This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar. This session was run on March 9, 2023.
They entered the smoke filled hut to find “Athena Rain” lounging on a bean bag smoking from a complicated, water-filled device. The room was sparsely decorated with only a small, mostly empty bookshelf, some clothes hanging on a rack, and another beaded curtain on the far wall. The walls had been painted in garish colors similar to those seen on the outside of the hut.
They did not waste time and quickly established that she was, in fact, Jessica Zhen. Zarf informed her that he was here to take possession of The Prismatic Ray pursuant to his detached duty status. She expressed surprise that the Scout Service had moved her to retired status, claiming that she was actively working on a project here on Twinsong. When pressed on this, she explained that she had encountered a Gaia planet in the Solomani Rim while still on active duty. She believed that Twinsong was another such planet and she had spent the last year experimenting with consciousness-expanding substances in the hope of finding a way to communicate with its vast intelligence.
They raised the issue that according to all records available to them, both from the Scout Service and the local system, she had been on Twinsong for at least five years. She seemed confused by how much time had passed and hazy on the details. They eventually seemed to chalk this up to her drug use and not a deliberate attempt to deceive them. After showing her Zarf’s documentation and buying her breakfast, she agreed to give them the codes they needed to physically access the ship from the highport’s docking ring.
Cindy Stevens flew them back to Caldera and they decided that Arenui and Mar-ven would remain in the city while the others secured travel to the decommissioned highport in order to assess the level of repairs necessary to make the Ray jumpworthy again. They took Grask’s bus back to the landing pad where they found Jade Avel still waiting to sell her load of algae control chemicals. It turned out that the group they expected to sell it to could not afford to purchase it for more than what Garret’s Fortune had paid for it and she was waiting for them to try to scrape together additional funding. They hired her to bring them up to the highport in her lighter for 500 credits each.
When the lighter docked with what remained of the highport, they found that the docking ring still had a third of an atmosphere of pressure, but the air was tainted. Jade agreed to keep the lighter docked with the ring long enough for them to determine whether they would be able to land The Prismatic Ray in its current state. They made their way through the stripped bare docking ring to the Scout ship. Once aboard, they found that Jessica had redecorated the ship as well, the bulkheads were painted in similarly garish colors as the walls in her hut. After a couple hours of inspecting the ship, they determined that they would need 8K in life support supplies, 6k in jump drive parts, and 7k in general maintenance supplies in order to make the Ray jumpworthy. They were satisfied that landing the ship on the planet it its current state was fairly low risk.
They radioed Jade and told her that they were planning on disconnecting shortly. As they were working through their preflight procedures, a 400 ton Corsair jumped into the system dangerously close to Twinsong. Jade quickly identified this as pirate-like behavior and informed them that she was disconnecting from the ring to make a run to the surface. The inbound ship was not broadcasting its identification and was closing fast. They decide to forgo the rest of their preflight and disconnected from the docking ring. As they began to de-orbit, the ship, identified as Jugisaal’s Razer, began firing on Garret’s Fortune, demanding its surrender. Shortly after they launched, the Razer launched a 100 ton ship from its hangar bay and it gave pursuit.
Mhan V’rak, in the pilot’s seat, pushed for all the acceleration the scout ship could give him. They quickly began outpacing the lighter. The pursuing ship opened fire on them, but missed. Hal took control of the turret and decided to fire the beam gun despite poor condition warnings from the computer. As soon as he fired, the barrel ruptured, rendering the weapon inoperative.
Mhan continued to put them through high gee evasive maneuvers and accelerate for the surface, pulling further ahead of the cargo lighter. The pursuing ship fired on them until it drew even with the lighter. It disabled the smaller ship and began boarding actions. As Jade radioed that she was being boarded, the Ray managed to land in the jungle outside of the artist commune. They concealed the ship and waited.
Comments
Post a Comment