Entrope - Insanity and Space Cold

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
• Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
• MARMALADING: 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: Finn Cyborg from Querion

by Ian

Mochila 

Jump-space Night One

The party are deep into jump-space travel and the first night of many ticks around. The crew head off to quarters and go to sleep. The jump-space trip takes a week - six nights.

[ For this journal, there are a number of nights where the three key characters of Riley, Stasi and Penny (Richard, Shane and Jason) have to make a series of rolls against their current 'Psych' value. THEN the following day, a player with the necessary Psychoanalysis skill performed 'repairs'. To keep this entry readable, I will narrate the thematic events and not detail the line by line numbers. To be honest, my notes were unfathomable :-). ]

Penny suffered vivid and disturbing nightmares. Her perspective was outside the Lost Crown spaceship and her dream showed a number of multi-coloured vortices spinning around the Lost Crown. These vortices were eating into the ship and destroying it from the outside in. Bodies and debris were strewn into the cold vacuum of space. It was total desolation with nothing surviving.

Jump-space Night Two 

Stasi decides to sleep in the Faraday cage (wire-netting) in the hope that the cage protects from the nightmares. Nope. Has the same nightmares and loses Psych.

Riley has a horrific night and his dreams are so real, they merge into waking. [Critical fail on Psych roll and loses 4 points!!!]

Riley has visions of the devouring vortices eating the faraday gage and ripping Stasi apart. Riley wakes feeling exhausted and revolted.

Jump-space Night Three

Another dreadful night where Riley has further nightmares. Gnostic attempts a therapy/counselling session and does nothing but send Riley further into despair.   

[ Gnostic attempts a psychotherapy session and fails with a 20! This takes 1 further point of Psych off Riley - leaving him on TWO points. At zero, the player is insane and the DM takes over. PC is lost....]

Emerse, feeling bad for Riley, went to assist and provide comfort. Unfortunately, due to Riley's current state of mind (what is left of it), Riley punches Emerse in the face and screamed at him to leave him alone. Emerse and his bloodied nose complied without hesitation.

Jump-space Night Four

Riley retreats to his quarters and starts smearing his poop on the walls. The name "Lost Crown" can be seen in the mess, over and over again. 

Seeing the desperate situation and understanding the horrific toll the nightmares are having, Penny consoles Riley and settles his nerves.

 

[ Penny succeeds (by spending 3 luck) on a Psychoanalysis roll and restores Riley's psych to '3'. ]

Penny also consoles Stasi and restores one point back to her.

Gnostic decides to assist by attempting to tranquilize Riley. He secretly accesses Riley's stash of fine whiskey and adds a handful of  tranquilizers. Luckily, Riley barely notices the unsealed bottle and consumes his usual fill of 'Pilot Fuel', thus knocking him out for the night.

Riley is bound and restrained for the last 'night' in jump-space.

Jump-space Night Five

The 'night' passes and the further nightmares make the three affected party miserable, but able to continue. 

As the jump-space journey ends with a 'pop' into the Entrope sector, the crew release the rambling Riley and prepare to travel in normal space to the Entrope planet. 

Entrope

Entrope

Riley was in the Captain's chair and guiding the Lost Crown across the system, Penny was on the bridge performing her normal duties. Riley caught side glances of Penny with horrific spiders on her face. Direct inspection showed nothing but normality. Riley is certainly not recovered.

The comms channels erupts with the Entrope Space administration "Ship Lost Crown, please proceed to Docking Station Gate C22."

Riley picks up the comms "Affirmative Entrope control. Please be advised that there is a crew member in need of urgent medical intervention of the psychosis type..."

"Roger that Lost Crown. Please state the name of the citizen needing assistance."

"Oh, that would be me. Riley O'Riley. The ship's Capitan. You should also be aware that the Lost Crown seems to be infected by dog-sized spiders."

"Please repeat Capitan O'Riley??? Did you say spiders? And that you were the one in need of psychosis medical intervention?"

"Affirmative." Riley responded.

After a pause of deep silence, Entrope command contacts the ship: 

"Please open the hold doors...."

Emerse had spent time diverting the ships commands away from the bridge (and Riley) and to his own passwords and protocols. Despite Riley pressing numerous buttons and pulling on various levers, it was Emerse that entered the command that opened the hold doors for the officials to board.

The authorities perform a physical examination on all crew and clear everyone except Riley. He is whisked away after they see the human waste smearing on the accommodation walls and "Emerse must die" with a hangman's noose. 

After several hours of debrief and psychoanalysis, Riley is duly released with a couple more psyche points restored.

The crew loiter around the space station and eventually all are ready to descend to the planet. They opt for the public transport on the space-elevator. There are numerous warning and rules posted around:

• No Weapons!!!
• No AI!!!!
• El Capitano is watching you!!!!

The descent takes an hour and a half and is very mundane to the point of dull. A welcome relief. On the descent, passengers get uninterrupted views of the amazing planet. As far as the eye can see are a serious of islands and archipelagos. Thousands of square kms of water. Each island was packed full of skyscrapers. the info pack informs visitors that the population of the planet is 20 billion people, on a very small amount of land. The leader of Entrope is a charismatic dictator called El Capitan Cabron. He has been in power for 50 years or so, but does not look a day over 28. 

The shopping on the surface is very good with all kinds of goods and services. Emerse takes a few of the party to a Darrian restaurant that is all posh and artsy. While having their meal, Emerse gets a name of a highly sought after councillor in Kingston called Joycie Harry.  The outrageous they-them will be able to help with the party's depleted psyche.  

The party spend a while shopping before they board their free shuttle to Kingston where Mr Sydney Walsh resides. 

Kingston

The shuttle skims quickly over the warm, steamy land and sea. Eventually they dock in Jabulani Island, Kingston and disembark to a city full of colourful people with dark skin. 

The crew explore the island and find good accommodation. As the evening draws to a close, Riley and Stasi decide to stay awake all night. 

[This will mean a CON roll in the morning and if they fail (which they both did) a penalty die on every rolls for the whole day, but Richard and Shane decided that was worth it.]

The others wake in the morning with Riley and Stasi bleary eyed and surrounded by empty booze bottles, consumed to pass the time away.

"I had a terrific night's sleep" offered Penny. "Was great to escape those madness-inducing nightmares for a change!"

After breakfast the group decide to split. 

• Most visit Sydney at his residence of 17 Duke Street. Travel is easy and safe in most of Entrope.
• Emerse and Riley visit Ms Joyce Harry the mystic. 

After a morning of incense and meditation, with lashings of yoga, Riley receives 1 psyche point back. 

Sydney Walsh

Meanwhile, the others knock on the front door of a rather beautiful colonial mansion. A maid answers the door and sees the crew in to a waiting room.

An immaculately dressed black man in a perfect white suit enters the room and introduces himself as Mr Sydney Walsh. The party hand over the sealed introduction letter from Contessa and Sydney reads it nodding and 'hhhmmming'.

"I know Contessa Ende very well. It is a pleasure to hear from her." 

Penny exclaims "I am her daughter!" 

"Ahh, welcome. Any family or friend of Contessa is a friend of mine."

Stasi can no longer contain herself and asks if Sydney would like a 'drink' (as in, blood to feed Stasi). "Your thick black neck is driving me crazy". 

"Why NO, that is not going to happen...." Sydney rejects the advance.

"According to this letter, you are all wanting work. Contessa has recommended you as able and results driven. AS it turns out, I have a missing X-boat I need to recover".

Recovery hex assigned

Sydney then explains that he is the Gnomes R Us X-Boat corporation Recovery manager for Entrope. His duty is to send out various contract crews to the different sectors when an X-boat misjumps. It just so happened he needed a crew to cover the sector two parsecs away. The Lost Crown can make that trip.

Sydney points out that the X-Boat corporation supplies recovery contractors jump-drive drop-tanks, so that the Lost Crown would be full of fuel when arriving in a dark sector and where there was no star or gas giant to refuel.

