Newcomers
With the Frank Wild down on the surface, the crew of the Deepnight Revelation help them fix the jump drives and get them into a state where they are less likely to fail and cause a mis-jump. As they prepared to leave, it was time to give the crew another handout for the Into the Deep shipboard magazine.
I’ve done quite a few of these in quick succession recently, but it’s been a handy way to share info dumps to the players about big changes to things. The current day is 1120-175.
Newcomers
Dr Zurjar Sezinsi gave birth to a boy, who has been named Zuran. Zuran has become the centre of attention, though more recent events has taken people’s minds off him.
Len Henga is due around 1120-268. Lav Anistai is due around 1120-303.
To complicate matters, three other women have also turned out to be pregnant.
- Linale Jinja Rashamziijan, Deck Officer, due 1120-320
- Pazishi Shajama Misaneje, Nurse, due 1120-345
- Elama Zaajami, Steward/Technician (who has twins), due 1121-015
There is currently discussion amongst the parents about how to best care for the children. Most of the time, the Deepnight has a large enough crew that if people need to take some time off, that would be possible. We’re coming up to the most interesting and potentially dangerous part of the mission though, so there’s a lot of concern that these crew members may be needed, and also on their part that they don’t want to miss out on the excitement.
A couple of people have suggested more of a commune approach, rather than children only being raised by their parents. Apparently, the worlds they come from use this approach.
Why
As to why there has been a sudden burst of fertility, the medical team have tracked the issue to a foreign infection that interferred with the contraceptive medication. The most likely vector seems to be through the food processors. If true, it means that the food processors are not entirely filtering out substances that can affect the body.
There is a match between some of the substances found in the pregnant women’s bodies and a certain species of fish collected from the world of Ada/1404 in LSD Transition One. This world was visited in 1119-136, where some strangeness was found in the local Gas Giant. However, the chemical seems to be unrelated to that. The team aren’t entirely confident about this diagnosis, but it is the best that they’ve come up with so far.
No other side effects have been discovered. Normally the food processors would have filtered anything like this out, but it is both subtle and the processors aren’t as well behaved as they used to be.
It would be possible to switch the processors over to a ‘mush’ setting, which would greatly reduce the chance of this sort of thing happening again. But a quick survey of the crew suggests that they’d rather risk a sudden death from food poisoning, or grow an extra arm, rather than spend the next ten to fifteen years eating basic paste.
Those Other Newcomers
The last week or so has been interesting for other reasons, notably the meeting with the Solomani ship the Frank Wild.
They are one of three ships that are heading to the same point in space that we are. Their reasons are different – they are merely interested in the physical anomaly there, and had no reason to suspect that there was anything living there.
The ship’s Captain, Rex Whelan, had been imprisoned by the Solomani Political Officer, a Lt Damietta Carstairs. Some of the crew were ready to rebel against their Political Officer, others were in agreement, most seemed unwilling to take sides.
The important thing though is that the Frank Wild is but one of a fleet of three ships. Due to drive malfunctions it mis-jumped, and has been trying to locate the other two thirds of its fleet since then.
We have decided to help with repairing their ship, and we will be travelling onwards together. Some of their crew will be coming aboard the Deepnight.
- Dr Madiline Berg, their science advisor.
- Petty Officer Lilly Targas, mechanic
- Miguel Sanchez SolSec
We are looking for volunteers to join the crew of the Frank Wild, in order to give them a bit of variety. However, anyone who goes over will have to follow Solomani law.
Adventure Stories
Amongst some of the strangest things that the Frank Wild and other ships of the Solomani fleet discovered, were the following:
- A Hive World. This was a cold world with a population of over a trillion humans. They lived in tunnels beneath the surface, with a technology level between 7 and 8. Their social structure was very non-human, with a complete lack of privacy, and barely any government.
- A pair of Roche worlds, with their surfaces less than a 3,000km apart. They pretty much shared an atmosphere, and were tidally locked to each other. There was simple animal life on both worlds.
- A gas giant inside the outer atmosphere of a red giant star. It was gradually beginning to spiral in, but its icy moons had long since boiled away leaving only their rocky cores.
- A swarm of ‘space whales’. They could flash colours along their skins, and some were kilometres long. They seemed friendly, and basked in the radiation of stars.
