(3) [Traveller] Voyages of the R.e.d. Dusk

Game Master mdt

Jenni will remain behind to cycle the airlock, as each goes through, and to cycle it on the return trip. She is exceedingly careful in her work, not wanting to compromise the atmosphere on this side.

Dev waits with EAVE hanging on his back for Scandalous to cycle through the airlock.

"Ok beautiful, keep close and don't wander off. These vacc suits are not armored, and one puncture and you are as good as dead. These weapons sure are weird. I spent many years with the scouts, and never have I seen anything like these sophants."

Tam waits to be cycled through the air lock after Scandalous. When she makes it through and sees Scandalous messing with the alien gun she warns, "don't play with stuff if you don't know how it works."

Scandalous gives a gentle toss to the firearm. It flies away slowly. Under normal circumstances, that's great advice. But the completely alien environment means there is no other way to learn. We'll all be playing with stuff we know nothing about for the next few hours. She says with a smile.

Moving to the tangle of bodies, the group finds hallways that would not be out of place on an Imperial Frigate. Doorways that are 'stretched hexagons' open off the corridor at regular intervals in each direction.

GM needs to know what you want to look for, and then needs an Int check. Each check will be 30 minutes of searching for what you are looking for. I'll make a random roll as well for each check, to see if you find something interesting even if you don't find what you're looking for. This is one check per group, if you all stay as one group, you get one check per 30 minutes. If you split up, you get one per splitting up.

We should probably break into two groups. I think setting the life support should be number one. Lowering atmo pressure, and switching ammonia for oxygen. She motions at Dev. Do you want to keep me company muscles?

Should we assume an aid bonus from our companion?

Dev, you have a better INT roll than I do. Please feel free to make the roll.

Smiling in the helmet of his vacc suit, Dev answers.

"Sounds like a plan. I want to get to the bridge and see what we can do from there. Jenni. Do you and Nanier want to try and find the engineering room? Let's keep in touch on the comm, and stay safe!"

Dev will try and find where the bridge is located.

INT Check: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (3, 5) + 2 = 10

GM Note here, altering the life support would require getting the power systems up and running again, which might set off any intruder defense systems. If you just want to get rid of the pressure, you could probably find an airlock, leave one of the repair bots to ratchet it open manually, and then wait a few hours for the ship to decompress. However, that might do major damage to anything you want to salvage. It's unlikely the ship can handle an oxy atmosphere anyway, same as your ship couldn't handle an ammonia atmosphere (corrosion of wires, controls, etc).

Yes, you can assume you get aid bonuses from companions

It's unlikely the ship can handle an oxy atmosphere anyway, same as your ship couldn't handle an ammonia atmosphere (corrosion of wires, controls, etc).

Does this mean we cannot use any spare parts from this ship due to our O2 atmo?

BTW if we know purging the atmo on this ship is the best option...we should do this first prior to roaming

"EAVE wonders if we should really be changing the atmosphere on someone else's ship. Seems likely if ship has defenses it would defend against this. Aggressively. Also, should treat ship as if robots could be enemies even if they won. Not all robots are friendly. Creatures EAVE doesn't know could also be alive. And hiding. Changing atmosphere may murder them. EAVE thinks EAVE and Tam should look for survivors. May not be ideal crew, since can't breathe, probably, but should still save all that crew can."

EAVE. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the attack looks like it happened a few years ago. I really can't see biologics surviving that far in time, without either abandoning ship, or bringing power on line. I sincerely believe that purging the atmo won't harm anyone. And you right, the main reason I wanted to arm myself was the thought of dormant commandos coming back to life.

So, it seems like Dev, Scandalous, and EAVE are one party? Leaving Warren and Tam as the other party?

You might be able to use parts from the ship, but you'd want to check them over first. Lots on your ship would be fine in an oxy enviornment, or a high pressure environment, but lots wouldn't. Same with a vacuum, lots would be ok, other things wouldn't be. You just don't know what would/would not be ok. Currently, the big thing you're looking for is fissionables.

With the help of Scandalous and EAVE, Dev begins to make sense of the ship's layout. They find corpses along the way, more of the female aliens. Then Dev stumbles on the bridge, about a 30 minute walk on the same deck as the one they entered via the airlock. Apparently the attackers knew the fastest way to the bridge, thus their attack being close to it.

The bridge of the ship is a disaster area, dead aliens all around, pinkish blood splattered everywhere, indicating they died when gravity was still in place. Since then, gravity has failed.

The trio finds male versions of the aliens here too, although they at first think they are adolescents. The males are much smaller than the females, only 2/3rds the height, and maybe half the mass. A 14 or 15 year old human would be about the same size.

Here also, they find the attackers of the ship. Cybernetically enhanced 'space monkeys' is as good a description as any. The furry aliens have most of their bodies replaced with cybernetic replacements, mostly just their head and bony face ridges left 'natural'. The two attackers on the bridge float, obviously dead, but the 'neural tail' coming out of the backs of their heads are shoved into the controls, shattering the consoles, as they apparently took over the ship. From the situation, it appears the attackers took the ship into hyper, much good that it did them, ending up here.

