The Road Ahead
In our previous session, the Travellers had performed a strategic withdrawal from the Anundarluu in order to escape the attentions of the gravitational anomaly which seemed to be following them with intelligent intent. One of the players hadn’t been around for the session though, so we rewound things a bit to give him a chance to interact a bit with what had happened with his character, the Vargr telepath Alfred. Normally I don’t like going back and re-doing things, but in this case there was the opportunity for some interesting things to happen or to be found out through telepathy, so I wanted to provide the chance for this.
Shortly after the crew had detected the gravitational anomaly, he had complained about a severe headache. What he felt was as if something was shouting very loudly from a very long way away, at a very low frequency. It wasn’t directed at Alfred, but whatever it was seemed to be reaching out and searching.
Given the choice between trying to reach out and contact it, and keeping quiet, Alfred opted to keep quiet and not try to upset whatever it was.
There was also some more discussion about the Killy-Death-Bot that they’d managed to jury-rig from one of the probes, and one of the players had come up with a new name for it – Drone Enhanced with Advanced Teleoperation for Hostile Body Operation and Thawing. Since I expect that these modified probes are going to crop up again, I decided to make a model of one, and realise that the longer name doesn’t quite fit on the side.
Switching back to the ‘present’, the crew were in Jump, and that evening they all got to make a final check to see if any of them had dreams. The only one that did was Shinzaro, which was useful since it provided a chance to expand a bit on the ‘attunement’ that she had gained with the message in the igloo.
In her dream she found herself sitting on her bed next to a Droyne, who was muttering about needing to make a final stand and how they had failed, but needing to leave a message. Shinzaro tried to think really hard at him – and he seemed to notice her – being surprised and shocked, made a comment about “oh, a slave species” and then vanishing.
Later, whilst she was in the med lab with Zanobia, she noticed Zanobia’s wall charts of the Droyne translations, and ‘felt’ that she understood them, pointing out that some of the message was coordinates for pulsars. However, the ship didn’t have full galactic maps so couldn’t pin down exactly where they were.
The rest of the trip is uneventful, and they get back to the fuel tanker Clean Up Your Own Mess ahead of the scout ship. A few hours later, the scout ship turns up and they refuel for heading back to Abalesk, and from there eventually to Egurgadi.
1107-076
After a few weeks, the It’s A Sex Thing and I Mean It This Time arrive at the Egurgadi dockyards and Deepnight Corporation headquarters. To great them there is a 75,000t demilitarised Amara-class cruiser – the Deepnight Revelation.
What follows is a debriefing for Operation Snowball, including a special debriefing for Alfred to find out whether he picked up anything unusual whilst in the Anundarluu. The coordinates they have match up to the coordinates they’ve obtained from a previous site – and the atunement of Shinzaro to the message isn’t unique, but sometimes a side effect of Droyne messages which can leave behind a psychic imprint.
The rest of the session is briefing them on the Deepnight Revelation mission – where it is going and how it is getting there, with a description of the route. There is quite a bit of discussion about the polities Spinward of the Trojan Reach, and it’s an opportunity to point the players at the mission plan for Operation Demnan Rendezvous – the attempt to get an advanced scouting mission, led by the Varikuur, out to Demnan Point to wait for the Deepnight Revelation and provide a resupply.
- Operation Demnan Rendezvous – Part I
- Operation Demnan Rendezvous – Part II
- Operation Demnan Rendezvous – Part III
Given how long the write ups ended up being, I’m not sure whether the players will read them all, but it was also background material for me so I have a bit of an idea of what to prepare for. The Deepnight campaign itself glosses over pretty much everything up until Demnan Point, but I think there could be some interesting things to explore in the Beyond and Vanguard sectors. Once they get to Demnan Point though, that is just the garden gate before heading out into completely uncharted territory.
The fast couriers from the Varikuur are due to have been sent back around 1107-008, and should have got to Floria by 1107-068 with more detailed information on the polities in this region and beyond. They should get to Tobia by 1107-138, ready for the Deepnight to arrive and perform final route planning.
The campaign itself has the Deepnight starting from Giikur (Vland/0211) at the top of the Rift, but given where my campaign is set, and based on decisions made about the location of the Deepnight Corportation’s headquarters, it made more sense to start things from Gushemege and Egurgadi. That provides the players with one last trip across the Islands, a stop over at Tobia and then from there it will be up to them.
So we’re now pretty much at the start of the Deepnight Revelation campaign. The plan for next session is for the two players who haven’t rolled up command crew to do so, then we can finalise the mission plan and start the next phase of the campaign proper.
