The Redeemer
After discovering a world taken over by pets in our previous session, the Deepnight Revelation and small fleet of Solomani are heading to the system of Eromi 0611 where there are signs of another technological civilisation. It is 8 parsecs away, but will take three jumps to get there.
With their destination close, it is decided to start rolling out the vaccines the science team have produced against the Fungus. They’ve been tested on a few of the crew, but not everyone. Starting to ramp up production, and rolling out to more of them will take some weeks, so starting now would be good.
After they’ve done the Deepnight crew, then they can possibly roll it out to the Solomani crew as well.
At the next world, one of the physicists, Emma Ungston, raises a concern that the data coming from Eromi doesn’t make sense. It looks consistent with a high tech (TL 11) civilisation, but isn’t quite right. It has the primary markers, but secondary markers are missing or wrong. Atmospheric pollutants from heavy industry, radio signals and other things are just all slightly odd.
At the next world, they try and determine what’s wrong. They haven’t decoded any of the signals yet. Indeed, the radio signals look either corrupted or random data. There are structures to the signals, but they don’t seem to mean anything. Since the jump to Eromi is 4 parsecs, it is decided to jump to a neighbouring world instead. It will mean an extra jump, but means that the final jump to Eromi will be only 2 parsecs – enough to jump out again if something goes wrong.
Just before the jump is initiated, biological signals are picked up from the new destination which matches that of the Fungus. It’s a faint signal, but enough to make them change their plans. Fortunately, there’s a second system a two parsec jump from Eromi. Conversing with their Droyne Chatbot, it says that there were habitable worlds in this area when the Droyne came through here, but this was the limit of communication with the mission, so it doesn’t have details. The Droyne may have gone to Eromi, and done something there, which would make it a worthwhile port of call.
This system just has an ice belt, but it’s possible to refuel from there, then jump to Eromi. The star’s jump shadow means they can’t jump directly to the main world, but have to jump in some twenty million kilometres away from the world.
On arrival, there are no other ships in the system – which is odd for a TL 11 world with a star port. The signals are still coming from the main world, but it’s unusual. It seems to be surrounded by a physical shell some 2,000km above the surface. The shell, rather than the planet, is what is giving off radio signals. The gravitational readings around the planet are odd as well – it looks like the jump mask extends out well beyond the usual 100 diameters.
After discussion, the thoughts are that the world is generating fake signals to make itself look like a high tech civilisation, and that the extended gravity well is possibly a trap. Anyone jumping directly to the planet may damage or destroy their jump drives as they are ripped out of jump space early.
The plan is to keep the capital ships back, and send in a scout ship, with a crew of Khadashi, Shiiguma, Daevin, Lt Anna Brown and Dr Madiline Berg as a Solomani representative.
The shell is solid, but partly transparent, partly reflective and seems to be in a poor state of repair. It is supported above the planet’s surface by a number of huge towers, and at the bottom of the towers are massive fusion power plants which are used to power the signals coming from the shell. The world itself is cold, mostly covered in thick ice. A narrow sea runs around the equator.
The scout ship reaches one of the towers, where there is an airlock that leads into the shell, just large enough for two people. Khadashi and Dr Berg head inside first. Inside, is a room with a number of doors leading off, including what looks like a lift.
One of the doors opens, and a cylindrical robot comes out – lots of thin manipulator arms in the style of an FX-7 medical droid. It moves over to Dr Berg, examines her suit, then forcibly sticks a sampler into her. Khadashi hits it with his cutlass, breaking off the arms, and it flees back into the room it came from leaving a trail of Dr Berg’s blood.
As they patch her up, the lift door slides open in an almost welcoming fashion.
They decide to get Dr Berg back to the Deepnight. Sampling the wound, there are contaminants in the wound. The chemistry of the contaminants is very similar to what the Deepnight crew have been using to detect Fungus infection. The thoughts are that possibly the robot was testing for such an infection.
They head back to the airlock, and they all head inside this time, taking the lift down to the planet’s surface. There are signs of cities here – buried under ice and no longer inhabited.
On the surface, there are rooms similar to living quarters, but no living people. A large display screen is found, which starts to try to communicate with them. After a while, with both sides running translation software, it becomes possible to understand each other.
It seems that whoever used to live here uploaded themselves into the computer systems, but that was 10,000 years ago. The systems are now ageing, but still mostly working. When the Travellers describe their destination, they are told in no uncertain terms that they must not go that way. That way lays danger, the wall of stars, that which destroyed their civilisation.
From its failing memory banks, it tries to explain what happened:
There arose several prophets who had dreams of a Great Being… the seven eyed Redeemer…. slumbered in Eden behind its ever moving wall of stars…. it reached out with dreams…. promised it would elevate those that brought about its migration to be part of a great consciousness…. those that failed to work towards its goal would find oblivion…
The space program started because of it…. seeking out parts of its body…. dreams of moving faster than light… other worked against them…. science was not allowed to progress…. the sacred maths were banned….
The Redeemer was found… it spread between the worlds and civilisation fell…. worlds were consumed, first in sickness, then in fire….
Eromi was saved, all approaching ships were destroyed by massive railguns and mass drivers, they could not dodge when moving at fractions of light speed. There were four worlds, Eromi was the last.
The people uplifted themselves into computers, to protect themselves from the dreams and the sickness. A shell was built, to attract anyone else in the area who were touched by the Redeemer.
So the Entity had reached out into the dreams of members of the race that once dwelt here, and persuaded them to try and infect themselves. They did find worlds which the Entity had infected, and they brought it back to destroy themselves, under the belief that it would elevate them to something greater.
Due to the work of those that worked against the Entity, this civilisation never built jump drives. The Computer now tried to attract anyone else to it, so it could destroy or warn them before they infected themselves on the other worlds.
When planning this session, my plan had been to have more exploration down on the planet before coming across the Computer, but in the end I decided to skip all that and just do the conversation bit. I’m not sure what would have been gained by spending time not finding anything of value.
Part of the plan was to show a bit more about what the Entity was capable of, to give more reasons to investigate it. I also wanted to give the Solomani part of the expedition a chance to see worlds infected by the Entity.
