Present:
- Anastasia "Stasi" Tepes. Zhodani Soldier from Querion – Shane
- Emerse Gee. Daryen Scientist from Torment – Darryl
- "Riley" O'Reilly. Sword-Worlder Pilot from Winston - Richard
- Anton Tositova. Solomani Gunner from Entrope - Ian
- Itzy Ende. Sword-Worlder Soldier from Winston - Chris
- Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
- Hoff Ende. Sword-Worlder Scientist from Winston - Kevin
- Gnostic Hands. Solomani Scientist from Entrope – Jamie
- Belle Ende. Sword-Worlder Medic from Winston - Steven
- Split "Penny" Ende. Sword-Worlder Minstrel from Winston - Jason
- NPC: Scurry. Drone Gunner from Winston
- NPC: Zeraphina Althira. Zhodani Diplomat from Querion
- NPC: Finn Cyborg from Querion
by Jason
We start aboard Ye Faerie Queene after escaping the spiders (and abandoning Liz). The ship continued to orbit the moon, Formaline.
“Ah,” said Belle, removing a rod-like piece from the giant spider she was dissecting. “This is the creature’s backbone, one of the two items, a so-called 'Margrave', we need to power up the Ancients’ complex back on Winston. A 'margrave of an avian spinosa'.”
One of the scientists in the group immediately queried this - "Backbone? I thought spiders were invertebrates."
"Shut up nerd," said one of the non-scientific types in the group. "Your own eyes saw this was no mere spider. I can’t believe your ego’s trying to point score after what happened to Liz. At least we can say Liz’s life and sacrifice had some purpose!"
"Ahem, right then," said Hoff. "So let’s prepare for our next stop, this moon we’re orbiting, Formaline. My records show it has an earth-like diameter but a gravity of 16 per cent. Formaline takes 306 days to orbit the gas giant Lophomyrtus. It’s cold, around -20C where we’re going, but the atmosphere’s breathable. Anyway, we should be perfectly comfortable in our vac suits, or even our cold weather clothing."
Gnostic asked how the atmosphere could exist.
"Various theories," said Hoff. "The smaller sun, denser planet, the radiation from the gas giant, or maybe it was artificially created."
Riley oriented the ship for an approach into Formaline’s atmosphere. As we flew in, interference from the gas giant caused us to lose radio contact with Winston. Almost immediately afterwards, we picked up a repeating SOS signal from the surface. Emerse, monitoring the signal, said it had a Zhodani signature to it.
As we got closer to the surface, we saw lights. Riley got us to within one km of the location, from where we could observe several make-shift shelters, a couple of air-rafts and three bright lights on poles. The site was somewhat overgrown with shrubs and climbing foliage common to the area.
Emerse called out over several radio frequencies, but got no answer. Could someone still be there? Could it be a trap?
We decided to land the ship around 100m from the camp. Judging by the appearance of the place, we surmised this could be the final resting place of survivors from the Zhodani freighter above, the Gnost Roma. They’d have lain here almost 20 years.
Soon after, the radio crackled to life. “Hello, hello,” in Galanglic [ Traveller English].
"Identify yourself," said a startled Emerse.
"I’m Toby, Toby. From the Gnost Roma. My God, you’re the first ship we’ve seen in five years, and that went right by."
"You can see us? Where are you?"
"Oh no, can’t see you, just heard the radio noise. I’m in one of the buildings here."
"How long have you been here?"
"Oh, oh, 19 or almost 20 years. Hang on, I’ll go get the boss."
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| Planet Querion in Querion system, Querion sub-sector, Spinward Matches sector |
Moments later a woman’s voice came over the radio.
"This is Ivanka Tepes of the Zhodani from Querion. To whom am I speaking?"
"I’m Riley, Captain O’Reilly" (cue some incredulous background gasps from the party - followed by heated but quick discussion about the right of Riley to call himself our leader. Well, he has the right to call himself a ship captain, we decided. But certainly not the boss of us.).
Ivanka went on to explain her party of five Zhodani (all women of course) and two humans (including Toby) had scratched out a living here since escaping the Gnost Roma by air-raft 19 years ago. They’d set up a power converter and found a source of food.
Zeraphina then took over the mike and she and Ivanka had an animated conversation we couldn’t really follow.
It was agreed we’d meet up in person. Zeraphina, Anton, Gnostic and Split representing the party, dressed up warm and walked towards the survivors outside. Itzy provided security from the rear.
We were welcomed with delight and open arms - but decided not to go for full hugs, these mainly being blood-sucking vampires after all. Their group included a Vargr [uplifted dog, bipedal] and a cyborg (Finn) in addition to the Zhodani and the humans. They confirmed they’d got stuck here after their comms were unexpectedly cut off by the same interference we’d experienced coming into the atmosphere.
We asked about the spiders and the grey creature we’d seen on the disabled freighter above. Both the same lifeforms, just at different lifecycle stages, they said.
