Stage Trees
Continuing on from our session last week, the crew of the Deepnight Revelation go over the message left to them by the failed Droyne mission. The Droyne from the Dual Alliance had come to Draytsirv, tried to rescue them, failed, and set in motion a course of events that will destroy the world the Deepnight is currently orbiting.
Things are not helped when Alfred comes to Zanobia complaining of a sickness. He feels as if something is pressing down on his thoughts – a great feeling of hunger and a need to consume.
Several other crew members have also come down ill – they have been gorging themselves over the past day or two, and are now very ill. They still fill hungry though, and don’t know why. The Fungus down on the planet seems to have telepathy of a sorts. Remembering back to when they first encountered it on the Deepnight Endeavour, it is mentioned that it seemed to take over the minds of some of those it infected, even getting one to try and betray her entire species. It is mentioned that there might be a need for a very large tin foil hat for the entire ship.
The Deepnight is moved away from the planet, but there are still some things that need doing. Firstly, there is the matter of the huge towering columns that seem to ‘grow’ in forests over some parts of the world. It is decided to set off some seismic charges around their bases to try and get some information on the structure of the formations.
The experiment is a success, and gives them some nice readings about what is beneath. However, several of the ‘trees’ begin to heat up. They begin to burn off their outer coating, and then one fully ignites, beginning to accelerate upwards as it turns out to be a huge solid rocket – some form of chemical-nuclear rocket. This sets off more, and before long, hundreds of kilometre tall pillars of rock are heading into space.
About half of them explode, or fail, but in the end the Deepnight is tracking 372 objects accelerating rapidly Coreward. As they get more readings from the objects, they seem to be of Biological/Twiglet nature, but infected with the Fungus. Some of them are heading towards the Imperium. Most get up to a few hundred kilometres/second, but a few seem to have grown m-drives, and are capable of much faster speeds.
The next week is spent chasing them down and destroying as many as they can. Most get away, but the majority of those that might at some point pose a threat to the Imperium (even if it will be in hundreds of thousands of years time) are destroyed. Those heading back towards the Commonwealth are of a more short term problem, and are also hunted down and destroyed.
Meanwhile, it’s also a chance to try out the biological weapons that the science team have been putting together over the last few years. Not just against the Fungus, which is their ultimate enemy/destination, but also against the Twiglets.
Infection of the great forests which the Twiglets are defending against the Fungus causes some of them to begin to collapse. In some cases, the Twiglets begin to starve, in others their ability to resist the Fungus is reduced. Weapons are also tried against the Fungus, though it seems much more resistant. What doesn’t immediately kill it, it seems to be able to grow a resistance to. Hitting it with genetically engineered pathogens after it has starved a region of food though seems to be the best way to finish it off though.
Some work is done to figure out how the Twiglets are communicating amongst themselves, which seems to be via pheromones. They also think that they’ve tracked down their probable home system, half have a dozen parsecs Rimward of Draytsirv.
The Deepnight spends several weeks in the system, researching the effects of their biological weapons on both the Twiglets and the Fungus, and trying to determine how best to combat them.
My plan for this world had been to give the players a ring side seat onto what the Fungus could do, as well as some more information on the Twiglets. They got to see some of its capability to spread from world to world, and also what it’s intentions were – to consume everything. It’s been a long time since there have been any real encounters with the Fungus/Entity, so a reminder of its capabilities seemed important.
The players also have an idea of what they might find at the Droyne colony world of Draytsirv.