The main priority is the X-boat's 'Mochila'. It's a locked metal goods locker that is about the size of a typical three-person sofa. They are usually divided into 8 equal sections to keep goods apart. Oh yeah, and if you can rescue the Captain that would be ok too...

"Remember with no sun, these unexplored dark sectors are as close to zero Kelvin as you can be.". The crew learn that 4 deg Kelvin is about it. Winter woollies are packed.

The party decide to depart the following day after lunch so the launch is planned for then. In the mean time:

• Spanner looks for anti-gravity tech - grav plates for Scurry.
• Emerse looks for rocket probe tech.

The others chill and enjoy the local hospitality.

That night, at bed time, all the three nightmare-affected go to sleep. Only Penny has a slightly disturbed night where there were nightmares that she couldn't remember, but no Psych lost (that is the important thing!).

The next morning the party stock up and get ready for their launch. More psychoanalysis done to top up the remaining numbers.

Jump-space launch

The crew are all in position in the Lost Crown. Strapped in and taxiing to the launch zone, about one million km (four hours @2G) from Entrope. The plan is use the fuel from the drop-tanks to charge the jump capacitors, then explosively jettison them all, wait ten minutes for them to get clear, and then to jump. All this worked perfectly and the crew were once again in jump-space. 

[  The jump to jump-space meant the obligatory CON rolls for all.  If you MAKE your CON roll, it is easier next time ("Jump bonus" goes up by 1).  

If you fail, you are sick (but your Jump bonus stays). 

If you fail with a 20, all successes are lost; your Jump bonus resets to 0. ]

Riley, Gnostic and Anton were sick. The rest were fine.

Emerse and Spanner worked on their tech projects and the others killed time as they saw fit. Penny had procured her amplified electric piano-accordion for the trip.

That night, our psych draining nightmares returned. Was back to the vortices destroying the ship and all those in it.

The process was the three crew; Riley, Stasi and Penny made their rolls or not and the next day Belle or one of the crew with the skill, performed a psych analysis.

Through the six night trip, the three player psych counts were well-controlled and no near insanity happened. 

[ This was because Belle was awake and not marmalading like the Winston to Entrope trip - Steven had arrived, and she had an excellent Psychoanalysis skill, so could fix any dream damage. ]

Unexplored Sector Arrival

On day seven, the Lost Crown popped into the sector from jump-space. As promised, total darkness. Nothing but the cold, dark vacuum of space.

The ship detects a weak X-boat transponder signal from over a million kms away, so Riley heads off in that direction. They long-range scan the source but not too much more is detected. Total radio silence from any attempt to contact. The ping does detect many asteroids and other typical space objects. The concerning part is that there is also *NO emergency locator beacon*. Does not bode well for the X-boat captain.

Four hours later (@ 2G) the Lost Crown is close enough for visuals. It seems clear that the lost X-boat had miss-jumped and partially merged with an asteroid. The cockpit bottom part of the ship was deeply imbedded into the space rock. Explains why there was no Emergency Locator beacon. The captain would have died instantly. The remaining question is if the mochila was also now space rock?

[ Why do X-boats have crews at all? Why not send automated ships like programmed drones? Why risk a person's life when there is any chance of a misjump? There are two answers.

1. A programmed X-boat could not handle any unusual conditions if something untoward happened during the journey or when the X-boat arrived at its destination. The X-boat corporation does not want to risk their mochila being lost because some noddy forgot to program
   if (pathCollidesWith(asteroid)) { dodge(asteroid); },
   and then they'd have to drink their own urine. They have to drink enough urine when there are misjumps as it is. 
• Okay then, so, why not stick AI on the X-boat to handle these edge-cases? 
• Well, AI in the Traveller-verse is strictly forbidden. There is much anti-AI prejudice, just like the Butlerian Jihad from the Dune series, or Gibson's Neuromancer, except it is even more rabid here. 
• Sure, some wags and upstarts risk running their own experimental AI, like Sang's Scurry, but that is quite a danger. The authorities come down hard on any AI; experimenters are killed.
• The party understands this. If Scurry was ever discovered, not only would Scurry be disintegrated, but Sang herself and all her associates (everyone who knows, or is suspected to know, that Scurry is an AI) would be summarily executed.
2. Jump-space requires sentience and sapience. There is some vaguely understood psychosomatic link between sapience and the jump warp. Ships with no sapience on board will successfully enter jump space, but they will never emerge again back to normal space.
   Hibernating negates sapience too. In the early days, when the jump trip took a month, some brave souls attempted to jump a ship with its crew all in frozen hibernation ("low passage"). Those ships never returned. ]

When close enough for long range images, they showed the ship and the part of the asteroid that the ship merged into, covered in some kind of fuzzy growth.

X-Boataroid

The Lost Crown closes in to 104m. No other observations are made. There is an icy growth or mould that has clearly burst from the X-boat on impact.

Hapless X-boat merged into asteroid

Looking at the parts of the X-boat that are still ok, the crew determine that the mochila is probably ok. At least most of it. 

Spanner and Emerse send out their drones. A few manoeuvrings later and Scurry has an area of the mould under a heat lamp. Not long into the test to see what defrosting the mould would do, we found out when a 'sprouting arm' lunged at Scurry. A deft DEX roll later and Scurry easily avoids the attack. I guess we all know what the mould will do!

Spanner commands Scurry to open the X-boat hold door, but Scurry decides that she will not put herself at risk. 

Anton and Spanner vacc-suit up and head out for the space walk. Anton goes prepared with his rifle in a heated gun case. They easily open the X-boat hold door with the external controls and a bit of heating and space walk into the ship. The mochila is there with 7/8ths external to the asteroid. It, and the surrounding parts of the X-boat, are all covered in the mould.

A plan is devised where a small sample block of mould, about the size of a sugar cube, is broken off by Anton. The floating lump is captured in a biohazard sample tube. They space walk to 50m to the Lost Crown and warm the specimen in the tube.

Not long to wait and the sample is thawed enough to spring a spider cobweb off the sides of the specimen tube. Ahhh, that looks very familiar. With confidence that everyone and the ship was safe, the sample is brought onboard the Lost Crown, and Belle performs a series of medical examinations.

Not too much to reveal. Yes, it does seem to be our familiar spider webs. No, there are no 'creatures' in the web. No DNA is found because Belle doesn't want to risk going in deep.

Recovered mochila

Anton and Spanner head back with a tow hitch connected to a winch in the Lost Crown. They manage to attach the carabiner hook to the mochila handle and signal to start winching. Riley magnificently manages to balance the winch pull force to keep the Lost Crown in place as a solid anchor. A small crunch and the 7/8ths breaks free of the asteroid and glides out to space. The crew flame blast the mochila to remove all traces of web. Interestingly enough, the broken section of the mochila had a spider clinging frozen to the section seven! That received special flame attention.

The crew load the freshly flame-washed mochila into the hold of the Lost Crown. The hold is cleared, secured and depressurized for the return trip. Spanner enters the navigation coordinates to Entrope and thumbs up to Riley to take off. He clears all floating space objects and fires the jump drive.

Entrope Bound (again)

Into jump-space and Gnostic, Anton, Belle and Stasi are all sick.

"Well... Do WE have some reporting to do. Who the heck is shipping spiders around the galaxy? Hopefully Sydney has a manifest that can fill in some of the details of the transport. We know it was from Anselhome to Entrope, but not much else. Wonder if the X-boat business will even provide customer details?"

We Don't Like That !!

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
• MARMALADING: Anton Tositova. Solomani Gunner from Entrope - Ian
• Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
• MARMALADING: Hoff Ende. Sword-Worlder Scientist from Winston - Kevin
• Gnostic Hands. Solomani Scientist from Entrope – Jamie
• MARMALADING: 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 Winston Diplomat from Querion
• NPC: Finn Cyborg from Querion

by Richard

 

With our feet up at Bitter End (the Ende holiday home on Winston) we await our next command, still being in the employ of Belle, Split, Hoff, and Itzy's mother Contessa Ende. The Lost Crown orbits Winston.

