Collectables
At the end of the previous session, the Deepnight Revelation was at the system of Orasu, where a civilisation of Droyne had been discovered. The Droyne here had long lost the ability to Caste, and were trying to keep a low profile.
Having finished finding out what they could from the Droyne, the Deepnight was ready to get back on track for its journey. I provided a short handout in the form of another Into the Deep magazine article:
The last few days has seen the ship being turned upside down looking for Droyne. It’s thought that they have all been captured and removed, though it hasn’t been possible to prove this.
One of the least practical suggestions has been to pump poison gas into all the vents. Fortunately saner heads have prevailed.
Navigation
The plan from here is to head back to the original planned route, heading down to the sector named LSD Transition One. Personally, I think whoever was planning the mission had run out of names at this point. I suppose that at least the sector names are pronouncible, unlike some of the names given to the systems we’ve encountered.
LSD Transition One
The last system will be Puwowia 1940 in this sector. After that, we will enter LSD Transition One at Denygdat 1802. After that, we will cross the top of the sector, heading to FSD Transition Spinward.
1404 Ada
1005 Atarawy
0606 Refunhuki
0306 Wuyohe
It is not known whether any of these systems are life bearing, so there is a need to make sure we are fully stocked before heading into this sector.
Far range sensor scans are limited in what they can pick up however, so there could be worlds or systems not yet detected. This sector does seem to be less dense though, which is one reason to skip across it as quickly as possible.
FSD Transition Spinward
We already have some knowledge of this system, since Grand Skies informed us that there was a Dual Alliance colony at Draytsirv 1127. Our star maps are not complete enough to know exactly what route we will take, but that is our next planned destination.
They might know something about the Biologicals, and might even know about the Entity.
Crew
The crew have been getting along fine. The fresh crew members have been fitting in well, and the many of those that were complaining the most decided to leave the ship. This has made the ship happier than it was.
I left it up to the players to plan their route to get to the edge of the sector, which took some time as they had to find systems with gas giants and places to pick up food. Once they had a route, it was time to make their first jump.
A couple of days before coming out of Jump, crew members started finding small plastic Droyne toys about the ship. They were hidden in lockers, under chairs, behind crates and in other strange places. By the time this made its way to the command staff, seven of them had been found. Each was about 10cm tall, and had a Droyne in a different pose.
Examining them, they hadn’t been made aboard the ship, so there was some worry about how they suddenly appeared on the ship whilst in jump. It seemed that they had been made on Orasu. Then an eighth was found in an airlock.
The cameras had been disabled for maintenance, using the key card belonging to Lybyx Varnauui, one of the engineers. He denied all knowledge, though eventually admitted to having lost his key card the previous evening around the time the cameras had been disabled. He’d lost it in the canteen, discovered it lost when he went to his room, then found it on returning to the canteen.
Going over camera footage, it was determined that his card had been lifted (then later dropped back under Lybyx’s chair) by one of the research assistants, Burgess Kinnil.
Checking over his personal data files, a list of 21 poses was found on a private to do list, all ticked off. There were also photos taken down on Orasu, which included a set of 21 toy plastic Droyne for sale in a market down on that world.
Taking him in for questioning, and he admitted to having distributed them around the ship “for fun”, as something for people to find. It’s decided that the ship needed a way to register practical jokes, rather than stealing people’s key cards. The latter seems to be the biggest problem, and Burgess is given some boring tasks to do as punishment.
The Deepnight arrives at Osk, where the ship refuels at the gas giant. There is a garden world here, which shows signs of an early industrial level of technology, but no population. There are abandoned cities, mostly overgrown and fallen into disrepair. A single Droyne ship is spotted sitting in one of the cities.
So an away team is sent down to investigate. The city, about TL 4 but abandoned for hundreds of years, does seem to be empty apart from the 4,000t ship. They land some streets away, and head in to take a look. The ship is powered down, and has possibly been here a few years.
Some bones are found near the ship – Droyne bones, but they show signs of large scale mutations. Another Droyne corpse is nearby – killed by laser fire. Again, many years old.
They gain access to the ship, and manage to power it up. After wrestling with the Droyne controls, they eventually manage to grab some data records from the ship’s computer. There is a biology lab aboard the ship, though it looks like it has been emptied of resources and any equipment that could be moved.
There is another Droyne body inside the ship, and again signs of a gun battle. The section of the ship they are in seems to be detachable, and they don’t explore the bulk of the ship. Powering it down again, they head back to their own scout craft.
Meanwhile, the team member left aboard the scout had spotted another Droyne hiding in the bushes. They seemed to have feathers growing out of the top of their head. They were watching the scout, then suddenly fled when an arrow appeared in the tree next to them. The guard thought they spotted something else, but wasn’t sure.
Searching the bushes, signs of lots of footprints are found, plus the footprints of the Droyne.
It is thought that maybe someone here is experimenting on Droyne trying to figure out how to get them to Caste. Further investigation will be needed.
The players are now entering some of the planned side adventures, though due to the course that they took, are encountering them in the opposite direction. Nothing wrong with that, it just means that they’ll know the answers before they encounter the questions.
One thing that I did find useful was my new Foundry macro for requesting skill checks. It was designed for use in a journal, so that it can be specified in a published adventure module. The GM just clicks it, and a dialog requesting a skill check goes out to the players via the chat. They can just click it (or drag it to their character sheet) in order to make the skill check.
It turns out that it’s useful to use in ad-hoc adventures as well. Which means I need an easier way for the GM to be able to invoke it. You can write it as an embedded macro string in a chat message, but it might be nice to have an easy to use UI to allow the GM to request a skill roll from players.
