Correlations

The Deepnight Revelation is making its way out of the Celadon Sector, and into LSD Transition One. There is a party aboard the ship to celebrate this. For some of the crew, it’s the first time they’ll have been in a completely unexplored sector.

I managed to put together a quick edition of the ‘Into the Deep’ ship-board magazine, with a bit of a focus on some of the crew members.

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Into the Deep

The Deepnight has crossed into the next sector – LSD Transition one. For some of the crew, this is the first time they will have been in a sector where there is no Commonwealth presence. For many of us though, travelling through the wilderness is just another year.

Probably about four more sectors to go before we reach our destination.

Navigation

The plan for this sector is to head across the top of it, and into the next sector of FSD Transition Spinward after about half a dozen systems. The plan hasn’t changed much since it was first proposed some weeks ago.

• Denygdat 1802
• Ada 1404
• Atarway 1005
• Refunhuki 0606
• Wuyohe 0306

Crew

I’ve had a chance to interview a few of the new crew members, to see what their thoughts are on the journey so far. I asked each of them three questions:

• Why did you join the mission?
• What did you hope to get out of it?
• What are the highlights so far?

Karl Abulston

• There weren’t any decent jobs working on jump drives back home, so I didn’t have great prospects. The Deepnight has really big jump drives, so I wanted a chance to see how they worked.
• An opportunity to really see how advanced jump drives perform.
• Actually, it was seeing the chirpers. I didn’t know such things existed!

Sleida Jabolson

• My marriage had just ended in a complete mess, so I wanted a change. There wasn’t much for me back home to keep there.
• I wanted to meet new people, who were intelligent, motivated and who wanted to go out and do things. Everyone at home were boring and not willing to take risks.
• Working on fixing the hull, with a great big gas giant rotating beneath you, that was an impressive sight. Gave me a wonderful feeling.

Emma Ungston

• I wanted to do physics, lots of physics. This seemed to be the best equipped laboratory that I would have a chance to work in.
• I’m hoping to be able to study some real hard science, especially strong gravitational fields around black holes or neutron stars.
• Working alongside Dr Nekuna has been a great experience. He’s so clever, and knows so much more than any of the scientists back home. It’s been a real pleasure to have worked with him.

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It was also an opportunity to check that my journal inlining of NPCs was working correctly.

The first world they encounter in the new sector is a gas giant with strange black spots. They seem to be particulates consisting of carbon and iron. The ship avoids them as it refuels, and sends in a probe to investigate. About half way through refuelling, the crew notice similar black material forming in the ship’s wake.

They quickly pull up out of the atmosphere, and check the hull and fuel contents for any of the material – but it all seems clean. Other spots are reforming their shapes, making patterns in the cloud. As the probe dips into one of the regions, the particles begin to form around it. As it tries to escape, long black strands pull it back down into the clouds, where it is disassembled.

Deciding not to finish fuelling here, they head towards the inner system where the is a world with surface water. The dump as much of their fuel as they can, just in case it is infected. They also pick up a faint beacon in orbit around the planet. It seems to be from the Dual Alliance, and is broadcasting the location of a small port facility down near the sea.

Sending down a team to investigate, it seems to be a Droyne supply depot, though has been abandoned for decades. Inside one of the portable cabins on the surface, are signs of Droyne activity, including what looks like a star route.

1802 X
1802 -> 1603 -> 1404
1404 -> 1204 -> 1005
1005 -> 0806 -> 0606
0606 -> 0505
0505 -> 0306
0306 -> 0107 -> 3207 
3207 -> 3008 -> 2910
2910 -> 2912 -> 2913 X
2913 -> 2714
2714 -> 2514 -> 2314
2314 -> 2114 -> 1915
1915 -> 1715 -> 1515
1515-> 1316 -> 1317
1317 -> 1118 -> 0919
0919 -> 0720 -> 0521
0521 > 0422 -> 0324 -> 0325
0325 -> 0327 -> 0329
0329 -> 0529 -> 0730
0730 -> 0828 -> 1027 -> 1127

The crew translate the coordinates into their own, and realise it seems to be a route across this sector and into the next one, terminating at the Droyne colony of Draytsirv – which is where the Deepnight is heading. The route suggests that the route is designed for a ship that is only capable of J-2, but has at least 4 parsecs of fuel. There is an X marked at 1802, which is where they are now. What the meaning of X at 2913 is they don’t know. Is it a warning about the Gas Giant?

The Deepnight flushes out its fuel tanks, and refills. Then they jump onwards to Ada at 1404. There is an Ice Giant here, which seems to have things moving around deep in its atmosphere. These are possibly ‘floaters’ – life forms kilometres across, which are little more than bags of gas. There are no metals here though (unless you’re an astronomer), so the crew feel safe to refuel in the upper atmosphere.

The usual routine of jump, refuel, jump eventually takes them to Wuyohe at 0306. Refuelling at the gas giant is straightforward, and there are some terrestrial worlds, the inner most of which has signs of life.

However, on approaching the world, it is discovered that it is mostly dead. There was life on the land, but it has all died out. There are large dead spots in the oceans. Most importantly, there are signs of infection by the Entity. The infection probably happened within the last 100 years.

They make notes, and move on. They had hoped to resupply with food here, and there is some concern that they couldn’t, even though they still have 180 days supply at full rations. It is also decided that they prefer to refer to the Entity as The Fungus, and that the Biologicals should be called Twiglets.

The Deepnight moves into the sector eloquently named FSD Transition Spinward. Their far scanning of this sector is limited, but they know that Draytsirv is at 1127.

At the system of Iredisere 3207, they refuel then find food on one of the inner worlds. It isn’t great quality, and requires resupplying at the poles where the temperature isn’t so hot. The ‘food’ consists of mostly bacteria, a lot of it extremophiles. But it can go into the food processors.

I have the players make a CEI check due to the complexities, and they get an opportunity, getting a useful wildcard to invoke at a later point:

A non-Traveller crewmember turns out to have had a very respectable academic career or interest in an obscure subject that has now become useful. Their long-disused knowledge of obscure alien art, dead languages or rare jumpspace phenomena can be defined at any time the Travellers want, providing a solution to an otherwise difficult situation.

At the next world of Delta Jula 2910, they pick up some very fragmented signals from Eguyame, which is their next stop at 2913. They spend some days making very detailed scans of the system, and determine that it is probably another Dual Alliance beacon.

There is a life bearing world, but the chemical signatures show some consistency with both Fungus and Twiglets. There are worries, but an opportunity to examine what happens when the two are brought together could be useful. This is another world marked with an X. They still don’t know what it means, but there seems to have been danger at both the X marked worlds.