Green

In our previous session of Deepnight Revelation, the crew had explored a world which had been used by the Droyne as a bio research lab. From here, they would head towards the system of Abyrezuky. This was a high tech world with a large spaceport and a population of almost ten billion, which surrounding systems had lost all contact with.

The Deepnight was to meet up with the CSS Illustrious at the system of Bitof, a couple of parsecs from Abyrezuky. Though the Illustrious was taking a direct route, it’s J-2 drive meant that it would get there around the same time as the Deepnight Revelation planned to.

During the trip, the crew finished integrating the stellar data that the CSS Illustrious had provided them with into their own databases. This provided them a full map of both the Far Side of Nowhere and Voidshore regions, finally bringing their destination at VS-X into view.

The reason I gave the players this handout now, was simply because I’d finally finished generating the system data. It took a while to generate all the sectors, and my database of star systems is now up to about 750GB in size. Most of that is planetary map data, since each system has fully detailed planets. It’s not something I need, but something I get for free with my world generator.

There is some discussion about whether to head to FSN-X first, which was the original waypoint. To get from where they are (the green dot, top right), across the Commonwealth (green systems) and towards VS-X would be much quicker to head directly across the region of low density star systems. So currently their plan is to do this.

By the time the Deepnight arrived at Bitof, there wasn’t anyone there. There was a small world with a dense, overly warm atmosphere and some surface water. The only sign of civilisation was an automated signal coming from a small port down on the planet. It was an E port at most, with a few buildings clustered around it.

The Deepnight started sending shuttles down to collect fuel, whilst a few science teams went down to take samples from the basic life forms and generally explore. A small team led by Dr Hoduunu (an NPC that is part of the life science team, a specialist in botany) explored the port.

What they found there were dead people. It looked like they had asphyxiated when their life support systems failed. Some were in vacc suits, others in simple breathing masks. There was no power, and the primordial outer atmosphere had leaked into the living quarters.

A medical team was sent down led by Dr Rosden, one of the ship’s medical officers. It looked like the seals on the airlocks had failed, and further investigation showed that the electronics weren’t working because all the insulation had been eaten away. The insulation and other components around the reactor were also gone, replaced by an organic residue. The vacc suits of the personnel had also suffered a similar fate – something had eaten away at the plastics.

There was bacteria present around where plastic had been – and it looked like it was eating the plastic. This bacteria was now also on the suits of the science and medical teams, though it wasn’t being that active.

Getting samples, and the teams back to the Deepnight without infecting the rest of the ship took most of the next day. The bacteria seemed to like temperatures in the region of 60°C – 70°C, and the temperature down on the surface was an unpleasant 50°C. The bacteria wasn’t that active at such a ‘low’ temperature, but the power packs of the vacc suits did get higher. Plenty of the settlement’s power and electrical systems got to that temperature as well. It looked like the bacteria had found some nice warm homes and started feasting.

The CSS Illustrious turned up, with news from a neighbouring system where civilisation was on the verge of collapse. A plastic eating bacteria had infected their power systems, Jump drives and gravitics, causing the collapse of their technology base. The infection had come from Abyrezuky.

The players guessed that it had maybe been an engineered bacteria to eat waste products, maybe as part of an ecological drive to clean up their planet. They were pretty much right about this. The Illustrious headed Rimward back towards the Commonwealth, whilst the Deepnight headed to Abyrezuky to check on things there – making a note to stay away from anything which might be infected.

The planet was in chaos, since they’d lost all contact with other systems and their society had collapsed into small bickering states. The bacteria had been engineered to only function in a narrow temperature range found in their waste systems but not in nature. But it’d escaped into other areas where that temperature range was also common.

The Deepnight offered assistance in the form of a counter agent, but the planet already had one. They’d had six months to work on a solution, and with a population into the billions, they had plenty of clever scientists of their own. The problem wasn’t finding something to kill the bacteria, it was applying that to the entire planet – something that the Deepnight wouldn’t be able to help with.

Warning buoys were deployed to tell people to stay away, and the Deepnight headed onwards. Their next destination would be the Federated Commonwealth, but they’d to plot a route. Where they currently were, at 0130, was right on the edge of the sector border.

Unfortunately, my star map viewer doesn’t scroll between sectors, you can only view a single sector at a time. This makes it really difficult to navigate across borders. Back in 2005 or so (yes, that’s how old much of the code is), it had a nice scrolling map similar to what Google Maps was back then. But changing technology stacks meant that feature broke and I’ve never had time to re-implement it.

Fortunately it wasn’t too hard to grab the four sub-sectors, stitch them together, and stick them into a handout in Foundry.

Once we had a useful map, it wasn’t too hard to figure out a route that would take them down into the middle of the Commonwealth.

My plan for the next stage is to quickly move through the Commonwealth and then out to the other side. There will probably be one or two important events, especially when they get to one of the important worlds, but I don’t want to micromanage every single world. The first couple possible, then it’ll become a common pattern of meet and greet, then move on. With a few paranoid naval ships possibly starting to worry. But that I can work out before next session.

This session had little input from the PCs. It was mostly NPCs doing the work (guided by the players). It’s something I’m happy with. A big ship like the Deepnight has lots of competent crew members, and coming up with reasons to name a few more of the crew is always helpful.