Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm a rebel from a Galaxy
far, far away. And with me with us today, we
have a very special guest and great friend of the show, Eco.
How you doing today, Eco? Hi guys.
Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine.
Happy to be back on the show. Thanks for having me.
Welcome back. Yeah, it's been, it's been a
minute. Yeah.
So for those that might not know you or the Lost Bay podcast,
tell us a little bit about yourself.
Well, so I'm eco. I'm a designer, I need the table
top RPT designer and I'm a publisher.
I have a small publishing studio called the Last Base Studio in
the UK where I publish zines and mostly bundles, actually bundles
of zines, yeah. So I mean, that's one of the
reasons you're here today is to talk about one of your new
bundles. But talk about the bundles
you've done for a little bit. I think you've put out, what is
it like 5 bundles in the last 12 months?
So why? Why bundles?
Yeah. So I've lost count, honestly.
But I think you're right, probably, probably I've put out
five bundles. And yeah, so why bundles?
There's kind of a couple of reasons for that.
There's. One weird reason, which is
there's there's a thing in France for kids I used to play
with when I was like 8 or 9. It's called Pochette, means like
like surprise envelopes or or something like that.
They're like paper bags, you know, not very expensive.
And in it's in them you have like.
Random selection of small, tiny toys like paper or plastic toys
like could be a dinosaur, a play in a car, a ballerina.
I mean, you never knew what you had in those and with the
buddies we used to buy them and. Even you could find them even in
grocery stores. And I remember, you know, like
the excitement when we opened those things and poured like the
toys on the floor and started making up our little games with
whatever we found in them. And yeah, I before working on
1st bundle, I kind kind of was reflecting on that and I said
OK, let's try and build pochettes for.
Grown up RPG hobbies like where there's a package with lots of
fun stuff you can use to play and in a modular way, you know?
And the other thing the other I mean comes partly from my 9:00
to 5:00 job working as a producer in in media, in video.
But the thing I like the most, and.
Is working with other people discovering how other people
work, how other people work creatively.
You know what's their craft, what, how they think how their
creativity takes place, takes shape and I think this is what
pushed me to become a a publisher of of in the RP GS we
we've kind of mimics what what I'm doing in my 9 to five job.
And and also this pushed me to work on bundles because like on
bundles, I mean most of the Bumble bundles that I've
published so far involved between 6 to 10 different
creators. So I mean for for me it's just
it's just like great. It's an amazing opportunity, you
know, to work with the team and and yeah, have like you know, a
direct way to. I mean it's kind of a privileged
way also like to to to discover and learn like the craft of of a
super talented person you maybe you look up to or Yeah.
So yeah, basically, yeah, I I love, yeah, I love, yeah, I love
like working, discover, working with people, discovering their
creativity. And also I think like, yeah, the
scene. And and and creative industries
largely needs structures, things that can support creators.
And in the bundles I've tried to to mix both.
More seasoned designers who have been publishing maybe?
Successful staff and who have some kind of traction with their
work and and first time designers or first time
designers in that specific genre who maybe could benefits benefit
from being given the opportunity to work with the larger team or
or or or to have yeah publishing opportunities.
So yeah, I think they're they're also a great way yet to.
Yeah, to support the community and to create a bunch of cool
stuff for, for, for the hobbies, for the fans.
Yeah, basically. Mostly I put I I publish bundles
because we got a lot of stuff in it in them that I want to have
for myself, you know, so. So many creators, like, I want
this from my own. So yeah, I mean, I mean, the
bundles are also, they're all so impressive.
And yeah, you've worked with so many, I mean, perplexing ruins.
Zach Hazard, I'm just pulling names out of nowhere.
Goblin archives On the Fear Bundle, there's like Josh
Dramansky. There's a lot of like, really
amazing creators on all the bundles that you've y'all put
out so far. So this bundle, the one we're
talking about today, what can you tell us about this bundle?
OK. This bundle is that is probably
the most ambitious bundle. Like in the last 12 months we've
been learning a lot about like processes, both.
How about like how to to create a balance bundle, which is not
just like a pile of stuff, but but that.
That makes sense as a collection and processes about also
production finding like good partners, printers and a
logistics chain that made sense, etc.
And so it was time to try and work on a larger bundle, more
ambitious. The difference with.
This bundle is that it contains only 100% original items that
were designed for it. For the bundle after reading the
pricing is a bundle for the sci-fi horror to build up
Mothership. It's also a box set will be
Kickstarter kick starting it and it's packed with a lot of items,
adventures, but not only adventures and.
And yeah, I'm lost. I'm sorry, I'm a bit lost.
No, you're good. No you're fine.
So why Why Kickstarter for this? It sounds like you said that
this is just a a much bigger project with a lot more going
on. Is that what why you're going to
Kickstarter for this instead of like pre-orders on your page or?
Yeah, so there's a couple of reasons.
So like the previous bundles were mostly republishing really.
Reformatting maybe? Stuff that has been that was
really that had been released sorry on each as on PDF and we
kind of we we redeveloped it for the bundle without to rim
uprising we've been building the bundle and and and the setting
because Outer Rim is like an extensive campaign setting for
mothership and. From scratch and there's a lot
of us involved. There's a lot of items So it's a
it's a it's expensive to produce.
There's a lot of us involved. We have shared profits system.
So it kind of I mean we need it to be big.
It's too expensive to produce. We need to sell a lot of bundles
to to make it feasible actually like the first bundle were were.
Funded via my own website. And I mean, they did well, but
we kind of needed to go to a wider audience basically to make
the bundle feasible. And yeah, This is why we moved
to Kickstarter. Basically for this bundle.
There you go. And you you talked a little bit
about, I mean how much content is in this, like what can you
actually tell us about the, the content that's actually going to
be in the bundle like the box set, all of that stuff like what
you know, what do you want to say about that?
Sure. So well, the bundle has modular
structure, meaning that each item can be used as a standalone
item. It has its own purpose as a
standalone item and but it's also it also can be used in
conjunction with other items the bundle.
Like entries together the kind of draw an extensive setting set
at the fringes of the Galaxy. Basically.
What's the premise here we are at the fringes of the Galaxy.
We're far from the core worlds, where, you know, cords push
their tech experiments far beyond the limit of what's like.
Humanly acceptable. There's like Horrors, aliens
like Dwelling, and there's also like.
Humans and androids organizing themselves, like trying to
resist to those opposing forces, to corpse and to the horror
that's happening and building. Yeah, just like real life
building factions. So the the entries, the items of
the bundle share locations, events and PCs, characters,
factions and they draw. An excess, an extensive setting
which you would discover as you play.
I mean, you don't have to read the book of lore, just play one
model, another model, and then another model and as you play
you'll be like doing another step in your journey.
You know, out in this, out in the out room and globally, the
bundle is divided. In the bundle, items are divided
in three categories. There's.
Like adventures, like scenes with like short to medium length
adventures, I don't know, derelict ship floating somewhere
and with kind of ghostly horror hunger happening there.
There's an adventure taking place in in where?
Where is it? In a floating gas harvesting
station. This is by.
The artist by Holly Jenka and the adventurous by Chris A Rio.
So there are adventures. There are other models which are
more into the category of adventure building, like We Got
a Faster Than Lights Travel expansion there is.
Faction, Word faction. There's a faction supplement
like Rebel Faction Supplement. There's another supplement by
Marco Serrano dedicated to a security for higher Corp nasty
guys, but it's fun to play. There's, yes, several adventure
and world building tools and and quite a few of them are.
Also at the same time playing, facing accessories and that's
one of the things I'm most excited about about their
things. You can drop on the table as a
Warden and and I know that they're going to put a green on
the face of the players like because they look cool.
They're so cool. There's Sorry to Bother You,
which is a collection of 40 NPC cards by Victor Jay Marino.
You got you got on the front like the portrait on the of the
NPC on the back you got the stats you can.
I mean that's a great way to make random encounters.
Shuffle them throw them on the table.
We got blueprints, we got maps we get and a lot of those
accessories are in game accessories.
There's in game items there's stuff your your players as
Rebels or as. People hired by the Corps would
have even the patches, you know, like the classical patches every
mothership campaign has. They're actually patch.
Yeah, patches of the factions of the in game factions.
Patches like the the factions. Sorry, the factions would have
themselves. So yeah, adventures, adventure
building tools, a lot of them. A few of them, I have to say,
are partly. System neutral.
I mean you could even drop them in non in non mother ship games
like the faster than light travel procedure which is super
fun or or there's a ghost horror generator scene which is really
extraordinary. It's almost system neutral 100%
and. And the third thing that is in
the bundle is the campaign handbook, which is the
connective tissue of the bundle. It comes only in the the 2nd and
the 3rd tier, like the bundle is is going to have the, the,
sorry, the the campaign is going to have a simple shape.
There's no stretch goals. You back it.
You have a tool. There's three tiers, one digital
tier and two physical tiers and. And I'm sorry, I'm going to say
that again. There's one digital tier and
three physical tiers, and in the the two higher physical tiers
there's the campaign handbook, which kind of pushes one step
further, that thing of creating and uniting the scenes together,
the scenes and the items to to. To build that setting and to
give you like the possibility to run longer campaign.
So what can you do with the campaign handbook that, first of
all, it's going to have like and gorgeous arts by evanging
Gallagher with kind of AI? Don't know.
Last 90s retro bankish futurism vibe.
I don't know. It's really, really, it's
really, really cool. Black and white drawings, very
contrasted, really cool. So the campaign handbook comes
with a lot of I I called that word adventure building tools.
You know, like. Custom classes and gear and and
hideouts and factions and and story plots and stuff.
That and the cool thing that it does, it both like cross
references, references, stuff that is spread out in the
scenes, but also adds more stuff.
It's kind of like a Bible of what's everywhere else in the
bundle. Plus, it comes with a series of
frameworks and guidelines designed by Josh Domanski to run
out of RIM campaign. Like you want to quick start
something, You want to do one shot, one shot, one with a with
values theme. Here's how you Do You want to
build a longer campaign? Pick a theme.
Pick 3-4 entries. Here's our You start your
campaign. There's even guidelines to build
the campaign using items of the bundle and 3rd party, third
party items, the ones you make or other stuffs you've bought
from other designers and and so yeah, so there's a series of
procedures to, I mean simple procedures, quick to use and to.
To play corporate response, you know we were used in mothership
to there's the big bad Corp this, and you do shitty stuff
somewhere. But they're kind of like, you
know, a vague evil entity. They're a name at the beginning
of the adventure. You don't really know who they
are. So in the campaign handbook,
there's procedures to actually turn those corpse into like, the
real antagonist of the players. What if you play campaign?
And the corpse is going to react to what players do, to what the
characters do and and and and now he's going to become like
the real big bag, Bad, evil and PC.
So yeah, I love that. I think that's.
An. Amazing idea.
Yeah, that's a great tool. That's just that part the the
corporate responses Josh Domansky like.
Addition to the campaign scene, the campaign scene, the campaign
handbook, sorry is written collectively.
It's really great item. You got like a sector, you got
ships, you get a lot of cool procedures.
And honestly, it's one good reason Enough just per SE to
back the bundle. Honestly, just that.
Well, hey, listen, I mean you're talking to the two guys who are
are 100% in the back. I mean whatever the highest here
is Rhino bag. No doubt.
I do really love like multiple things.
Like I love the very crowd sourced like campaign book and
like take on creating like a setting for mothership.
And I like how modular this sounds.
Like I love stuff that you can pull out and play.
I mean, I'll probably play this as a whole with my group and
we'll run the outer rims, but I love stuff that I can pull out
and use in other games, and I love.
Having physical things that I can hand to players like I feel
like that deep into the experience so much just get
here's a thing that you can hand, they feel it in real life
and they really have that little extra buy in.
I'm really stoked for this one and I've gotten pretty much
every bundle so far. So oh.
Yeah. And you said there's some.
Oh yeah, absolutely. So there's an item that was
designed by me, or. A near near did Alien Armory.
You might know it's as in for mothership.
So I I contributed. Oh yeah good.
I contributed to the design of of nearest entry.
Well, he worked on several entries, but, and yeah, by the
way, the cool thing of this bundle is that it created
connection between designers. As we you know, we started
working on all the entries together.
Like we've got a secret channel on the Las Bay Discord server
where like designers and artists of the bundle needs and that
sparked collaborations, unexpected collaborations and
that's such a cool thing. But anyway, near as kind of
hacks, a desktop calendar, you know calendar, I'm going to try
and send you a pic you can show to your to your listeners
viewers and you're going to put it on your table and it's going
to it's going to be a tool and this is kind of a spoiler so
it's half a spoiler. I don't know I'm going I'm going
to go for it because it's just so cool.
So it's a it's a corporate procedure to determine if a
subject is human or a Droid or an Android.
You know, and and and the scene is is the tool the corporation
would use, actually. So it's like a pyramidal desktop
calendar. On one side, there's the
questions for the subject. On the other side, the warden
side, There's how you should interpret the responses of the
subject and decide if they're an Android or human.
Maybe they're they're an Android that don't know it.
Maybe they're they're convinced they're an Android, but actually
they're a human. The test is going to tell you,
and of course it's going to tell you what to do once you find the
answer with a lot of horrible outcomes, like how you should
manage that stuff, you know, very mother should be horrible
way. It's like a.
It's like a Turing test. I think that's what it's called,
right? The Yeah, yeah, it's like a
truing test. That's awesome.
That's. That's very cool.
That's a physical thing to put on the table.
I love that. And that's the cool thing about
this bundle. We work so much on the
physicality of it. I mean, sure, there's a lot of
scenes, there's a lot of pamphlets, but it's more than
that. There's things, there's tools,
there's items. Yeah, stuff.
And and there's even a node, your tape, you know, with the
sounds of space. Oh yeah.
There is very cool. Yeah.
By. Yeah.
Yeah.
By David Bland and and and yeah
and we're paying attention also I was, I was saying earlier you
know like we have more experience now on production and
other things. So we're we're paying a lot of
attention to how and where we're going to produce those items in
order to make them you know as as good as we can in terms of
quality, in terms of production quality.
So yeah I I'm over excited about this bundle.
I feel super grateful to yeah. To have the the opportunity to
work this with this roster of incredible designers and artists
and yeah. I know if you talked to this
whole time, like you've been saying these names and me and
Rango. Yeah, So, so, I mean talking
about that roster a little bit, I know you said some, some names
that obviously we all know and love.
Marco Serrano, David Blandy, Evangeline Gallagher, Did you
want to run through, like, some of the people involved in the
project? So yeah, so basically, yeah,
because I've been asked that before.
How would you pick people for the bundles?
