Lizards are Cute

After destroying a civilisation in the previous session (though who was ultimately responsible may be up for debate), the crew of the Deepnight Revelation are making the two parsec jump to Batinuha. This system is meant to be the last of the worlds that the Droyne used for scientific research in this area. It is also the only one which wasn’t destroyed when the research went wrong.

The mission team write up a report of what they have learned, and a summary of that follows:

• The Battledress suits worn on the expedition down to Opadajo are potentially infected by virus. Whether it is from the Droyne or the Mainframe is not known. However, it’s not fixable without a complete hardware refresh, and they don’t have the resources to do that. It’s passing all functional tests though, so may be safe to use.
• The ship’s computer was also partially infected. It was shutdown before the attack progressed too far, and remains shutdown since it can’t be entirely cleansed. The scientists will need to spend a bit more time arguing over which models they want to run due to reduced computing resource, but the ship can continue to function normally.
• The Dryone have managed some massive stellar engineering, with apparently only a single ship. This is worrying. If the Deepnight finds the source of the Entity, and the Droyne have got there and failed to deal with it themselves, then this will be really worrying.
• Some of the data picked up from the Pyramid shows a way to detect the Entity from a distance of several parsecs – as long as it has infected the world sufficiently to be present in the atmosphere.
• There is no mention of the Biologicals in the data.
• However, the experiments the Droyne were doing suggest links to the Blood Petal flowers.

There was discussion about the Droyne, and a comment about wanting to kick them in their nadgers. This led to a discussion about Droyne physiology, especially in terms of breeding methods. One of the crew pointed out that the Deepnight’s library contained much in the way of detailed treatises on the subject, with such titles as “What the Droyne Windowcleaner Saw” and “When the Droyne Fixed My Plumbing”. A careful study of such works passes the time in Jump.

Arrival at Batinuha revealed an Earth-like world with three continents. There were thick jungles and forests, but initially no sign of habitation. After a while, there is a brief signal burst which identifies a small starport near the equator.

A couple of ships are sent down, including the 200t scout Princess Starfire and the Pinnace Nymph. Zanobia and Dr Rusasa head down in the Nymph along with a couple of mission scientists and a couple of security guards.

On the way down, some huge avian creatures are spotted, which occasionally dive down through the thick jungle canopy and return with prey.

The starport is a small abandoned research station, with just enough room on the overgrown landing pad for the Nymph. There is a plan to grab some samples of the local fauna and flora, and try and determine what the Droyne were up to here.

The flora looks normal, apart from reddish vines and flowers which cover the lower trunks of the trees, and which has grown over the cluster of buildings.

The buildings look like they were abandoned in good order, possibly 10-15 years ago. There is a little damage to one of the roofs, but otherwise it is in good condition given it’s been left in the jungle for so long.

Inside one of the buildings are some left behind wall boards and power cables, but no computer cores. The wall boards have some pictures of various wildlife up on it, with three notables being pointed out.

There are the large bird-like creatures, named Devil Beaks.

There are the ‘white prowlers’, which are feathered and beaked quadrupeds the size of a small horse.

There are reddish serpentine quadruped lizards named “‘lurker lizards’.

It looks like there was some notes left over for brain storming sessions, questioning the odd genetic and evolutionary history of the three creatures compared to everything else. There are also notes about the white prowlers always managing to escape the pit traps.

There is also a skull of one of the white prowlers still hanging on the wall, and some tranq darts, traps and netting. Looks like it was a research and/or hunting station.

Some of the party go out hunting, and eventually manage to track down a white prowler. One of the security team shoots it, and it vanishes. Checking back on the gun camera, it looks like it was there, the bullet struck it, and then a couple of frames later it wasn’t there any more.

Had it gone invisible? Teleported?

The trail was eventually picked up again some ten metres away. It looked like the creature had teleported. It was eventually tracked down, and Zanobia wasted it with her plasma-jet. What was left would take some time to cool down enough.

There was a circling devil bird up above, which was being monitored by the Princess Starfire. It seemed to have spotted the burning corpse, and the armed team sheltering nearby. It obviously wasn’t using sight due to the thick canopy. Eventually it drifted off, deciding not to hunt here.

After some samples were taken, it was noted that nothing had been heard back at the port. Nobody was answering comms requests, so the team headed back there. The Nymph was still sat at the port, but it was covered by a number of lurker lizards. They were trying to get inside, but failing. They were taken out by rifle fire from the security team, though one of the team almost went into a trance after two of the lizards stared at him. They were quickly dispatched with more shots.

Inside the pinnace, the crew were safe, if a little dazed. They had been overcome by how cute the lizards were, and had fallen into a daze. If they had been outside the ship at the time, then they probably would have allowed the lizards to eat them.

Taking what samples they could, the research team left the planet and headed back to the Deepnight.

There were flora and fauna here which were definitely alien. The plants had links to the blood petals, but there were no signs of biologicals anywhere. The three animal types seemed to be genetically engineered, very probably from Droyne/Ancient manufacture, and very probably all equipped with psionic abilities.

It wasn’t clear what the Droyne had been up to here, but it was decided to leave it safely alone, and just use the samples taken for future study.

For this session I had wanted to give the group a chance to do a bit of hunting, and also test out the Creature actor type in MgT2e a bit, since I’ve hardly used them. A topic that’s come up on a podcast I listen to (the Grognard files) about different ways of doing monsters, was the idea of having random options for a monster’s attacks. I haven’t read the rule systems concerned, but the idea I came away with was that you roll randomly to see what sort of attack a monster (or animal) does. Does it bite? Pounce? Run away?

The idea is to give a few more varied actions, rather than always doing the same thing. I thought this might be interesting to do in Traveller, where creatures are a bit plain and boring (statistics wise) compared to those found in D&D variants.

As it happens, I never got to use this. It could be a nice way to allow some creatures to have unusual attack types or tactics, within the Traveller rules, without giving them things like feats. Just roll a die, with frequency representing how difficult it is for the creature to get into a position to try the attack.

At least in my Traveller though, there is rarely opportunity for combat like this. Especially when the PCs aren’t geared up in battledress, plasma jets and other weaponry which makes pretty much any fight against a natural creature very one sided.