Frank Wild
The Deepnight Revelation has encountered the RSS Frank Wild, a Solomani exploration vessel almost as far from home as the Deepnight is. The Frank Wild seems to be having problems though, in that it’s political officer has taken charge and not all of the crew seem to be happy with that.
At the end of the previous session, the Deepnight received the following message from an unofficial sub channel from the Frank Wild:
Captain confined, political officer in command. Situation unstable. Will cooperate if you assist.
The crew of the Deepnight discuss what their options are. I’d already worked out what the views of the NPCs was going to be, partly in case their opinion was asked, and partly to provide the players with a bit more information on what they could do.
Lord Sivas stated that it could be a declaration of war to go in and help a mutiny aboard a Solomani vessel. Then again, if they were really in distress (or it could be argued that they were), then it would simply be a rescue.
Captain Kishasaa gave orders for a boarding team to prepare, and to be ready to launch on 5 minutes notice. Just in case. She also commented that if she was the crew member sending the distress, then she’d probably try to temporarily disable the ship in some way, to make ‘rescue’ easier.
Mission Commander Cacamri thought it could be a dangerous distraction, but the Solomani could also provide them with useful information.
They have a little bit more chat with the Solomani Political Officer, then the ship goes dark. The weapon and drive systems go offline, and then they receive the following message from the same source as before:
Weapons and Drives disabled. Time extremely limited. Attempting to regain control from political officer. Please assist.
One option raised by one of the players was that they might be talking to an AI that has taken over the Solomani ship. It’s not believed that this is the case, just raised as a possibility.
To describe what happened next, I’ll hand it over to the player’s and their own write up of things:
We decide to board the ship, largely because this will allow us to raid their porn collection, and to see if they have episode 243 of “Cyborg Commando” – the one we are missing that famously features a duck. We scoot on over in a scout ship and accidentally knock down their airlock door. Some panicking Solomani look like they are about to hurt themselves so we reluctantly have to gently subdue them. They are mercifully restrained with rope and duct tape (to the mouth of the Solsec Lt). We find an airlock door which someone has scandalously vandalized, this is obviously criminal (as opposed to our accidental destruction of the first airlock we encountered) and so we go to arrest the perpetrators and restore order. Two active shooters with sub-machineguns are rapidly disarmed before they can hurt their hostages and with this the terrorists start surrendering. At the back of the ship our brave medics put their own lives at risk to render medical aid to prisoners taken by the evil Solsec. A bag is deployed to prevent the Solsec Lt from intimidating the crew. We finally penetrate to the ships’ torture dungeon and rescue the Captain. Hoorah! We are heroes!
from the Exciting Voyage of The Sex Thing
When the boarders get onto the ship, the SolSec monitors are trying to force their way into the engineering department, where some of the engineers have disabled the ship. They surrender without putting up much of a fight. At the other end of the ship, the bridge is taken with a bit more shooting, but there are no lives lost. It’s easy to wait for surrender when you’re in battledress.
The Captain is released from the brig, and he does seem to be stressed out. As it turns out, the XO seems to have been ineffective through out the journey, forcing the Captain to do his job as well. After seven years of very rapid progress, the stress finally got to him and a lot of the crew.
The Captain takes back control of the ship, but he may not be in a fit state to really take charge. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else on the ship that really wants to either, and the Political Officer, though willing, doesn’t appear to be a great candidate. Basically, the ship is in a poor state.
The ship’s systems are on the verge of failure as well. There were two other ships in the expedition, but the Frank Wild misjumped at some point, and hasn’t been able to locate the other ships since then. They are heading to a small cluster of star systems that were on the route, in the hope of meeting up again with the rest of the fleet.
The jump drive is in urgent need of repair, but the small ship really doesn’t have the tools or expertise to do this. Fortunately, the Deepnight does, and aid is offered.
The Frank Wild settles down on the planet, to give everyone a chance to resupply and give the systems a look over.
A lob ball tournament is suggested, and diplomatic cheese and unicorn burgers are handed out. There is an attempt to exchange porn collections, but all the Solomani ship has is wholesome propaganda films. It seems SolSec aren’t quite as flexible in what they allow as entertainment as the Imperium officers are.
In terms of mission, it seems that the Solomani are heading towards the same destination, though not for the same reasons. They know nothing of the Fungus, though have encountered a world that was possibly suffering from its effects. There is an exchange of scientific knowledge.
There is talk of maybe exchanging some crew, and both ships heading to the hoped for rendezvous point together.