New (Zhodani) Winston Governor
Right-honorable Naya Riviera

Riley has been intoxicated this last week and is like a caged animal looking for trouble. All he has really been able to do is annoy Emerse, who continues to fiddle with his digital instruments and hair brushes.

Even Spanner is restless.

There have been many political changes on Winston and in the solar system. The Zhodani have a much larger presence and have installed their own Governor for Winston, Naya Riviera. The previous Sword-Worlder governor, the Right-Honorable Glen Tunnel, had been accused of corruption, and had gone to ground with his family.

All Sword-Worlder bases on Winston are closed and the Zhodani are building their own.

Contessa is closely aligned with the Zhodani and there is a large presence of Zhodani soldiers in the grounds of the mansion.

"I don’t like all these Zhodani around – what have we done?" mused Gnostic. 

"What is your problem?" responded Stasi (Zhodani herself), looking up from sharpening her knife.

[ As predicted in our last write-up, we re-open the debate on which staterooms each of us has on the Lost Crown. Fortunately, such debate had been foreshadowed and we were able to close it down quickly with reference to last week's write-up. ]

Whilst staying in the mansion, Riley and Penny had sleep disturbed by unfortunate dreams also known as nightmares. Neither could recall the detail until Gnostic successfully psycho-analyzed Penny (he didn’t dare do Riley) and Penny recalled spiders and a large one on her face.

That day Contessa summons us to a meeting.

"Are you happy to work for the Zhodani?" she asks

"Of course," responds Stasi

"Ah,  not so quickly" chips in Gnostic – "Doing what?"

"Well, the Zhodani are arranging to establish a Secret Police force to help manage Winston. They haven’t been able to finalize that yet and have a number of resistors who need arresting"

"Sounds good to me" says Riley "How much do we get paid"

"Your normal salary plus a number of Zhodani tech items"

"Done" says Riley

"Not so quick" Emerse interrupts. "I don’t like this – it sounds very fascist to me" 

We debated this for a while and then voted and agreed to accept the job with Emerse voicing his reluctance (and voting against).

Nasty nightmares

We have access to the armoury and take what we need and then turn in for the night.

Emerse, Gnostic and Stasi are all plagued by nightmares of spiders and blood encrusted fangs. The rest of us sleep like babies.

The next morning over breakfast we theorize that these dreams may be the Ancients trying to get our attention and do something about the Zhodani.

Of course, we ignore that and get on with the job at hand.

While the arrest warrant for the previous Governor of Winston Glen Tunnel was going through the courts, the new Zhodani administration wanted him out of the way more quickly, but to distance themselves from this, they arranged for a third-party, us, to do the dirty work. So we had been provided arrest warrants (on Zhodani administration letterhead) for Glen Tunnel, and his brother Homer, plus his wife Otira, and two grown daughters Hataitai and Manapouri Tailrace. We are also provided a location of a building where they are thought to be hiding in downtown Bitter End.

Care is required. The police of Winston still support the Governor (or rather ex-Governor) and we are sure that the building will be guarded. Since Itzy decided to stay at home with his Mum for a time, we lack fire power.

We do a drive past. The building is in a built-up street with a number of boarded up shops and numerous apartments in the area. It's in the seedy side of town. The buildings on either side are attached and an alley runs behind. The building directly across the alley is an apartment. All of these buildings are two storied. A tavern. The Married Bee, is some 50m down the street.

Two security guards stand outside the front door and one outside the door into the alley.

"Let's go to the tavern and stake it out a bit" suggests Riley with an alternative agenda.

"Good idea" says Stasi.

"I'm not so sure a Zhodani should go in there" Gnostic questions.

"It will be fine, let's go. What could happen?" asks Riley, parking the van and heading off with the rest in tow.

The Married Bee seems a popular place with good patronage. We enter and conversation stops and they stare at Stasi.

Ignoring them we get a table and sit down with Riley and Stasi going to the bar for drinks.

A large man with an even larger beer belly comes up to the two of them.

"Tell that Zhodani bitch to fuck off" he demands.

"You talking to me fatso?" responds Riley with a large grin developing on his face.

"Yeah I am and what's more….." he trails off as Riley's fist knocks three of his teeth out dropping him to the floor.

Riley follows up with several well aimed kicks before returning to the bar to get the drinks.

"Did you need to do that?" Emerse softly asks.

"Yes" responds Riley taking a large drink of whisky.

"You've kind of killed our cover" 

"What cover?"

"Exactly – I ah ah ah might go" and with that Emerse exits and gets a taxi home.

During the distraction Penny and Gnostic had slipped out and sussed out the building.

The alley at night has two guards. 

Penny, who is very stealthy, slips into the shadows and successfully climbs onto the roof. She quietly creeps along it and lowers herself to a ledge adjacent to a top floor window. She manages to jimmy it open and then decides to leave it an inch or so and re-joins Gnostic.

Meanwhile Stasi has decided to take photos of the inn patrons before making a hasty retreat to our parked van.

Spanner and Riley who have been sitting quietly, also now leave but not before buying his toothless friend a drink (no hard feelings in a pub fight). We all meet back at the van (except Emerse who has skulked off home).

After some debate a plan is hatched:

• Riley will offer a distraction by going into the alley and "acting" like a drunk;
• Penny will climb to the widow she left slightly ajar; 
• she will lower a rope to Stasi (who can't climb very well);
• Stasi and Penny will enter the building and arrest the sleeping Tunnel family;
• They will then use Emerse's walkie talkies to radio Spanner;
• Spanner will back the van up to the alley;
• We will throw everyone in the van and drive off.

What could go wrong?

And guess what? – nothing did. In fact, everything went exactly to plan. The only slight variances were that Riley punched one of the guards (although no surprise) and that we ended up disarming and taking the two alley guards with us also.

We drive back to Contessa's mansion, rather delighted with ourselves and to the delight of Contessa, and the surprise of Emerse.

The family and guards are placed in an outhouse, and thirty minutes or so later two Zhodani arrive with a van and load the Tunnel family on and take them away.

Before leaving however, they summarily execute the two guards in front of us. We all stood shocked including Contessa.  Killing in cold blood isn’t our style!

We have a few days to wait, hoping the Zhodani tech we are getting for payment arrives soon. 

Jolly Doctor Dollywell (a psychiatrist) has been called for the bad dreams trauma, and works with Split and Gnostic who are especially edgy.

Riley has convinced Emerse that another valid coping mechanism is whisky and that it's worked very well for him for the past ten years. Emerse, still reeling from recent events, joins Riley and even tries to go glass for glass with him. Alas, Emerse's system is not as well attuned to the medicinal remedy of whisky and is asleep before long.

We continue to have unwanted dreams and some are very severe [we are losing psych points.]

"We need to get out of here" says Gnostic

"Yes, we must get away from these Zhodani savages" agrees Emerse

"I want to fly that ship" slurs Riley.

We vote after each voicing our various concerns and unanimously agree to leave and go one system over to Entrope (Gnostic's home solar system).

Contessa provides us with a letter of introduction to one Sydney Walsh in Kingston (on the main planet Entrope). Well, we assume it’s a letter of introduction as its in a sealed envelope.

Gnostic sets up the jump computer with the correct navigational coordinates and set off. We move a million km from Winston (100+ diameters) and jump. 

"Whoo hoo" calls Riley immediately before he vomits. Everyone else follows suit (except Stasi) – [ Jumping causes nausea and vomiting for the uninitiated. ]

In a week we will be in Entrope. Riley has already made one successful psych roll. Who will be crazy when we arrive ……?

Lore-dump: X-Boats and Traveller interstellar communications

Jump-6 X-boat

The speed of light is pretty fast, but on interstellar distances it is a problem. Each Traveller system hex is one parsec from adjacent hexes. A parsec takes light three and a bit years to traverse, so keeping a galactic empire running needs faster comms. 