Well, I don't really pick them. I kind of talk with designers
and things happen somehow. And there's kind of a mix of, I
love to say, veteran third party mothership designers, people who
have already an experience in working on mothership for
mothership and a mix of people who are experienced designers.
But it's the first time they're working on a mothership.
But they have an experience with, you know, horror or
uncanny stuff. They've they've been dabbling
in, yeah, horrific themes or horrific adjacent themes.
And and this, this is really cool because I don't know.
That's nice balance. Like, I don't know that works
somehow. So we got I'm going to I'm sure
I'm going to like mispronounce everybody's name.
I'm sorry folks. I love you.
But you know. Yeah, we've never done that on
this show. This will be the first.
Time. A single time.
Yeah, you know, you know. So we got Chris Ario, how did
bio drones and cryo clones. We got David Blandy who has
released and kick started successfully, Ecomorphos, Post
Bank, Post Apocalyptic Game, really cool.
We got Josh Domanski who is kind of who has already designed
several a lot of stuff with horror themes.
We have Victor, Jim J Marino who is designing the NPC card deck,
who is an amazing artist and designer.
We've got Near who's working on several items.
The the sentence assessment procedure, the thing I was
talking about earlier and other pamphlets.
We've got Zach Hazard, Wolfen, who's doing a really, really,
really cool and horrible thing about basically Cyborg implants.
It's called Surviving Machine Machine Parts.
It's really cool. How?
Yeah, like Cyborg extension can can affect you, but they can
give you. But how they can affect you.
So there's David Kenny, who's working on both an adventure,
The Hunger in Hackernar. Sorry, I don't know how to
pronounce that. And that's not even an English
name. So Marker now I don't know.
And a ghost and a horror space ghost and space horror
generation a generator. There's team Ober Mueller who's
working on a prison heist adventure.
It's so cool. Yeah, there's it's prison
sabotage adventure. Basically there's a prison being
constructed in some remotes like system in a planet with a barely
bearable breathable atmosphere. It's a high security prison and
you just you and your your your crew and your your people living
on the planet. You just don't want it and
you're gonna sabotage it. And that was written in
collaboration with Josh Domansky.
I was speaking about like, you know, cross collaborations.
There's Marco Serrano, like Mothership, like fans probably
know Marco's work. And there's Christian Sorrell,
who's been working in conjunction with New York on a
couple of pamphlets. Really cool.
There's Alfred Valley, of course, who's a returning
designer of the bundles. There's myself doing a couple of
things and. Sorry folks, we got cut off
there for a second. So ego, you were saying that we
had some amazing writers on this project, but there's also some
great illustrators and layout people as well.
Yeah, yeah, we are very lucky. We have like really super
talented people taking care of the craft part of the of the
bundle items, and I'm going to just name them.
You might. Also, there's some people who
are doing design like as in game design and making art for their
entry as well. These are Zach, a Hazard weapon
who's doing amazing 3D, almost like kids bashing, flashing
Cyborg stuff. It's really amazing.
There's Victor J Marina, who's drawn the 40 NPCS of their car
deck. And they're just, they're just
missing. They're they're, I mean, it's
forty faces and there isn't one who's looking like another.
It's it's just amazing. You got aliens, droids, a lot of
different kinds of characters. And then we have as
illustrators, Danielle Locke, Veal Ville is doing The Hunger
in Arkarnar. Daniel Locke is working with
David Blandy on Blink. Eventually Gallagher is doing
all the illustrations for the campaign handbook.
We have Holly Jenka who's done well who's done like the
background behind Hunter with which is like the the, the, the
campaign banner and also this this illustration and more
illustrations for like that one for Chris Ario Zinn and and we
have amazing layout artists as well like John Verne and Gontijo
many of you might know and also New York is doing like some kind
of super advanced strange layout with bashing and working on on
stock photos etcetera. And what's really cool is that
we have kind of different vibes going from, I don't know what
you would expect a mothership Superman to be very tacky
metallic hard science art to some more spanky zenish art.
Links to the theme of of the Rebellion, basically.
So there's a nice span of different drawers that are,
yeah, working super well together.
I mean, we're so lucky. I hope I'm not for forgetting
any anyone. There's so many people working
in the bundle. Did I say Jean Vale, also
amazing French layout designer who's doing some layout.
So yeah, yeah, we we, we got a huge, great team working on the
bundle, so. Yeah, it's crazy, the talent
that you have associated with this, and I mean, it makes sense
that it's coming to Kickstarter to be able to put all of this
together because it sounds insane.
I. It's ridiculous like it's a
whole box. I mean the the FEAR bundle was
amazing in the envelope but it was still like a big envelope.
The box set for this I can't tell you how excited I am for it
and and thank you so much for coming on to talk to us about
this. We love all the bundles that you
put out especially this and you can follow this one right now on
Kickstarter right the the pre link the that you can follow
before the campaign drops which I believe is on October 3rd, the
bead. There you go.
We'll be down in our in the description of wherever you're
watching this, you'll be able to find that, but.
Yeah, we have also like, yeah, we have also redirect URL which
is pretty simple. If you go to
outerrimuprising.com it's just gonna redirect you to the
Kickstarter page, which is like more complicated to to remember.
Yeah. And I mean, it's kind of a
tradition in modern shape crowdfunding.
Like Mother, she created crowdfunding.
We're going to have patches like, you know, physical patches
for Kickstarter, key for sorry, backwards in the first 48 hours.
Those patches are amazing. There's three, three of them.
They're designed by Alfred Valley, which means that they're
super cool. And there are patches of three
of the main factions that are present in the bundle, so I
don't know. That makes them even more cool
to me. I know, like they are the actual
patches those rebels would wear on their jackets.
You know, so. I do love the patch thing for
Mothership. I mean like.
There's so many times where I look at the project.
I'm like, I'm back this for the patch do you?
I have so many. I have no jacket to put it on.
But yeah, that's the point. Now I have to buy a jacket
myself. I have too many patches at this
point. I literally have just been
thinking about getting like a flag and just like putting them
all like a grid on a flag. That's what we're going for.
But again, ego. Thank you so much for coming on
the show. Super appreciate it.
You're always welcome. Thank you especially for any of
the bundles. Yeah, and for those watching and
or listening, if you stick around right now, this is
obviously part of a bigger video because you've seen the time
stamps. Right after this you we will be
hearing an actual play, a preview of an adventure that's
actually in the bundle. It is the hunger of Akronar from
David Kenny and playing that is myself Hunter at Caleb Zayn
Hewitt of Triangle Agency and it is run by Josh Demansky.
So stick around. You want to listen to that, make
sure you go to the websites listed that, Eco said.
We'll be in our links as well. And again, Eco, thank you so
much for coming on. Thank.
You for this. Thank you.
Yeah. Bye.
Bye, guys. Bye, bye.
Bye. Hello, welcome to the Weekly
Scroll podcast. My name is Ryan.
And I'm D6 goblins, all standing on each other's shoulders.
And I'm Caleb Zade Hewitt, a Co founder of Haunted Table,
creator of a game called Triangle Agency, and a cast
member on an upcoming sci-fi comedy show, The Adventures of
the s s Bad Ship. And I am your what was it, game
Mother? It's what they call it
Mothership for tonight. My name is Josh Domanski.
I am a writer and designer in the table of RPG scene.
You guys might know me from episodes of this show, as well
as my work on in particular the limited horror series help write
some of the adventures there. But tonight, more importantly, I
am one of the members of the the kind of collective crew working
on the Outer Rim Uprising Bundle for Mothership.
This is a collective of, you know, indie tabletop RPG
designers, in particular those who work in the mothership scene
that have come together to make this bundle of content all
underneath the Outer Rim Uprising umbrella.
This is pieces and bits to make your own campaigns geared
towards. Making insurgent campaigns,
playing as regular folk, fighting against the tyranny of
corporations at the farthest extent of human civilization,
the edges of space. So just like real life.
Yeah, just like real life. Just like real life.
Only if only. Yeah, yeah, In particular my
involvement. I am doing layout on one of the
adventures that you guys will see in the bundle and I wrote
and had my hands in. Probably half of the campaign
handbook that will come included with one of the tiers for the
bundle, so keep an eye out for that.
But tonight we are doing something a little different.
We are playing one of the adventures that's present at the
bundle. This is one that should be
available to all of the standard Tiers.
So after you watch this AP, if you back the campaign, look
forward to seeing it in your inbox at some point in the near
future. So yeah, where's the overlay?
But this is The Hunger in Akronar.
It's put out by A Magnum Galaxy Games in particular, It's
written by D Kenny with art by Ville.
They got Contigo to do the layout, which I am really
excited about. And Ross Leahy did the the
editing, but in particular if you guys are familiar, D Kenny,
the Magnum Galaxy. Crew are the ones who put
together previous adventures such as Nirvana on fire, dying
hard on hard Light Station, and the cleaning of Prison Station
Echo. Realistically, all of these
would go very well with an Outer Rim uprising campaign if you
already happened to own them. And they're so beautiful.
All of them. Yeah.
I will note in particular there's a bit of private gushing
on camera here. Dying hard on Hard Light Station
is like the first mothership adventure where I felt like I
really got running the system. So I'm very excited to run this
adventure for us tonight and to kind of see what all of the
parts of the bundle end up coming together, because I only
have my eyes on certain little bits that I'm helping out on SO.
Yeah, I'm pretty stoked too, actually.
So. Yeah.
And this is my first time playing Mothership, so you'll
see me live learning how to play.
Same actually. So we reviewed 0 E see previous
episodes from my opinion on that before and and loved the the the
game and have been really excited to get 1 E It's a little
bit later than than we had hoped but hopefully it's coming out
soon but super excited to play. And I can't wait for this
bundle. I have so much content for One
East and have yet to play it. So very, very excited to
actually get to play a game that we've reviewed here on the show.
Now dive in. So we'll do a little bit of an
introduction here. We'll have a chance to introduce
your characters to each other, and then we'll sort of jump into
play proper. The three of you are rebels,
insurgents. The corpse would probably call
you terrorists, but what you consider yourself is up to you.
But you're desperate. Your base, the place that you
called home for some period of time, is gone.
Corporations came in, they got the drop on you in orbital
bombardment. Everything you'd worked for, the
people you knew are no more. Now your ship managed to escape
lucky enough, and you hope to find others that made it out
alive, but as a concern for the future.
Right now, you are waking up from cryosleep.
You hear the familiar kind of snap hiss of air bursting out of
the pod that you've slept in for a couple of days.
Hasn't been too long at this rate.
Long enough to need the cryo sleep.
But outside of that? Fairly short journey and as the
fog. Clears from your mind and your
memory starts to return about who you are and where you're
going. You remember?
I need you guys to tell me what is the name of your vessel that
you currently reside in? The name of the ship.
Yeah, yeah. Give me a name for the ship.
S s hard times. Sure.
Sounds good to me. I guess that's hard times.
All right. What is the general stack of the
ship? Is it sleek, Modern, new?
Is it a repurposed like work vessel that you've commandeered
for your purposes? Absolutely.
A repurposed work vessel. I think it was probably, I think
it was probably used for like extremely dangerous temporary
mining on like moving smaller objects like asteroids.
But we have in the time since mostly used it for getting
around secretly. As cassette your memory has come
back. You look up, you see just the
steady bleed of the it's the early warning system telling you
that the ship will revert into real space in some short period
of time, but your pods are opens up.
You're able to sit up, you feel the whoosh of hypersleep
sickness kind of come over you, and you see your compatriots
also setting up in their respective pods.
I want you guys to introduce your characters to each other in
the audience. We can go in the order of that
general introduction at the start here, but give us your
character's name, their current class.
And anything you think that would be relevant to their
characters, or at least for us to understand who these
characters are. But before you do that, I will
note for the audience that these characters that we are playing
tonight are built from the custom character classes and
other little bits of character elements that will be included
in the campaign handbook at I believe it's the second tier of
the Outer Rim Uprising bundle. But.
You guys can go ahead. All right, so I guess that means
I start. That is me, Lawrence, Kentucky
Cherniaski. I'm going to, I'm going to zone
in on the Kentucky, not the Cherniaski, because my
Southern's better than my Russian.
But that's me. I go by Kentucky pronouns.
Are he, him? I am a union Rep.
I have skills in military training, athletics, tactics and
command. Generally I have business casual
wear on, so you'll see me looking very union reppy.
I have a patch on my side that says Hot Scab Summer, the
Molotov cocktail on it, and as a union Rep I am a champion of the
working class, skilled and organizing and leading crews.
So that is what I will often be found doing.
My character sits up from the. Cry.
It's a cryosleep pod, right? And she's got like a big wide
brimmed hat, like she's holding her hair and she places on her
head and then she sits up. You see, I also have a southern
accent, by the way, when? We get there, everybody.
You. Want one or not?
I never. Do a Southern accent, though, so
she sits up and you can see the patch on her jacket.
It's a heartbeat that says do not resuscitate.
She looks over and she's, you know, beat up and scarred and
fairly old. Tired eyes die in Maya Krishna.
Friends call me day. I'm a saboteur.
When I was younger I've done, I did a lot of things that I'm not
proud of. But the time I thought were
right. The pay made them right.
The indoctrination made them right.
But after the Palladium Fields, I saw the truth.
Those men and women I fought against, they were right.
And now I've joined the other side and I was unfortunately not
loaded with a southern accent. And I also do not use a cryopod.
I am having a my my startup sequence sitting in a chair near
the cryopods. I've been hooked up to machines.
In other company I might be a little more careful about
divulging exactly how robotic my body is, but in a group of
people who I know I am not as concerned about that I am
Steven. My pronouns are they them.
I have my classes. Synth and Synths are androids
who previously worked in labor or security but have sort of
taken their own, decided to move forward as independent beings
and often modify their body to appear more human.
I don't think I've had a lot of money to do that.
So what I am doing to rely to do to get across that idea is all
of my body is covered in pretty baggy clothes, including gloves.
And I'm wearing a mask that is like a popular mask that young
people wear who are trying to look kind of edgy.
But it has like a like a an LED sort of screen on the front that
gives facial expressions. And so it's like it actually is
hooked up really directly to me, and I can make it really respond
to my feelings. But it is one of the, I think
people who don't know me are like, is that just a guy who's
put on this mask or is that a robot?
Right. My camera is out of focus and
it's driving me nuts. No, sorry, give me one SEC.
Oh, I also didn't mention my patch.
My patch is a little robot skull that says odorant dimituant,
which basically means let them hate as long as they fear, I
believe. So that might tell you something
about Steven Battle, Steven. All right, How?
