have been in a right pickle had the room on level three been, say, a munitions store, things would have gone even more pear shaped. T… P… K…)

As it turned out, the room below the Ducal chambers was, in fact, the containment room for the servitor of Nidderdak, embodiment of hunger and source of the material being used by the necromancer.

The servitor was bound inside a crystal shell.

In a small room.

Shared with a grenade.

Those with any occult senses whatsoever were aware of a great disturbance in the vicinity as the crystal shattered and the servitor was released.
(GM Note : At this point, the bulk of the base personnel are down on level three. Not all of them were aware of any necromantic activity and the next few rounds are spent while the occultists brow beat the more biddable of their catspaws into doing what they are told while the more principled of the security staff is earmarked for shivving up and feeding to the entity. Unbeknownst to the party, the Duke is in Lab One, trapped for the moment and the Duke's loyal body guard has only one concern : Get to his liege lord and kill anyone in the way. The bad guys plan is pretty basic : Send some zombies up in the lift to keep the party busy while the body guard and some of his men sneak up the bolt hole and try to re-take Level Two) Back in the central section of level two, the party are aware that someone is hiding in Lab One but can't get in to see who it is.
Strange howling and gibbering sounds were echoing up the ladder and lift shafts, prompting much speculation about what the suspected demonic entity might be up to.

The lift is called from the floor below and then sent back up. Annissa noticing the lift's movement first and ending the debate.

The lift arrives…

It's full of zombies.

Zombies don't dodge and packed inside a lift they offer a pretty easy set of targets. Most were taken out with head shots before they even got to the doors.
The lift was then called back down to level three.
Annissa took it upon herself to send a grenade down the lift shaft to disable the lift, causing some criticism for reducing their means of escape to the easily contested ladder shaft but Annissa maintained that the occultist could keep sending zombies up in the lift until they ran out of ammo.
Some furniture was thrown down the ladder shaft to make it harder for the enemy to come up.
A grenade was dropped down the lift shaft after Ezra was fired at when he tried to fire downward. The scream that accompanied the explosion indicated 'a result'.
Sadly, the psychic downstairs was a telekinetic and levitated a grenade back up the shaft and blew Ezra across the room.
The Masseri bodyguard began his one man counter attack, bursting through with blaster rifle blazing and there then followed a very protracted gunfight.
When everyone has a shield and synth armour underneath, killing ones opponent can take a long time. The bodyguard had 'Stiffsynth' the heavy duty version of Synthsilk (7d protection) and a duelling shield (15 charges) verses the party and their standard Synthsilk and standard shields (4d and 10 charges).
Annissa felt her shooting was sub par and tried hacking away at the bodyguard on a couple of occasions with her scimitar (better for going under shields).
A security guard joined the fun and sprayed an assault rifle into the party, downing Alectrona's shield and wounding her.
Minor wounds were received by several people and the guard seemed to be being slowly whittled down, but then he threw a grenade into the midst of the party, injuring Alectrona still further.
Antonio botched his dodge roll verses the grenade… Antonio's player suggested that a good botch result was to dive for cover, misjudge and fall down the ladder shaft to the level below. I thought that would be fair…
A 10 meter fall is potentially rather unpleasant and even more so when landing on items of furniture. Luckily, Antonio's shield did not fail before it absorbed the impact and he landed unscathed.
The scene that greeted Antonio would rate as the second most unpleasant sight of the mission (the worst would follow a little later).
Lying on the ground was one of the security guards, still alive as the occultist offered up his steaming entrails to a hovering obscenity that seemed to be made up of darkness, tentacles, eyes and toothed maws. The Ukar was holding the guard down with some sort of psychic power as far as Antonio could tell.

(GM Note : I rolled perception rolls for the Occulist, Ukar and Entity and they all failed miserably)

Antonio took in the scene and just turned and very sensibly climbed up the ladder back to level two as if the devil himself were behind him. Which, in some senses, was bang on the money.
Meanwhile, back at the gunfight…
The body guard, sensing that his blaster rifle wasn't doing enough damage and ducked back into the accommodation area and shut the door, swapping weapons with the guard, planning to use autofire to down shields.
A brilliant plan but the security guard was immediately gunned down after only one shot from the blaster rifle and the 6 round burst that hit Ezra did no damage.
Ezra however was on target with his blaster shotgun…

(GM note : Ezra's player achieved close to the maximum possible damage you could. He critical'd his to hit roll and therefore had 8 damage points to dish out. He then rolled the damage dice for the weapon and all of them came up as damage, giving another 9. In addition to that, of the 9 dice he rolled, 6 were a one or a two, which means the damage penetrated the shield. So, 17 damage in total. 10 stopped by the shield and 7 going 'over' it while 6 leaked through it. 13 points verses 7 dice of armour)

A fairly good armour save left the body guard close to unconscious and he tried to dive back through the door and shut it behind him.
Annissa however stepped in and used her last grenade, posting it through the gap in the door before it shut. The guard was rapidly converted to a fine red mist on local landscape.
Antonio emerged pale and shaking from the ladder shaft pointing behind him and yelling "Demon!"
At this point, a man in a biohazard suit burst out of lab one with two flasks, one in either hand and threw them at the party.
Ezra and Antonio were the first to react and fired simultaneously, both hitting him in the upper body. Now, the effect of two blaster weapons at point blank verses an unarmoured opponent can best be described as… well, messy. The upper torso ceased to be and the head and neck went one way and the trunk and limbs went the other.

(GM note : I had been at pains to ask the party whether they were wearing their Vau sheathes before they went in and they all were)

Fortunately for the party, the concentrated tincture of active Symbiote breeder spores was blocked by the filtration systems of their Vau suits. However, downstairs, the Ukar and the Occultist are not wearing any protective gear and there followed piercing scream and gurgle. Alectrona sensed something flowering and then withering as the spores tried to convert the occultist and his body rejected the conversion, causing him to die an agonising death.
All thoughts of what to do next were cut short by the arrival of the entity up the ladder shaft.
Unlike the demons encountered before, this creature seemed to be corporeal and took damage from weapons fire as the party opened up with everything they had.

(GM Note : The entity was actually some sort of servitor creature from the outer darkness with demonic traits rather than a manifest demon – It had 20 health levels, all damage was halved and then soaked by 3d of armour).

