Tulu Pazin
The session this week continued the discussion about the strange space faring creatures that the Deepnight had found around Zastravaz IV. The biologists back aboard the ship were all keen to start researching them, at the expense of their other duties. The big worry from the players is that the worm thing was related to the strange gravity creatures they met in the Anundarluu Nebula.
Since it was new to science (or at least their science), they got to name it, calling it a vermis spatium magnus ruber.
Tulu Pazin (1203) / La Grone / Iphigenaia
Their next stop was Tulu Pazin, which I originally got confused about since I looked at Traveller map and saw Turigol, which is nearby but quite different, having a corrosive atmosphere and non-water oceans. Even my generated system differed from what was on Traveller Map though – possibly a difference in the UWP data that I’d used, or a bug in WorldGen. In any case, it became a minor plot point that the Imperium’s map data was obviously wrong for this world. Not surprising given how far away from the Imperium everyone is now.
Whilst the Deepnight headed towards one of the gas giants for refuelling, they picked up a ship’s transponder signal from the 2nd world. It was registered as a Vargr ship from the Kajaani Triumverate, a 400t civilian vessel named The Racing Wind. So the It’s A Sex Thing went to investigate.
The world was a small Meso Arean world, with a thin but breathable atmosphere, a couple of ice caps, and a single sea (or river) running around the equator. It has plenty of flora, though no trees, and some land based fauna, though most of the complexity is in the oceans.
The ship turns out to be a science expedition, led by Dr Kasoutsrr, a Vargr, who welcomes the Sex Thing to come down and join them. They are here investigating the local wildlife (which mostly consists of large rodent-like creatures, and lots of insects), and they are about as far Spinward as they can go given their Jump-2 drive.
By the time that the Deepnight Revelation arrives at the world, everyone is on good terms, and discussing the various scientific discoveries that they’ve made so far out here. The Travellers also pick up a bit of information about the Regency of Muirimi, which they want to visit on their journey spinward. It’s a bit of a loosely aligned polity, with a lot of independent worlds disagreeing over how to run things apparently. The Vargr believe that they’ll probably be overrun by the Aslan at some point.
Here on Tulu Pazin there are ruins of a human colony, but it seems to have failed and there is nobody living there now. The Deepnight uses the opportunity to collect supplies, whist the crew of the Sex Thing head over to the colony to find out what happened there.
The ruins consist of a town of stone buildings, now overrun with vegetation. Most of the homes are tidy, as if people were expecting to be leaving. Several have shrines in them, dedicated to the recently dead. Stone makes up a large part of the construction material – from the buildings to tables and chairs. The world has no good source of wood, so anything other than stone had to be imported.
They find a hospital, which has the remains of dead people in beds where it looks like they had been concerned about the spread of disease. Checking the records, they find that the population was wiped out about 50 years ago by a disease which would have been preventable if they’d had access to sufficient medical resources.
The vargr scientists know of the disease, since it’s endemic to the region but most places have access to vaccines against it. They can provide the necessary information that would allow the Deepnight to produce its own in case they need it.
The next destination after Tulu Pazin is due to be Waranask, which is said to have a large stone age population.