To get around this, communication is done with X-boats. These are the Traveller equivalent of the Known World "Gnome Post" (or the Pony-Express in America in 1860). They travel around Imperium space* moving packages and information via jump space (hyperspace).  The local version of Galactipedia is also updated on every X-boat trip.

The X-boat comes in three flavours: Jump-2, Jump-4, Jump-6 (which is the pinnacle of jump-engine technology). 

The jump-6 X-boats are made almost entirely of fuel tanks with a small state-room for the single pilot and life-support, and a small one-tonne cargo-hold. The lesser jump X-boats have the same crew quarters, but can carry more cargo in leu of jump distance.

X-boats don't even have normal drives (atmospheric drives, space drives nor thrusters), so are totally dependent on their support ships ("dockers" or "catchers"). They have a small thruster ("quy bomb") to get them to 1G just before entering jump space (when entering in jump-space, the velocity vector is preserved, and the Quy effect preserves instantaneous acceleration during the jump-moment, so the ship feels like 1G onboard during the trip). This way they don't need expensive (and heavy) grav plates.

 

Every day, once a day, every Imperium system* launches an X-boat to every settled hex within six parsecs. 

* = every settled Imperium hex, and every settled non-Imperium hex within six hexes of any Imperium hex. Plus every hex on the white X-boat "jump routes".

X-boats with different jump speeds are, of course, arranged so as not to waste the higher jump X-boats on trips where the larger engine is not needed. 

The X-boat pilots are in fact gnome-speaking folks, and have the same motto as Gnome Post "We'll get your package there on time - or we'll drink our own urine".

And like Gnome Post, the cargo can not be alive (even low-berthers - who are effectively dead - are forbidden.)

The jump trip takes the normal seven days to do the trip, so at any one time, most of the X-boat fleet is in jump-space.

To save on cost, the X-boats use unrefined fuel (which is effectively free). The X-boat corporation bears this risk (and the cost) of a 1 in 216 chance of a misjump. Because systems tend to be on straight lines, more often than not, a misjump will arrive in a viable system anyway, so the X-boat can be recovered and refueled as normal. If it lands in an empty system, the X-boat is stranded (empty tanks), and crewman will have to wait some time while search parties are sent out. He better hope the misjump was not too far - it is possible to jump a vast distance  (throw D6 to see how many D6s you throw - that is the number of hexes away from your target hex), so it may take some time for a rescue. He may end up drinking his own urine after all (he has enough subsistence rations to last a year).

On the rare occasion where the misjump destroys the ship (1 in 216 of misjumps), the corporation wears that. The hapless crewman knows this risk. He can console himself in that it is a quick death - when his ship materializes inside a star or planet.

As the (human) Imperium has 11,000 systems plus another 3500 adjacent systems, every day,  there are about one million X-boat trips. Of these one million jumps, 4800 will misjump. Most of these misjumps will end up in a settled system, but 1600 will misjump to an empty system (and need to be rescued). 22 will misjump inside a star, asteroid or planet.

An individual X-boat pilot typically has a 10 year career in which time he will do 450 jumps, so will have two misjumps in that time; and will more than likely survive these.

Other cultures run their own version of X-boats. The Zhodani have the Z-boats, the Aslan have A-boats, and the Droyne have Scaly-crawlers. The smaller confederacies, like the Sword-Worlders and the Darrians, just use the Imperium's system.

A Job Well Done

 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
• Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
• MARMALADING: 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 Winston Diplomat from Querion
• NPC: Finn Cyborg from Querion

by Richard

We are on Dollar.

Gnostic has finished his private discussion with Zeraphina, the Zhodani ambassador. 

"They clearly want the crown and perhaps me; in any event I'm in trouble here and we need to go" he explains.

"Go where?" asks Split

"Of course, they want the crown" volunteers Emerse. "It will give them control of this system."

"Sell it to the highest bidder, I say" says Riley in his typically mercenary demeaner.

"But you are a Sword-Worlder!" complains Anton.

"I owe them nothing" responds Riley "especially after booting me out of the military for no good reason"

"No reason?" Split's eye-brow raises "You are a drunken callous thug!"

"But I can fly! Anyways, let's sell it to the highest bidder, I want a better ship"

"We need to get out of this system to do that" repeats Gnostic. "Then we can negotiate from a distance. We should jump to Entrope, another Sword-Worlder system" [Adjacent to Winston system, the other adjacent system being Torment, quarantined. ]

"How are we going to do that, they will shoot us down" 

"They won't lay are hand on us" Riley volunteers with just a hint of unwarranted arrogance.

We are in the Winston system, owned by the Sword-World Confederation. One of 26 systems owned by them. The Zhodani control, about 3000 systems but their nearest is six jumps away. Owning the Crown of the Ancients will give the Zhodanis control of the Winston system and a foothold in this area. On the other hand, the Imperium control about 9000 systems and are four jumps away.

"Why don’t we take control of the system?" chuckles Gnostic

"I want a simple life" protests Riley. "Whisky, flying, brawling, women and money – in that order. I don’t want politics"

"And anyway, that will bring the wrath of all of them onto us" 

"Let's ask Mum, after all she is our employer and our Mum" Belle says looking at Split

The debate quietens and we all agree that that is the most sensible idea. Belle and Split send a message to their mum, Contessa, outlining everything and seeking orders.

Light-time is an hour to Winston, so messages are not instant. Eventually the reply comes back which reads "make sure everything turned on, then return to Formaline, and orbit it."

"Well we have our orders," announces Belle "let's get going"

Split, Anton and Gnostic ready themselves and head into the Ancients' site on Dollar to turn the system on. They do so without issue and return to the Faerie Queene an hour or so later.

"Ah …. there are two Zhodani frigates on route to Dollar" says Gnostic who has observed them in the Ancients' chamber when they turned the system on.

"We can easily avoid them" states Riley as he prepares the Faerie Queene to launch. 

Another message from Contessa: "Treat the Ambassador well…. Am doing a deal now….. A shame that Montrose Space station is still there! Out"

We launch and start our five-day journey to Formaline. "Riley is very intent and closely watching the Faerie Queene trajectory and the two Zhodani frigates.

Zhodani destroyers on an intercept course

"They’ve changed course to intercept" he mutters.

"Have Zeraphina talk to them"

"Good idea"

"I'm ready to shoot if I have to" (Anton from the gun turret)

Zeraphina hails the frigates and has a long conversation.

"They are here to escort us to Formaline and keep us safe" Zeraphina announces.

"A knew it" smiled Riley nervously with perspiration pouring down his brow.

Four days later we arrive at Formaline and proceed to the surface. We land safely and head into the Ancients' site. Everything was as we left it including the steam door in the ceiling that to date we hadn't opened. 

"Let's open it"

"Don’t be stupid"

"Go on"

"No"

We argued for some time eventually leaving it (and as it turned out later, wisely, as we are informed by the Zhodani at a later date that it had 21 spiders behind it. Plus some Ancients' relics).

We successfully enter the main chamber. Nothing had changed and we go about turning the system on.

The solar system lights up (to Gnostic anyway who is wearing the crown) and reveals several Sword-World frigates and scout ships in the sector but trumped somewhat by Zhodani battle fleet: one cruiser, four destroyers and a number of frigates.

Gnostic takes the crown off to see if he can still see the solar system portrayed, which he can.

"I wonder if I could blow up that old scout ship attached to the Montrose Space Station" he ponders.

"Unlikely I think" as he puts the cross hairs on it and touches it.

Simultaneously the scout ship, a Montrose one at that, explodes into pieces and a bolt of lightning hits Gnostic in the chest for 7 points. Gnostic flies across the room and lies here for a moment. He raises his hand and meekly calls out "first aid".

Anyone with any skill fails and even Stasi fails when Gnostic realizes she is trying to suck his blood and wriggles free.

We go back to the Faerie Queene and take off deciding to spend a day refueling before orbiting and awaiting further instruction.

We receive a call from Contessa wanting to talk to Gnostic, who had now been largely cured by Belle.

""How attached to that crown are you?"