The creature focussed its attention on Alectrona and she was filled with an uncontrollable hunger for human flesh…

(GM Note : Alectrona has the worst luck in the world for this stuff. Every, and I mean EVERY time there's a random roll for 'who the demon picks on' – It's her. She's pumped buckets of XP into stoic mind and raising her faith but she almost always fails the defence roll verses possession or whatever. In this case, she failed the roll but I gave her a second roll to give her the option of either chasing after the moving meat or chowing down on the very fresh corpses on the floor)

The creature was cut down after some very impressive shooting by the remainin members of the party, who were aghast to see their medic pulling the head of the dead scientist out of the biohazard suit helmet and chewing his nose off, before battering the head on the floor to break the skull and get at the brains.
A few moments after the creature collapsed to the floor, Alectrona began to regain her senses and then spent several minutes doing little else but vomiting and screaming.
Antonio took a moment to recognise the battered head of his Duke and then calmly looted the body for the Ducal signet.
Alectrona's recovery was slightly aided by the feeling of the lifeweb recovering in the immediate vicinity as the taint of the demonic entity faded. The 'reassuring' presence of the lifeweb helped calm her.
Once Alectrona was vaguely conscious, the party cautiously proceeded down to level four but could find no sign of the Ukar, surmising that he had gone down into the frozen undercity. They did find the contorted body of the occultist on the way, grateful at least that he did not become a symbiot.
With insufficient explosives to block the shaft leading to the undercity, they decided to retreat to the surface and set the merchant ships reactor to overload. They also did some serious 'evidence gathering' (You know, any incriminating data, paperwork and easily transported items with a high financial value).
Repairing the base's ATV allowed the transportation of even more 'evidence' and the two vehicles drove away into the hills with the countdown on the reactor ticking away.
Raki the Raccoon refused to approach the party, evidently afraid of the symbiot taint all over them.
Arriving back at Jaz'eers bunker, they reported that the Duke and his party had been dealt with, although they suspected that the Ukar might have escaped into the undercity and survived the blast. They also apologized for the fusion explosion.
Aftermath :

Antonio asked to be allowed to visit the ruins of his ancestral lands, a delay that seemed reasonable. Examination of the paperwork and data recovered from the base revealed some facts :

Only the occultist (Constantine Dextrite) and the Ukar (Sakash) were cultists. The rest of the team were 'only' aware of the Duke and his scheme to produce symbiot spore plague bombs.
The team thought the entity was an Ur Artefact and not a demon
The Cultists were using the corpses and the entity to attempt to find a way to take the run of the mill 'Husk' (Zombie) and turn it into a form that could pass on the zombie curse via an infectious agent they dubbed 'Breath of Life'. Until recently, the curse would burn out after three successive infections but Constantine felt that he was on the verge of perfecting it. Another cultists called Malakaiah appeared to be working on the same thing and having equal success.
Several plague bombs had already been sent out into the Known Worlds but they 'only' carried symbiot spores.
The Cult planned to add Breath of Life the plague bombs and unleash a zombie plague on several populated worlds.