Long have you been crew mates on the s s hard times as of the
start of this current arc of your adventures.
I don't know. I feel like me and Kentucky go
way back. Like I think we're from the
same. Area you know.
Yeah, probably. And it's not Kentucky.
'Cause I'm not doing Kentucky accent, it's almost as bad as
Tennessee come at me, But I feel like a you're a labor or
security Android. Did you previously work on maybe
this ship and then when we kind of commandeered it, maybe you
joined like we all became a crew then?
Yeah, I like that idea. Well, what I'm what I'm thinking
is especially based on my back story, which the back story that
was given in this like random role was that I had a company
kind of leave the crew that was with me before to die.
And I witnessed that happen. I think it would make sense that
this ship had been kind of abandoned entirely, and I had
been set adrift for a while until you found it and were able
to repurpose it. Yeah, sounds good.
So we've we've done enough I guess to get to know each other
pretty well, but not like for a very long time.
I would say maybe like a mission or two, however long that takes
maybe maybe a couple months tops would be my assumption.
Again, me and Dave probably go way, way back, but as far as us,
you know, being a threesome, probably maybe just a couple of
months. Now again, as you sit up, you
look at each other. Fog continues to recede in your
head. Do you remember why you're here?
You remember your objective after the memory of your lost
base kind of comes into play now before the corpse found your.
Place of operations before it was blown up, you guys were
working on a job, working on setting up a job.
This job you've been contacted by representatives of the light
of the interstellar way. Now these folks are religious
doomsday cult that kind of sits here out of the fringes.
Takes advantage of a lot of the folks who get kind of caught up
with being out at the fringes, but.
They don't particularly like the corpse themselves, and they tend
to pass along secrets that make you wonder how they learned
them. And these things kind of help a
lot of the insurgents groups kind of strike in tactical
manners against these corporations out here now in
particular. They give you information on a
vessel. Now, about a year back, the
Dyson Initiative was building this this freighter, the CF
Senespera. Now rumor has it that they were
working on a experimental jump drive, something that could
shorten the distance that you needed to jump.
And therefore shortening the time that you needed to jump
from system to system in the Outer Rim.
It's a corporate venture. That sounds like a good idea,
but as a group of insurgents or rebels, this would be key to
finding ways to circumvent the corporations now.
The jump drive as of right now has not made it into widespread
productions is primarily because of the accident that occurred at
the CFS in Espera when they went out to test it.
Apparently, according to the official records that were
passed on to you by this Colt, the ship disappeared in theory,
never to be heard of again, but about a week ago.
Signals were picked up distressed beacon by the CFS and
Espera. You've been given the
coordinates so you know about where to find the ship.
Your task is simple. As far as you're concerned, you
need the win. You're sort of desperate for the
win after what happened. The thing you just survived and
this ship might have the key to your next move.
This jump drive can save you in the future if you can get it to
work, or at least the research can put you ahead of the
corporations. From the early navigation cart
charts, you know that this is some unnamed system, but the
star itself log the navigation chart, says Akronar.
As you awaken from your pods, you get up, you're looking at
each other, you're passing that hyperspace sickness that we
talked about. What do you guys do?
They sets up and she looks over a Steven with his glowy face.
Damn it, Steven, I do so hate when you wear that thing.
Would you prefer that I showed you the skeletal machinery
underneath? No, I suppose not.
I mean, this is what you said last time, A.
Little, a little bit. I'll think I wouldn't.
I find it more difficult to communicate my emotional status
without the face. See, as of right now, I am.
I'm frowning at you for complaining about the way my
face looks. I've seen many a men convey
plenty of emotion without their face attached.
Listen Steven, it is your right to wear what you want to wear.
It is in the bylaws, so this voice is killing me.
So you do. What you?
Feel is best to communicate yourself in the most appropriate
of ways. Thank you.
My smile turns bright green. See.
Look at that positive reinforcement.
So like we get up and we like get armed and ready and like I
check our like approach vector like how far are we from our
target. You head over to the cockpit
presumably, and we can assume that the s s hard times is
pretty small ship. Enough for you guys.
Maybe a little bit of cargo, but nothing super crazy.
We're kind of like kneeling down to get under stuff and like.
Yeah, as you get up to the cockpit, the first thing you
notice is that just the glaring light coming into the cockpit
now. You can see it in the distance.
The star you know you know as Akronar is sort of radiating
light into your cockpit. Now as you stare off into the
star, you get like that Vertigo Y feeling, which is probably not
too common for someone used to being in space, but the feeling
itself is familiar. But the star just burns out in
the distance, the blackest space.
It's like this orange hue as opposed to the bright burning
yellow that you've seen. And there are just sunspots that
kind of like the the black of flames flick up on the surface
of that sun. Dave, perhaps you should ask
this sun to turn off its light. Jay just looks over and opens
mouth and then closes it and then I assume this this vessel
has like AUV shield or something, right?
Sure to mind us. Just like flip the UV shield and
like lower it a little bit and I turn back and I'm like it looks
like we're getting close. Y'all someone doesn't feel crap
quite right. As you look down on the sensor
array, there are a few things. First, your sensors are going
Gaga. Just like all sorts of radiation
that's getting you see like that the the little like lights are
sort of lighting up it. This is a weird system.
You're getting gravitational anomalies that you think might
be sensor errors. It's kind of hard to tell with
how they're sort of flickering here and then just like an
intense radiation coming off of that sun, but.
You also see the ping just a short distance ahead of you, and
as you kind of you put the UV shield down, you can see it just
ahead of you. A vessel.
Now this is, it was a freightliner.
That's sort of obvious. Some corporate freighter, big
sort of looming. It's an ugly son of a bitch.
Built for, you know, efficiency in terms of like packing space
rather than anything sleek. But you can tell it's been
modified and it's been heavily modified.
There looks to be what would have been.
The cargo hold has been sort of ripped out and replaced with a
new unit. You can kind of see the the
metal that was grafted on there is like significantly less worn
than that of the rest of the ship, but the entire ship itself
is. In poor capacity, you can see
breeches in the hole. You can see where the panels on
the outside are sort of warped and bubbled and just sort of
rend open. But there is ahead of you the
Senespera when the when the lights going off and we're
getting these anomalies. Am I able to at all figure out
if they're coming from like the the solar radiation, or are
they? Do they appear to be in
different spaces in like physical space or like?
Is there any pattern to them I can discern?
It looks to be primarily solar radiation, or at least that's
the best you can interpret it with the quick glance at the
readout. I try to like.
Loop all of our sensors, sensor arrays together like Jury rigged
them together essentially to get like a clear read out of just
the ship and see if we're getting anything strange from
that to cut through the solar radiation.
Yeah, I think that's easy enough.
You're sort of blocking out the background radiation using it
to. Focus, Yeah, I'm grouping all
the sensors onto a single point and target, you know?
We were just talking about Star Trek, so you know, I believe it
is safest if I manually pilot us to the ship from this point.
But as you quickly use your sensor array, the ship does not
appear to have its reactor active.
There's no drive signature. Kind of like desperate.
It's for all intents and purposes filling dead in space.
But you are getting pings. Of life science.
It's hard to tell, especially with the even the wash of the
radiation is sort of making your sensors difficult.
But the ship itself is, you know, it's a hunk of metal.
It's not like a it's like a thin cruise line or anything like
that. So getting through the hull, the
ship, to get anything more accurate is difficult.
But you're getting, like I said, signs of life, some faint, some
strong. Doesn't really seem any rhyme or
reason to where it's at though. So days like leaned over the
console, just like, well, that's weird.
I'm getting life signs, but I'm not reading any reactor signals.
Didn't seem like they have any power.
Perhaps it is an anomaly from the solar radiation as well.
Maybe you're right. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think. Maybe Kentucky, you're the best
pilot of all of us. You might want to take the helm
and try to get us close. All right is.
That true? Is Kentucky the best pilot of
all of you? Let's.
All we do expert skill in piloting, that's true.
Yeah, I've just got robotics as my big one.
Yeah, I have. But my military training,
athletics, my expert skills are piloting and tactics and my
master skills come in. So I'm gonna start commanding
you all. No.
So, yeah, I mean, I guess I can take over the flight controls.
You. Get 2 expert skills.
Yeah, I got to listen. Listen, I am a expert of of
experts apparently. So yeah, why don't I take over
the controls? Steven why don't you continue to
monitor the with the life signs and day if you continue to try
to make sure we keep a a solid sensor with your jury rigging
there. I feel like maybe we can get
this thing close enough is my assumption and maybe avoid these
gravitational waves and whatnot and just slider on in there just
Mosey up to it and dock. So yeah, so I'm going to, I'm
going to slide into the the piloting, whatever we have
chair, station console and get her done.
I don't think this is a particularly difficult maneuver.
You probably have scanned data on one this ship too, because
you guys have been hit with your scanners.
The two, it's like sort of the general chassis that it's built
on. You know where the airlock is,
you know where it's easy enough to link up your ship, so you
guys won't have to do the space walk if you don't want.
It's just a matter of sliding in there and.
Theory. You got all the time in the
world slide on it. So do we want to just dock onto
an area of the ship or do we want to go to the airlock?
I mean, are we aware, day and Steven, of where the reactor
would be in relation to where we could possibly dock or
potentially these life signs, are we going towards him
avoiding them? What's the best place to dock
this thing? I believe we've only got the one
airlock choice, but no, I do not have any records of where the
prototype was it a prototype is. I've always been a fan of the
direct approach. All right.
Thank you, Dave. All right.
Well, yeah, we sideline up to the airlock and we'll just, you
know, dock. As you get closer.
You know the ship starts looming.
In your view it dwarfs yours by not a considerable margin, but
enough where it starts to kind of like blot out the the light
from the star in relation to your ship, but as you get
closer, your console. Lights up, get a little.
It's an SOS beacon from inside. Nope.
It's through outside of the vessel.
Then you see it. Vac suit floating just off the
vessel, A tether line stretching from either the side or the back
all the way down and hooked up onto the vessel.
Unfortunate, I'll say. It's just a bit is, is it?
Is it possible to how? How?
What part of the vessel is it coming up?
Is it near the airlock? Is it just on the way there?
How long is the tether line? Like?
Would we be able to get close to this thing to see if the person
inside is still alive? Or is it just like a dangler?
Right now it's a floater. It's floating up.
The tether line's pretty long, all things considered.
It looks to be relative to where the airlock is, so you've got
like the airlock's on one side of the ship.
And the the tether is like parallel to the airlock, but
hooked up to a different part of the ship.
So it it wouldn't divert you off your path if you wanted to go
and try and do something fun there.
But you do have scanners and you can, you know, try and do
another lifetime scan. A little more focus in this
regard. That's what I want to do.
Beep, beep, boop. Let's do a life sign scan.
Yeah. And again, doesn't it's not
particularly hard to direct to your equipment here.
Adjusting for the radiation, you get a small blip.
Unfortunate again. Well, well, I mean, does it let
me live or dead, Steven? Well, it means they are alive.
However, if they're from here, I have a feeling they are not
interested in what we are accomplishing.
The entire procedure we are attempting to execute.
It's probably simpler if we leave them where they are now.
I mean, well, so there's something going on with the
ship, right? Here's, here's my thoughts.
Just, you know, just for, for, for, for everybody here at SO,
there's something going on with the ship.
Would it not be better to bring them on board and maybe ask them
why they are floating in space as opposed to leaving this blip
of potential information out here dangling?
He does make a valid point. Very well.
I recommend that we tie them up before we release the
engagements on their suit. So do you have a environmental
suit on the ship? I I think it's pretty standard
affair to have at least bare minimum sort of space walking
suits for you guys. You know in your airlock there's
probably a respect to vac suit for at least Kentucky and Day.
Maybe, maybe not Stephen, but. I have a 0G skill, so also quick
question, does does so Stevens and Android not a robot right?
Does that mean he's partially or they they're they're partially
robotic or or partially? Humanoid.
I don't. I don't think I have any, like,
actual biological parts. OK, so you guys just walk in
space? Yeah, we're we're using alien
rules where, you know, androids are artificial humans, as
opposed to replicants, which are engineered humans.
Yeah, or. Cyborgs, which are part machine,
part human, yeah. There we go.
All right, cool. Yeah.
So I think I would be fine to just go out there, but I'm not
0G, I'm not 0G proficient, yeah. Yeah, the the cold harshness of
space isn't great on like Android interiors, but for a few
minutes you'll be fine if you put day day if you just want to
get in that vac suit and. I don't want to but just seem
right now, you know, real quick. So we're on the same page.
Before we go into this little quick pow wow, make sure we go
over everything together. Make sure we're we're good here
if we need to. Are we are we killing?
Yes. Mm hmm.
Yep, I'm on the same page. Dave points to, you know, Steve
as like that fantastic. So if this person's brought in
and they are hostile, we just boot them out the door, right?
That's that's our thoughts. Enter our groups.
Sure. Yeah.
All right. This is why I like you, Steven.
Straight into the point. It's all right.
So go get them day perfect lasso men.
Let's see so. Before day gets out, she goes up
to her locker and she's like enters the code and like bangs
on it and it pops open and she pulls out like this antique SMG
that across it says this gun kills fascists and hands it to
Kentucky. And it's like you might want to
hold on to this and then she, you know, suits up in the.
Media suit or whatever it's called the mile space jumper
suit. Is there like a tethering like?
I assume like it's it's a ship like I would have some sort of
tether that I attach to, right? You can assume.
Yeah, cool. So yeah, get suit up into the
airlock and connect the tether and then decompress the airlock.
OK, lovely. So as the airlock kind of like
dumps, the air opens the door. She gonna need to get roll to
see if you make this jump. What that roll is is how you
justify it. What you doing?
What is? What is your focus here when
you're trying to get this? Floating.
Day is like a little. She's not like elderly, but
she's a little older and she's been through it.
And so she's much more of a planner.
She's like looking at the angles.
She has some experience in 0G. She knows that like how much
force is going to be too much force because there's no inertia
that stop. So I'd like to make this as an
an intellect role because she's kind of pulling on experience.
You're. Using smarts here.
I love it. All right, so let me roll from
you. It's D100 you're looking for
under your current Intellect step.
Can I use 0G as well? Oh yeah, you can SO0G for the
uninitiated Uninitiated as a trained skill.
That means Hunter gets to add 10 to their, in this case Intellect
score. I rolled a 19.
A 19 OK, that is a success. So you push off just the right
amount, your arms outstretched, your targeting is good, you're
going to land right on this person.
But as you arc over the hull of the ship towards this floating.