"Ah not that attached if we get the right price" 

"Good – what's the right price?"

"We want a better ship, some money and Riley wants some good Whisky"

"Ok, over and out. I will be back to you shortly"

An hour or so later Contessa comes back to us. She had clearly done a deal with the Zhodani and lined her pockets but had also come through for us.

We would get an unnamed Zhodani Wolfsbane class Patrol Ship, with

• Jump-2 jump drive
• 2G manoeuvre drive
• grav plates
• grav terrestrial drive
• 2 hard-points with our choice of weapons
• 6 state rooms
• 250 tonnes
• 12 ton cargo hold

Also, some money and whisky.

The deal was done and our new ship would be called "The Lost Crown"

"You will need to induct the Zhodani on how to use the crown" Contessa messages in.

We agree and a Zhodani scout ship docks some hours later and a Zhodani volunteer, Rynae, boards and Gnostic starts to show her the Crown of the Ancients' abilities. For a moment we worried that it may not work on a Zhodani head but our worries were misplaced and Gnostic was able to pass on all the valuable information.

With that completed we head home to Winston, leave The Lost Crown in orbit, and land with the air-raft.

It will be two weeks until the Lost Crown arrives. For the two hard-points, we have chosen Cannons (like YFQ) and a twin missile launcher. We have also requested 1-point body-armour for each crew, new vacc suits, grenades including incendiary grenades and flares.

We rest for two weeks. Riley drinks, whores and fights his way through the fortnight whilst the numerous nerds in the party play with their scientific instruments.

The Lost Crown hold will fit our air-raft, although when Riley also tries to put a jeep in the hold he finds Emerse has built himself a small laboratory where he can sleep, in the hold, so no space for the jeep.  The six state rooms are divided up as follows:

• Belle and Penny Ende - the sick bay
• Cyborg Finn and Stasi – no one wants to witness their sexual acts
• Spanner being the only other woman
• Riley and Anton
• Gnostic. He insisted as he had given up the crown
• Itzy and Hoff, our marmalading friends should they ever return.
• Emerse was in the hold with his own small lab.

[ Readers may wonder why these minor details go into the write-up. It may seem strange however history has indicated that we are more than capable of arguing and debating missed facts for many hours in the absence of proof. ]

We remain under the employ of Contessa. A job well done we all think. What will she have in store for us next?

Cosmic Explosions

 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
• Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
• MARMALADING: 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 Winston Diplomat from Querion
• NPC: Finn Cyborg from Querion

by Jason

Where everything happens from hand-held flares to Cosmic explosions

Like, was it just last month that Belle and I were totally binging on teasing man boys, doing our hair, and waiting for our next shopping drop from the Space Station? OMG, it’s, like, totally true! For real! 

I feel like the last few weeks have totally changed me forever. It’s been such a trip hanging with the nerd boys and overall, like, fashion disasters in the fam. Now, I get that a flare is, like, something that burns giant spider webs, not just a style on our nearby Sword Worlds. Gs are such a drag. And the ruins left by the Ancients are, like, beyond cool! 

I’ve tried to be bold – like, fighting in the front when my jam is more like being an entertainer and influencer. No one’s held me back, it’s wild how everyone except Riley and Stasi are, like, total background players – never knew! 

I was chatting with Gnostic (a total brainiac) – and we’ve found something that, like, changes everything. There’s a huge power here that makes our system, like, the prime real estate for anyone looking to defend an Empire. That makes us, like super powerful – or dead. Whatever happens to us, we’re, like, making history, like, right now.

Like, one day people are gonna look back and, like, wanna know all about us, ya know? So, like, keeping this log is totally important. Ugh, this is not really my vibe, but I’ll try my best. 

Formaline

[At the Ancients' site, near the Zhodani encampment where the survivors of the Gnost Roma (including Anastasia Tepes and Finn) stayed for 20 years.]

I grab the log as we’re like, halfway through the tunnel to the control room, right?  Riley and me are totally leading the way. Spanner and Emerse are chilling behind us. 

We take an inventory of the firepower we have to get through whatever. So, 13 sticks of dynamite, 12 flares, 12 cocktails, and 12 grenades (with Anton). Pretty good compared with our last trip.

We make it to the first steam door, using flares as we go, like, totally burning the web. Gnostic does his handprint thing and the door opens, with steam in the ceiling above, and the room is, like, about the size of a lounge. There are webs everywhere, ugh! It’s cold and Anton doesn’t see any heat sources. He puts his helmet on anyway and we start clearing the webs. 

Gnostic's like, should we open the roof to check it out? Most are like, no way. So instead he opens the door to the passage ahead, and two spiders come running at us. Riley and me totally hammer one each. Anton shoots and finishes off the one closing on me. Riley wraps up his one too. Moving forward, we burn through our sixth flare, following the passageway and circling around to another door – like, the main chamber we expect. 

We’re all, like, ready! me, Anton, Sam, and Gnostic keep our helmets off for now. Gnostic opens the door but, like, the web is all in the way. Anton throws a Molotov, he’s like, the best thrower, right? It goes off, burning the web, and we can see in! There’s webs on the sides and 8 sets of eyes staring back. We put our helmets back on. Riley throws a grenade but totally misses. Anton throws and, like, lands it perfectly between four spiders, who take 8 points each.

 

Belle and Anastasia show up – Stasi swaps places with Gnostic, standing by Anton. Anton’s next grenade hits 4 spiders for 5 points! Stasi, me, and Riley all finish off a wounded one each, then Stasi takes down another one! Four spiders left now. I wound a fresh one for 5 points! One of them, like, totally jumps on my face for two rounds. It really hurt. 

Riley gets another and pushes it into the room, totally letting Stasi in. Like, one grabs Riley’s helmet and cracks it, and there's a fight until he shoots it and drops his gun. Riley and I toss off my spider, but ugh, I take more damage, -5 and it all goes dark. The spider lands like, super easily. Riley misses, but Stasi hits for 7 to finish it off.

So, like, next thing, Belle is totally tending to my face owies, like bringing me back to life, ya know? I’m feeling super hyped but also, like, totally barfing everywhere. I’m still kinda out of it. What’s the plan, tho? The last member of our gang that had this happen to her was, like, only around for 30 mins before totally flipping? 

Now, nothing else is moving in the webs, duh. There’s this steamy door on the far side and one in the ceiling, like OMG. They’re debating whether to take me back while Emerse is focusing on the mechanical challenge at hand in the time we have left. 

Gnostic is, like, opening up the ceiling hole – a cylinder block of snow totally falls down over the machine and it’s, like, stuck and frozen. 

Meanwhile, I’m suddenly super into Anton. I caress his neck and go in for a love bite - he’s screaming - and Riley, like, totally smashes my head with the butt of his gun (breaks my neck they say later, so rad). But Belle the medical Doc is, like, on it and keeps me stable, but no mouth-to-mouth, yikes! 

They rush me outside, Gnostic is getting the site defences under control. We meet back up with Finn and ask where we can find medical facilities – he hasn’t seen anything, like, whatever. The ship [Faerie Queene] is, like, orbiting, like, an hour away (too long) but Stasi is, like, "There’s an infirmary back at the old [ Zhodani survivors'] base (where Stasi spent 20 years)."

 

We take off in the air raft, Riley flying but only Gnostic can navigate or we’d be soooo lost. 

Penny's vomit

We get to the base. Stasi is guiding Belle and, like, turns on the power at the infirmary. They stabilize and, like, attach hoses to my stomach and pump it. They suck out, like, seven little spiderlings and are like, totally sure the stomach is empty. They do an enema for good measure, like, what the heck? Belle says it’ll take, like, six hours for neck surgery. 

Meanwhile, Emerse is, like, plotting to melt that snow back in the machine room with copper wire heated by the battery from the Zhodani generator but it’s, like, gonna take ages and they totally don’t have 24 hours. Seriously.