Session 37

Game date : July 31st 4,998 A.D.
GM Note : Last session having run late and folk being tired, I decided to pick things up during the 'aftermath' and expand on things a bit.
Thus, we rejoin our merry band back at Jazeer the Hivelord's bunker complex as they inform the symbiots of the goings on at the Masseri base.
Antonio : "Sorry for blowing up a chunk of your planet…" –pause- "Not that it's yours."
Antonio asked that they take the Hammer to the site of the DeMosto family estates and allow him to see the land of his ancestors.
A while later, the ship landed and Antonio plus Ezra headed out to say a few words over the site of what had been the principle DeMosto holding (now an ice covered blast crater).
Annissa took some time to use the ship's external cameras and one of her own to take pictures of the holding as a kindness to Antonio.
As the service concluded, the two men saw a humanoid shape drop from the sky and land near the ship…
Aboard the Hammer Musa, Alectrona and Annissa were surprised when someone unexpectedly came aboard the ship.
Sakash the Ukar psychic had escaped the Ekatarinburg undercity and was launching a desperate bid to capture hammer and make good his escape.
Using his telepathic power, he made Annissa and Musa turn their weapons on Alectrona, but the use of shields and armour made this a less immediately lethal situation than it otherwise would have been. Alectrona, lightly wounded, dived into the nose turret and was locked in.
Sakash then ordered the remaining two to exit the ship via the escape hatch. Alone on the bridge, Sakash began pre-flight procedures.
Antonio and Ezra made it to the airlock and Antonio was able to de-scramble the hastily encrypted door code and gain access to the ship. Annissa and Musa (now free of psychic control) began to climb down off the ship to rejoin Ezra and Antonio via the airlock.
Storming up to the bridge, Antonio and Ezra open fire on Sakash, before Antonio is taken over and told to fire on Ezra.
[GM note : There's not a member of the party with a psychic resistance roll above 8 on a 20 scale – Ezra however managed to resist and critical his]
Ezra shrugged off an attempt to dominate his will and, ignoring Antonio's less than effective weapons fire, discharged his blaster shotgun at Sakash, unleashing yet another spawnily high damage roll.
Sakash's head now redecorated the inside of the cockpit.
The obsidian dagger, the Ukar's remains and the canister that 'radiated evil' were all stowed in the airlock and later dumped into space on a trajectory that would intersect with the system's sun.
After putting out the fires caused by blaster weapons in an enclosed space and some work with mops to remove most of Sakash from the paintwork, Antonio set to repairing some of the bridge systems before Hammer headed for orbit.
In orbit, it was decided to take a look at the orbiting scout ship and try to board it.
Antonio and Alectrona suited up and headed over to the other vessel's airlock. The hatch was locked and so, Antonio attempted to override the controls. Sadly, the airlock on the scoutship was booby-trapped and Antonio set off an explosive charge equivalent to a hand grenade. Antonio was badly wounded by the blast and fragments, Alectrona a few meters away was less badly hurt but both lost suit pressure.
[GM note : I tend to play it that a space suit loses pressure if it takes more damage than it rolls in armour – Both took over 4 points on a 3dice suit] As Antonio and Alectrona flail around trying to patch gaping rents in their suits, Ezra and Annissa launch themselves from the Hammer's airlock as the rescue team.
[GM note : I was making the victims roll Dex+Vigour to get their suit patches in place whilst applying 3d vacuum damage per turn. Antonio nearly died – He was on 1 health level on after failing three dex+vigour rolls when I rolled 5,6,6 on the 3 damage dice] In the nick of time, the rescuers got to Antonio as the last of his air leaked from his suit. Alectrona had just managed to seal her own damage but not been able to grab hold of her comrade to render assistance.
Back on the Hammer, Antonio and Alectrona were given Elixir shots and put to bed.
It was decided to just blow the scout ship up and the Hammer opened fire. However, the scout seemed to posses some form of automation and was able to raise shields and return fire before turning to pursue Hammer.
Annissa engaged the cloak and broke orbit, leaving the scout for others to deal with another day.
A couple of days into the uphill run to the Daishan gate, Alectrona's 'Affinity' sense picked up a stirring of the lifeweb aboard ship and tracked it down to Antonio's bunk.
Sakash it seems had been covered in Symbiot spores and one of them had germinated into a slime mold that was crawling over Antonio's dressings, seeking a way into the wound…
A can of local anaesthetic and a lighter was swiftly employed to torch the slime mold and only then was the situation explained to Antonio, whose alarm at suddenly being mildly singed was transformed to a period of near catatonic terror.
Transiting the Daishan gate into the Abydos system went according to plan but on arrival at the Abydos gate, it seemed that it was in a reset period. For the next three days, Hammer hung silent in the shadow of a planetoid while large queues of Symbiot traffic built up. Alectrona was initially overwhelmed by the mind voices of so many but was able to block them out after a while.
After three days, a Symbiot ship arrived bearing a reset-key and the traffic jam began to break up.
Two jumps later and it's a collective sigh of relief to enter Known Space once more and Hammer headed to the pre-arranged rendezvous in the Leminkainen system.
Once aboard the carrier, debriefings in the secure area followed a very, very thorough decontamination and scan.
As the party explained more and more about what they discovered, the interviewing officers got more and more pale. Ezra gave one of his (in)famous 'Powerpoint presentations on Eeeeevil! (tm)' to help with the debriefing.
The carrier set course for the throne world at maximum velocity. What the party had to say needed to be heard at the highest levels.
Antonio was ragged about agonising over the demise of his Duke.
Antonio : "I've shot plenty of people but they've all been strangers, the last person I shot who wasn't a stranger was family as well."
Party (practically as one) : "Apart from your wife?"
Antonio : "I meant shot and killed… Okay, that was her brother."
Seven days later, the party were conveyed in secret to the palace and secure guest quarters.
Antonio's fixation about Daishan in the eyes of the party led to yet another row in which he suggested that everyone had an obsession, Annissa and shoes for example (Which wasn't that well founded on fact and turned up the pressure cooker of the Al-Malik's temper flaw another notch).
Osprey arrived later that day and the party were spirited aboard to fake their arrival 'back' at Bz-II.
Casey was VERY pleased to see Alectrona and broke off her embrace briefly to answer a question from Antonio with "SNOGGING!" before returning to reacquainting herself with her Rinsada.
Fortunately the following statement was made OOC – "She'd not be so swift to stick her tongue in that mouth if she knew what Alectrona stuck in it a fortnight ago…"
Osprey had been shadowed by raiders a couple of times during the past month but managed to evade them. They had picked up Diana the Selenite and left her at a space station in orbit. The agent said she would like a word before the Osprey left the system.
Lady Paula Juandastaas was wryly amused at having had to have her own security clearance raised several levels just to talk to the party about their last mission.
Analysis of the intelligence captured on Daishan included reference to 'The Timetable'. The Masseri symbiot plot seemed to be waiting for the Duke to finish the last batch of bombs and then release them when he returned to the Known Worlds. The Antinomists however seemed to have an unspecified date in mind for their use of the 'Breath of Life' weapons they were developing. Ezra came to the conclusion that the coming millennium was a significant enough date and was the most likely candidate.
Once all the reunions and interviews were over (including a rather intimidating interview with VoKarm, Mazarin and Oelestre) the party were free to relax.
They had been told that they should follow their own judgement and 'nose' in the matter of uncovering the plot, intelligence indicated that the "beta site" lay somewhere on the edges of either Vuldrok or Caliphate space and that a subtle approach by agents already known in the area would probably work best.
Antonio, continuing to try turning over a new leaf, expressed a desire to see some of the higher brow sights of Bz-II rather than the low dives and bordellos he had frequented on all previous visits.
Mass at the Cathedral was item number one.
"I tend to doze through sermons." – Antonio
"Why, you seem to like giving them…" – Alectrona
Item number two was a show at the theatre, one that didn't involve the ladies on stage getting naked at any point.
After the show, dinner at a nice restaurant (where the waitresses were not topless) and on to a night club.
Alectrona had been given the option by Casey (who remained behind) of "An early night or a late breakfast" and had chosen the latter option.
Somehow the subject of Annissa's (non) lovelife became a topic of conversation (raising that pressure cooker just a smidgeon more).
At the nightclub, Alectrona detected a Symbiot infilatrator that seemed to be keeping an eye on them. The creature seemed to have no ill intent and was left alone. Just one more in a succession of discreet and not so discreet watchers that seemed to be tailing the group.
Back at the palace, the debate on where to go and what to do next began. The general plan seemed to be : Pick up stuff for the fiefs back on Aragon, head there, check on progress and then go off to Hargard and see where the trail led.
Antonio (ever the Republican) decided that Annissa's attitude to her serfs and some of her responses to him on feudal matters were patronising and said : "She has to patronise me, otherwise she goes stale…" And at that point your honour, she punched him in the face.
When he came around, he was roundly castigated by all and sundry for continuously baiting the person who paid for his kidney.
Annissa went out to vent her anger at the Agora, driving hard bargains to secure a cargo.
Later that day, Antonio and Annissa made peace.
Quote of the day (for me) : "I don't see why people say I am obsessed, I haven't mentioned Daishan all day." – Antonio.
(In unison) "IT'S BREAKFAST!" – The other party members.
Meeting Diana at the orbital station, she was able to amplify some of the information provided by the Eye.
In the Selenite's opinion, the 'beta site' lay beyond the Vuldrok world of Fingisvold, as an agent of theirs had tracked suspicious ships transiting that gate.
She confirmed that Hakim and Hecate were still alive and operating somewhere in the Caliphate, possibly following the route from the other direction.
We leave our party as they make for the gate at Bz-II.

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Session 38

August 18th 4,998 AD

We rejoin our happy band on Byzantium Secundus as they plot, plan and generally argue about what to do next.
Annissa invested some of the profit from the sale of various surplus captured weapons in an assortment of grenades (in addition to replenishing the expended munitons). She was shocked at just how much a plasma grenade was worth… (100 FB when a months wages for a starship crewman is about 20).