Stranger, you pass out of the ship's shadow and the light of
the star hits you bright. You can feel the radiation
quickly bake your skin, but just a little bit before you're kind
of like before your natural or on the radiation like UV light
shielding on the helmet kind of kicks into place, but as you
feel that. Tinge of radiation hits your
skin. I need you to make a sanity
check for me. All ready.
Sorry today the harsh light on day we gotta.
Know I got 71. 31 All right, if you guys rolled double s, let me
know, because that's a crit. Both pass and fail.
You take two stress. And I need you to roll AD 10 for
me. 2. Two, as you pass into that
light, just that brief period of time where the light hits your
face before the UV shielding. It snaps down.
That brief portion of a second feels like an eternity.
It feels like a light is swelling through every part of
your suit, piercing into you. With a brilliant glare you feel
as if your body and hands begin to dissolve, being burnt away by
this light from the star, and you feel yourself remaining
here, body less but still present.
Then you hear the click of the shielding and your back floating
in space. Are you all right?
Yeah, I might need some new eyebrows, but.
I have a few. After a few seconds, land and
you latch yourself on, you've grabbed this person.
Like I said, they're in a back suit of their own.
It's you've seen it before. This is one of like the
corporate Brandon, you know, Dyson initiative back suits.
It's got the branding on it and whatnot.
It looks pretty beat up, all things considered.
And it's definitely like beaded, you know, as if the Sun had been
kind of like casting on it for a long period of time.
But you have them. What do you do?
I grab them by like there. I assume there's like a collar,
probably area right here. I knock on the helmet a little
bit. Can I see into the helmet or is
it? Is it kind of like?
They have their own UV like protection, kind of flick it
over so it's a reflective surface you see yourself in
their face. So I'm going to like one hand
and the other one on my tether, and I'm going to like pull in on
my tether a little bit and just fly back towards the opposite
way or float back. I guess it'd be like a.
Very normal amount of force, you know.
Assuming you unhook their own tether.
Is how they're hooked up, would it?
You know what? Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and
unhook their tether. OK.
You can assume the tether setup is going to be similar to yours.
It's probably like a carabiner. Yeah, it's like a double lock
carabiner that I have to twist and squeeze, you know?
That's right, I have a carabiner tattoo.
This is where we get the real carabiner knowledge.
It's a double action carabiner as well and yeah, and I like
pull towards the towards our ship, towards the hard times.
You reel yourself back in in short order using, you know, the
internship, the pole, and you're back in the airlock, you hear?
Like. The snap hiss as it cycles the
air and the as the door opens, letting you back with into the
hard Times Now laden with stranger.
I want to immediately walk out of the airlock and is there a
like a window on the airlock door?
Yeah, probably. I want to immediately walk in
and close the door behind me. So are they?
Do you leave the person in there?
I think so. OK, so you've walked in.
The window down you've laid the person on the ground and you
walk in equals. Yeah, I walk in, close the door,
I take the helmet, I come, I take the thing off.
I'm like, well, I got him and I I reach for my my gun, you know?
Oh yeah, yeah, I hang it back. I put the strap over.
I hang it. Very familiar, you know, very
former, you know, Corporal, military scum.
Well, I mean, let's look. Which one of us is to be the
good cop? Well, I think your social skills
are so unparalleled that you should be the one to do it.
Very well. Perfect now after you.
Yeah, I'm going to lead the way into the OR.
I'm going to enter the airlock whether or not they come with
me. Very confidently.
So are we actually going to go into the airlock with this
person or are we going to talk through the door?
To the airlock, the one person who, if we need to jump into
space and grab them has the potential for living, go talk to
them. And then I'll walk through the
window with my gun. So.
Yeah, Steven completely agrees. That makes perfect sense.
So Steven, you cycle the airlock, or at least a door, you
know, walking in the door shots behind you, the individual on
the floor. Hasn't moved from where they
were dropped. Now that they're sort of laying
there outside of the space, you do see like a name tag, kind of
like on where their breast would be.
It just lists presumably their last name, just Roman.
The UV shield is still down on their helmet and but they're
perfectly just like laying in the ground.
Can I get you some coffee or something else to drink?
You get no response. I'm going to go at looking for
the latches on the helmet I I'm figuring the UV shielding is
probably doesn't have an external adjustment so I'm just
going to take it off like I'm headed to find the latches and
unlatch it. Easy enough.
Unscrew the helmet and pull it off, and as you lift it you see
the face of a woman. So now she is fair skinned.
You can tell, but her skin is like, severely sunburned.
And you can see, especially as you remove the helmet, it's like
it stops like right at her neck, where the shadow would kind of
be from the collar. So her face is like, you know,
beet red. It's not quite blistering, but
it is quite sunburned. She has like a black hair pulled
back into a ponytail that's kind of put there.
Her eyes are shut. Doesn't take any notice of you
having pulled the helmet off. And the only thing you can see,
the only sign of life is just a slight quiver of her lip.
I do not believe she's going to be very useful for answering
questions. You smack smack her a little
bit. I'm going to, like, take her by
the shoulders and just kind of like.
Shake her a little bit. Not like slamming her head to
anything, but just like a hello hello.
Like you shake a baby, Yeah. So can you shake her like that?
Then you notice the quivering of her lip is doesn't like really
increase, but you take a little bit more feature to it.
It's almost as if she's whispering.
Just like a. Small movement and.
I'll lean forward and and turn up my my audio sensors.
Simple, you hear her saying. A silly.
Find facility.
He knows what to do. Find facility.
Facility. Well, we are looking for
something silly according to this person.
Find the silly. I like I hit the intern columns
like Are you sure it wasn't a name like the silly or something
like that? No, I'm pretty sure she said the
silly. OK, well, I'm not in there, so.
What? What?
What's wrong with her day when you were out there?
I mean, 'cause you got a little sunburn on you as well, right?
You got a little something, something.
Just her crispy eyebrows, you know?
Yeah. I mean, it's hot out and that
sounds bright. It's hot.
Yeah, that's it. Nothing weird.
Nothing. No reason she's like this just
from being out there. I mean, I've been feeling weird
since we got in this system. Do we think the sun has some
kind of like Ginjutu or something?
Or like what? I believe you might be the
silly. All right.
Well, I mean. I assume we have some sort of
like we didn't like get the layout of the ship.
Is there some sort of like cargo hold space That means it was a
mining ship, right? So there's got to be some kind
of hold. Yeah, like.
It's the more utility ship than like a cargo freaker, but you
would have enough room through its previous function or your
own modifications to hold at least a little bit of cargo.
I was thinking we leave her in the airlock, but we leave some
supplies like some some rations in some water.
Well, it's gonna be hard when we use the airlock to leave, you
know? I mean, I guess we're gonna
dock. So it won't be that bad though.
Or yeah, it. Won't be bad.
Well, that seems fine. We can.
We can clearly lock it so that she can't get into the airlock,
correct? So like, basically she's just a
prisoner in the airlock. Can we lock the airlock so she
can't also, like, leave? I'm sure someone with computers
could set up some kind. Between exit routine, yes, I can
attempt to override the normal manual engagement on the other
side of the airlock. OK, so Long story short, we're
turning the airlock into a low prison cell, but we will be able
to access the airlock if we need it.
We can do that. Steven, you got that correct.
I hope so. All right, let's go.
Let's go find the silly. Let's lock her up, maybe throw
our protein bar or something and get the fuck out of here.
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and and grab those supplies while
everyone else is getting their their weapons and stuff and toss
those in there and then are we landing?
Are we plugging in? Yeah, we're going to, we're
going to slide in there, Yeah. You.
Guys are pretty close to the ship.
Easy enough just to do a formal docking procedure, no?
The only tricky. Heap it here and.
For experienced pilots, it's not even that really tricky.
Only your ship currently has, like the the auto dock sequence
activated. Usually you have like a linked
up bit of communication for them to kind of like click together,
but it's just a little bit more finer maneuver maneuver
maneuvers and you kind of hear like the as the ship locked
locks together putting your your airlocks off each other.
All right, wonderful. We have used our maneuverment
and docked here, so why don't we maneuver ourselves into the ship
here? I guess we're so Vasily and the
reactor. That's what we're looking for,
right? Well, I don't know that we are
necessarily looking for the silly.
That is what she was looking for.
You're. Looking for the the jump drive
technology? The reactor.
Well, I I just have a feeling if some random traumatized person
is floating in space telling us to find something, it might help
us if we also encounter something that might traumatize
us. To know what would have helped
her is my opinion, but. You know, we shall see, I
suppose. Interesting.
I normally do not make a habit of taking advice from people who
are unconscious. Well, I mean, I guess you need
consciousness, but that's fine. Excuse me?
Oh, no, it's good. We're we're all good.
All right. So day do you lead in the way?
Yeah, days all kid, all kitted up, you know, she unloaded,
unloaded all the stuff in her locker, you know, and got her
SMG around like a leather cord. Can we can we check and see what
the like quality of life is in the ship with no reactor on
before we step off the ship our ship?
No, as you get up, you realize. Ship doesn't have much in the
way of power going on at the moment.
Damn it. I guess we're putting the
fucking suits on. There was signs of life that
tells you anything if you've had the the skins, but you do know
that the hull has been cut into in some regard, so whatever
caution you think is reasonable. So the two people who breathe in
air, I guess are going to find the jumpsuits the like the EDA
suits. And the one person who doesn't
probably doesn't need one, I assume.
Well, we, yeah, we talked about maybe needing it in case it gets
really cold, but I might be OK inside the ship.
Well. We have that girl's jumpsuit, so
I was. Going to say we have a third
suit. If we really need it, why don't
we we use the? The the our suits.
And Steven, you can take the girl suit.
And so worst case scenario we could do a whole, you know, your
whole nose prisoner like situation, if you know what I
mean. Very well.
And I am going to do that. I'm going to, I'm going to take
the the oversuit off of our unconscious guest.
What did it say again? Was it Rowan?
What did it say? Roman.
Roman.
Yeah, ROMAHN, cool. It is worth noting that back
suits, if I remember correctly, have armor .5 that you can note
on your character sheet OK and as a result they run the risk of
getting torn to shit if you get attacked.
So be warned. So they have armor, but they
can't get torn up, Yeah. Yeah.
My cat, my business casual wear that I have on right now.
It's kind of like an athleisure situation.
Just a real quick touching on mechanics.
Armor in one E mothership is sort of this ever present thing
you guys need to be looking out for.
If you take damage and it is less than your armor point value
then you kind of shark off the damage.
But if you take that is more than your armor, your armor is
kind of like ripped and sundered.
And you subtract that from the damage, but your armor's kind of
just like after that. So I love.
I love that. It's not just like plain.
It's not just soak and then you always have it.
It's like soak until it breaks and then it's gone.
I freaking. I love that.
It's so good. No.
So you're in your air lock. You're staring at the other air
lock door. You've now cycled your door at
the very least. And you go to hit there the
bullet button on the outside, then it latches their torrent
and you could like that, hit the button and fuck all happens.
Oh, we'll. Go There does not seem to be
power to the store at the moment.
Right. All right.
I wanna I wanna just break it. I this is my my pitch is that an
important component of mechanical repair is knowing how
things break. So I'm thinking I can
potentially use some like Precision Force to try to snap
the the things holding this door together and open it up.
You're not under any particular time pressure, unless you want
to do this in a quick manner. Otherwise, well, that's just
something you can do. You have the the expertise and
the knowledge to do so. So tell us.
Describe it. How do you, how do you break the
store? Well I'm thinking if it's an
airlock door that is one of the like kind of rolling in from the
side ones and attaching. Then it will have like a manual
override that would normally be on the other side.
And on this side, we would need to be able to like break the
sections where it is like sealed, like where it's like
clamping down and and holding it in place.
So I'm trying to just like basically break the external
clamps so that I can push the door, like roll it back over to
the side, which would be kind of hard to do unless you're just
like very precise up against the door.
All right. So you know the insurance and
outs. Or.
You quickly you assess the door in a quick and you hear.
The door opens, the pressure between the two rooms equalizes.
So at first you learn one thing, it's eminent or immediately
obvious and that is that there is atmosphere in the ship.
Great. The pressure does equalize in
your favor, so the air gushes into the room, if that makes
sense. But before you lies there,
airlock as you look in, seemingly undamaged.
Like you said, it's very obviously.
It doesn't have power in there. Besides the briefest of sort of
like emergency bits, there's like a little like flashy LED
that kind of hits, but the rest of the door doesn't appear to
like a standard function. But the room itself is a pretty
standard airlock. It looks very similar to the one
you were currently standing in. You see just a rack of.
The Dyson uniforms and back suits that are kind of shoved up
in lockers on like a series of benches that kind of sit there
and there is a door beyond the airlock, presumably entering the
rest of the ship. I before we leave, I want to do
what we've talked about, which is that I'm going to like try to
tap into the computers of our ship and have the airlock stay
sealed, even like against manual overrides, until I sort of like
return a password to it in case this person on the other side.
Unless unless this person knows how to break them the way I do,
I suppose, and it's at least just a deterrent to keep them in
one place. Do you tell your other crew
members? The pass already said, well,
what I'm thinking is to make it even worse, I'm thinking it has
to like connect physically to like I have like a a key in my
finger that has to be like tapped into the machine itself
because I can like pop it open. Lovely.
Why? And we're completely unaware of
this. No, no, this is part of the
plan. This is what was suggested was
that I would lock it up, but the only way for the only way for
that to be locked is if we have some kind of key.
So it's going to be makes sense, it's going to be my hand so.
Show me. Show me the hand, all right.
Yeah, I'll share a glance today. We have a knowing look of well,
at least that's coming back my face.
The LED's on my face flashed to a very flat line.
That was non verbal communication.
I do not need to hear, to see. Good job, Steven.
That's a nice way to get that done.
We appreciate that greatly. Why don't we, why don't we just
get her done? Let's just move.
Let's continue to move forward. So as you you, you're currently
in there airlock locking your airlock.
Again, while there is atmosphere, there is no life
support systems active in terms of like artificial gravity.
So you're able to, you've got back suits on, you presumably
have mag boots kind of associated with those back
suits. You can kind of lock yourself
down onto the floor. But note that things are a
little floaty at the moment. However, again, you found
yourself in the airlock. The door is beyond.
You can dig around a little bit. What do you guys want to do?
I'm going straight through a clump, clump, clump, No concern.
Clump. Clump walk over to the door
again. This one has no power.
You look, you see the console next to.
It doesn't appear to have power, but.
It's part of the console. There there's a little COM unit
you can see. The screen of the COM unit is
cracked, but you can see little shreds of blinking light as if
it's active. Currently I'm tapping in.
Yeah. Beep.
