Meddling in Affairs
In our previous session of Deepnight Revelation, the crew had gone down to the world they’d named Osk to investigate the ruins of a civilisation. A Droyne ship was discovered parked in one of the cities, powered down and unused for some time.
Sending down a scout party, it was clear there had been some fighting here. The remains of dead Droyne were found, some of which looked quite mutated. They also encountered Chirpers, and a live Droyne with feathers growing out of their head.
There was some concern about the Chirpers/Droyne have telepathic abilities, so it was asked whether psionic shields were a thing. Obviously they were – the Travellers had seen them being used in the Imperium equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons. They’d been worn by the heroic Imperium soldiers fighting the evil Zhodani. Whether they actually existed for real they weren’t sure of – and the ship definitely didn’t have any.
They took the scout up to scout around a bit more, and Trennance picked up a burst of local radio emissions. After some effort, it was tracked to a major crossroads in the city. Khadashi and Daevin went down to investigate. It seemed to be coming from the first floor of a ruined building, so heading up the stairs to investigate they narrowly avoided a trip wire trap.
Lodged up at a window was some electronics and a camera. It seemed to send a short range transmission whenever it picked up movement.
Further investigation of the ruins discovers a network of sensor devices. They also realise that they are being followed – a Droyne in a worn out vacc suit is trailing them. When hailed, she tentatively meets them.
She identifies herself as Stermbroyt, an explorer who arrived here 6 years ago in the ship landed nearby. They met, and were attacked by, some Droyne who were already here. She escaped, but her companions were captured and experimented on.
The Droyne here are part of a group known as the Evolvers. They were banned from the homeworld, so must have come here to do their experiments. They are trying to figure out how to Caste Droyne. Their experiments have generally met with failure.
So I switched things around here, with the Travellers finding out who the Evolvers were before meeting them. Stermbroyt was asking for the Evolvers to be killed, and if there were any survivors for them to be rescued. The Deepnight had a decision to make – whether to ignore the problem since it didn’t affect them, or get involved.
It was decided to put together a team and perform an assault on the Evolver labs. A couple of days scanning located it, and gave them a good idea of numbers and defences. The Evolvers seemed to be aware that something was up – presumably they’d seen the Travellers on their camera traps. There was also sufficient circumstantial evidence that the Evolvers really were the bad guys, though until the raid there wasn’t definite proof.
When the Travellers blew their way into their labs though wearing battledress, they weren’t expecting it. Apart from a handful of Stunners some of the characters had brought on board, the ship didn’t have any stun weapons in the armoury. Three Evolvers were captured though, the rest killed.
There was plenty of evidence of biological experimentation having been done on captured Droyne and Chirpers alike, so they were able to verify that the Evolvers were doing Bad Things.
Talking to them though, and looking through their records, they seemed to really believe that they were doing the right thing – trying to save their race from extension by finding a way to get them to Caste. They just didn’t know how to do it. They’d been abandoned here when some of their team left in the ship they used to get here about 10 years ago. But they’d continued their experiments.
It was decided to spend some time taking the rescued Droyne back home, along with the captured Evolvers (one of who turned out to have Psionic ability).