"You don't have to –be- useful Annissa, you own the starship." (Antonio in one of his more sensitive moments)

[GM Note The running IC joke about the Osprey AI fancying Antonio was given further fuel when she chided him for not taking proper care of himself. His cyberware apparently records his physiological state and Osprey was aware when he linked in to the ship systems that he had had a near fatal decompression episode and severe blast injuries]

The trip to Aragon, the planet holding the nobles fiefs was uneventful and Osprey landed at the Agora on the main continent to sell off the cargo from Bz-II and pick up supplies for the estate.

[GM note : Annissa made a critical success on her sales roll and made a tidy sum on the delivery]

A call was placed to Steve and Aquila back at the castle and a list of items required for the fief was drawn up, Annissa decided to purchase additional apiary equipment to boost the peasants honey production with a view to making mead. Annissa also decided that some throw rugs might brighten the peasant hovels up a bit.

"We should encourage the serfs to breed more, in 16 years we'll have a crop we can sell on" (Antonio being satirical, we hope)

Arriving at San Daniel the changes were obvious even from the air, the two villas were re-roofed, the fields now all fully back in cultivation and the trees and vines all neatly trimmed. Alectrona and Antonio were eager to inspect their newly repaired homes and were very pleased with the results, even if there was not a stick of furniture or jot of decoration about the place.
Annissa was pleased to see that the extension to the manor house was progressing well and that the foundations for a chapel down in the hamlet were lain.
Antonio decided to take the truck into town and go shopping for furniture and houseware, Alectrona agreed and pretty soon the entire cohort were packed into the vehicle and bouncing off down the road to the local market town.
Arriving at Aguilar, Antonio decided to start his quest for consumer durables with Don Gregorio (the Scraver Boss who had a hand in fencing the original house contents when they were stolen in the first place).
The Don was most helpful and directed the nobles to the relevant tradesmen in town, the local lumber and wine industries meant that wooden furniture and decent glassware were both readily available and cheap.
Firebirds were liberally pumped into the local economy and orders placed. Alectrona decided to commission both a hot tub and a proper bath house, although this would be a longer term and rather expensive project.
Antonio also set out to source both horticultural and ornamental juniper plants to facilitate his own long term plan : Gin production.

Returning to the castle, Ezra and Antonio (referred to as 'the boys' by everyone else) declare a desire to go hunting. Sadly for the boys, their personal arsenals, whilst extensive, lack any weapons that would leave enough of the average small game animal intact to fill a sandwich. Casey agreed to loan the pair a couple of the air-rifles from the survival gear. The boys also decided that taking Raki the Raccoon along as a 'gun dog' would be a fine idea.
The Racoon thought it was a fine idea too… (Cue the GM doing more racoon impressions)
"Okay Ezra… let's shoot some shit up!" – Antonio, spoiling the image he had managed to project of a proper nobleman engaging in a huntin' shootin' fishin' lifestyle for all of half an hour.

Now, the thing about genetically engineered attack animals is, amongst other considerations, their enormous appetite.

Upon their eventual return from the local forest, they presented Lady Annissa with a quantity of pigeons and the like for the pantry.

"These are pigeons my lady" said Ezra, "They go in pies. Although admittedly the first half a dozen or so went into your Raccoon." (Which being part Doggoth can swallow quite large animals in one gulp).

Ezra spent some time whittling holy symbols as gifts for the peasants and talking with Brother Lucas about the spiritual health of the parish.

Musa inspected the castle defences and spent some time tweaking the radar array in the tower.
Antonio wrote letters to his parents and his daughter, dispatching money to Saskia toward her future education.
All in all, the party spend a pleasant week doing landlordy things on their estates and kicking back. The promised furniture arrived and the houses were left in a basic but liveable condition before Osprey departed for the jumpgate.
[GM Note – Rolling secretly for sensors and such, the party do not spot the 'tail' they pick up at the Aragon jumpgate – Two ill intentioned raider class vessels containing some unsympathetic members of the Antinomist cabal and a rather special device…]

On arrival at the Bz-II gate, Osprey was hailed by a Hawkwood courier and the commander, one Peter Hawkwood asked them to consider visiting Leminkainen to speak to his liege lady, Lady Jane Holden Hawkwood.
[GM Note – What follows now is me running the published Red Brick inc 'shard' adventure "Kraken's Loom" which I recommend to anyone who runs FS as a tidy little adventure. My apologies to the author though as I brutally murder the carefully structured design of their scenario.]

Arriving in the Leminkainen system, Osprey and her crew are aware that two raider's are tailing them and pile on the speed to outrun their pursuers.
Hakkonen, the capital of Leminkainen is an oasis of style and comfort on the surface of a desertified craphole.
The Baroness had established herself in a 5 star hotel and her commission was simple :

· Several years ago, her cousin, Count Anderton Blake Hawkwood, went missing when the liner in which he was travelling was lost.
· Only 13 survivors of the liner were ever found and he was not among them.
· Recently, his heirloom blaster pistol was discovered in the possession of a Vuldrok trader who claimed to have picked it up on Hargard.
· The presence of the pistol on Hargard raises the possibility that the Count is still alive and this is what the Baroness wishes to have investigated.
· The Count's younger brother has taken control of the family lands as his only living heir and the Baroness thinks this is a) In poor taste and b) Hasty. She wishes the signet ring recovered if the Count turns out to be dead and will use this to deal with 'the usurper'.
· Of the 13 survivors, 9 committed suicide in the years since and 2 are missing presumed dead. The remaining two are on Leminkainen. Also in the system is the captain of the ship that rescued the survivors.

With paperwork provided by the Baroness, the party decide to interview the Vuldrok trader at the local militia gaol.
En Route to the gaol, they were approached by Sir Gregor Ashwood Dale, a vassal of the Count's brother who asked that they consider passing the signet ring to him should they recover it as the Baroness merely wished to manipulate matters to her own advantage rather than out of any loyalty to her cousin.

"Great." Said Antonio, "We get an enemy whichever way it goes."
Arriving at the gaol, the party were shown to the cells.
[GM Note : Cue Antonio's player doing a passable impression of DCI Gene Hunt from 'Ashes to Ashes' as he interrogated the captive :
"You Sunshine are up shit creek and I am here to offer you a paddle"
Geezer!]