Bop Boop. A little bit tap into the com
head, you hear it's just a loop. And it's kind of hard to
discern. It's almost as if you're
listening to layered whispers and bones voices one over the
top of each other, just forming A cacophony.
It's hard to make out anything that's really going on outside
of the rise of noise. And underneath it all is just
this, this bassy hum that is an unpleasant sound.
Let me try to isolate it. I had to get up and access
terminal and I'm going to try to like isolate the bass that back
that hum and crank it up above the other noise a little bit as
to better discern it. And again you pick it up and the
bass is pulsing like a. And it's you know it's you're
you kind of control the volume so it's hard to say it's like
shaking you but you would imagine if you had a big
subwoofer it would be you could sample this and make music off
of it but as you are listening to the hum you swear you feel it
too. Like you said, you didn't turn
it loud enough, but. It reverberates through the deck
I. Don't know, maybe it's some
background noise from the radiation picking up.
We're really close to the sun and might have been here for a
while. It is making me uncomfortable.
I would like to turn it off. I second that and I I flip it
off. Easy enough.
Sound goes away, but the hum, the vibrations in your feet
remain. Feel the pulse.
It's not particularly loud, it's just noticeable though.
Now let's work on getting the store open.
Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep. For just for just the briefest
of seconds, because I don't have 0G and I'm not an Android.
I just kind of let myself float like one of those.
Like wacky arm waving inflatable wacky tube man for just a
second. And then and then I just get
serious again and we can move on.
So Steven, we are we we breaking this one too or what are we
doing? Let's get, let's get on.
Let's get on to getting on. I'm happy to do so.
Is there a way to do without breaking it?
Well, I can try. I can try something.
How? You're I'm more.
The jury rigor than the computer person or the break things open
person. So.
I'm trying to I have my lock pick set and I can try to fiddle
with the locking mechanism from this side and open it up.
Are you planning to repurpose the ship for another use?
Hey. Sometimes I have a door closed
behind you, you know. Yeah, can I just hit the open
button and see if it opens? Oh, we decided already It
doesn't have power. That's right.
Yeah. Fucking Damon.
Yeah, great smash. I'm breaking this one too.
Yeah. I like they has her like lock
pick, like high end lock pick set in hand and she's like all
right. Getting ready to open it.
Like I'll kneel down. Ready to do something.
And suddenly the door just like blasts open.
All right, good job, Steven. Let's.
All right. You're welcome.
Yeah. And this door is like
compromised now. Like, it's like you, you broke
both sides of the airlock. It's yeah we're done we're we're
all right. All right.
Anyway, so forward forward
margin there and we we just progress into the next room.
So what you walk into is it's function's pretty obvious this
is a cargo deck. You find this.
It's a cavernous corridor that forms the spine of the vessel.
You see on the far side, there's like a bulkhead window looking
out facing the sun, the light of that star just kind of streaming
in and casting itself along the far wall.
Now it is hot in here. You can tell the air is stale,
even though you're not breathing it.
You still have your helmets on as far as I'm aware.
And the heat? You can feel it through your
suit. Get my UV shield.
The moment I see sunlight, I remember.
I'm just like. Yeah, and it's coming through
like a little bulkhead window. So it's not like it's like
filling the room. It's enough to illuminate the
space. But but you put your quick UV
shielding on and you follow the beam of light and you look to
where it meets the wall. That's where you see it.
It's the tableau the human shadow just brought into the
bulkhead from the light of that star.
I need all three of you to make a fear save for me.
Wonderful. I I am, actually what I'm seeing
is. I'm good at fear, insanity
versus other people. Oh my too.
Is pretty good. Yeah.
So.
So it's fear, correct? I got a 21 I.
Also got a 21 hey. I failed.
Oh, I succeeded. We met in the middle.
Same amount of fear. Did not have a dice roller up.
So this is my first mothership dice roll, so I'm just rolling
D100 and have to get less than my FEAR save which is a 44
correct? Correct.
And I don't have anything to go with it and I failed.
Those of you that failed, just take one stress.
You can react to the situation however you see fit, but you've
seen that. It's like a shadow just burnt
into the wall, but you can very clearly see where the limbs and
the hands were. The body kind of filled with
that light of the sun. No AM.
I getting from from what's on the wall am I getting like burn
mark or am I getting that the everything around it was blasted
with light but that wasn't like am I seeing something like in
the negative or in the? So that's a good point.
It's the the negative you see. It's like the person was
blocking the light and you see like the shadow of their form on
the wall and the rest of it is sort of bleached a little bit
different color. I'm like, Dalek has like heart
palpitations, you know, she's having like a flashback to like
times of war, you know, and you've.
Seen what's? On.
What? You you were in that sun.
You've been I? Know, But she's thinking about
the atomic, like the leftovers of atomic weaponry she's seen in
campaigns in the past. And I I'm kind of, you know,
walking between everyone and I see it.
I do the kind of fucking God damn it, fuck is that.
I believe we should stay out of the sun.
You know what? That's a good, that's a that's a
that's a darn good idea there, Steven.
What is God fuck, is there anything left?
Is it all completely? Is there ash on the ground?
Is there anything over there? Well, you see that form of the
body against wall there, you don't see the corresponding
body. It's just kind of the shadow
burped into it. What you do see on the ground,
it's a pulse rifle. It's kind of laying there.
There are spent like shell casings, kind of like cascading
around it and you can kind of like start to piece together a
scene. Here there is a thin trail of
blood. It's kind of on the ground.
It's you follow it with your eyes and it leads right back
into that airlock you just kind of entered through.
You can see. That the airlock itself, now
that you're on the inside looking at it, has been
basically compromised in terms of the seal.
So on the interior they're bolt holes that kind of a cascade up
the wall, presumably from the pulse rifle that lies on your
feet. And you see now that you've kind
of turned around and you're looking at it sprayed just
adjacent to the airblock, you know, with.
Presumably some spray paint or something like that.
But it kind of it's big, it's erratic, it's all over the
walls. It says feed Paul PAHL.
Feed. Yeah, feed, Paul.
We got a. Fine Vasilian feed, Paul.
There's a lot of people don't know what to do on this ship and
we haven't really seen anybody. Is that how you spell
Pennsylvania? That's not how you spell Roman
either, but it's on that jacket. There are many ways to spell
many names. I believe we should keep moving.
I ain't. I ain't getting near near that
Jackson Pollock over there. Why don't you grab that pulse
rifle there for me? Does that reference hold up?
Who? Oh, it's just this person I knew
back home. They also were blasted to
nothing by the core because all core are bad.
But could you just grab that pulse rifle?
I am also susceptible to the dangers of radiation.
I just don't want to go near the grill sheet on the wall.
And neither do I. Why do you believe that I
should? I go pick up the pulse rifle.
As you walk over here, here, your boots on the bulkhead, you
know there's there's atmosphere in here, so sound does carry and
you get a little closer to the, you know, burnt shadow on the
wall. The pulse rifle isn't in the
light itself To slowly reach down and grab the pulse rifle.
Pick it up, it's yours. Yeah, I'll do that and I'll back
away cuz I was scared of it and and then we can move on.
No, as you you can check it real quick.
It's caught a clip in it cuz you could like pull that out.
You can see it's mostly like empty.
You got two shots with this thing.
In terms of like mechanics, so you can do 2 bursts with the
pulse rifle before the clip is out.
Each burst does 3D. Ten damage does.
The pulse rifle have like a clip situation or is it like a
magazine situation? Oh.
Magazine, because I know guns, so it's magazine, But as you you
look at it, you pull it out, you see it's got a little bit of
ammo left. You slick it back in.
The ship is rocked. You feel the heat of a solar
storm. It vibrates and rolls over the
ship. While the three of you are
standing here, the light coming from that bulkhead just sort of
intensifies as the radiation emanating from that sun kind of
like rolls over the ship. That was like an earthquake, but
you're in space as a kind of rock set.
Space quake. Space quake and you hear it.
It's coming in over your your suits like microphone system,
but it carries from in the ship this guttural scream that's
like, ah, just echoing down that corridor that makes through the
center of the ship accompanied by that.
Tearing of metal, just like. Maybe that is Paul.
Again, all of you, I need you to make fear saves.
No, I don't wanna. OOP failure 74.
Lovely. Lovely.
I got 42 which is both of the
answer and a success. Success.
I had 19 and I failed. Those of you that failed just
take a stress and again you can respond accordingly.
So the ship is rocking you. You just picked up this pulse
rifle. It's you.
You've been shook and coming in over the speakers.
There's this eerie scream and the tearing of metal
accompanying where that kind of. Bouncing down the hallway from
the the, you know, you guys are kind of in a long corridor
effectively. Well, goody, let's get the hell
out of here. I believe we should move much
faster. We're looking for them.
Let's go. So Yep.
Yep. Yep.
All right, Paul. Looking about the ship, you have
a couple of directions. 1. You can go down that hallway
towards where that noise just came from.
Otherwise you can go what's effectively to your left.
It is a cardinal E You guys know the layout of the ship in some
regard. One can imagine that the Cockpit
or command module is going to be up in that direction.
Yeah, we both, we all failed our fear check.
So I think our only choice is to turn around.
I think we're. Going to the the command neck.
I passed it, so I feel like I keep, I keep my cool a little
bit this time and then yeah, I just, you know, so I'll start.
Yeah, yeah. So go, go left, left, left day,
lead the way. Come on.
And I just Marshall everybody like in that direction.
Kind of get everyone to get back in and let's go.
We go. Yeah, clump.
Whatever. I.
Whenever I was alone on the mining ship, I would often
fantasize about the arrival of monsters.
I do not want that anymore at all.
Oh honey, if there are people here, they're already monsters.
And we look ahead. As you.
Make your way down the corridor again.
There's no emergency lights here.
It's really only the light kind of cast from that bulkhead
window behind you. Now that's kind of illuminating
the space. Or maybe even your shoots have
little lights here too. But this is a cargo vessel.
She tilt, Harry. It's not like prettied up.
The walls are similar to your own ship.
They're kind of just made of tubes, piping and shit that's
used to kind of run the ship here.
The corridor is pretty short in this direction.
Maybe a quick dodge and a turn before you find yourself at the
door of the command module. Is it closed?
The door is closed, yes. I hit the button to open it.
You reach forward, you hit the button.
This one works. You hear the boop?
Small miracles. The door like moves a couple of
inches and stops. I got this.
I'm going to push it. Are you kidding?
It scrapes across the frame and you can see that the door frame
itself is kind of warped and bent with the the rest of the
ship and it's you're able to kind of push it open enough to
kind of get in into the room. Just try not to break it this
one, Steven. I did not break it, but that was
a very loud creaking sound all. Right.
It's probably not all right. So we we way into the command
center. Yeah, just move.
Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.
Quick, you walk in now in this command module.
It's a pretty familiar setup. Here you've got this.
The observation window that kind of like lays out the front, this
command module is bigger than yours.
This is a it's a freighter. And so the stations are here for
a number of people to sort of crew it.
One can imagine that the the ship itself in total probably
carries a crew of like 20 or so, give or take.
And maybe 5-6, seven of them are the ones who run operations
within the the cockpit itself. So you have like the command
share, you have like a navigation area, you have
somebody who could do like communications.
So those are all kind of spread out in the.
Sorry, I had a quick jolt there. So like I said, the command
chair sitting in the center, everything else is kind of
spread out around it. Think Star Trek.
That's a good, funny comparison. But as you walk in, you see the
mess, the observation window, you know, that sort of dominates
the view out in front. The ship has turned in such a
way where the light isn't quite jutting in.
You can see the way that the angle is at, that it is
illuminating like a good chunk of the room, just not like the
door you're. Entering through immediately.
Damn. But the observation window is
cracked. You can see it spider web from
some internal blow that hit the window but didn't shatter it
thankfully. Goody.
Now the rest of the room is not in much better shape.
The light coming in from that window sort of illuminates A
horrific scene. There's smashed consoles, torn
chairs strewn about. You see.
More human shadows arch into the rear bulkhead and accompanying
that, accompanying them, bloody hand and footprints everywhere.
And I don't want. Are there any terminals that I
can get to without walking directly into the light?
Yeah, most of them are smashed though.
That might still be accessible, but that's going to be pretty
difficult to kind of get anything out of this.
But if you have the time, you might be able to do it.
But I said. Yeah, I was going to ask, is
there are there any, does it look like this crew had any
robots who were active in this room?
Like if I were to try to find like something to recover
memories from. Nothing immediately obvious.
In this section, there might have been androids or proper
robots elsewhere, but they're not appear to be any, you know,
currently in the the command module here.
But like I said, you see those human shadows burnt into the
bulkhead, you know, currently cast in the light of the sun,
and there's just spattered blood sort of everywhere accompanying
them hand and footprints. Stem from where those bodies
were burnt, but they kind of mark the floors, the walls, and
as you look up the ceiling, which has been twisted and
sundered, you can see like a giant Terranet where the ship
took damage enough to see the internals.
Kind of like sneaking up into the darkness.
Yeah. Now there's a command chair.
Sitting in the center of the room, there are the smashed
consoles all over the place. What do you?
Guys, do I? Since all the consoles are
smashed, I I think perhaps we should leave.
Now. Does the does the command chair
have any? I mean is it just a chair or is
there any control modules attached to it?
You walk up to it. Yes.
We have our UV shielding on. It does the Thankfully the light
of the star doesn't quite cascade over that portion.
Like it's mostly like the the front near where the view screen
is, and that like it's casting onto the bulkhead which would be
your left as you walk in. But the client sure is like
sitting right in the center, so it avoids the direction line of
the light there. But as you walk up day, you.
Cross in front of the chair, looking down at the console.
You see everything, of course, spattered in blood.
You see it slumped in the chair. It's corpse.
It's headless, lashed with micro cables that apparently like
adhering it to the chair. The things that must have been
torn out of walls, like components that are wrapped
around their arms, holding them in place on their where their
head once was, lies the stump of a neck.
You can almost see the bite mark scourge into that stump.
I need you to make a sanity save for me.
You think they're OK? Yeah, they're OK.
Everything's fine. Yes, I got 12.
You're 12, OK? So how do you push past this?
So as you see. This corpse lying there headless
blood kind of everywhere. You know, I feel like for the
most part, like I've seen Day has seen some shit, you know?
So, like, while this is upsetting and inhuman, like it's
like, you know, I was there. The Palladium fields, you know,
nothing really quite compares to that.
Yeah, I I I turn to my my comrades.
I'm like, I don't think y'all want to see this.
It's pretty bad. Bad.
Bad in a different way than the sun.
The sun's burning. Yeah, bad in a different way
than the sun. Bad in the headless corpse with
cables wrapped around it type of way.
