Fungal Twiglet Mashups
After a break over the Christmas period, we’re back to our Deepnight Revelation campaign. The Deepnight and its crew are heading Rimward through the Federated Commonwealth of Worlds in the Far Side of Nowhere region. They are managing to keep ahead of the news of their arrival due to their Jump-4 drives, so most worlds are surprised to see them.
Their current destination is the Dual Alliance, a small enclave of worlds inhabited by both Droyne and Humans. Beyond that, is the edge of the Commonwealth, and the Voidshore, which will be the last stretch of their long journey.
As they hop from world to world, I’m continuing my introduction of new crew members, trying to give some more of the NPCs a voice and personality.
The ship gets to Tuhe, a civilised system where the is a major business conference being held. Several of the crew want to go down to attend, especially the corporate team. When they return, they come bearing vendor wear and stress balls.
Whilst some of the crew are at the conferences, Lt Ganim picks up bits of a transmission from outside the hull of the ship. It seems to be going in the direction of the local naval base. What was sent isn’t known, she just picked up a bit of scatter off a tight beam communication.
Tracking down who was outside at the time, there was a group of engineers checking over the hull in that area. One of them is one of the newer crew members – Tala Ofsten.
She’s a specialist in jump and drive engines, but wanted to also gaining wider experience. According to her team lead, she’s intelligent, enthusiastic, asks lots of questions and jumps into anything given to her.
Alfred and Khadashi are given the task of investigating her, and do find a laser communicator in her room. Alfred uses his very special investigation techniques to probe her mind. From what he can tell, she’s loyal to the mission, but also was made an offer by the Commonwealth government to feed back what information she could. Being a low ranking citizen, she’d get very preferential treatment on return from the mission.
It is decided not to let Tala know that her cover is blown, but to keep tabs on her instead.
At the system of Sumoxna, it is discovered that there are genetically engineered fish living under the ice on one of the gas giant’s moons. They are remarkably similar to fish that the Deepnight came across on a similar moon 8 years ago. Similar even down to the DNA, other than a few hundred thousand years of evolutionary drift.
Evidence of Droyne tampering and seeding perhaps? Information is shared with the local research base.
At the next system of Therexxun, there are some silicate based insect-like lifeforms living out in the desert. Unintelligent, but an interesting subject of study for the local humans. Again, there is an exchange of information.
Eventually, the Deepnight arrives at the Dual Alliance world of Ishkin. It is ruled by a Pentat of a human male and female, and droyne alpha male, beta male and female. The crew are invited down to the planet for a meet and great, where a lot of interest is shown in their mission.
At some point, Talliena (a priestess from a world which worshipped technology of the Ancients) goes off with the Droyne to talk about who knows what. I haven’t done that much with her, and should probably do more. She was about 9 when she came on board, and would be coming up to 12 now.
There is also surfing and the eating of deep fried chocolate covered spoo.
There is some discussion about the attacks by the Biologicals along the border, but the people at Ishkin don’t know much about that. There have been some rumours, though if there is any information it will be at Grand Skies itself.
So they head to Grand Skies, where the reception is much as before. People are surprised to see an ‘alien’ ship, but then see it as an opportunity to sell news stories and gain information. There is a Pentat here as well, and they are interested in exchanging information for information. They are happy to share what they know about the star systems to Rimward, especially given that some of their kind settled systems out that way several centuries ago. They have since lost contact, but they have some information.
Grand Skies Information
Around year 350, the end result of a civil war was that a group of Droyne who were unhappy with the alliance with the humans, set off to found their own colony to Rimward.
There is little in the way of civilisation out in that direction, and the number of life bearing worlds is lower than it is here or in Charted Space. One suitable world was found though, which was named Draytsirv.
For a while there was continued contact, though it was limited due to the long distance. Then contact fizzled out after a couple of hundred years
Around year 860, the signals started becoming intermittent, and the last signal was received around 1063.
The distance to Draytsirv is about 280ly, so it’s probably been about 300 years since the settlement there failed.
There weren’t any deliberate signals sent back home, so information about what happened isn’t known. Just that the faint radio transmissions that any technological civilisation leak out ceased.
Final Expedition
About 25 years ago a expedition of a single ship was sent to try and make contact again. It never returned.
Life Forms
Though there was little sign of human or droyne-like life in this region, there were some life bearing words. Some of these worlds had a plant-like lifeform that showed some signs of intelligence.