The Vuldrok claimed to have bought the weapon in good faith at a shop in the Viyanagar city of Achiharta on Hargard. He provided a description and location for the shop and the general view was that he was telling the truth. The Baroness was informed and the recommendation was that the trader be released.
The first of the survivors the party chose to interview was Lady Tersa Hawkwood who had retreated to a nunnery in the mountains to dedicate her life to prayer.
Arriving in a rented skimmer, piloted by Annissa, the party were shown to her cloister where Lady Tersa would only communicate in writing.
As soon as the purpose of the visit was explained to her, she tried to commit suicide with a pen knife and had to be subdued before eventually being calmed down enough to explain what happened to the liner 'Lexington Script'.
To summarise what happened : A big tentacular nasty appeared from a shimmering patch of previously empty space and ate the space ship. A classic Void Kraken attack. Except of course kiddies that Krakens are a tale told in spacer bars to scare tourists.
Heading back to Hakkonen, the party decide to split up : Ezra and Alectrona will hit the library and media archives to research Krakens and ship disappearances whilst the rest of the group head off and track down the last survivor. Tanalu is given the task of filling in the forms required to get permission to visit the rescue ship's captain.

"I'll have you know that =I= can do think machines you know!" – Antonio (affronted that Alectrona was Ezra's first choice for data search work) "I –know- you do…" – Ezra (implying a different meaning for 'doing a think machine' entirely)
Annissa, Ezra and Musa arrive at a village known to be on the route of the wanderings of the last survivor. The man had become a mendicant friar with quite a following among the peasantry and his route was relatively predictable.
After waiting all day, they were pleased to see the Friar arrive but did not get to talk to him as he began dispensing benedictions to the peasants and preaching a rambling but passionate sermon against evil and the need to obey the will of the Pancreator.
As dusk approached, the Friar became more and more fervent and seemed to heal some of the local sick. The peasants built a huge pyre and by the light of the flames, the service went on into the night, the Friar eventually curling up to sleep by the fire.
Pitching a tent, the party resolve to speak to him in the morning.

[GM Note : This bit works best if visualised as a TV / Movie scene]
Opening shots:
Ezra and Alectrona waking up in a 5 star hotel, satin sheets and en suite bathrooms et al.
Cut to :
Musa, Antonio and Annissa crawling out of sleeping bags in the desert and brewing coffee over a stove.

Cut to :
Ezra and Alectrona commenting over a lovely breakfast of coffee and croissants that it's nice to get to eat without anyone bickering.
Cut to :
Annissa and Antonio bickering about making the coffee, sorting the breakfast, the nature of sand etc.
Cut to:
Ezra and Alectrona laughing and joking about the peace and quiet

Cut to :
Annissa approaching the Friar and him leaping up, screaming about the party being in terrible danger, being agents of the Kraken's will and then jumping at Annissa, grabbing her face in his hands and, amid screams and gibbers, delivering some sort of mysterious blessing.
Cut to :
Alectrona and Ezra buttering another round of croissants and deciding whether to hit the library first or go to the records office.
Cut to :
A crowd of pitchfork wielding peasants 'asking' the party to leave town.
By the time that everyone meets up back at the hotel that evening, the research team have learned that Krakens are –officially- a myth. The establishment line is that even discussing them is the sort of thing only loonies do and that anyway, even if they did exist (which they don't) they never attack ships within the orbit of a gate for Holy Doctrinal reasons.
Tanalu had also managed to arrange an appointment up at the orbital naval base for the following day to interview the captain.
Annissa mentioned the odd behaviour of the Friar and Ezra used 'Rending the veil of unreason' on her to check the state of her Soul Mirror and to
detect any taint that might have resulted.
[GM Note : No taint. High Faith and remarkably low sin taint.]
Careful not to mention the 'K' word, the party interview with the captain went swimmingly. He toed the official line that it was some sort of mechanical failure and stated that the 'Lexington Script' was lost some 6 AU _within_ the orbit of the jumpgate.
Curiouser and curiouser said Alice…
Business on Leminkainen concluded, the Osprey lifted off and made for the Leminkainen gate, en route for Hargard.
Remember those raiders?
Lining up at the gate for the jump to Hargard, everything was normal until Musa noticed a strange distortion in sensor returns at the edge of detection.
The next moment every single electrical system plugged into the ship shut down. Everything, without exception.
The only electrical power was that held in batteries isolated from the ship (space suits, ammo power clips, that sort of thing). In pitch black, zero gravity and growing alarm, the party and crew were able to communicate using suit radios only.
Then, the ship was hit and began to decompress.
Emergency hand cranks were the only means to close bulkhead doors and most of the atmosphere was lost. Ka'ra reported damage to the engine room but decided to make her way to the bridge instead of working to begin a 'cold start' on the reactor.
Ka'ra asked for every blaster magazine, power cell and spare battery that the party had to hand and began to swiftly daisy-chain them into an alarmingly dangerous looking assembly.
Taking two wires, she then discharged the power into herself and began to crackle with lightning inside her vac-suit. Taking off one glove, she placed her paw on the metal of the bridge bulkhead and the lightning discharged from her into the wall and spread out.
As this was happening, the ship clanged as a large vessel appeared outside and grappled the helpless Osprey.
The room lights up as a rapid fire laser on the frigate sized vessel engages an unseen target. The flickering light reveals vuldrok markings on the frigate that has them grappled. It also reveals the looming jumpgate.
GM Note : It is at this point that everyone remembers both IC and OOC that with no power, there's no Sathra damper (the GM included – Prompting a dash for a copy of Dark Between The Stars and a flick to the 'Sathra' section)
On the bridge, systems begin to flicker fitfully into life and the emergency backup generator is able to start to spin up.
But not quite fast enough…
The ship jumps.
Fortunately, the Sathra damper field of the frigate extends a small distance away from its hull and Osprey was clampled dorsal side toward the frigate's hull, so the full mind bending effects were diluted somewhat. It was still, however, somewhat unnerving, in a pleasant and mind expanding way.
Emerging into the Hargard system, Osprey attempts to hail their 'rescuer' and are answered with a heavily accented Vuldrok voice gloating "Off to the slave market with you, Hawkwyrd scum!"
The menace was somewhat ruined by most of the party hearing some giggling in the background and recognising the voice…
It would appear that Captain Dan was breaking his parole to the Inquisition and serving on a starship as pilot again. The party had been rescued by the very Second Republic ship that they had inadvertently helped Thane Gudren acquire.
Later, aboard "Lightning" Dan explained that they had been staging a show of strength for the Hawkwood. A confederation of minor Thanes had gathered and launched a 'raid' through the gate into Hawkwood space to show that the Vuldrok were not sitting around doing nothing.
"Lightning" was along to demonstrate that all her weapon systems were fully operational and she was in full fighting trim, hopefully revising upward the perceived strength of Hargard.
The plan had been to jump in, broadcast some rude messages, fire a few broadsides into any passing asteroids and buzz some merchants before jumping out. Emerging from the gate, they saw two raiders pounding a stricken ship and decided to pitch in to help their old friends. "Live targets are fun targets" as one of Musa's 'friends' from Valheim put it.
The two raiders were swiftly beaten off with some damage and Osprey grappled and towed.
Reviewing the sensor data, Dan pronounced that in his opinion the raiders had a device called a "Psi Lens" – A Psionic Amplifier. Very rare, very expensive and hideously proscribed. Theurgic versions existed but from the effects on Osprey, Dan was sure that someone had used some ability similar to Ka'ra's electrical control ability from a great distance.
We leave the party en route to Hargard, wondering just how much money they now owe Thane Gudrun and how she's going to want paying…

