Shoot First
Whilst the Deepnight Revelation is in Jump heading towards Dublin, the officers have a discussion about the route they plan to take. Dublin is the primary world on a J-2 route at the Rimward edge of the Commonwealth. There have been rumours of attacks along the border, especially against the independent worlds of Keppa, Phema and Shoh. The world of Eyyd, which controls a small independent cluster of worlds, has also reported attacks.
The plan is to head to Eyyd next and see what they know of the attacks by the Biologicals, then head back over to Keppa, Phema and Shoh.
The Deepnight comes out of jump about six million kilometres from the gas giant, and during the usual recovery of its systems the bridge crew notice a problem with the sensors – they aren’t resetting properly. After some fiddling, it’s realised they have reset, and the false positives they’re getting aren’t false.
The Deepnight has been locked onto by several objects. One is accelerating away from them at 2G, and another dozen are accelerating towards the Deepnight at 10g. Incoming missiles.
The alert is sounded, and the crew scramble to activate electronic warfare. Meanwhile, Captain Kishasaa broadcasts a message to the retreating ship – a sub 1,000t vessel that is heavily armed with bay weapons. “We are friendlies. You do not want us not to be friendlies”.
Broadcasting the codes they’d be given by the Commonwealth, and after some heated discussion, the Raven orders the self destruct on its remaining missiles (7 had been destroyed by the Deepnight’s ECW, so they hadn’t been that much of a threat).
The captain of the picket ship apologies for having an itchy trigger finger. They had been on a state of alert, and something so large and unknown coming out of jump made them assume the worst.
Once contact is made with the main world, agreement is reached to refuel and head in system, where they can talk to the government and local military. It takes several days to travel in-system, and during that time the Deepnight are able to listen in on the local news, so I provide some handouts to the players.
Eyyd Increases Hostilities
The Eyyd Navy frigate Star Tide fired shots at the Commonwealth frigate Legartha at the system of Etexesa, causing minor damage. The Legartha defended itself and drove the Star Tide back.
Etexesa 0704 is considered a contested system until Eyyd halts its hostilities. It is recommended that nobody goes there without a military escort.
It is believed that access to the Eyyd Independent Worlds via Utonis 0504 is currently being blocked by the Eyyd navy.
Illegal Actions of the Grand Republic
The Grand Republic is once again pushing its patrols further into Commonwealth controlled space. They claim that they are “excercising their freedom of movement”, but these are acts of aggression in an attempt to demonstrate that they are not a failing state.
They have stopped several smaller Commonwealth ships, boarding them and performing illegal insepections for “weapons and illegal goods”. The Grand Republic has no authority in this region, but the Commonwealth is refusing to send more patrol ships.
The Dublin Main continuous to pay its dues to the Commonwealth, but only sees 70% of that funding being returned in the form of defence. Why do we continue to pay Commonwealth taxes when they don’t provide the promised protection?
Phema Disaster
Rescue teams are still looking for survivors on Phema IV. The asteroid impact completely wiped out all the settlements along the Long Sea. There is still hope that settlements further inland, or on high ground, survived, but the boiling rain that started to fall hours after the impact probably killed everyone.
One of the search and rescue teams, which included several incident response specialises from Dublin, have gone missing during the operation.
The Keppa V Crisis
Reports from Keppa V continue to describe massive deaths in aquatic life. Given this is where 90% of the world’s food is sourced from, the world is close to declaring a famine. Supply ships from Anidewu III are trying to provide what they can.
Ecologies describe the deaths as being caused by an RNA based viral infection originating from some of the indigenous life forms still present in the deep oceans. The virus causes an organism’s cells to rupture and die, invoking some form of sell destruct mechanism. Why it is suddenly happening now isn’t clear.
Though attempts over the last century have been successful at replacing the human-incompatile indigenous life with something Terrans can eat, some of the original planetary lifeforms still remain.
Scientists say that a lot of the worlds in this sector used to have a similar type of indigenous life, but it was replaced during the early Droyne and Terran colonisation of these worlds, especially those in the heavily populated Arcadia sector.
As well as famine, the settlers are also suffering from attacks from the sea. Things with tentacles have been reported attacking boats, or even crawling up onto land. They seem to be suffering from the same infection as Terran life, leaving behind rotting, bloated corpses of decaying flesh.
There are claims that the events are linked, but it isn’t clear how. The first strange beasts were sighted about 10 years ago, whilst the plague only became apparent within the last year.
I think the players had been planning to just drop in, refuel, and head off at Dublin. However, I’d planned it as an important stop over point to provide the players with some information about the local systems. I wanted to ensure that had enough information to be able to make some informed choices about what to do, and where to go next.
For a while now, I feel I’ve just been pushing things along without too much input from the players, so I wanted to give a bit more agency. The new information allows them to rethink their plans.
The arrival at Dublin main world was met with apologies, and a chance to invite officers and politicians aboard for a look around, as well as a chance to go down to the planet to meet with the planetary President.
Now they’re actively talking and sharing information, they get more detailed info.
Recent Events at Dublin
Ship Attack
Three months ago, a ship came out of jump space near the gas giant Dubin VI. It was a very rough exit, suggesting a mis-jump. The ship was approximately five to ten thousand displacement tons, and was not broadcasting on any standard frequencies.
There was a 500t trader Tycho Express that moved to intercept, but it was fired upon as soon as it got into close range. The Tycho was disabled, and then rammed by the intruder. Both fell into the Jovian’s atmosphere, and believed destroyed.