The rest of the squad gets back to the Ancients’ machine room through the tunnel. Totally prepped for a spider ambush, but like, nothing happens. So they chill in the room (snow). They close the roof and start digging with shovels. Gnostic's like, 'Let’s warm this place up' – cranks it to 35, then like 50 using his Crown of Ancients' with vac suits on. The snow melts super fast – it's, like, gonna half fill the room with water unless we open the sump door – so they do, and the water just flows out.

 

Gnostic raises the machine. Checks out the solar display. So, a Montrose scout ship is now in orbit around this moon (Formaline) along with the three Sword-Worlder destroyers. 

They tidy up the room and turn the defences back on. Head back to the infirmary. Gnostic needs to get Riley back on track with the air raft after he starts off in the wrong direction again. 

By this time, I’m all patched up, no paraplegia vibes, but I’m, like, restrained just in case. We gotta convince the Zhodani ambassador to get the Sword-Worlders to tell the Montrose ship to not land – she does it. It’s a bumpy ride back to the Faerie Queene, but we make it.

In Space

So, like, we’re totally planning to jet to a chill spot to peep this conjunction event or whatever. We decide to keep 50,000 km away from the Event spot after Emerse checks with his Tamaguchi. We’re also avoiding any beams from the Ancients’ sites that we’ve left running. Time to activate the sensors, ya know? 

A tentacle appears through the tear.

Now I’m feeling way better – but fish burps, lol. I’m rocking a neck brace for a week. Riley keeps trying to make me hurl some more, sooo annoying. 

EVENT! We see a glowing hole on the ship's sensors – like, a tear in space or something, 20km long, 5km wide. A massive segmented cylindrical shape emerges from the tear. It’s so organic, like an octopus arm or a gigantic slowly whooshing tail. 

Spiked balls emerge at high speed

It shoots these mechanical objects through a huge hole in the tip of the tentacle towards Formaline (half a million km away). They are like spheres with spikes, similar in size to the holes on that freighter. A stream of them.

 

We switch to combat mode and throw on vac suits. Riley’s helmet is cracked and, like, not safe, yikes! 

Then the tentacle thing, like, launches a spikey orb at us. Anton straps in, ready to fire, and we change direction but it’s totally following us! Riley tries to shake it off, but it’s gaining, like, so fast. We slow to one G, and Anton can finally fire [the ship's quad canon]. He shoots when it’s 20 km away. Total hit! The spikes get blasted off and now it’s just a ball, getting closer – like 1 km away, and Anton fires again. Bits are falling off now. 

Gnostic tunes into the device, and it’s like, ‘Surrender, and we won’t hurt you.’ He goes full blank on them and tells us what went down.

So like, the ball is totes up close now. Anton’s, like, shooting again. It’s only 500m away – boom! Sparkly vibes everywhere. We check the scanner. The ones going for the destroyers are totally out, but the unarmed Montrose scout ship gets hit by the spheres. "Mayday mayday, we’re boarded!" Then it totally cuts off. 

Gnostic [using his Crown] tries to chat with the Ancients’ telescopes, but fails (ugh). Tries to project his mind toward the octopus tail thing but, like, it hurts so much he loses four psyche and, like, falls down screaming. 

Formaline

We think we’ve got enough fuel to land on Formaline and see if we can use the machine to shoot at the alien ship. Then we’ll need to bounce back to the gas giant to refuel. We’re like, the spiders opened the space/time continuum but we can totally stop them! 

The destroyers are busy fighting off more stuff while we zoom by towards the moon’s surface. Riley nails the landing, and Gnostic’s feeling better by this point. [Lands the Faerie Queene at the same clearing where the air-raft did last time]

No changes since last time at the site and we head to the machine room. We activate the hologram and see the year and the wiggly alien arm – it looks like a tentacle with the hole still issuing the spikey balls. 

Gnostic’s all like, should I target it? There’s a green handprint and target reticle that appears on the hologram. Gnostic touches it. Then, like, the tentacle mother ship and the warp tear just totally disappear – poof! 

Gnostic target's a ball
using his Crown of the Ancients

He finds that if he moves the viewer to the spikey balls, the handprint-target again appears. So he targets them; they don't vanish like the arm and tear, they just explode. 

He also targets the messed-up Montrose ship (hit by a spike ball earlier); it explodes too.

Like, there's totally drama about what to blow up next, ya know? So, he zooms the viewport to Winston and there's this whole Montrose space station deal with, like, ten scout ships chillin'. Belle is like, 'No way, don't blow it up!' 

There are, like, a total of four space stations around Winston, for real. 

Gnostic, with his crown, is the only one who can, like, activate the targeting thing. He finds this super big rock, like, 10km wide way out in space and manages to blow it up. Major power vibes! But he can't bring up an adjacent solar systems on the display; it’s like, only targeting stuff in one system, ugh. We can scan the planets in the system but not the tunnels, like, totally lame.

 

Gnostic is all about staying with the machine, in case the rift shows up again (the effect has a +/- day halo, so cray). Everyone else heads to Faerie Queene. They decide to, like, chill for a day. Destroyers keep orbiting, and one totally heads toward the Montrose wreckage and just obliterates it. So, like, 24 hours go by and the rift is still, like, closed and totally fine.

So like, Gnostic totally shuts down the whole place and re-ups the defences, then we bounce off to the gas giant Lophomyrtus to refuel. We shoot a message to Contessa for orders, and she’s like, wouldn’t it be fab if the Montrose space station was no longer there? 

Riley skims Lophomyrtus upper clouds to refuel, getting super close. 

We return to Formaline again, but Riley lands totally bad, wrecking a [SABRE] engine, so we can’t leave. Sang the engineer says she can fix it but it’ll take like, eight days using stuff from the old Zhodani survivors' base. Better than 19 years we figure.

Back in the Ancients’ complex, Gnostic fires up the machine again but feels super guilty about blowing up the Montrose's space station – ends up blowing up another asteroid instead. Realizes Contessa didn’t give a straight order, and doing it cold-blooded would mess him up mentally.

 

Contessa: "Wouldn't it be nice..."

We scan the planet and, like, see no more spiders at all. We watch the Montrose ship debris fall out of orbit and crash onto Formaline – like, nothing left. 

During the eight days we all chill and get our psyche back (Spanner and Gnostic are still one psyche down, though). Once our ship's engine is fixed, we lock up Formaline and head to Dollar. 

Contessa pings us asking where we’ve been and why we've been MIA (there are no comms from the surface of Formaline). She’s all about the Montrose station still being in orbit. Belle emails asking about more specific orders, but she just repeats what she said before. 

Dollar

Takes like, five days to reach Dollar, during which time we finish up the final psyche fixes. The party votes on whether to blow the space station, and it’s 6-2 for no. Stasi and Riley vote yes.

So like, we totally think closing down the Ancients’ three stations is super best, to keep them safe from others’ use. But some of us are all confused after Contessa's totally vague order. 

The Zhodani fleet [one light cruiser, two destroyers and five frigates from the Querion system] finally rolls up at Formaline's orbit, and Ambassador Zeraphina talks with them on a private channel. 

Afterwards she visits Gnostic and is all, like, ‘Hey Prof, wanna join us for a job?’ She’s, like, ‘I can hook you up with major cash and, like, all the ladies you want.’ 

She says, ‘It’s time for the Sword-Worlders to, like, move on, and it’d be better if this system was, like, totally Zhodani.’ 

Gnostic looks as white as a ghost – but is, like, gonna think about it, for sure.

FOUR HOURS

  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
• Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
• Gnostic Hands. Solomani Scientist from Entrope – Jamie
• Belle Ende. Sword-Worlder Medic from Winston - Steven
• Split "Penny" Ende. Sword-Worlder Minstrel from Winston - Jason
• MARMALADING: Hoff Ende. Sword-Worlder Scientist from Winston - Kevin
• MARMALADING: Itzy Ende. Sword-Worlder Soldier from Winston - Chris
• NPC: Scurry. Drone Gunner from Winston
• NPC: Zeraphina Althira. Zhodani Diplomat from Querion
• NPC: Finn. Cyborg from Querion

by Jeff

Riley hadn't finished his two bottles

The morning dawned clear and sunny, and apart from Riley's headache from last night's drinking, everyone was in good shape. The ground crew had loaded up the truck with everything we would need (turns out that they hadn't loaded 'everything' we would need, but more about that later) for the trip out to the canyons and the newly discovered Ancient site, so we jumped in and headed out. Anton was very excited that they had even equipped the truck with a mounted machine gun and he spent most of the trip standing behind the gun caressing the barrel and aiming at every passing rock and piece of scrub. "Blam, blam" he shouted as he took aim.