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Session 39

October 1st 4,998 AD

We rejoin our heroes as they discuss their recent rescue by Captain Dan and the Vuldrok raiding band in the Leminkainen system.
Dan rather shamefacedly broached the subject of Vuldrok tradition – The Osprey had been taken as a prize (effectively) and the other captains sworn to Gudrun's banner wanted their cut of the prize money. Gudrun would pay them off but she would want repayment in turn from the Osprey's crew.
The repairs and prize money/bribes would come to over 20,000 FB, far more than the party could afford, but Gudrun was happy it seemed to offer the Osprey a chance to serve in her flotilla on a raid or two and recoup the money owed.
"Great! Let's be pirates!" - Ezra and Antonio
The downhill run to Hargard was fairly uneventful, although Osprey quietly congratulated Casey on her birthday one evening on the bridge. The feisty Ukari had just turned 18, which seemed to mean more to her shipmates than it did to her, although she was pleased that it now meant she was legally old enough for elective cyber-surgery.

Annissa and Alectrona were not too pleased to hear what Casey's idea for implantation would be : A very nearly proscribed Psionic/Neural Interface.
Dan told the party that they were welcome to sort their business out in Viyanagar and then head over to Valheim for repairs, once Osprey was repaired they could start 'working off their debt'.
Landing at the starport in the Ramakrishna capitol, they observed a Hawkwood explorer class ship that they had last seen back on Leminkainen. They suspected that it belonged to Sir Gregor.

Antonio suggested that they might want to steal it but was dissuaded on the grounds that a) It was illegal b) The Ramakrishna would notice and be very annoyed.
Casey set about obscuring the Imperial markings on the hull as the Questing Cohort headed off into the marketplaces of Achiharta.
Locating the stall described by the Vuldrok trader, Annissa bought a rather beautiful necklace for Casey, paying over the odds and securing thereby the gratitude and cooperation of the shopkeeper.
Suitably buttered up, the shopkeeper was very helpful and was able to describe the person who had sold him the ring. Whilst unable to name the man, the description included details of a very distinctive tattoo on the mans arm and the fact that the Vuldrok was a trawlerman on a ship that operated between Achiharta and Elfheim. More to the point, the man wore a ring that matched the description of the missing signet.

The Cohort was invited to a reception at the Ramakrishna palace and seated near a very affable local gentleman called Jangdeep who was a fount of information on local customs and events.

Also present at the banquet was Sir Gregor, who politely asked after the party's mission and reminded them that his patron would be the better recipient of the sought after signet ring.
Jangdeep was most helpful when Annissa mentioned the purpose of her vist.
Annissa : "I find myself in the embarrassing position of needing to find myself a trawlerman..."
"Why?"
"He might have something I am looking for..."

Jangdeep recognised the tattoo, the mark it seemed of a new cult spreading among the fisherfolk, seemingly tied to the Nizdarim and their god Nidderdak.
After the banquet, artistic turns by guests were traditional, Annissa and Alectrona performed a song accompanied by flute.
The following day, Annissa made enquiries at the habourmaster's office, seeking information about the tattooed fisherman. The harbourmaster was quite helpful and was able to name the man's ship if not the man himself. He served on a trawler called the 'Modigh' and it sailed between Elfheim and Achiharta each month.
At this time it would be in Elfheim but would return in two weeks or so.
Flying to Elfheim, Osprey landed at the 'overflow' dock area in the grand harbour, a series of great pontoon landing pads moored to the piers and harbourside.
A large, black vessel resembling some abyssal sea creature was futher down the dockside, a frigate sized craft that simply -had- to be Nizdarim.
The next substantial chunk of the game session could take pages and pages to write up, due to the large amount of dialogue.
Take the following list of words

l Seaman
l Ring
l Trade
l Toilet

And imagine just how easily derailed the whole thing would be.
Antonio managed to inveigle himself into a game of chance with the trawlerman in a seedy dockside dive and despite being the target of a concerted attempt to fleece the outsider of his money, Antonio managed to win the signet ring.

Reeling home from the bar, Antonio was in a very delicate state. He collapsed into bed, after one of his colleague 'helpfully' plugged his neural interface into the ship systems.
Osprey chided Antonio for not looking after himself before he subsided into a drunken stupor.
He 'awoke' in a virtual representation of his cabin with the sensation of a night spent in company (but not in a sexual way) and then awoke 'properly'.
Bjorn (the trawlerman) seemed unwilling to reveal where he got the ring and so a series of rather ropey plans were hatched to try and extract the information from him.

l Ezra - "Got any Rhohypnol?"
l Annissa's Mata Hari plan
l A note reading "If you want to earn some good money, we might have an offer"

Ezra and Alectrona had a short but vitriolic argument when Alectrona criticised Ezra's moral guidance to the party as a whole, citing his bloodlust and 'joking' references to criminal ideas.
Ezra then suggested that perhaps he should leave, before others played peacemaker and brushed the matter aside for the moment.
Finally, Ezra waited until the man went to the toilet and buttonholed him while he was in the urinal, offering him a bribe to reveal where he obtained the signet ring.
Bjorn launched himself at Ezra and a fight began, a very messy and undignified one, as Bjorn had not finished at the urinal before starting to attack Ezra.
Ezra retreated outside the inn and was pursued by Bjorn who was swiftly tasered, dragged into an alleyway and interrogated.
Bjorn revealed that the ring came from 'The Envoy', a servant of the Star Brethren, a man who had gazed into the face of God and who supervised the loading of their ship.
Ezra took a set of binoculars up to the cliffs overlooking the harbour to survey the docks around the Nizdarim ship.
The 'Envoy' turned out to be a man who resembled a brine preserved corpse in leg braces.
A man with gill slits faintly visible down his back.
A man who was plainly the missing nobleman...
Also visible from the elevated vantage point were two men in Known Worlds manufactured combat gear in a concealed position down on the dockside.
Ezra beat a hasty retreat and declared that the Osprey should leave immediately as this was all far too dangerous.
Rather than argue the point, the party agreed and the ship was made ready for the flight to Valheim.
As Osprey lifted off, they had a birdseye view of a battle down at the docks as a snatch squad seized the 'Envoy' and bundled him into a van amid blaster fire and C4 explosions. Ships were tumbled into the harbour and the human servants of the Nizdarim ship gunned down in a clearly military style extraction with no thought about collateral damage.
We leave our party en route to Valheim.
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Session 40