Remnents of the ship were found amongst the icy rings.
Strike on Eyosym
Five years ago, a small task force took part in a strike on an outlaw outpost at 1807/Eyosym IV. It is a large population independent world, known for funding raids onto other worlds.
It is a struggling democracy, and the people there know that the only way to prop up their civilisation is by raiding Commonwealth border worlds for high tech goods, and sometimes people.
The starport there was destroyed, as were several weapons factories. There haven’t been problems from them since then.
Funding Crisis
The local Commonwealth Naval resources are underfunded, and have been for a while. Over the last three years, two of the frigates that performed regular patrols of the region have gone missing. They haven’t been replaced.
Two of them, the Broadsword and the Hammer, received recognition for their actions on the Eyosym strike. They had experienced crews, so it was a great surprise that they went missing.
Food Stability
There aren’t many garden worlds in this sector. The habitability of systems seems to drop sharply as you approach the Rim. One such world though was 0306/Hane, part of the Eyyd Coalition Independent Worlds. A wide variety of high quality good stuffs made its way to the Dublin group via Utonsi.
Since the closure of Utonsi to regular traffic, access to this food has been severly restricted.
Most of the local worlds can produce more than enough food, but it isn’t of the same variety and quality as that which came from Hane.
Nearby Worlds
0903 Jorvik
Barren landscape with oceans that are filled with life. Population is barely over two million, but has high tech industry, up to TL 11. It is strugling to keep this going though, and needs a lot of resources from Dublin and the other worlds of the group.
0905 Afetedi II
The only Earth-like world still has a thick primordial atmosphere. It has basic indigenous life, nothing more complex than bacteria though. The world is not habitable.
0906 Birka III [D]
Warm Necro Gaian world, used to have life but it died out pretty recently. Records suggest that there was life here up to about 200 to 250 thousand years ago. Then something happened. It was a sudden event, but over a period of about 50 thousand years.
There was land life here, including trees and land based animals. There is evidence of both Terran and native life forms amongst the fossils.
There is a settlement here with a population of 10 million. They have started to farm some small areas of land, but most food is artificially produced.
1006 Aarhus III [D]
Temperate Necro Gaian world. There is evidence of an extensive biosystem here, completely alien to Terran based lifeforms. It died out between 250 and 300 thousand years ago. There is no sign of a large geologic or astronomical event that caused this.
Possibly the die out happened over a period of about ten thousand years.
There are nine million people living here, under a theocracy. It is a unique cult that worships the Bloodline of the Ancients. The Matriarch rules them. There are strict birthing rules, where people are bred according to the dictates of the Matriarchs.
It is a TL 9 world.
1107 Kaupang III [D]
This is a Meso Gaian world, with basic life in the oceans.
The five million people that live here worship the Talking Heads. Little is known about them, except that there are 17 of them, between 3m and 12m in height. They are solid stone, and are crude carvings of human faces.
The Priests say that the Heads talk to them, and tell the people how to live their lives.
The people here a “Nice”. There is little unrest, and everyone cooperates with each other. They have a number of scout ships, and they have been seeking out similar heads in nearby systems, but have so far found none.
1204 Nicerimo [D]
Another Meso Gaian world, population 89M and heavily balkanized into warring factions. Most of them live in tunnels beneath the surface, and warfare is both subterranean and surface based.
Nukes have been used in the past, and most people stay away from them.
This extra information allows the players to start asking more questions about the biologicals, and doing some more planning about where to go. They are able to get some samples from the local scientists – of the alien spacecraft, the strange tentacle beasts and also some planetary samples.
The spacecraft is related to the Biologicals, as are the tentacle beasts. The old indigenous life goes back billions of years, so predates the Ancients. It has some similarities with life on planets found Coreward of the Commonwealth where the Biologicals were first encountered.
Scouts are sent to the other planets in the system, where there are some native life which hasn’t been tampered with by Terrans. It’s possible that a lot of the worlds in these sectors had such life, but in the Commonwealth and the Republic this life was wiped out by Terran life forms.
So the Deepnight ends up staying a while at Dublin, sharing information about the ‘fungus’ and the biologicals. They also hold sessions about the Ancients, though the local scientists aren’t entirely sure how much of that to believe. Eventually some more information turns up from Phema. Images from drone surveillance showing humanoid figures walking around in the wasteland following the asteroid impact there. They are very much non-human, but look different to the Twiglets that were encountered earlier. Could they be part of the Entity? Or something else?
Finally though, they have the information that they need and start to plan where to go next. It is decided not to go to Eyyd. There is a chance of conflict there, and it seems best to let them get on with things. There are talks going on currently, so hopefully they can all get along.
The players want to go to Kaupung, in order to investigate the heads. The “Ancients” of Birka is not what the Deepnight crew first thought. It simply refers to their Gerontocracy. Nothing to do with The Grandfather.
From there, they will head to Keppa, and possibly split up, sending scout ships to investigate the other systems.
At the end of this session I did have a talk with the players about the style of the interactions we’ve been having. A lot of the time I find that the conversations aren’t necessarily between an NPC and a PC, or even an NPC and another NPC. But between two groups of people. This has meant conversations have been rather abstract, with not much depth to the NPCs. I was thinking whether I should try to introduce individuals (a scientist representing the planet’s science team, a specific government official etc) to provide more roleplaying depth.
The players are okay with this abstract approach though, so I’ll continue doing it. If it gets into a situation where it makes sense to have individuals, I’ll do that. But for the most part we can keep things abstract.
