The Mummy

We are approaching the final destination in our Deepnight Revelation campaign for Traveller. In our previous session, the crew had reached the system of Tayayy, just two parsecs from the system of Terminus. There are sophonts here, and pyramids, with a civilisation towards the end of TL 1.

For me, I’m getting somewhat apprehensive about the final part of the campaign. I have no idea how things will go, what the players will decide to do or what they will think of things. After over 180 sessions of this, I really don’t want things to end on an anti-climax.

The players decide to send a probe down to one of the pyramids to take a look at it. A random check for success gives an opportunity – the probe has some abilities that were added by one of the Erline. Exactly what can be decided later when it is needed.

I have absolutely no idea what they’re going to find, so I’m mostly winging the whole pyramid exploration side of things. There are bronze doors at the base of the pyramid, and the whole structure is starting to sink into the swampy ground. Why build a pyramid in wetlands? Probably shifting climate changed things, so what was once dry land is now less dry. People have been maintaining the pyramid though, and the ground has been dug away to allow access to the doors.

There are two large keyholes on the doors, which the probe can’t open, so the remote operations team fly down to take a look. They get the doors open (TL 1 locks are hardly going to stop people who know what to do), and the probe is sent in.

A corridor leads to stairs, which lead up to a central chamber. There are paintings of the locals, many of them looking upwards. Some seem to have crude telescopes.

Inside the chamber, the walls are covered in what looks like constellation maps. There is also a pattern on the floor made from coloured stones. Red stones in the middle, a pale set of stones encircling it, two other sets of stones either side. The decision is that this might be the nearby red star, in its phase when it is undergoing gravity lensing and appearing as many stars. The ring may be the gravity anomaly, the other points the known gas giants in the system. The players have a discussion about what could be in the nearby system, and a comment is made about absolutely not wanting to go into the gravity anomaly.

It is decided that the probe has the facilities to do a scan of the walls, looking for secret spaces. There is one beneath the floor – some space beneath the tiles. It is getting close to dawn at this point, so it is decided to leave things until the following night.

Back aboard the ship, people are getting excited. Some are organising a party – one last party just before the jump to Terminus system. Just in case things go bad once they get there. However, the general feeling is that the crew have spent so long aboard the ship on this mission, that they are eager to get to their destination and find out what it is they’ve come all this way to see.

Aboard the Solomani ships, the sentiment is similar. There is a suggestion that maybe the Frank Wild, which isn’t in the best of health, stays behind and waits for word to come back. If they hear nothing, then they can return home with news of how far they got.

It is decided that the general idea is good, but it may be better to leave the Leonard Hussey behind. It’s in better shape, and more likely to survive the long trip back to Solomani space. It’s considered unlikely that the firepower of one extra Solomani ship would be important if it comes to some sort of fight.

A more paranoid plan might be to send some smaller scout ships to Terminus first. Have them perform a quick scouting operation, then jump back. Terminus is 2 parsecs away, and the scouts have Jump-2, with 4 parsecs of fuel. So they can jump in, perform a scan, then jump back. As long as whatever is at Terminus is limited by speed of light, then this should be safe.

Meanwhile, the biology team has been studying some of the samples that have come back, and noticed that the local plant life has traits that makes it resistant to the Entity. The traits look like they’ve been engineered by the Droyne – evidence that the Droyne and their ship the Tresskvuess got this far.

The resistance is slight though, as if it’s decayed over the past 300,000 years due to lack of need to maintain it. Whilst trying to measure its strength, the biologists are getting inconsistent results, and track things down to the fact that different sites show flora of different resistance. The further north the sampling sites, the stronger the resistance.

In the tundra in the far north, there are signs of infection. The Entity is here, but weak. The flora has good resistance to the Entity, and the extreme cold is making it hard to grow. So it hasn’t. This is good information to the biologists on what sort of conditions the Entity can thrive in.

The second exploration of the pyramid takes a larger team, and this time the crew go inside – protected in their vacc suits. Some wanted battledress, but it wouldn’t fit down the hallways.

Lifting up the floor – which seems designed to be lifted – there is a hollow space underneath, where there is the corpse of one of the locals wrapped in cloth. The hole seems well sealed, and soon after breaking the seals the biological scanners give a warning of detecting some contamination from the Entity.

Very carefully, the mummy is examined. As well as cloth and other substances, the corpse is wrapped in leaves from northern plants. The locals obviously realised that these protected against infection. The corpse is quite heavily infected – but the infection seems to have had little physiological effect on the body. It shows little signs of corruption compared to corpses that have been come across before.

It is remembered that back on the Deepnight Endeavour, one of the crew members there was infected but showed no physical side effects. They had worked with the Entity to help spread it, but hadn’t been physically affected. Maybe this was something similar.

The corpse was sealed up, the room hosed down with fire, and strong decontamination procedures performed on all the members of the expedition.

After that, the players were curious about what the locals knew, so went to visit the local town. There was a debate about whether to choose a large city or a small town, but it was decided that if things went horribly wrong, then a small town would be easier to ‘sort out the mess’ for. They were welcomed as guests – and once again the locals took them to be sailors amongst the stars. They had dreams you see, of one day going to the stars themselves.

The religion here was similar to that of other nearby worlds. The Entity seemed to be sending psionic thoughts to certain individuals, about how to build technology and how to reach it. The idea seemed to be to build the civilisation up, and then use it to infect the galaxy. Whether it could do that without consuming itself was a question there wasn’t an obvious answer to.

The locals knew of the infected region in the far north. Sometimes, some of them would head that way when they “felt it was time”. Most never returned. A few did, one of them had been buried in one of the pyramids. Legends said that he had come back full of grand ideas, but those around him tended to die.

The priests had good astronomical records, which confirmed a lot of what the science team knew or had been guessing. The people here also experienced a surge in visions every 73 years – the same as the previous world. Their last one was 40 years ago. At Orafo, 16 light years further away, their previous event had been 24 years ago. That seemed to indicate that the influence of the Entity was limited by the speed of light.

It was considered safe to be restocking on supplies here, so they needed a plan of what to do next. The crew very much wanted a big celebration before heading to the Terminus / Athazog system. Rather than sending the big ships, the plan seems to be to send four of the smaller 200t scouts. They can perform a very brief survey from the outer edge of the system, then jump back. It seems the option with the least risk. In the meantime, the larger ships can perform checks of their equipment and systems and plan for the final jump.