October 9th 4,998 A.D.
GM preamble :

This session took place after a 2 month RL hiatus and was also the debut for the use of a different game system. We had been running the Fading Suns default system since the game started but I decided that it might be an idea to try a simpler and more action oriented system to see if that made a difference.
I settled upon the 'Savage Worlds' system after flirting with GURPS (neither simpler nor more cinematic than VPS) and Unisystem (simpler but quite different from the systems I knew my party had used in the past) but SW won out on simplicity (and because some other GM's had done work on converting FS to SW).
SW has PC's being a lot more competent from the start and the advancement makes experienced characters really quite formidable. I converted the characters across and the change was really quite marked (40 game sessions of experience applied to a starting SW character makes for a very different beast compared to what you get after 40 sessions of the VPS system).
In addition to the core SW system, I downloaded and assembled an "Adventure Deck", which is a pack of 54 cards with game and plot influencing effects e.g. "Ignore all damage from one attack" or "Find all there is to be found from a search roll" or "Receive unexpected re-enforcements". Each player got 4 and could play 1 per session.
The use of 'bennies' – SW's version of the plot point system found in a lot of games nowadays was another addition the players liked the look of. Being able to spend tokens to get a re-roll or soak damage was very popular.
Going with the general props vibe, I gave the players with occult powers a pot of glass tokens to represent their power points.

Here's how the game went :

We pick things up with our heroes loaded into a skimmer and flying 'home' to Valheim from the city of Aelfheim after the business with the 'Envoy of Nidderdak' (aka 'The missing Baron').
Having recovered the signet ring, they had elected to not recover the Baron and had watched as he was kidnapped by other agents (presumed to be in the pay of his younger brother).
The consensus was that the party were well out of that business and that handing the ring to the Emperor and letting him decide who got it would probably sidestep a major vendetta from the party they didn't give it to (and just mildly annoy both parties instead).
Alectrona was feeling the effects of an ongoing sleep problem that she thought might be due to nightmares, but on later reflection realised that she hadn't actually had a dream she could remember in quite a while.
Arriving at Valheim, our heroes were wondering just what it was they were going to end up doing to pay off their substantial debt to Thane Gudrun and generally musing over the best way to proceed with their plans to locate the 'Beta Site' when Annissa, Alectrona and Ezra all noticed something that seemed to have passed Antonio by...
Thyra, the young lady with whom Antonio had had a night of passion with back at the winter solstice, appeared to be carrying a young baby around with her as she went about her business in the village. The winter solstice was some ten months previously...
After some whispered conference, Antonio's associates broke the news to him and the Masseri noble suddenly began to do a rather passable Hugh Grant routine ala 'four weddings and a funeral'.
Antonio asked Thane Gudrun if she knew who the baby's father was and was told with some amusement that it was definitely his. Anxious about possible repercussions and social mores, Antonio asked what he was meant to do about it and was told that it was between himself and the mother unless she had chosen to make it her families affair, which she evidently hadn't.
Visiting Thyra later in her shop (she is one of the local weapon smiths) Antonio was introduced to his son, Storri Thyrason. Thyra seemed almost amused at Antonio's concern and did not seem to feel that she had any claims on Antonio unless he felt obliged in any way.
Children born of a solstice were a blessing to the community and a mother in hardship could expect communal support if the father was unknown. Thyra said that she had no objection to Antonio having "His priest say his words over the child" but "The shaman has already said his and the boy will be raised to honour our gods".

Thyra seemed to be giving Antonio the option of being as involved as he wanted to be in both Thyra and Storri's life.
Later, in the mead hall as Antonio came to terms with recent fatherhood through the medium of lager, Dan brought news that the Hawkwood scout ship that had carried Sir Gregor had broken orbit, begun acting erratically, got into a brief shooting match with an orbiting craft and then plunged into a grazing orbit that would end in a crash somewhere on the planet below.
The ship was already to low to attempt a ship to ship rescue, so Annissa asked Dan to keep an eye on the trajectory and see if it or any escape pod came down intact.
Some time later, the escape pod jettisoned from the craft and re-entered somewhere in the northern arctic regions of the planet whilst the craft itself broke up.
Enquiries were made about staging a rescue/recovery trip to the landing site while Antonio asked Ezra about baptising his son.
Antonio seemed fine with acknowledging his bastard child and having a priest baptise it in front of two noblewomen seems a pretty legally binding way of doing so.
The pod had landed one one of the many volcanic islands in the arctic sea between the continent ruled by Sigfaddir and that on which Valheim and Aelfheim were located. Flying a ship all the way there would be a recipe for getting shot at, so a boat would be needed for part of the trip. The thing is... no one in the party is a sailor and Valheim is 500 miles or more from the sea.
People asked around and it turned out that there was 'some sort of a boat' that someone who 'sailed on a lake nearby sometimes played with' in a packing crate in the loot hall somewhere.
The 'boat' turned out to be an amphibious truck with a hovercraft skirt system that had been seized on a raid on Leminkainen some years ago (a more high tech and seaworthy variant on the DUKW used in WW-II)

Antonio : "Oh god! We're all going to die..."
Annissa : "Why? We've got a boat and a sailor to steer it?" Antonio : "Only it's not a boat and he's not actually a sailor..."

The DUKW was loaded into the hold of a Myrkwyrm (oh, the party love that class of ship after their time on the hammer) and flown to the coast of the continent. The remaining few tens of miles out to sea to the island were through disputed airspace and the DUKW would have to take them the rest of the way. Thorfinn (their cheerful captain) had actually been a trawlerman before taking up the raider's axe, so did know what he was doing. Most of the party donned life jackets and the main body of their space suits in case they ended up in the freezing seas however.

