Heading to Floria

The expedition to the red zone world of 985-373 was successfully completed, and the away team returned to the Deepnight Revelation with their collection of samples. Since they have several teams of scientists on board, we went through how they wanted to prioritise researching the material that they have. The campaign does have rules for doing scientific research, and I need to re-read them to remember how it’s all meant to work.

Next up on the list was that the ship was running low on supplies. By low, I mean they had only had about 70 days of supplies left before they’d need to start breaking into their extra supplies. They had the choice was to buy some at Floria, or find a world where they could scavenge for raw supplies. Only three parsecs away was the world of Pa’an, a Gaian Pelagic world with a population of 5,000, a class E star port and a TL of 5. If the population were to object to the Deepnight stopping off, they would be unlikely to do anything. The only complication was that the world is a Zhodani client state, and the population could be Psions.

It was decided that the risks were low, so they jumped to Pa’an, refuelling first at the nearby gas giant. There is a plan to take the Sex Thing in to the main world during the refuelling, the problem there being that with a 1g drive the Sex Thing would take over five days to get there whilst the Deepnight could refuel and get there in less than five days.

So instead they take one of the scouts which has a 4g drive, naming it the Probably Harmless. Khadashi, Alfred, Lord Sivas, Shinzaro and Zanobia head off to the world with some common consumables to try and sell.

They perform a quick scouting of the world, finding that it has an extensive biosphere, with large tracts of aboreal forests, many large land animals as well as rich sea life. They find some good places to collect supplies far from the colony.

They do get messaged from the colony, inviting them down to visit at the starport. Willing to do some trade, Lord Sivas accepts the offer and the Probably Harmless heads down to land. An awful long time ago, at one of the public parties they attended at the start of the mission, the players had a “Gain an advantage in a diplomatic situation” bonus, which could be used anywhere in the Reft or Trojan Reach. I had reminded the players of this, and since they were so close to leaving the Reach without having yet used it, they had decided to make use of it. The bonus was deliberately non-mechanical in nature, so I decided to play it out in a way that would be most advantageous to them.

As they approached the landing pad, Alfred, who is a closet Psion, suddenly got a “really bad feeling”, and strongly recommended that they didn’t land. So the Probably Harmless quickly did an about turn and headed back up to orbit. He had had a feeling of being telepathically scanned, and also an impression that those down on the surface meant them harm.

From that point on they did what they could to keep away from the colony, and concentrated their supply collection to the far side of the world.

They sent a dozen of the pinnaces down to the world, along with a large segment of the crew, and spent 9 days collecting supplies. It shouldn’t have taken that long, but the players rolled really badly (a lot of 1s and 2s on their rolls). I interpreted this to meant that the crew had run into difficulties – cold rain, mud, biting insects and other issues that meant that they were ratty and low in morale by the end of it.

Fortunately they rolled really well for the spaceship operations, and didn’t have any accidents moving the supplies from the planet up to the ship. By the end of it, they had a full hold of supplies, and tried to raise everyone’s morale with a big BBQ at the end.

The 9 days also gave the Deepnight engineering crew enough time to mount the two particle barbettes on the front of the ship, increasing it’s offensive capability.

From there, they quickly left orbit and headed to the system of Odin. Odin had an Oort Cloud, so they decided to try refuelling there. It only took a couple of days to find a suitable source to refuel from, a random body selected from my list of suitable objects^[1]Wonders of a Solar System: Kuiper Belt Objects:

This world is a medium sized irregular sphere which has a very unstable spin. Latent heat from radioactives in the rocky core occasionally causes the inner parts of the world to melt. Every few months this shifts the centre of gravity and causes the world’s spin to change. The surface is heavily cracked, with many iceberg shaped protuberances producing kilometre tall cliffs of water ice.

From there they head to Boronu, where they also use the Oort Cloud, though it takes several days to find a suitable body to refuel from. Finally they head to Floria where they aim to refuel at the main world.

It’s also time for another check for defects, getting a result of 2 defects. This results in a bit of hull damage (130 points) and damage to the defensive systems – a -1 to sensor checks. The sensors can be fixed at Floria without too much difficulty.

Arrival at Floria occurs on 1108-047.