And what appear to be teeth marks type of way.
Yeah, I'm OK without that. Yeah, I think you'll be OK
without it. So is.
There anything else up there? Is there access to to, to
anything that we might be able to to use at all?
Yeah, sorry. Was there any like access ports
or anything that was like? No you can.
So outside of the the outside of the missing head, this person's
body is relatively intact, so you can do what you will if you
want to do a little bit of like searching or whatnot, but.
Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna search them for sure.
Yeah, other than that, the captain does appear to be
sitting in front of like a like a navigation terminal.
Effectively that was part of the normal display that is on and
blinking. So there is a little bit of
power to that and it's not smashed.
That's sort of like the significant thing.
That's the best part, yeah. I would, I would happily while
while you're searching. I would sort of like blinder
blinders. Like move over there and try to
try to tap into the navigation systems and see where they came
from right now. I pull the body off the chair.
I'm like don't look over here and I set it on the ground and I
start searching it while you access the.
Terminal. Yeah, I think in in my mind
right now I'm I'm trying to figure out whether whatever this
thing is that could have done this would have been related to
the sun or if they maybe brought it.
So I'm wondering if their their their path up to now in
navigation is going to give us any hints as to what they were
carrying. Sure, we'll do the body first.
No. As I said, we'll do the body
first. Cool.
Day is your sort of pull this over and looking for?
Clues. No, you see, they have their
uniform on. It has the name, it's Mekel.
MEKEL kind of written across it. You can tell that the person was
like fairly well built. It was.
It's a body of a woman for sure. But they were muscular and they
must have been, you know, approaching 50, give or take.
But. There's a couple of things you
notice as you quickly like push the body down and.
They have no head. Do a quick pocket.
They have no head one. You see a small pin just
adjacent to their name tag, and it's the symbol of the light of
the interstellar way. That's sort of you recognize it
because you've dealt with them in the past.
That's kind of like pinned to their chest.
Lots. You hired us for this job,
right? They sent us here.
They didn't hire us, but they gave us the rumor.
Now tucked in her pocket, now spattered and saturated with
blood, you pull it out and it's a piece of like, flimsy or
paper. It's a star chart.
In particular, it's a Akronar star chart, revealing a network
of expertly potted jump routes through the area.
Now, as you look at it, you've been in space.
You recognize. This the map.
Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you within this current
context without some further study and you see a number of
unknown destinations marked with cryptic symbols.
I turn back and I explain what I found and I hold up the pen.
I was like, what the fuck do y'all make of that?
I have a cynical response. And it is that perhaps we are
not the first ones sent here in search of a an object in this
area. Why would they have sent us
here? To find something created by the
corpus if they they were the ones here?
I have a cynical reply. Well, now without cynicism.
She's still the the captain's wearing a a crew suit, right?
Is there, there's a patch for the suit and everything.
So I pull out a laser cutter shaped laser pointer and I will
laser point towards like the patches and stuff and say if you
look close between the bot Marks and all that stuff that I can
see only. A little bit at a distance so as
not to get the full effect of the gore on my sanity.
It looks as if she is still wearing a crew suit, so could it
possibly be that she was a plant or a bug, as opposed to the
entire group being sent here previously by our rumor mongers?
Well, Steven, what do you find on that?
They're a terminal. Let's see.
The display, as you kind of like interfacing with it or looking
at it, currently reads ion thrusters primed, awaiting
handshake from the engine compartment.
They were preparing for a jump. Now you can see coordinates that
are sort of locked in and with a quick sort of, you know,
navigation calculations in your head.
It appears that they were jumping into the core of the
star. Can I get a timeline on that?
Like, do I know how long ago that was primed?
So that was primed according to the computer log a week ago,
give or take. But you see in the computer log
that the. Date code that it is using is
not correct. How not correct is the date
code? About a year off in which?
Previous so it it happened. It would have happened about a
year ago minus a week. Yeah, there we go.
I It appears this ship has been here for a very long time.
Longer than we expected. What about the blood?
Is it, does it a blood a year old?
I mean, it's organic. Is it?
Does it look fresh? Is it basically just like
leftover rusty looking bits at this?
What is it? How fresh is the body even?
How familiar are you with decomposition and?
Enough. That's what we called.
God damn. They were, I'd have perhaps not
mentioned the most important part, which is that they appear
to have been diving into the sun.
So this ship has been. Here for a year, but primed to
jump in the sun last week. I suppose we are potentially
jumping to conclusions the. Computer itself could have an
error, and if they had truly been here for a year, that draws
into question Roman, who we found outside of the ship, as
well as, as mentioned the fresher blood.
It is possible that the computer itself is just experiencing a
bug. Do we know how old this ship is
at all? It's a newer drive, right?
Like could the entire ship have just been reset like a microwave
and it just went back to 0? In the context of, it is a year
old plus it is a week as in its internal clock just got reset as
opposed to somehow time jumped or something like that.
Is that is Steven? Is that a possibility?
It's a possibility. I am not sure that this line of
questioning has will bear much fruit for us right now.
I what I'm wondering is. Or whether they were attempting
to destroy the ship because of something inside of it.
Stephen. Can you figure out where that
drive is? This is for navigation, I don't
believe so. On that note, as the I don't
believe so sort of hangs in the air or any of you can respond in
kind, you hear noise. It's like a.
Another moan, like a echoes into the space.
It's. Followed by a second.
And a third you hear the creak of metal coming from above your
heads. You see in the sundered space
the components reaching out from the darkness, the hand.
Grasps onto the bulkhead and begins.
You can feel it pull itself forward.
Up above us, above you. Are they feeling sighted?
Broken and like torn apart, you can see the components in there
and the hand reaches out from the darkness.
From like, inside of the machinery?
Yeah, and you can. See.
The muscles tense as it begins to pull itself forward.
What do you? Do run.
Let's run. That place?
Yep. I I have to say, I am beginning
to wonder if the drive is here at all.
Perhaps we should go. Yeah.
Let's get the fuck out of here, at least.
As the three of you turn to run, you hear the thump 123IN short
order. And you look.
I do for sure. All right.
So as you're turning tails, Steven, you take a look back and
you see the humanoid. Three creatures standing there.
They're sort of bent and twisted.
They wear shredded uniforms. Their skin is like charcoal.
It's dark, it's burnt, it's blistered, Their faces, all
skull with how the skin has been sort of sagging and turning
inward on them. Their teeth are bared as if
their lips are burnt away. Their eyes are sunken in the
Hollow and they are moving towards you fast.
The gun? Oh man.
What? Do you guys, do you have but a
second the the three of you are about to cross through that
threshold? This cause the command module
isn't very big. The door is currently forced
open and kind of jammed in space.
You have the cargo holds ahead of you as you're turning to run
in there. They're close behind you and
moving just about the same speed you are, if not a little
quicker. The gun, Kentucky.
The gun. I'm not the only one with the
gun, but yes, I guess I can turn and fire.
Can we slam that door shut behind us at all or we just
booking it? You can certainly try.
Fuck. I'm not very strong, so I'm not
going to go close the door. I can try.
We we force it open. So it's going to be a second
probably. But I can.
I can try to push it back. Can I try turning and shoot?
Well, Hey, yeah, go for it, Ryan.
No, both like if Steven's grabbing the door and closing it
like as it's closing can I just like fire to try to slow him
down and same day same so. We've entered sort of combat
here, but combat and mothership, the way it's set up in the base
game is not in terms of like a. Defined set order.
We're doing Spotlight initiative here, so I'm gonna describe the
scene. You guys describe how you want
to react, which we've basically been doing here, and then we
play it out with any roles that we see it fit.
Now you have these three creatures, They're gonna act
effectively as one entity as they begin to shift and move
towards you. You can turn, the two of you can
fire and Steven can try and shut the airlock door.
I need the two of you that are firing or to be combat checks as
you fire into this crowd here a Steven.
I need a strength check as you try and pull the door shut.
If you fail to pull the door, the three of them are going to
be calling and ripping at you regardless of what.
Whether or not the other two are successful at their combat
checks. Do we think my mechanical repair
ability applies here or I also have industrial?
Justify it for me. Well, mechanical repair, again,
we're dealing with a broken piece of machinery, so I've got
that there. I bring up industrial equipment
just because in general, like I'm moving a big piece of metal.
I don't think the skills stack and at least that pleasant of a
manner. You got an expert skill at 15?
Go ahead. OK.
Let's do the the door first so we can talk about the the
gunshots, OK? I'm rolling trying to get under
61 and I got 93 so it did not matter.
Fail. All right, it's.
Stuck. Lovely.
We'll talk about that in a second.
How about the guns? What are you guys doing?
I rolled a 36 for my combat, so I succeeded, and then I rolled a
19 for damage. How about Kentucky?
So I rolled a 13 for my combat and my combat is 32 + I.
So I mean not that it matters that succeeded, but I also have
tactics and military training and I assume firing and
directing other people where to fire and stuff like that might
come into account for all of that.
Yeah, but that helps. And as far as and then as far as
pulse rifle goes, let me. The pulse rifle IS3D10 and
remember you only have basically two shots with this, so 2
bursts. So one burst would be 3D, so it
would just be two D 10 then is each D10A burst or is it?
Like no you do twice. You can do 3D ten twice,
assuming you can shoot another round.
So just know you you have one more use of this.
That's kind of it. Cool.
OK, OK, so I did a total of 15 damage.
All right, so both of you fire shots in there.
You see, as Steven is trying to grasp the door and pulling it
shut, the door's jammed. It's stuck on the thing that you
had forced it open. And you see it three sets of
hands, kind of like you hear the thump against the door, and the
three of them reach around and they're grabbing and they're
tearing at Steven. Steven, you take.
A lot of damage. That is 18.
What? Now you have wounds.
I'll talk about that in a second, but.
I have 14 health. That's all of it.
Yeah. So you you have two wounds
because you're a synth, so we'll talk about that in a second, but
you feel the rip and tear as. These creatures begin to pull at
your artificial flesh and rip into your uniform.
They have sundered your armor, so that is reduced to 13 because
you have five points of armor, which means you don't gain a
wound, which is nice. So they ripped into your back
suit and you can feel them tearing at your artificial flesh
or whatever you have for blood is kind of like dripping out of
you from the rips in the tears. If you lose all of your health,
you lose one of your wounds, you gain a condition which is
usually associated with the damage, and if you deplete your
last wound, you die. If you only have one wound
listed in your character sheet, that health is all you got.
So think of the wounds as health bars and a health as HP per
health bar. So you thanks to your armor, you
survived that and you can take a wound but the rip and tear and
then you hear the rattle of a machine gun and the the wind of
a pulse rifle as I start to tear into them.
And you can bolts kind of ram into them.
They don't respond to the damage, but two of these three
mutated things drop to the ground with the third still
standing. This third one is going to rush
in. Past the door, not as
compatriots have fallen and there's still enough room to
kind of get in. Or it's always going to attempt
to rush in and it's going to go for one of you guys with the
guns. It's going to lurch itself at
Kentucky. What do you guys do as you see
it kind of pushing itself through the door and lunging
towards Kentucky? Since it's separating away from
me, I want to try to like slash at it.
With my I have a scalpel which I'm kind of interpreting as
being like a finger that I can quickly transform.
So I can like try and like slash.
At it from behind to try to get it as it's moving past me.
OK, that'll be a combat check when we get to it in a second.
But what do the other two guys do?
Oh man, I really want fire again.
But I'm. I'm worried about hitting
Kentucky. So, but we're in a pretty tight
space, right? Like it just it dives through
the door at me cuz we had stepped a little bit farther
back from Steven as I was having Stevens.
Kind of like behind the door ready to slice as it jumps
through. Yep.
I guess if it's diving straight at me, I know I only have one
pulse left. I want to just.
I want to like kind of. Well, because.
We we're a little floaty. So yeah, I just want to jump and
kind of like just like float off to the left and then bring the
gun back around, but like go this way.
So if it runs in, it can almost kind of run past us.
And then we'll all be like on the same side or even like jump
a little like forward and towards Steven, but out of the
way of this thing rushing forward.
OK, that one will be a speed check when we get to rolls in a
second, what about, What would they?
He's a jump out of the way. Then Jay's going to take a shot.
OK, so we got a whole sequence here.
We have this creature enters through and lurches itself at
Kentucky. Let's do your roll first.
OK, so rolling below speed. Now I do have athletics.
Good, good. That counts.
So you I think that's 10, so add 10 to your roll.
Plus 10, so roll underneath the 5045. 45 Perfect.
All right, So you lurch out of the way, and you feel it as it
pushes forward again. This thing is untethered by
gravity, so it it's launching itself through this corridor.
Here you see its. Arms kind of reach.
Out, twisted, bent and elongated and you'd like almost bone, like
with how stretched skin is across it.
At swipes at you and you can see like that.
Chomping a mouth like that. Of it move past, but it misses
you. It's like scrambling in the the
gravity here as you hear the swipe of a knife and the pulse
of a rifle. Correct.
Or I guess you have SMGI do yeah.
I need combat checks on the both of you.
I rolled it too. Lovely.
I rolled a 41. Just barely made it. 40 because
I got I do 1D10 damage. 1D10 or give me those damage rolls.
3/3/11. 11 Oh, that is not enough.
No. If you you get a slice in and
there's no blood, it just through like dried skin and it
gives a pretty good gash in it, but the creature carries forward
and fire into it and again the bolt hit into its side it
doesn't react but now it is floating towards day again it's.
Hit a little bit by the inertia of the bullets, but it's still
got its arms outstretched, its mouth jumping it is like almost
going to latch on today. What do you guys do?
I want to do the same thing. I'm going to slash it again.
Dave's going to try to use her Zero G skill to jump out of the
way. OK, what about Kentucky?
What's your plan? I guess if it's barreling down
on me, I'll use the last shot of my pulse rifle just from, well,
it. Is, yeah.
It's missed you and it's heading towards day.
Well then, yeah, then I'll fire cuz I got nothing else cuz my
laser cutter is just a laser color cutter shaped laser
pointer. So yeah, so if it's going
towards day, I will just take a shot from the ground.
OK, so you fire your actively last round into this.
OK, let's have that dodge roll first.
That's going to be speed to get out of the way and then you can
add your 0G. So that makes it I roll the 39 I
needed below the 46 all. Right, lovely.
So you're able to sort of? Dodge out of the way again as
this thing comes down. Now the two of you who are doing
attacks, the pulse rifle, you can do that as a normal attack.
The swipe. I'll have you roll at
disadvantage just because it's sort of put distance in between
you. So let's roll twice.