Arriving without incident at the cave that led to the Ancient access tunnel, we encountered the new set of guards that Contessa Ende had sent out here to keep those Montrose bastards away from the site. Riley thought the squad of eight were a bit lax and immediately sent two of them up to the lookout ledge at the top of the cliffs "to keep an eye open for anything suspicious". 

Offloading the large chest that contained the "Volatile Canker" (we hoped) and our new stock of weapons, we began our trip down the tunnel. Gnostic donned the Crown of the Ancients and led us up to just in front of the ring of blood where one of the previous soldiers had exploded. 

"It's red" explained Gnostic, "Active and deadly. So don't go crossing the line just yet"

Only Gnostic, and only while wearing the Crown, was able to see and use the Ancients technology that guarded and protected the Ancients site. Gnostic tried to summon the servitor that had previously assisted us at the site, but that was unsuccessful. 

"Just open the way" suggested Penny.

Gnostic issued a mental command through the Crown to open the way.

"It's green" he declared, "Let's go"

Only Gnostic could see the colours

We passed the defence ring and proceeded down the tunnel to the Artifact room (where we had found the four Ancient artifacts, including the Crown) and then on towards the main Control room. 

Gnostic placed his hand onto the palm plate and opened up the steam door into the Control room. It appeared just as we had left it a few weeks ago. Gnostic then opened up the Servitor room, and he reported that the Servitor was there and had emerged into the Control room with us. A brief discussion between Gnostic and Servitor revealed that we needed to place the required power source item into the 'receptacle' in the Power room.

"We knew that already" grunted Riley, "Let's go look"

Gnostic opened the steam door leading down into the Power room, and we cautiously advanced. The Power room was quite different from the active Power room back on Dollar, this one had no steam drifting around, no water dripping into the tank below the floor grates, and no noise. The main control unit was situated in the middle of the room, and we knew that the power source creature would be located right behind it.

"OK" stated Riley, "You take the margrave thing and that body around to the receptacle"

He was looking at Anton, who shook his head. "No freaking way am I going back there"

A discussion ensued. 

Penny volunteered, and she took the margrave and disappeared around behind the control unit.

The horrible visage of the creature gave Penny a start [Jason used two luck points to ensure that Penny made her Psyche roll and didn't run screaming from the room in shock] but she quickly recovered and looked at the slumped form and noticed two gashes in its side. One shaped just like the margrave in her hand, and another quite a lot longer, but looking nothing like the grey creature that was in the crate.

"There's a gash in the creature's body that matches the margrave" Penny called, "I'm sticking it in"

The margrave slid easily into the gash, and the creature gave a jerk. 

The gash rapidly sealed itself over the margrave until the area looked exactly like the rest of the body.

"Bring the chest around" Penny called.

Another discussion ensured.

"Not me" stated Riley forcibly.

"I've been shocked by that thing before" noted Spanner, "I'd most likely run again"

In the end, Gnostic assisted Penny to drag the crate around behind the control unit, opened it up, and together they peered back and forth between the body and the remaining gash in the chest of the power creature.

"This isn't going to work" declared Gnostic, "It must be something inside the body we need"

"Try the hand" called Emerse from the other side of the room.

Gnostic lifted the arm of the body and poked the hand into the gash. Nothing happened.

"Belle" called Gnostic, "Bring your scalpel and give us a hand here"

Taking a deep bracing breath, Belle grabbed her medical kit and rounded the control unit.

[Steve had to spend four luck to make Belle's Psyche roll, and Belle didn't run screaming]

 Belle whipped out her scalpel, made a large incision right across the belly, and drew its odd grey skin apart. Immediately inside the belly was a long thin organ that obviously matched the gash in the power creature.

"That stinks" complained Penny.

"That's got to be it" decided Gnostic, and they lifted the strange organ up and slid it into the gash.

"Sllluuurp" went the wound, and it sealed up over the generative apthera.

Stepping back, Penny, Gnostic, and Belle watched as the horrific creature's head slowly lifted and its eyes opened.
They quickly retreated back abound the control unit and joined the rest of the party, and everyone hurried out of the room and returned to the main Control room.

"Who has woken me?" echoed inside Gnostic's brain.
"You have been woken to perform your task" replied Gnostic mentally.

A vision of a large room full of rubies appeared in Gnostic's mind.

"Can't eat those" Gnostic muttered as he scanned the control panel, noting that the engine room was now green.

"Let's get the hatch open and the detector raised" Gnostic decided.

"What about all the water up in the bowl?" asked Spanner.
"What about all the water up in the bowl" relayed Gnostic to the servitor.
"There is no water above the hatch" replied the servitor to Gnostic.
"There is no water above the hatch" relayed Gnostic.

"Bullshit there isn't" yelled Spanner, "We went kayaking on it not so long ago" 

"No" responded Emerse, "There is a shaft straight up to space. We saw the stars in daytime up there"

"There might be a shaft to space, but we were floating on the water when we saw that!" 

"There is water above the hatch" relayed Gnostic to the servitor.

"Inconceivable" responded the servitor.

"He says that's inconceivable" relayed Gnostic.

"I do not think it means what he thinks it means" quipped Spanner.

"Better just test it slowly" instructed Anton, and he immediately ran out of the room and away up the tunnel.

Everyone else backed off to the door to the tunnel, and Gnostic opened the roof hatch.

Immediately, a powerful jet of high-pressure water thundered around the hatch opening.

"CLOSE IT" yelled everyone simultaneously, which Gnostic did.

The water flow stopped, and the water that had squirted into the room slowly ran out through the last exit door from the control room, which led off to something called the Room of Shame.

"We need a drain" declared Emerse, "What's in that Room of Shame?"

We took a look into the passage that led to the Room of Shame, but Gnostic stopped us and pointed out the glyphs carved into the walls of the passage.

"Danger, do not enter. Room of Shame. Do not enter" Gnostic translated.

"Right then" declared Penny, "Let's not enter. Let's just assume that it will act as a drain"

"(2/3)πr³" muttered Emerse, "Bernoulli ... flow rate ... hatch about 4m2 ... height 300m"

"Four hours" yelled Emerse, "The bowl will drain in four hours"

"Right" declared Gnostic, "Lets head up to the defence ring, open the hatch, walk out to the lake, and watch it drain"

Closing the steam door between the Control room and the access tunnel, we all trooped back up the tunnel to the defence ring location. Emerse figured that if the steam door failed and the water flooded back up the tunnel, we would feel the draft and have time to exit the cave system to the canyon before any water arrived.

Standing at the defence ring (which was still green) Gnostic issued a mental command through the Crown to open the hatch. Then we all headed out of the tunnels and made our way to the lake to watch it drain.

Anton was already there, and while he reported that some bubbles had popped up some time ago, there had been no draining taking place. There was no vortex swirling in the centre of the lake, and the water level had not dropped at all.

"Bugger" muttered Gnostic.

We all (except for Anton who wouldn't go back into the caves) headed back to the tunnel and proceeded to the defence ring. Gnostic mentally commanded the Control room door open, and we rapidly backed up the tunnel towards the entrance. No draft blew against us from below. No water roared up the tunnel. Nothing.

Gnostic looked at Penny and raised an eyebrow. Penny shrugged her shoulders.

Everyone turned back and went down the access tunnel to the control room door, which was closed and not open.

"Ah" declared Gnostic, "We were too far from the doors to be able to activate them mentally"

The lake hadn't drained because the hatch hadn't opened.