They’d been passing Formaline, using the moon as a gravity assist, when they were hit by two projectiles. The projectiles turned out to be a means for the spider creatures to board the freighter and attack the crew, killing most. The survivors powered-off the ship (since mysteriously re-powered somewhat) and used the only two air-rafts to escape to the moon’s surface.
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| Air-raft (and not "air/raft") |
"Right, let’s do a deal," said Riley. "I estimate I can get you all aboard our ship and back to civilization - but I’ll need 50 per cent of your air-rafts and half of any minerals you’ve found as compensation."
"I suppose that’s acceptable," said Ivanka.
"And the cyborg," said Riley. "We’ll need him too."
"Finn you mean? I’m afraid he’s an intelligent and independent being, I have no right to give him away like a piece of property."
"Isn’t he illegal?"
"Oh no, he's a cyborg, not an android which would be illegal. Cyborgs have a living brain and Finn's brain is Zhodani."
"Alright then. Just the raft - can you help us get it on board?"
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| Anastasia "Stasi" Tepes |
While this discussion took place, Zeraphina had been talking to her other sisters in the survivor group. She found a particular friend in Anastasia "Stasi" Tepes [Shane's new character], who in turn had a special bond with Finn.
Stasi helped us get the air-raft on the Queene (it took about a day). She decided she’d like to keep hanging out with Zeraphina and us. In return, she persuaded Finn to join us as well - performing a ruse where she pretended in front of Riley to be able to command Finn to do her bidding.
It was very cramped, but we managed to get everyone on board Ye Faerie Queene and lifted off. Our guests suffered greatly, finding proper gravity pretty hard to deal with after their 19 years on-moon 16% gravity.
Back in space, we set a course for the outer reaches of the gas giant’s atmosphere (20-hour trip at 1G). Riley performed a rather clever technique to scoop up the extra fuel we needed. It was getting mighty hot by the time we got out of there.
Then it was a 63 hour trip (@1G) to the space station above Winston. We radioed ahead to say we were coming and space control asked Riley where we’d come from and what we’d been up to.
Riley described the way we’d found the freighter, battled spiders as big as yer head and afterwards heard the SOS that led us to rescuing the survivors. Space control sounded very surprised and interested and had a number of follow up questions. Riley clammed up and they decided to bring us in.
On the way, all the vamps had camped out in Zeraphina’s cabin. Their two human companions looked very punctured and ill, and said very little.
Zeraphina came out and announced that her sisters were feeling very poorly and were in urgent need of blood donations. She asked for the male members of our party to volunteer themselves - in a way that sounded like we didn’t have much choice. It took an awful lot of persuading, but first Anton and Gnostic agreed, then Hoff, then Itzy.
Emerse shut himself in another cabin, saying he couldn’t be disturbed. He really felt apprehensive about biters and decided he needed to build a double power taser for his protection. He must have been feeling a bit distracted because he crossed the wires during construction and gave himself an awful shock.
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| Space Control around Winston |
Before we docked, those of us in the Ende family made an encrypted call to Contessa (Belle, Itzy and Hoff's mum). We told her everything that had happened minus mentioning Finn. She thanked us for the update and said we’d be pleased to hear that the projectile weapon we’d ordered for the ship was almost ready and could be mounted to the ship during our stay at the space station.
Very soon after we docked, some armed humans in hazard suits pushed their way in and barked orders at us to lie down on the floor. All of us complied except for Captain O’Reilly. They gave him one more chance, at which point he asked under whose authority on his ship. They then tazed him to the ground, where he lay wet coughing and vomiting for several minutes.
After putting gas masks on us, then going about the interior of the ship applying a biological spray, the officers came back and asked us all to cooperate in providing blood samples. Oh the irony for both our men and the Zhodanis.
We were all thinking the quality of the communication we’d received thus far could really have been improved and were of a mind to write a very stern letter to the space station commander. We mumbled and complained under our breath, but submitted to the blood tests. Well, all of us except O’Reilly. After another round of tazing, he was literally dragged off somewhere else from the rest of us. The Zhodanis were taken to a separate room as well.
Meanwhile, O’Reilly came to in a very bare-looking interview room. He was asked for a blood sample again, with emphasis that this was them asking nicely and they would not take his blood without his consent. He told them to go jump without a spacesuit. ZAP! Down he went again. If you were a fly on the wall, you’d have observed there was an attractive spray across the floor from both Riley’s mouth and rear end, and absolutely no contents left in his bowels or stomach.
This time when Riley woke up, he agreed it would be considerate to all on board the space station if he were to volunteer a blood sample. The test came back clear. He was returned to us while Belle was off visiting the commander.
Belle and Itzy (accompanying as guard) were received warmly by the commander’s assistant and taken to a comfortable if spartan interview room in his complex. Several troops already there ensured Belle and Itzy were clearly outnumbered.
