Azazoth

There are 7 parsecs to go before the Deepnight Revelation reaches its destination. They have arrived at the system they have named Orago, where there is a stone age civilisation with basic pyramids and vaguely reptilian humanoids with long necks. At some of the pyramids there are celebrations, where they light fires atop the pyramids at night.

For the most part, the crew send down some probes to listen in and try and learn the language. They take some DNA examples, and determine that the locals evolved here with the rest of the life on the planet.

Whilst one of the probes is investigating some unusual burned areas around one of the fields (it looks like a border has been burned of all live around some of the agricultural fields), they lose contact with the probe and it crashes to the ground.

It is just before dawn, and the local villagers are beginning to stir, so the plan is to leave the drone there and see what happens. The villagers are surprised to see it. They give it some kicks, try to scratch it with some copper jewellery they have, and eventually point to the sky in an excited fashion. They carry it back to their village, and present it to the village elder.

The dump it unceremoniously on the ground, at which point it comes back to life. Basically, I got an “Incident Happens – piece of equipment fails or goes missing” result on the “How Well Did They Do” check. The probe wasn’t hit by some alien technology which was the player’s first thought – it had just suffered equipment malfunction.

Dropping it on the ground knocked something back into place (I decided it would fix itself if a player rolled a 6 on a D6. They did) and the backup systems came back online. The villagers were startled, but apart from some humming and flickering of lights, the remote operations crew left it there simply recording. So the villagers went back to prodding it.

Eventually the nearby villages were called, and a celebration was had that evening. The gods had gifted something to them.

Some progress was made on understanding the language, and it was determined that the elder was the Eldest Dreamer. The subject of dreams had come up previously, so maybe the Entity was contacting nearby civilisations with Dreams. One or two of the crew members have had glimpses of strange dreams recently. Alfred, the Vargr Telepath, remembers something but isn’t sure what. Shinzaro, who has picked up Droyne imprints before, claims that she doesn’t recall anything.

Eventually the players decide, other than doing a Close Encounters sound and light show with their drone, not to bother the locals any further and won’t go down to talk to them.

Which was disappointing, because I’d worked out what the locals knew, and what information they would be able to pass on to the players.

Eventually though, after some further discussion, it is decided they will go and talk to them after all. Khadashi, Zanobia and one of the social scientists are sent down. Backup up by a security team on a shuttle, and a Solomani Tenzig class vessel above the clouds but ready to bring shock and awe down on things if needed.

So what do they find out?

The locals welcome them, and aren’t that surprised. Their god has sent them dreams about travel between the stars. They know of the galaxy – not just as a band of light in the sky, but as a large collection of stars. They have had visions of building ‘machines’ that will allow them to leave this world and head to other worlds.

Their aim is to head to the Red Star, where their god awaits them. He will awaken from his sleep, and then take them across the galaxy. They will become one with him, and conquer the galaxy.

Their god has slept through time, waiting for the galaxy to be ready. When he was born, the galaxy was without life and there was nothing to conquer. Now he is hungry, and the galaxy teams with life, ready for the taking.

There are events every 73 years when the Dreaming becomes particularly intense. They describe this as their god opening his eyes and looking out on the galaxy. The last such event was 24 years ago. Going by the Deepnight’s astronomical data, they aren’t sure what this coincides with.

About 75 years ago there was another type of event. The Red Star broken into many stars, and seemed to become streaks of light. The Red Star can be seen at night from here, and is in the Terminus system. It is a C4 class star – similar to a K type star, but high in carbon. Running computer simulations aboard their ship, it is decided that it is conceivable that this could have been the star passing behind the gravitic region in the centre of the system, and gravity lensing causing the star to appear as many stars.

Spinning gods and dancing stars causes the players to name the system Azazoth.

The Travellers ask about the burned areas around the fields. Apparently, they do this sometimes because they feel the need to constrain the growth of some things. They aren’t sure why they do it, but feel that being able to limit the growth of a region is important.

The players think that maybe the Entity has realised that it must learn to constrain its growth. Maybe it wants to form a relationship with another species to do it for itself, and is using some form of psionics to communicate with nearby civilisations.

Other dreams that the locals have include a night sky filled with coloured lights and streams of stars. Zanobia even gets a flash of this in her mind. It seems that some of the locals are telepathic. The night sky may be one distorted by gravity lensing.

At this point, it is decided to leave. The idea of burning the area to the ground is discussed, to stop the spread of ideas from here. Or maybe they can use some biological intervention to suppress the Psi gene amongst the population. A wider discussion back aboard the ship is about whether they should try and drop some asteroids on the planet. This mostly comes from the “Destroy the Entity Now” faction. A few asteroids could be nudged to take out the planet in a few years, or a few decades.

It is ultimately decided not to do this. If the people here are going to be spreading the Entity throughout the galaxy, then that won’t happen for ages, and if it’s a risk, the Deepnight can instead destroy the Entity, or come back here and destroy this civilisation later. Or even go back to the Imperium and get them to cleanse the region if it is considered a threat. Or at least, have a committee put off making a decision for a few centuries.

This was an idea I had wanted to raise as part of this encounter. There are civilisations in the region that seem to be manipulated by the Entity to build up their technology to the point where they can travel to the Terminus system, get infected, then spread the infection throughout the galaxy. Is it required to prevent these civilisations from doing that, long before they get the capability?

There are several aboard the ship that argue for nudging a few asteroids onto an interception course with the planet, but they are strongly outvoted. For now, it is decided to leave the civilisation alone.

So they head to Quiso Major, refuel and plan their penultimate jump to Tayayy, a mere 2 parsecs from their destination. However, this jump will be 3 parsecs, so if there is anything dangerous at Tayayy, they won’t be able to quickly jump back before refuelling. So a fuel depot is constructed a parsec out from Quiso Major, allowing them to arrive at Tayayy with 2 parsecs of fuel, and 1 parsec of fuel in the depot.

If anything goes wrong in the Tayayy system, a quick exit will be possible.

So eventually they reach the Tayayy system at 1121-245. There are no gas giants here, but an ice belt that they can refuel from. There is also a habitable world – which is also inhabited. There are also pyramids here.