Tonasuxes

Our Traveller Deepnight Revelation campaign continues with the Deepnight making its way across Kaalin Ulterior sector (11 sector spinward from the Trojan Reach). After leaving the Aslan colony behind, they headed to the system of Sibu Recu (Kaalin Ulterior/1923), a system with three gas giants, a barren dwarf world and a Bathy Gaian Teerrestrial class world.

The Bathy Gaian world had a diameter of about 15,000km, and a retrograde day of about 60 hours, which was only slightly longer than its year, it being a mere 3 million kilometres from its red dwarf parent star. The world was covered with an ocean up to 50km in depth, and had a dense and hot carbon dioxide atmosphere. On the day side, temperatures reached over 200°C, which was just hot enough to boil the surface even at the extreme pressure.

On the night side it was colder, dropping to a mere 66°C, where the water rained out.

Nothing unusual had been detected here, so it was meant to be a quick in and out – refuelling at one of the gas giants before heading to their planned destination of Tonasuxes. However, I had a few more things planned for the players to finish off the scenario with the octopus civilisation.

However, whilst refuelling one of the engineering crew – Monty Jackson – had a panic attack. Whilst working on the piping for the heat exchangers in the life support system he started screaming about drowning, and being covered by water.

They managed to sedate Monty and get him to a med lab. He was still getting some thoughts of drowning, and it was suggested that maybe the Octopuses (known to have some psi capability) may be to blame. He complained of his skin being burned from boiling water, and thick dense water engulfing him – possibly visions from the Bathy Gaian world.

He reached out and grabbed Zanobia, who was giving him a medical checkup, and she got visions of being surrounded by dense oceans, with a hint of tentacles around her. Not only was he probably receiving the visions from the inner planet, but possible Monty was undergoing a psionic awakening.

So Zanobia called Alfred, the Vargr she knows to be a telepath, and wakes him from a nightmare sleep where he was dreaming of being stuck beneath water. It seems that something from the world is reaching out to the psionic sensitive individuals. Zanobia also got an alert informing her that Teeka, who had been rescued from Goblin’s Planet several years ago and who was still in a cold berth (because everyone had forgotten about her) was registering unusual brain activity.

Alfred is given the task of making sure Monty doesn’t do anything stupid if he really is developing latent psionic ability, and Zanobia makes a note of having to check in on Teeka.

There is discussion amongst the crew (i.e., players) on what to do. It was decided that they didn’t want to have anything more to do with the octopuses. Alfred had got a sense that whatever was contacting him was more intelligent than the regressed animals they had encountered previously. This had been my plan to let the crew find out some final things about what had happened with the war between the octopuses and the machines, but the player decision was to run away. Which was fine.

The next destination was Tonasuxes, which was the source of the TL8 level radio broadcasts that they’d picked up earlier. I allowed the players to have a map of the system, together with the jump shadows, and decide which part of the system to jump to. The gas giant (IV) was currently the opposite side of the star to the inhabited world (III), so they decided to jump direct to IV. They’d then need to fly across the system to reach the inhabited world, which would take another couple of days.

They sent scouts first, which couldn’t find any signs of technology beyond the planet itself. There were some communication satellites, but they were all pointing down. Nothing seemed to be looking out from the planet.

It was a heavily populated world, with a low gravity but dense enough atmosphere. It was TL 8, with a heavy use of cyber technology. The world was run by a mega corporation in the military hardware business which had taken control some time ago. With a single world government, there were now far fewer wars, but the company ruled with an iron fist.

Most of this could be picked up by the scouts and through monitoring of the communication networks. By this time the Deepnight crew had a better idea of what the creatures looked like. They had four legs and two arms, with strange growths/antlers coming from the back of their necks. They had small eyes and lots of feelers around their face.

This was another MidJourney creation which had turned out nothing like I’d expected. They looked a bit termite like, so I decided their cities were tight and crowded.

The crew decided to contact them, via hacking into their communication systems. Their greeting was met by confusion – not only were the Tonasa not expecting to be contacted by aliens, but the very thought of other worlds hadn’t occurred to them. As it turned out, they didn’t even know that there were other stars other than their sun, let alone other worlds.

After some discussion it was figured out that they had poor eyesight, and weren’t able to see the stars. Because of this, they had never thought to look upwards with instruments which would be able to detect them. They knew about space – they had satellites in orbit after all, but only knew that the atmosphere got thinner and then there was nothing.

The crew were invited down, and a meeting was had. The first thing the crew realised was that video communication hadn’t quite made it clear about the size of the creatures – they stood about three metres tall, dwarfing the humans. Lord Sivas was very good at diplomacy this time around, and a trade agreement was settled upon. Now that the Tonasa knew about other stars and other worlds, they were really keen to be able to populate them, since their own world was already overburdened. In exchange for some biological knowledge (especially around detection of aromas and scents, since for the Tonasa this was their primary sense), the Tonasa were granted some access to basic jump science. They were at one end of a Jump-1 main, so that should give them access to a few worlds. One of these systems even had three potentially habitable worlds. This gave the Tonasa a new purpose in their – spreading out across the stars to wherever they could reach.

Despite Lord Sivas’ diplomatic skills though, he wasn’t willing to eat the local food. After a few days here, exchanging information and learning about the culture, it was time for the Deepnight to move onwards.

They headed along the main, to Mumace and then the system of Amiyeti. This was the system that had three habitable worlds. All were dwarf terrestrial worlds, but they each had an active biosphere, liquid water and a decent atmosphere.

On the innermost of these three worlds, there was a bronze age civilisation of humanoids. Numbering only a few million, they had some small cities and a mostly agrarian society. The people here are hairless with large ears – the crew describing them as goblins. Their appearance was another MidJourney generation.

The crew realise that once the Tonasa build their jump drives, this culture won’t stand a chance. Even if the Tonasa try to preserve the species, which seemed unlikely given what had been learned about their society, the Amiyetians would be unlikely to survive their world being colonised.

The crew realise that they’ve caused this problem by handing out jump technology, but also decide that actually they’re not that bothered.