The commander entered the room and introduced himself as Director Gluteus Febrile. He asked where Belle and her crew had been and whether they’d brought anything back from the expedition that his officers hadn’t already seen. Belle reiterated we’d been to Formaline, heard the SOS and discovered the survivors. She said very little about spiders, except to agree with O’Reilly’s original report that they were big bastards - and really you’d have to talk to him or Emerse to learn more as I wasn’t even there. Said nothing about the Ancients. Not much more was said and she was released.
There was a bit of follow up questioning with Emerse and a more compliant O’Reilly. They confined their discussion to the freighter and its spiders and didn’t give too much more away. It sounded like the Sword-worlder Space Force might later be engaged to investigate the freighter further.
With all that drama behind us, we were kind of relieved we wouldn’t be going straight back to Winston. We said goodbye to the survivors we’d rescued - goodness knows what they’d be doing next. Stasi and Finn had become good mates with Zeraphina and decided to stay with us.
We decided on our next course of action, which was to visit one of the other Ancients’ sites on our map of the solar system - this time the second farthest planet out, Dollar. The trip took a good eight days (183 hours@1G) this time, which gave us all time to get to know our new party members a bit better. Stasi had a habit of never looking you in the eye when talking with her - her gaze was more toward the neck. Finn was the only one of us able to keep up with O’Reilly’s drinking, although once that was discovered, the whisky locker got locked.
We studied Dollar - a much different place with a 7 per cent gravity and temperature around -220C. It had a 25.6 year orbit around the sun, and a day length of 37 hours. We’d definitely need our vac suit skills this time around. It seemed nothing had ever been done with this planet, but its solidity and lack of atmosphere suggested it was safe to land on.
Emerse spent his time building a drone on tracks capable of working in Zero G.
Riley spent a lot of time getting his new air-raft ready for a trip from orbit to planet surface. Hoff’s superior engineering skills allowed him to spend some time assisting Riley and making expert repairs to his mistakes. Riley would then reverse Hoff’s fixes and the cycle would go on. It kept them both amused and occupied.
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| Ye Faerie Queene's new projectile gun turret |
Anton was extremely keen to let rip with the ship’s new gun. But without a legitimate target, he had to make do with practising and making all the gun noises himself.
Gnostic claimed the Crown of the Ancients (Liz had this previously) so he spent a day of the trip to get it attuned to him.
Once we got into orbit, we used our coordinates to pinpoint where the Ancients’ site was. We didn’t need to worry about using up fuel this time, so took the ship to the planet’s surface and about a kilometre out from the site - we knew from our experience on Winston that our more advanced electronics would fail closer in.
We then donned our vac suits and took the air-raft through the freezing twilight space outside. Finn, Itzy and Split stayed in the air-raft. Finn had plenty of electronics on him and was not willing to risk his life support to enter the field.
Gnostic, wearing the crown, detected a glow on the perimeter of the circle around the centre of the site. As he directed us there, we realised this site was identical to the dishes we’d found on Winston - including the tunnel entrance. There was no water this time, and without sufficient atmosphere to generate moisture or ice, the tunnel was clear.
Now came the tricky bit. Few of us were proficient with our vac suits. Maybe we should have done some practice rather than going to bars all the time. Ah well, how hard could it be? We exited the raft and found we could communicate by pressing helmets together and yelling. Progress was slow. Emerse in particular practically needed to be carried - there was quite a bit of corn, peas and diced carrots on the inside of his visor (but he was still talking).
We roped ourselves together and Gnostic, probably the best of us in a vac suit, took the lead.
Finn, wearing no helmet, motioned to Gnostic to take his helmet off. So Gnostic paused, then complied and the tunnel was warm and pressurized (with air). Everyone followed suit except for Stasi and Belle.
Down a little way, there was a glowing yellow circle around the tunnel which only Gnostic, with the Crown, could see. (This was about the spot where the soldier exploded back in Winston in a similar tunnel network.)
Emerse carefully slid his fingers past the threshold. Nothing happened. So he walked through. The circle went green. Then everyone followed.
About another 50 paces, Gnostic saw another yellow circle. This time is was Gnostic's turn to gingerly side his fingers past. The same result, the circle went green and everyone got past.
Then they came to a door way with a swirling surface like steam (this mimicked the doorways on Winston) It had a handprint on the side. Gnostic used his (ungloved) hand in the print and the door "opened" (the steam vanished).
Then they all entered another control room like in Winston but it was a bit different. It only had one additional tunnel. Whereas the Winston one had five tunnels.
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| Dollar Ancients' control panel |
There was a radio telescope receiver in the centre, like the Winston one, but this one was twice the size.
And there was another control panel on the wall, like the one from Winston.
The doors had handprints next to them. Gnostic opened the far one opposite the entrance; the steam vanished and a tunnel was visible, disappearing into the darkness. Gnostic headed down a little way and he saw what looked like web on the floor and walls; web similar to that on the Zhodani freighter... oh dear.
He bravely retreated and "shut" the door.