They had mobility, and the ability to work together. No attempt to communicate with them was ever successful however. They’re not even classed as sophonts, since they seemed to lack higher reasoning. Some researchers did claim that the level of intelligence was different rather than lacking, but nothing was ever proven.
A few samples were brought back after the initial expeditions. But if any extensive research was done by the Draytsirv settlers then the results of such never made its way back.
Biology
The samples that Grand Skies have available show signs of genetic tampering. These biological constructs either engineered themselves, or were engineered by another species. The latter is assumed since the biologicals show little sign of having technology.
Comparing to the samples of the Biologicals that the Deepnight has:
- The basic genetics are very similar. It would appear that the Voidshore biologicals are older than those in the FSN area. Though there are only a few samples, they show greater diversity.
- The genetic tampering is different, but similar. After much research, the conclusion will be that the Voidshore biologicals were engineered independently of the FSN ones. Voidshore were done second, since the genetic changes are more efficient.
- In particular, more work was done around being resistent to disease attack vectors.
A number of worlds in the sector had Biological presence, so something had spread them around multiple worlds. It is thought that their homeworld was probably nearby.
This is a lot more information that the crew have got previously about the Voidshore region, and leads to some discussion amongst the players about what is happening. They figure that the Biologicals spread out from the Voidshore region into the Far Side of Nowhere region, and that the Droyne came in the other direction, tinkering with the genetics of the biologicals.
The fact that the Biologicals seem to be highly resistant to the Entity would make them better carriers. So are the Biologicals part of a plan by the Ancients to spread the Entity? Or something else entirely?
Whilst at Dark Skies, the crew are also provided with some information about what has been happening on the border in Celadon sector, where there have been some attacks by something on the border worlds there. These attacks are probably by Biologicals – or at least this is what the Commonwealth thought.
Since the border worlds are independent, the flow of information has been sparse. Reports from a few of the worlds in Celadon sector suggest that something is going on. Whether it’s a coordinated series of attacks, or random acts of violence isn’t clear at this stage.
Eyyd/0606
The most technologically advanced of the independent worlds. It has its own small navy, though most of it is under 1,000t. The flag ship of its fleet is the Queen Eyyd, a 5,000t destroyer. It has lost several scouts in the small J-1 cluster that it considers to be its domain of influence. It had a battle of some sort out beyond the 6th world, but details haven’t been forthcoming. There have been reports of attacks on settlements on the surface of the main world. A couple of reports suggest that their ships were the subject of boarding actions, but we have not been able to obtain any official reports.
Keppa/1409
A small colony of less than 100,000 people. There is no unified government, and a pre-starfaring level of technology. They have basic mechanisation and very simple electronics. There have been reports that their fisheries have collapsed due to fungal infection, and that attacks have occurred on several communities. Some say that the attacks came from the sea. There is extensive aquatic life on the world, though little land life. Nothing that was previously considered dangerous though.
Phema/1410
It did have a population of 20,000. However, this is now thought to be zero. Six months ago the main settlement was hit by an asteroid. One report from first responders mentioned strange plant life, but that is just a rumour. No holovids are available, and there have been no official reports.
Shoh/1311
Shoh is a TL 7 world with over a third of a million inhabitants. It has recently asked for Commonwealth protection against attacks on supply ships. There has only been a single survivor of such an attack, and their sensor readings were highly ambiguous to say the least. Whatever they picked up on radar was either highly amorphous, protected by stealth technology, or otherwise obscured.
The Dual Alliance is a small enclave within the Commonwealth, so after the Deepnight leaves here, it will be back into the Commonwealth for a short while before heading out across the border and back into the wilderness of (mostly) uncharted space.
I tried to provide some more information to the players about what they could encounter in Voidshore. The adventure as written doesn’t give much information on what the Commonwealth or Dual Alliance would know, and I think they would have some information – especially from the Draytsirv expedition. I really wish the adventure book gave a bit more info on the Dual Alliance though. It doesn’t even (as far as I can find) say where the Dual Alliance is. I’ve had to guess based on a few clues. It would have been nice if it had been marked on the map.
After years of manually getting world maps out of my WorldGen generator, and each time saying that I really should write a script to automate it, I finally automated it over Christmas. It took five minutes, and now I can run a single command and have all the image, height and cloud maps for each world in a star system exported from the database and written to disk within a few seconds. It makes creating handouts so much easier. I really should have done it three years ago.