Take the lowest. I got a 32 and a 18. 18 I got a
Yeah. 30. Two which which is going to do
it for me? Succeeded, Correct.
Yes, yes, both succeeded. OK.
Nine image. Pulse rifle.
I rolled a 22. I need less than a 32.
Well, I guess 42 if I had military training, so.
All right, so both of you with the pulse rifle and the swipe of
the knife describe for me how you take this creature out.
I'm thinking that I like, I like jab the knife into it and like
turn around so that the bullets can like fire directly onto it.
Like I'm holding it up, kind of shielding myself but putting it
in range to be fired at by Kentucky.
Like whirling it around. Yeah, And then from the ground,
is that like, whirls around? I'll just take that final shot.
That. And do I even need to roll?
I don't even need to roll damage, right?
No, no. So with the blade of the knife
and the pulse rifle, you kind of like cut into it and the bulge
and the thing starts like lies, still kind of floating in the
gravity. Here, Now all of you take an
additional point of stress. I should have been counting who
had failed, but I think you all failed at least once, so point
the stress around. Perfect.
Said the air goes still. What do you do?
I think perhaps we should leave this ship here and go, Well,
should we at least see if the reactor is even on the ship at
all, or what? I understand your interest, I
suppose. I am concerned that the two of
you will become these monsters, but I'm concerned you're going
to become a can opener. But that doesn't mean what we so
is there a way to. Because we're we're right, we're
we're right outside The thing is there a way to make the
navigation system not be targeted at the sun real quick
just maybe hit like the off button on that so if you do find
the reactor, we don't get shot into the fucking sun.
Is that a thing that you could do?
Is that a thing you could do, Steven?
I believe I can push off, yes. Yeah, why don't we do that real
quick? Why don't we run down, see if we
can find that reactor, and just take a peek?
And if we can't, we get the fuck out of here.
I thought, we're looking for the jump drive though, right?
Whatever. Whatever the fuck we're here for
day. I don't know at this point.
I don't care. We got people burning into the
fucking walls and zombie shit's coming at us.
Why don't we just turn the thing off so we don't get shot into
the sun, see if whatever's here is here and get the fuck out of
here? How y'all feel about that?
All right. Are we all on the same page?
I've. Turned it off.
Oh, you walked into the room? Yes.
All right. So Steven like.
Did you just, like, walk away during their conversation?
Yes, while they were talking, I went ahead to go do the job.
As you walk over to it, you can hear like that coming out.
Of the ceiling. Still, I move much faster.
I move quickly to turn the to click the button.
As you can go up there and again you can see as you can quickly
up to the console, it's a command has already been put
into place. What it's waiting right now is
the response from the engine compartment.
So you would have to do like a pretty substantial like beat the
shit out of this to break it type of deal because it's just
it's idle, like like it's waiting for the response.
The thing is is like the core is powered down.
The engines are dead. No, not dead, but you know, not
active currently. But there's no way to cancel the
pending order, is what you're saying.
At the moment, because it's just it's just it's like a loading
screen just waiting for the response.
The second I confirm that I'm just back the other way.
Nope, There's no way for me to. There's no way for me to turn
that off. It is.
As long as the power doesn't return to the ship, we should be
fine. But if power does return for
some reason, it appears the command will be executed on.
Oh goody. And we hear the we hear those
moans and stuff when when Steven walked in there.
Stephen did for sure. I don't know if you guys did or
not. I also believe there are more of
those things in the walls. Well, good.
Why don't we? Yeah, why don't we jog this one
out, shoot down maybe the other hallway a little bit, see if we
got a reactor so we can be like, Nope, there wasn't nothing and
just get out of here. So those religious whack a do is
don't come for us as well. Sound peachy?
Peachy and we we know the basic layout of the ship, right?
Yeah, put it on the part. It's, it's.
This is a corporate freighter. You know, you've seen a million
of. You've probably rated them
yourself. It's, you know, the basics, but
you do know that this one has also been heavily modified.
So, right. And in theory, the jump drive
and the reactor car way the back of the ship, that's pretty
standard. You're you're not going to put
that near the command module because you know the radiation.
Yeah. Why It's good for you.
I think we start booking it towards the back of the ship.
Yeah, I think we jog it out. I sling the pulse rifle over my
back because I have no guns for it but maybe or no bullets for
it, but maybe I'll find more. But it's not in my hands or
anything. I, I, we just are, are, I guess,
in a line just jogging towards the back of the ship.
No, as you make it further, you'll go back into the little
like cargo hold area the whole way leading deeper.
Into the back of the ship where you need to go is the same
hallway that that bulkhead light was passing through.
So you guys get back up towards the airlock and you see the
hallway stretching down into the corridor, a beam of light
casting across it. What do you do avoid it?
My ship, my suit has been ripped up so I can't pass through there
safely. Is it like total like ceiling to
floor beam of light? The way OK, so the hallway is
fairly cramped, all things considered.
You have a it's like a like a submarine bulkhead window.
That's the word for it. It's round and the light is
coming through it and it's just. It's it's circular and it's
casting it on the wall. But you maybe you can like duck
down and ride along the wall to avoid it if you so choose, but
otherwise it's basically just going straight across the hall.
Is there something around I could use like a like a pane of
of metal or something that I could hold up as a shield as I
pass through that's a great shadow in.
The cargo hold, there are various bits of boxes and like
that. Maybe you can grab one of those.
Yeah, I'll break. I'll break one of the sides off
one of these crates or something and then use that as a a a
shield, like a shade, and without saying that, successful.
Yeah. Easy enough.
So you you slide it maybe over the window.
It's not a very large window, so the dude, you can kind of feel
the radiation on this. It's presumably like a metal
box. Not just like a wooden crake.
Those don't make sense in space. I don't know.
You put the little lids you could.
Plastic out pastries. It's a cooler.
Yeah, there's even more trees in space.
That's such a good point. Not in the outer rim.
Just rock out here. This is deserts.
So you stick the lid of it. Up against the bulkhead window
covering it and you can feel the radiation.
Kind of like heating the lid here, but it otherwise blocks
the sun as far as you're aware. Bolt past just.
Quick run past, you pass through where the sun used to be and OK,
you make it across seemingly fine.
Your voice faked me out so bad. That was very successful.
I love GM where it's like seemingly and appears to be and
stuff like that, that there's the best.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then as soon as they're past, I'm gonna move and stop
holding it up myself. You move past.
Drop it. The sun just fills the space
once again. You're fine now.
Within short order, you guys kind of continue to push down
the hallway. Now this cargo hold, it pushes
into a hallway, but then the space kind of opens up once
more. This is a like a mess room.
It's clearly where the crew would like take their breaks or
eat their meals, but it's sort of cramped within this this
space too. So it's a little bit of a larger
room, but it's not huge. Think of like the.
A room in Alien where they all kind of meet to have that first
meal after they wake up from cryosleep.
So something like that where the there's like a little table in
the center, maybe some sort of set up there that distributes
food there and various chairs around.
It looks utilized like there are bowls and stuff kind of
scattered throughout. It's not like a fresh meal.
It's kind of sitting there, but it's like somebody hasn't really
cleaned up particularly well. In this space now there are a
few things worth noting. This canteen.
Effectively this meeting area branches off in several
different directions. You see short hallways leading
to rooms on, you know, cardinal, north-south, and a little bit
down the hallway another southern room.
But you can see that the corridor itself kind of
continues further on towards where you know, the engine
compartment would be. You know where you would expect
the jump drive in the reactor core and all that stuff handled.
Now as you enter this room though.
You get the quick delay of the land.
You hear a sharp whine. It's almost like hissing, like a
that's kind of coming through your system, speakers and
Steven. You can hear it directly because
your suit is not ripped up. And then you see it what once
was a large gaping hall hole in the hall.
It's been partially sealed. A table has been pushed up
against the wall and there is back foam that's kind of pushed
around. I kind of like the sealant foam
that you'd see in between walls, but it's not a great seal
because you can hear the hiss of air push through it now.
Among this room here you see scattered on the ground appears
to be a foam gun. There are chunks of this
unidentifiable meat that seems to be just kind of floating in
the space here. Good.
You see one last thing here? It's a cluster of blood stained
kitchen knives stabbed into the wall.
One of them pinning like a scrap of paper.
I am going to turn on my bio scanner and just sort of do a
quick sweep so I can kind of try to identify what the safe
directions for us to go are from here.
All the others are presumably looking around.
Very quick scan. I don't remember what the bio
scanner does particularly, but just for the error, simplicity,
no media like life signs within the the vicinity of the room.
You won't be able to detect anything beyond the walls, given
that they. Block the signal.
There is an asinine amount of radiation coming from the back
where the the engine compartment is, correct?
I'm gonna jog over to that that paper in the wall and kind of
read that while Steven's bioscanning.
All right, you can. Do you wanna pull it off and
pull the knife out or what have you?
Or do you just leave another wall?
I guess I'll just yeah. Well, and I guess if I can have
a knife, I'll have a knife. Might as well have a knife.
So you pull off It's a kitchen knife it.
Presumably a little dull now has been stabbed into the metal
wall, but you can add a knife. I think they do.
I'm looking at the thing, Treat it as a scalpel, which deals 1D5
damage, but you pull the knife out and you grab on to the note.
To the note itself is it's another navigational chart.
This is mostly like somebody had torn A chunk off of off the one
and pinned it to the wall here. And you can see scrolled on the
back as you. Lifted off is.
In kind of like a hasty script it says escape hell 1982 and
then underneath that it's signed VS escape.
Hell, 1982, OK? So he's standing here at the end
of the bio scan. You still hear the hiss of air
leaving this room, what he was doing?
There's a dangerous amount of radiation coming from the engine
compartment as well. I think I would pick up that
foam gun and spray foam where that that air leak is.
Do you? It's a little hard to tell
exactly where it is because you're not seeing the air
leaking out. Because it's you would see the
air on the other side. Presumably you can deplete the
rest of the charge of the phone gun, or you can do some kind of
magic and figure out where the leak is.
Do we have is there anything in here that is like a juice box or
a giant bag of talking powder or you know, it like bubble maker,
like anything like that happens to be packing peanuts?
Yeah, there, this is a it's a like a mess room.
So there's like, MRE's and all that type of shit kind of
scatter all over the place. Yeah, any I just want to crush,
just crush up anything and aim and throw it at the the thing.
Just like, tear yourself open. Nutri Cream bar hair and as you
all. Put it It's just barely touch
him, yeah. The the Nature Valley bar.
The extra crumble. One that you might as well get.
All they do, you just got to crack it open and pour it in
your mouth. But as it pours in my mouth,
does it aim at? Leaking air.
OK, so I think that works. You can see using the the.
Granola bar you kind of like sucks into the wall where the
the holes are and you're able to use that knowledge to quickly
seal up with the rest of the foam again, leaving you with a
foam gun with about half a half a canister.
Boom. Very good, I say.
We keep fucking moving, yeah. We jog it out.
Peak peak, peak in the back and then skedaddle.
I recommend that the two of you stay very far away from the
engine room. Exactly where you guys are
going. We'll stay as little time as we
possibly need, so. Very well.
All right, Well, you lead the way towards the back of the
ship. Yeah.
We'll let Steven lead the way, though.
I have been injured. My systems are already harmed.
Hey, which which hand was that key in again?
I have forgotten. And day's like, damn it, fine
and like push us through. We're going, is there now, is
there anything in here that would be some type of like
medkit or robot, like a screwdriver or like a robot
Band-Aid or something, anything that we could patch him, patch
up, patch them up just. Like a tiny bit.
So what have you do for me is. Take a luck roll.
This is not anything that's in mothership.
This is just something I like to do for these type of situations.
I need you to roll AD 6 for me and you're looking for Lowe's.
Lowe's are good, better than Home Depot.
Adam, I rolled A1. A1 All right, Can you mean when
you find an Android repair kit? Critical luck.
Take it, I'll take a one. So Android repair kit.
So I assume it's just like on the wall in some type of box or
something to even expect a fire extinguisher and whatnot.
So I go over, break that, bring it over to Steven and say.
You broke this break the box, yeah.
I'm like, you don't need this motherfucker.
Which? Is it and and I bring over the
Android repair kit to Steven say hey would this be any use to you
there Steven? Yes, it is not the exact, it's
not meant for my model exactly, but there are many parts in here
that I can find useful. Yeah, well, beggars can't be
choosers, right? So.
Do we think this would be because I could use it?
Do you think it'd be? Do you think my robotics would
apply the masters Co robotics or do I need to do mechanical?
Repair, which is the I think because this is a like a
specific thing meant to repair, I don't think I really need a
role, I just say that you can. Make a body save for me.
If the body save is successful you can heal 1D10.
If the body save fails, you can heal 1D5 OK.
I got a 20. Hey hey, it succeeds.
So it's AD 10. Gracious.
So roll D. 10 And then you can heal that to your health.
And then they roll a what? I got a 5.
Five. Love it.
All right. Pretty good.
I think that's technically how Mothership handles it, but I
think that's how I'm handling it, so it's.
Done. I appreciate it.
Right now I I hatch up a couple of the the holes on my my body.
With that in mind again, now that you're back here and you've
sort of settled in the space and the the has sort of been sealed,
you can feel it now that hum. And ververbrates for your feet,
but then the steady, like it's kind of felt through your body.
Now the air vibrates as it pulses stronger than it was
before. I want to move fast, but hop in
there to see if we can find what we came for.
Yeah, same. Now.
You push forward, deeper into the senespera.
Every step you take further, the vibration of the pulsing gets
louder, or at least you think it's getting louder.
You just feel it more. So it sort of reverberates and
begins to shake your body. By the time you reach the jump
drive housing, it's nauseating, Just this base hum that's
throbbing in the air. You can feel the deck plate
shaking beneath your feet, but you see it.
The jump drive sort of twinkles. It's suspended in an magnetic
field. Indicator lights strobe across
its surface. As it spins, they pulse that
same strange darkness that you've seen in the star itself,
and you can feel the radiation just emanating off it, matching
the pulsing waves. As you enter this room, you see
that the jump drive again. This is familiar in a sense, but
you've never seen anything quite like this unit, especially cuz
it's suspended in a magnetic field.
Usually jump drives are kind of like a piece of shit, kind of
like hook pushed into the ship itself.
But amidst the heat, you see it as the radiation pulses off of
this engine. For every pulse you see them
humanoid shapes again, three of them kneeling, staring at the
engine. But it's as the radiation
pulses, as the engine pulses, as if you're seeing their shadows
being cast, and at pulse you see them and then it recedes and
they're gone. Stephen is Stephen is motioning
for everyone to back back up, like this thing has connected to
whatever the sun is. I move backwards.