There is a discussion about who on the Deepnight will go across to the Frank Wild, and how the Frank Wild will be run. It’s captain is in the middle of having a mental breakdown, the previous XO was relieved of his duty due to general incompetence, and the person next in line doesn’t want the job. Putting the Political Officer back in charge doesn’t seem like a great idea either.
They could offer one of their own crew to help captain the ship, but the Solomani might not take kindly to the idea of a Vilani/Imperium crew member taking over their ship.
However – they have picked up a number of ”Terran” crew from the Federated Commonwealth. These are ethnically Solomani, even if they come from a different culture. They’re also very definitely not Imperium. One of their engineering officers is found who seems to have the skills, so Engineering Officer Larshan Hemwater is installed as XO, to backup Lt Cmdr Ian Roth, the Frank Wild officer who will take over as Captain. With support from a capable XO, he might be able to pull things together.
Shiiguma goes across as well to help with Engineering, along with another Terran, Lav Anistai, who is also an engineer who can help oversee the engines.
Whilst reviewing what each ship could offer to the other, it is discovered that the Frank Wild has 6 Stun Carbines, as well as 3 Psionic Shield helmets. I put these in here because after going through the Central Supply Catalogue, the players noted they would have wanted these at the start if they’d known about them. So it seemed like a good way to introduce them.
So a Stun Carbine and Psi Helmet were lent to the Deepnight Revelation.
After that, it was a case of ensuring both ships had shared astrogation data, and then a jump to the system of Todu. The Frank Wild arrived an hour ahead of the Deepnight – much to the delight of the crew. As to how smoothly things went, I rolled on the “how things went” table, and got a poor result, which gave an incident.
The exit from Jump was bumpy, plus an incident of “some of the necessary equipment is unexpectedly missing, offline or out of commission, requiring a creative workaround or hurried fix”.
I decided that some of the internal security cameras in the Frank Wild had gone missing. This was something that had obviously been deliberately done by someone, so Shiiguma and Lt Carstairs teamed up to find out who. They both rolled badly, so nothing was found.
However, during the jump, Shiiguma did get on well with the rest of the engineers.
After that, it was a jump to the system of Tydad. 7 hours after the Frank Wild comes out of jump, the Deepnight finally appears. This time the jump went really well, so the crew are beginning to feel better about themselves. There is a food world here, but it would take almost a week for them to get in-system, so it’s decided not to bother. There is a message beacon here, left by the rest of the Solomani fleet three weeks ago.
They left the message in case the Frank Wild found it, and it gives details of their planned route to the rendezvous point the Frank Wild crew had guessed would be a good point to head for.
Shiiguma was still having no luck finding a pattern to the missing cameras.
From here, it was a jump to Funy, and another smooth trip. Once again, the Frank Wild arrive well ahead of the Deepnight Revelation. This system was a close binary star system, with two asteroid belts and a gas giant well inside the double jump mask of the stars.
The two ships had to cross the system to get to the gas giant, which was well within the jump masks of the two stars. The inner asteroid belt of this system was particularly dense, and seemed to consist of the remains of multiple planets. Asking their Droyne AI, Kyrransk, his knowledge of the system was that the asteroid belt was here when the Droyne ship Tresskvuess went through the system 300 thousand years ago. However, there had been a terrestrial world in the system at the time, and the gas giant had been further out. Sometime in the last 300 thousand years, the world seems to have broken up and added its mass to the asteroid belt.
Shiiguma had by now discovered that some of the stun weapons and explosives in the Frank Wild armoury had gone missing. Many of the security cameras that had gone missing, included areas leading to places such as the armoury. Trying to find who was stockpiling the weapons was going to be difficult.
Lt Carstairs thought that possibly those responsible were more likely to be those who supported her during the recent… difficulties. However, crew morale was improving, and people seemed happier. Even though there was some grumbling about the Terrans taking on officer positions, crew integration had gone well, and the grumbling was limited to just a few people. She felt that pushing the matter openly might force a few people to do something stupid, so she was in favour of continuing to investigate quietly.
The two ships continued their journey, with the Frank Wild continuing to come out of jump first. This also greatly improved crew morale. Eventually they reach the system of Urene, where they stop to re-supply.