"I'll need to be much closer to the hatch" decided Gnostic, "In the Control room I suspect"
"Wear the vac suit" suggested Emerse.
"We didn't bring them" noted Spanner.

"Bugger" grumbled Gnostic.

We concluded that Gnostic would need to be in the Control room, or perhaps in the Servitor room, which was immediately adjacent to the control panel, to be able to open the hatch. We also concluded that at least one other person would need to be there to assist Gnostic in case of problems (like a flood of high-pressure water), and that the vac suits would definitely be required, in case of submersion and drowning!

We retreated out of the cave, into the truck, and back to Bitter End to collect two vac suits.

A day later we were back. Anton had recovered from his temporary lack of courage and volunteered to assist Gnostic down in the control room while the rest of the party observed from the lakeside.

Anton and Gnostic sealed themselves into the Servitor room, donned their vac suits, and Gnostic issued the mental instruction to open the hatch. A load rumble immediately began beyond the closed door and the thunder of high-pressure water roaring through a relatively small aperture began.

Wiping his nervous sweat from his brow, Anton asked Gnostic how long it would be.

The lake was draining down

"Four hours" Gnostic replied, "Assuming Emerse got his calculations correct"
"Gulp" 

Up above at the lake, the rest of the party watched as a burp of bubbles trickled up the surface of the lake and a swirling vortex formed in the centre of the bowl. The lake was dropping.

"Maybe a little more than four hours" clarified Emerse as he eyed the vortex.

After four hours the thundering vibrations hadn't subsided, but shortly thereafter they did. Gnostic opened the door from the Servitor room to the Control room. Water flooded into the room, sweeping Anton and Gnostic off their feet and swirling them towards the Control room door. Anton managed to anchor himself to something solid and grabbed Gnostic by the arm as he was swept past him towards the door.

After a few minutes the water flow stabilized, and the level slowly dropped from the ceiling down to the floor level.

"So" muttered Anton, "More than four hours" 

After another fifteen minutes, the floor was clear of water and Anton released Gnostic.
They made their way into the Control room and watched the water drain away down the tunnel to the Room of Shame. Looking up through the hatch they saw the twinkling of millions of stars.

Projecting his command mentally through the Crown, Gnostic issued the final instruction to the servitor.

"Raise the detector" he instructed.

The detector platform smoothly lifted from the floor and into the hatch above, dripping water. As soon as it socketed itself into the hatch, the 3D holographic projection of the local solar system appeared within the Control room. Gnostic mentally zoomed the projection into the zone near the wreck of the Zhodani freighter around Formaline. He made out three additional ships in orbit immediately adjacent. The detectors instrumentation had tagged them as Sword World Destroyer Class ships.

"Getting busy there" mused Gnostic, "And look, there is the Montrose scout ship"

He pointed at a glowing spec in orbit around Winston. 

"This is such a strategically significant site!" he decided.

Making sure the detector stayed deployed, Gnostic and Anton closed the steam doors, returned up the tunnels to the others, activated the defence ring to red, and led everyone back to the truck.

"Keep a sharp watch" Riley instructed the guards, "It's even more important than ever now!"

Everyone loaded into the truck, and we raced back to Bitter End.

"We wasted twenty hours fetching those vac suits" noted Emerse.

"Only two and a half days left to the conjunction" he added.

"Plenty of time" declared Riley, putting his down on the accelerator.

We reported to Contessa on the trip back to the compound and asked the ground crew to get the Faerie Queene ready for an immediate departure. 

Stopping briefly to load up some extra cases of whiskey, Riley soon had everyone strapped in for the launch up to orbit, and then straight through to Formaline.

The trip there was uneventful, although there were musings.

"Are we sure activating this conjunction is a good idea"
"Absolutely, just think what three of those detector things could see when combined"
"What happened last time? Wasn't it nineteen and a half years ago?"
"Yeah, my freighter was hit by three explosions, and we ejected down onto Formaline"

"And old Winston Peters died in that skyhook accident about then too"

"Was there a time before that?"

"Ah, yup, some three hundred and fifty-two years ago"

"What happened then?"

"Nothing much"

"The terraforming of Winston started about then!"

"Hmmmm"

Three Sword World Destroyers moved to intercept

As we entered the Formaline zone, we were hailed by the Sword World Destroyers.

We had spotted them from the further out, and they had obviously just destroyed both the freighter and the Zhodani scout ship. Taking no chances! 

Fiery debris still burnt behind them as they moved in our direction.

"WARNING. YOU ARE ENTERING ZHODANI RESTRICED SPACE. TURN BACK NOW"

"We're just passing through" responded Riley.

"WARNING. YOU ARE ENTERING ZHODANI RESTRICED SPACE. TURN BACK NOW"

"This is Zhodani Ambassador Zeraphina Althira. Put on your captain"

"WARNING. YOU ARE .... Oh, Ambassador. What can we help you with?"

"Certainly, you are cleared to land on the surface, near your survivor's camp"

Riley pulled the Faerie Queene into a low orbit above the Ancient site on the surface. Well, not directly above obviously, but some kilometres off the side of the overhead beam line. Then most of the crew suited up and boarded the air-raft. Belle and Emerse stayed up on the ship to watch over Hoff and Itzy, and to give us some cover from above if necessary. Emerse figured that since the guns were no problem, how hard could it be to manoeuvre the Faerie Queene? 

"Don't you bloody touch my controls" yelled Riley from the air-raft pilot's seat.

Riley took the air-raft for a few spiral loops around the Ancient site on the way down to the moon's surface. It was just like the others, a huge hemispherical bowl cut down below the surface of the moon. No water, although the base glistened white with the snow that covered most of the landscape. Low scrub covered the surrounding plains and Stasi pointed out the location of their old camp site. Everything was covered with patchy white snow, but Riley spotted a small clearing relatively close to where the tunnel entrance to the Ancient site began.

"What about using the exhaust wash to burn back all the scrub around the clearing?" suggested Spanner.

"Good idea" responded Riley, "I can give it a crack"

[Riley's piloting skill for Air-raft is not that good, although Richard has been building it up since we obtained this one from the Zhodani survivors. At the last minute (after failing his Air-raft skill roll) Riley realised that the 360-degree jet wash burn idea would require two successful skill rolls. Fortunately making his Luck roll, Riley managed to thump down somewhat near the centre of the clearing, but without burning back much of the snow-covered scrub]

"CRUNCH"

Below Formaline

It was the vibration that alerted them to the activity. They had shut down most of their external sensor input due to the low temperatures, but feeling the vibrations from the surface they extended their sensor grid and activated those in the vicinity.

It was a Floater! The two-legs had returned! Perhaps it was breeding time again, despite the cold.

A few two-legs emerged from the floater and staggered through the surface covering towards the hive. They wondered again how the two-legs managed to move, always falling as they travelled forward. Perhaps after the breeding they could study another two-legs and see how they worked.

Viewing the two-legs from multiple units in the scrub around their path, they watched as the two-legs entered the hive-mouth. Atrocity! The two-legs were burning out the sensor grid inside the hive-mouth! A brief doubt flooded their consciousness. But, they thought, at least the vaporiser will kill one of them. They sent three units from the surrounding scrub to follow the two-legs into the hive. 

Aberration! The two-legs stumbled right past the vaporiser, and it didn't activate! With a brief thought, they sent one of the units charging ahead down the hive-mouth towards the two-legs. It was time to end this.

Aberration! The vaporiser has activated and unit's input ceased. At least the other units would be safe for two rotations they knew and sent another unit to attack.

Aberration! The vaporiser has activated and unit's input ceased. This was unknown. Why had the vaporiser activated in such quick succession. Aberration. Send the final they instructed, and the last unit raced down the hive-mouth.

Aberration! The vaporiser has activated and unit's input ceased. Their input from the hive-mouth faded with the destruction of the last unit, and the two-legs disappeared from their senses. Imperative, they thought, activate more units, we must breed the two-legs!

...