I start backing out. Yeah, hard saying.
Yeah, all that's on. All that's on my mind now is is
get out of here. I think that that was such a
like. An evil feeling response from
this this thing to the sun's rays this like.
So wait, did Steven see them like they were with the human?
Like chances were doing what? To they were just kneeling and
like praying at it, but all we're seeing is that their
shadows being cast. Oh, very good.
Very, very good. I let's let's let's leave.
This jump driver is not going to be useful to us at this point if
it ever was. I I I think it is.
I think it's time to go. I think we're all in agreement.
Like I I mean, why would you at this point?
Who wouldn't leave this? You know, it's like you're dying
for this. I'm not dying for this.
No, see as the radiation pulses.
Anvil falls in your head. The Anvil falls in your head.
The figures are no longer kneeling.
They're standing, and they've already crossed the room.
About halfway and the pulse and you see the shadow.
Kind of cast on it dies down and the pulse and they're closer,
no? No, I I we're out of here and I
know that I have to open the door.
So I'm running ahead of everybody.
I'm going. I'm there was no pause.
This is a zooming zooming as you turn and run.
I need speed checks from all three of you to see if you can
outrun these things. I am a robot.
So robotics, right? I'm just kidding. 19 Athletics.
Athletics. Yeah, so.
I got a 62 which is a failure. 49 Oh, and I needed A50.
Lovely. Wow.
Well, I mean, I'm the slowest, All right.
So as you turn around, you were in the front too, so that makes
sense. A Kentucky turn.
You start running down the hall quicker than Steven, who's it's
a little slower on the uptake, and as you turn to move down the
hall, you feel it. You don't quite have flesh in
the way that humans do, but you can feel their touch as these
rates reach out and run their hands down you.
It's like a radiation burn radiating through your skin.
I need you to make a sanity safe for me.
Failure. I got a 36.
We haven't had any double s. We're going to do a bunch of
things here. One, you take an additional plan
of stress. I'm up to five.
Then I need you to make a a D10 roll for me.
Oh, OK What's this for? You'll know.
I got a four or which seems good to me.
You, as you turn and you're moving away, and you felt that
radiation just passed through your body as these things, these
spectral shadows, grasp at you and you blink and you find
yourself in the same compartment, but you're
surrounded by a bustling crew of the Senespra.
A hulking, bearded man powers on the drive and quickly begins to
warp and swell. There are ports of the jump.
Drive in the pulse latently. It's rhythm beats into your
veins and your flesh begins to ripple and steam, revealing the
Milky white Android liquid passing through your synthetic
skin. The crew around you scream and
claw. They're burning flesh.
They turn their twisted faces to you for help and you realize
they're all you, all Stevens, screaming and grasping at
themselves around you. And then another blink and
you're back in the sundered chamber.
You feeling the radiation pass through you.
I need you to make a panic check.
This is one rule 1D20, and you're looking for greater than
your current stress. Is it?
Easy. I've only got 5.
It'll be no problem. I got a 20.
Hey, 20. All right, so I get.
Together you keep it. Together you do not panic.
What do you do? I there is like a moment where I
think a little tiny speaker, very quietly.
I've tried to make it to this wouldn't happen anymore, but it
does. It's just like error, error,
processing, failure. And then there's a moment where
I, like, shake my head and it stops.
And then I am going to. Well, first I want to process
how close are these people to me now, since I like zoned out
first on top of you. Yeah, they were already on top
of you. Yeah.
OK, two things. I am going to be trying to
struggle away from them but but while I do that I am going to
like bite on my finger and try to rotate it so that I can get
the key off. I I want to to remove my own.
Finger by like OK by just trying to push away.
You're you're still in this engine department and you see
them in the pulses. It's three figures.
Standing around. They're reaching and grasping at
you again. You can feel the radiations for
pulsing through your skin as they try and reach and touch
you, but you're trying to break away and get away from them.
Yes, OK. But before that Kentucky Day,
you guys are down the hall and after a a handful of steps you
realize Steven's not with you. What do you?
Do He's got the key. Well.
I guess turn back and I just. Clump around and start walking
back the. Two of you turn around and see
them down the hallway. You see Steven kind of frozen up
for a second. Biting their hands.
That we were doing. Yeah.
Biting it to get it off. Biting into their finger.
You see it in the bomb, the. Pulsing rhythms that you feel
through them, the shadows surrounding them kind of showing
up with every pulsing rhythm. What do you guys do?
I'm going to fire on the fucking shadow people well.
I guess they don't have corporeal forms.
Huh. I.
Don't know. Can you tell me what do you
think? No.
You wanna make that combat check?
Yeah. I'll make the combat check.
Yeah, go ahead. No, just fire down the hallway.
Your bolts kind of go wild. Maybe you're trying to miss
Steven and it's like in between pulses and so you're just shot,
just kind of go wide and bang into the bulkhead.
Stephen, back to you. What do you do?
So I want to. I know there's three of.
Them around me, I'm trying to dodge through them and then if
I've. Successfully like because I've
put this under my mask and like clamped my like robo teeth
around it. My hope is that I can undo the
finger so I can lob it at them just in case.
So the those are like my my 2. Two things I'm trying to Bob and
weave around them, but I'm like preparing.
To have to just throw. It in case I get stuck, OK,
let's have another speed check to see if you can kind of worm
your way out from the the grasp. I got a.
I got a four. Four.
All right, so you're. Able to kind of push past.
It's not even like you push. Past you just break away.
From them and you, you're. Not running down the hallway and
you've heard that of the submachine gun kind of rattle by
your ears and within a few moments you're sitting next to
your compatriots. The three of you are now
standing there. You can continue to see the
pulses of the engine behind you, illuminating those 3 ghastly
figures heading down the hallway in your direction.
What do you do? I wanted through the hallway
where the sun's coming. I want to do a crazy slide up
against the wall underneath the sun.
All right. What about Dave, Kentucky?
What are you doing? If season rushes.
I grab day and push them forward too.
Gone leading in. The back and then I don't have
a. Gunner, you know what?
Can I throw a kitchen knife and then run?
You turn it? Yeah.
Just just. I don't even.
I don't even look at what happens.
I just like start running behind all of them as.
Well, but I'm in. I'm in the back, OK.
So as you continue down the hallway, you.
I don't feel the radiation touch of those ghastly creatures, but
you just hear the. Ship alive around you, just
dumping in all the rooms. You hear about the moans and
coming from the walls, the rooms, everything, The ceiling.
You can hear the skittering of hands and legs as they clamp
onto pipes. You don't see them as you
continue to push through. Now, Steven here ahead you run
and you slide under the light of the the sun coming through the
bulkhead. Oh yeah, Dave, Kentucky.
What do you guys do? I mean, same shit.
Yeah, triple. Slide We each do our own.
Slide version you know. Yeah, it looks really cool.
It's so cool. OK, so you're able to Wow.
Wow. Wow.
You get under. Wow.
You've you wound your way past that and you know you're.
Standing there. Staring up at.
That broken as fuck airlock. What do you do?
I'm going to slide past the airlock and and plug my.
Now kind of loose finger into the.
The equivalent of the keyhole. Ready.
My weapon. You turn around and there's
nothing in the hallway behind you.
Nothing you can see. So wait, real quick.
These guys are like you're they're like shadow people
essentially, right? What seems like does my weapon
have like a shadow setting? Like a shadow People setting?
Yeah, can. I can I put it on some shadow
people you would need like. An IR scope or something?
Like that. I don't think your.
East. Your rusty submachine gun has.
I say rusty, I say antique. Antique.
It's a machine gun. I don't think it has that type
of attack. It's OK.
Cared for very. But as Steven sticking their
finger in and you get in the little.
Cycle through. That takes a few seconds.
To register the key, you do feel the hum in your feet still, and
you see in that bulkhead cast light, three figures briefly
illuminated before you get a ping of the airlock doors open
as the key cycles you. Knives out for Roman.
Where'd we go, Roman? On the floor still.
OK, great. Skipping fast and then I.
Think I'm going to. I don't know, Steven looks very
hard at. Roman, I closed here
immediately, like I'm closing the door.
She's coming, OK? OK, so you're in your own
airlock. Roman's still on the ground.
Your ship lies ahead. What do you?
Do we're leaving? We're getting in our ship and
we're leaving. We'll keep Roman in here for the
time being, but we're scooting. Yeah, but we'll close.
The airlock Roman's still in jail.
You enter into your ship, you close the airlock, you make the
calculations for disconnect. You hear that the resounding
rank through your ship as it disconnects from the Sinespera.
You can still feel the radiation from the sun cooking your own
ship. What do you guys do?
Punch it. Get out of here.
Punch it. OK.
So you be in the fly away, you calculate your approach.
Factors you do probably a. Little more hasty than you think
you probably should. Systems in and the cool.
Tones of hyperspace kind of rush forward and you see, you know,
the familiar swirl as space. And time is bent to project this
ship towards your destination. Well, another successful mission
now. Yeah, I think we did great.
Yeah. Listen if we.
And that's what's important right now.
Pay. Your dues to the union and let's
get moving on and. Within short order, you're able
to prepare for the. Do your usual like get the ship
set. Up type of deal.
Eventually settle back down into your cryopods after some time.
Maybe it's a day or so, but either way you have a decent bit
of travel. Ahead of you to get to.
Wherever you're going at this point, no.
As you settle into your cryopod and you feel the, you know, the
gas or whatever it is that puts you under kind of flood into the
chamber, cryo sleep isn't like real sleep.
It's almost instantaneous that you sort of leak back up.
But this time was different. You dream of an orange sun.
With black fire jutting out of it in terrible sunspots.
You dream of twisted corridors of a sun bleached ship filled
with unimaginable horrors you dream of.
Lights cascading down onto you, piercing through you, down to
your very Fiber. Disembodied eyes staring.
And then you wake up. Go through your normal cycle.
And as you return to your. Looking forward to seeing
whatever destination you plugged into your.
Jump Drive. You see the orange light.
Piercing through the viewport as you stare out until a familiar
star. With a familiar hulking
freighter lying just. Ahead of your ship that.
Was the hunger in Akronar no set us free?
Wow. Let me go.
So we all lived happily ever after?
Well. Obviously.
At a certain point, you just have.
To feed Paul. What we definitely didn't find.
Vasily either, but we kind of. Or or we I.
Don't know, the look says. Maybe we did.
Who knows? But I guess.
In order to find out. You should get the bundle on
Kickstarter. This was only one way this
mission could go. Who knows what do we get?
Like so like so little. Of the actual ship.
But yeah, but. So this as we said Josh, you
know for, for, for, I know. The more of this video.
For those watching, we'll be able to find some more
information on here, but this is the Outer Room Uprising Bundle
for the Ship 1 E. Anything that you wanted to say
to kind of wrap up any information about that before we
end this horrifying adventure that we just went through just
real quick? Again, this was The Hunger and
Ekronar. It's written by D Kenny as part
of the Magnum Galaxy art by Ville who also did the artwork
for Dying Hard on Hard Light Station which you can see here.
They are looking fantastic and I wish I could well you guys are
seeing you see the cover on the little overlay of the art of
that thing. It is a good looking Zine, but
this is just a one of a whole plethora of options that you
have within the bundle if you buy the highest tier.
I believe that we are specifying 3 separate tiers here, the first
being primarily adventures, the 2nd is going to be more like
world building stuff and the third is extra tchotchkes.
I think we got a cassette tape there.
We got a couple of patches we've got.
I wish I remembered all the names of these things off the
top of my head, but I'm sure Aiko in the introduction has
talked about the various things that have been featured.
But again, this is just one of the adventures.
This is, this represents. In our campaign scene we talk
about various frameworks that you can have to run your
campaigns. This is like a starting
adventure in one of the frameworks, and based on how
it's all set up, things can spiral out and you can have a
whole campaign just. Dealing with the consequences of
your you know mission here and what that means for the wider
Galaxy if your crew escapes. But we only saw a fraction of
what this module has to offer, maybe half of the ship, and one
of the potential consequences of things that may have happened.
So if this stream has caught your interest or attention here,
I would recommend checking out the rest of the bundle.
Definitely backing it at the level to get this one for sure,
but there's tons of good stuff in there and we got a bunch of.
Really cool community creators that have kind of bound together
to make this thing a reality. No, this is super fun.
I can't wait for the entire mothership bundle if you've
backed. Any of Michael's mother bundles?
Before the FEAR bundle was gorgeous.
Like everything that they're doing is fantastic.
And this one, every time they put out another one, it just
steps up a little bit more and a little bit more.
So super excited for this one. Can't wait to get it physically
in hand. And Josh, thank you so much for
running this. That was amazing.
Super appreciate it. Terrifying.
And thank you absolutely. And Caleb, thank you so much for
for coming on to play. So definitely find all of
Caleb's stuff at at. You could find me most commonly
on Twitter at or not Twitter but whatever at Suzanne HI also use.
Co host a lot. Now as Caleb Zane or you can
join the Haunted Table Discord for easy to find discord dot
haunted table dot games and you can find out about all our
stuff. Oh, and you can see me be a a
much sillier robot. In another podcast coming out in
the next few months called s s Bad Ship.
So take a look on that. There we go.
Nice. And and Josh, just to make sure
everyone knows where to find all of your stuff.
Yeah. You can.
Find me in most places. Under the username unenthuser
that is unenthusiastic user smashed into one that's across
Twitter or whatever the fuck you want to call it.
I'm on Blue sky at the moment and you can find my itch dot IO
page. It's on induser dot itch dot IO
with links to the the very stuff that I have worked on personally
at least that has currently released.
Outside of that, because I have a problem with unifying my
usernames across it, you can find me at a different name.
On Discord, but in particular, I'll go to the Lost Bay server.
That's the one that's run by Echo.
That's where the the latest place to find out about all of
the various bundles that are kind of going on, what's planned
for the future. The Lost Bay RPG that's
currently in some form of play testing that I think full
release is coming later this year, maybe next year, but
that's another one of the things that Echo was working on.
But also more importantly, anything here.
There is the Liminal Horror channel hosted on that server.
That's where I spend. I don't really do a lot of
Discord, I lurk in most places, but you can find me specifically
on the Lost Bay channel or sorry, the Liminal Horror
channel on the Lost Bay Server. There we go again.
Thank you guys so much for coming on.
Thank you guys for playing and running that adventure.
Super appreciate it. And this is the.
Weekly Scroll Podcast You can find our link tree The weekly
scroll with all of our links so I don't have to say them all
every time anymore. And that is our stream.
Back this bundle and catch us next time.
You all have a wonderful day. Goodbye.