The trip to the island was not the most pleasant voyage in human history as the DUKW wallowed a bit but sea sickness medication was on hand for the queasy.
Sighting the island in the distance, the party had a choice of two routes across the island depending on which of the two anchorages they went for – Short but across rougher terrain or longer but with less hills and rough ground. The easier, longer route was selected.
Approaching the western bay, a fishing vessel was sighted pulled up at the shore and armed guards on the beach. The party decided to land around a headland and send Musa and Ezra to investigate.
The boat appeared to have brought a party of heavily armed and armoured Vuldrok warriors, most of whom were heading inland but with one man left to guard the boat.
Musa waited until the group were out of sight and stealthily crept up on the guard and subdued him.

[GM : Nice first outing of the SW stealth rules, worked nicely too]

Interrogation of the man to find out who he was and what they were doing there proved redundant when the mark of the 'Deep Pool Fishers' was spotted tattooed on his arm. This led to the dubbing of the party of axe wielding Vuldrok as 'Team Nasty'.
It was decided to lay in wait for Team Nasty and ambush them on their eventual return to the boat, after disabling the boat and stealing anything valuable.
The party dug in and waited, some of them regretting leaving all their longarms back at Valheim.
Some time later, gunfire could be heard from the interior of the island, rather more than you would expect from six men theoretically overwhelming the occupants of a standard escape pod. A call over the radio to the fishing boat for more ammunition led the party to think that something was going on here...
Sneaking to the sound of the guns, the party discovered a standoff between the chainmail wearing Fishers (Team Nasty) armed with light firearms and another group armed with more automatic weapons and wearing a collection of more modern combat armour.
Unsure of whether or not the people shooting at Team Nasty were good guys or not, Ezra decided to use his Theurgy and used the rite "Rend the Veil of Unreason" to perceive the soul mirrors and inner flames of those in the area. Alectrona decided that her Affinity might be useful and extended her senses into the local Lifeweb (for the first time in a very long time it has to be said).
Ezra and Alectrona received much the same information viewed through their differing paradigms – The Soul Fishers (Team Nasty) were moderately tainted with some malign occult influence, similar to the large dark presence within the escape pod. The people shooting at the Fishers were even more tainted but with a taint recognisable to both Ezra and Alectrona as Demonic.
It seemed that Team Nasty were being attacked/opposed by Antinomist cultists with the pod as the prize. These cultists were dubbed "Team Evil".
A plan was hatched : The party would circle around the firefight and attack team evil from the rear, thus eliminating the most effective firearms and then proceed to deal with team nasty before investigating the pod.
Cue a mass stealth and sneak, with bennies being expended to ensure that the bad guys didn't spot them. We then got a nice demonstration of 'The Drop' as the party opened fire on team evil before the cultists knew they were there.

[GM Note : The SW combat system came into it's own and things flowed in a pretty fast, furious and indeed fun manner.]

I didn't keep a detailed log of what happened in the fight but here are some key points:

The fire combat rules work nicely, the party being better shots due to their wild dice being largely offset against team nasty due to the shorter range of the party's blasters giving them a higher Target Number to hit the NPC's.

The house rules for shields verses guns worked very well. Bullets sparking off shields most of the time but one NPC coming within a point of actually incapacitating Musa with one shot (A shield stops 20 points, it takes 24 points to do the maximum three wounds to someone with tougness 9 and a cultist got 44 off the roll of 2d8 – four 8's in a row off one of the damage dice was a scary sight)

People didn't mind the totally random initiative and were chuffed when the joker came up about three times in the course of the fight (only once for the opposition).

It was noticed that one of Team Evil was using a weapon that could only have come from Poseidon or Prime, a ceramic needler with a very high rate of fire.
With 'team evil' and 'team nasty' out of the way, Alectrona's healing skills having got Musa back on her feet, it was time now to deal with the pod.
Antonio decided to pop the hatch and toss in a grenade with the door between him and whoever was in there.
Sadly he was not expecting what happened when the hatch opened... eight purply red tentacles whipping out and trying to pull him into the pod.
There then followed some frantic Bennie expenditure and the use of some Adventure Cards in the course of a rather nasty fight against a tentacular amalgam of the three formerly human occupants of the pod (the tentacles turned out to be modified intestines). Antonio ended up being moderately blown up in the course of the fight and tested the SW falling rules quite nicely. Two grenades, some bennies and a lot of shooting swearing and Ezra using 'Holy Warrior' later... the beast was dead.
The party then headed off to deal with Team Evil's transport, Ezra eliminating the two guards with a captured rifle (and loving the 'double tap' rule a whole lot).
Someone also played the "We find everything there is to find" Adventure Card so the haul of loot and information was suitably large.
The party found themselves in possession of a rather nice cabin cruiser / patrol boat (a more luxurious version of the boat from Apocalypse Now basically) plus the arms and armour of a dozen men, the survival gear from the escape pod and some personal effects of the unfortunate Hawkwoods who had been absorbed by the Envoy's parasites.
All in all, a rather large chunk of their debt.
Ezra performed funerary rites for the dead and the bodies were cremated.
They decided to let the surviving fisher go, as killing an unarmed unconscious man would have been evil and he had no idea who knocked him out anyway.
Thorfinn sailed the patrol boat with the DUKW under town and Annissa using her limited knowledge of how maritime vehicles work to steer the DUKW. A few lucky dice rolls on her unskilled boating attempts later and both vehicles make it back to shore where the Myrkwyrm slung the boat underneath for a somewhat slower return home to Valheim.
Paperwork on the boat indicated the cultists were in the pay of a Rekgolder (merchant) from Ostmark who was plainly some sort of bigwig in the local occult underworld and had wanted the pod for some nefarious purpose. This would be worthy of further investigation.
Antonio commissioned a very high quality axe for his son, engraved on the stock with the legend "Be Lucky – Dad".
Alectrona found her sleep disturbed by dreams of incredible vividness as her Affinity broke free of months of unconscious repression and her mind flowed into the lifeweb, perceiving the female 'soul' of the planet and all the living things around her. The effect did not abate when she woke and Alectrona found it hard to separate her mundane senses and Affinity, seeing the filaments of her connection to the web, the glow of auras and the flow of lifeforce all around her. Ezra suggested some changes in her meditation and a consultation with Tanalu.
Thane Gudrun was very pleased that a simple investigation trip had netted a goodly haul of loot and no likely repercussions traceable to her.
We leave our heroes as they debate the best way to follow up their latest leads and how hostile an environment Ostmark might been for Questing Knights such as themselves. Back to campaign diary index.

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