The Most Advanced Thing
The Deepnight Revelation is at the system of Misilubuy, making a careful scan of the surrounding systems. There is a worry of running into bioships, plus the choice of routes in this low density region of space is limited.
At the end of our previous session, they picked up some strange signals coming from the system of Hagavo. The three gas giants there seemed to be behaving oddly, giving inconsistent readings on their size and masses depending on which methods were used to calculate them.
The decision was made that the system needed to be investigated, because there was something very odd going on there. The plan is to jump to the neighbouring system, so that when they do jump to Hagavo, they will still have 3 parsecs of fuel so can escape easily.
At the neighbouring system, they discover a part of a bioship. It is a frond about 40 odd metres long, with a wide fan-like structure capable of channelling magnetic fields. The thought it that maybe this is how they feed/charge themselves. If the bioships generally use these, then they might be easy to target in order to disable them.
As far as the scanning of the Hagavo system goes, there are a number of competing theories, and the science teams put on presentations to try and convince everyone else about their own ideas.
There is a thought that the moons of the gas giants have collided, creating a large, bright set of new rings. This seems improbable though for it to happen to all three gas giants.
There is a theory that the gas giants have very powerful magnetic fields, plus also detection of gravitons coming from the giants.
A final theory is that there are carbon nanotube structures around each gas giant. This would seem unlikely though.
They jump to Hagavo, coming out of jump about 1 AU from the outermost ice giant, just inside the system’s kuiper belt. At this range, it is possible to use their telescopes to get some good images. The world has three rings, which are much brighter than expected. They are also thicker. At regular points around the ring are what appear to be choke points – some structures are there which seem to be shepherding the rings. The rings have a solid structure within them, and are orbiting too fast.
Matter is being dragged up from the planet’s atmosphere, and seems to be fed into the ring structure. It’s also being lost though – it is close to a balance point between matter coming up and matter falling back.
The inner two giants are similar, though the innermost seems to have a much more defined structure around it.
Aboard the Deepnight, Zanobia runs into Teela. It’s been 7 years since Teela has been part of the plot, since we forgot about her again. She was originally picked up on Goblin’s Planet, where she was part of some Ancient habitat. Now, she seems to be channelling the priestess of the Droyne pyramid, talking about short lived species, screaming stones and final experiments. She doesn’t make much sense, so is given some medicine to calm down.
A scout ship is sent in towards the inner system, and a drone is sent towards the ice giant, where it discovers that the choke points are kilometre wide torus structures through which the matter is flowing. There are huge gravitational and magnetic fields around these structures – whatever they are is very definitely not natural. It is commented that the crew are used to being the most advanced thing in the system. Whatever the Deepnight is facing here is much more advanced than them.
A bioship is detected ‘basking’ near the upper atmosphere of the ice giant, though it doesn’t seem to have spotted the Deepnight yet. It is approximately 15,000t in size. More bioships are around the inner giants, which also don’t seem to have reacted.
The torus structures are mostly empty space, apart from the gravity generators and some smaller enclosed modules which may be designed for sophont use. They appear to be sealed against a vacuum, and also in spots where the magnetic and gravitational fields cancel themselves out.
It is decided to send in a team to investigate.
I’ve maybe mixed too many things in during this session – the stones, the Ancients, the Bioships and weird Alien mega structures. I do intend for this to have at least some pay off, to give the players a chance to get some answers to what has been happening. The campaign has the payoff around this point as well, though I’m currently doing it slightly differently.
As to Teela, we really did forget about her. What happened to her child? What happened to her rapid ageing? Did she go back into cold sleep? Obviously she’s out of cold sleep, so we could probably have a flash back to what she’s been doing for the last 7 years.