Three of the attackers died in the hallway outside the bridge, the other two are dead on the bridge, still attached to the control systems.

Each of the attackers is approximately 7 feet tall, give or take a few inches, and they appear to have been fine in the atmosphere, as they are not wearing suits.

Well, I could have the conversation over comms. EAVE can still choose a party. And fissionables are ok in vacuum, right?

Scandalous plays the battle scene in her fertile minds imagination. Her thoughts briefly sliding over their intense emotions. All Spectacle, Fury, and Passion turned into our hope.

Yes, but the systems to access it might be damaged, just warning up front

And comms aren't going to work on this ship any better than they did the Verdant Dawn, with the power off line. Thanks to all the metal blocking the signals

EAVE will go with TAM and WARREN. I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of any dangers we might be presenting.

EAVE had slipped off of Dev when Scandalous had disagreed with her, her tendril sliding out to wrap around Tam's arm and draw her in. "Just like old times!" EAVE announces to Tam as she does.

"Should look for medical bays or cold storage, maybe? Rescue more friendlies? Or Tam and Warren have better ideas?"

Actually, EAVE could split and go with both teams.

If she'll grant a bigger bonus to both teams, sure!

A +1 to each teams Int check, bringing both to a +2 instead of a +2 and a +1

Sounds good!

EAVE takes a moment, and splits roughly in half. The majority of the carapace and underbody comprise one bot, while the majority of the sensor array and some of the underbody compose the other. The legs split, leaving two similar, but still different bots to the original. The result is far less sleek, though.

Each wraps its legs around its carrier's shoulder like an armband, leaving them with an extra arm-tentacle and an extra set of eyes.

Warren cycles through the air lock and looks around, "This is sure a mess. I wonder what the rest of the ship will look like."

He nods when Scandalous mentions splitting up and forgets that doesn't translate through the vacc suit. "I'll be happy to go with Tam and see what we can find."

As they head down the hall he says, "Fissionable material would be our first priority but medical supplies might be helpful as well if we can use any of them. I'd like to examine some of these corpses to see what makes them tick and see if anything of theirs would be useful to us."

INT check: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (5, 6) + 2 = 13

Perhaps subconsciously, Warren is looking for more information on medical about the aliens, because instead of finding the cargo holds or engineering, he instead finds a large and modern med bay. The med bay has many aliens in it, most of them wounded. However, there are some who are wearing neck bands that seem to be a rank insignia of some kind, or perhaps indicate they are doctors or nurses or whatever the aliens have of the equivalent.

Looking through the assembled bodies, he finds that a dozen or so have no obvious wounds indicating they were killed by violence. Warren also realizes that the bodies have not rotted, in fact, they are perfectly preserved despite the time that has passed, only blood and fluids have dried out over time.

This seems to indicate that something killed everyone instantly, and also stopped all biological processes.

Warren and team can spend a half hour rummaging through the med bay and examining the aliens to attempt to get an idea of what happened, if he would like, or can make another check to continue searching.

After observing the corpses in the med bay Tam asked, "Can you figure out what happened to them?"

Warren shakes his head in his vacc suit and a "Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!" comes over the com. As he walks through the med bay he responds to Tam "I will try to find out what killed them. Something happened to them in an instant and it would be good to know what." He begins examining the corpses.

Medic INT: 2d6 + 2 + 2 ⇒ (3, 6) + 2 + 2 = 13

Once on the bridge, Dev and his group will examine the controls and try to determine if they can safely reactivate any of the systems.

INT: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (6, 5) + 2 = 13

As my INT bonus is already +2 do I get a further +1 from the others?

Yes, you get another +2 from Scandalous/EAVE on INT checks. But this would be an Mechanics check, so only a +1 from EAVE

Dev spends half an hour trying to decipher the alien controls amongst the damaged and shattered consoles, avoiding the cybernetic bodies.

The ship is completely without power, until the power is restored, nothing is going to work. Power will likely need to be restored from Engineering. However, he does find that the circuitry, while alien in design, is not unrecognizable. So it should be possible to intuit what things are in a general sense.

Unable to communicate with the others, and unable to leave the pinnace, Malt spends his time re-running pre-flight checks and scanning the local area in case anything unusual shows up.

Sensors: 2d6 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (1, 3) + 2 + 1 = 7

Sorry Malt, not much to do at the moment

Dev, after examining the bridge, moves on to find engineering.

"Well the circuitry seems to be fairly similar to Imperial standard, but beyond that, this ship is more advanced than anything I have seen before. Come on, let's see if we cannot find engineering."

Search for Engineering: 2d6 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (4, 4) + 2 + 1 = 11

Group WET

Warren examines the bodies as best he can with his equipment on hand. Without being knowing more about the aliens, he can't be 100% certain, but looking at the tissue samples under a high scan shows a lot of damage at the cellular level, and all of it spread out. The only thing Warren can think of is a lecture he attended back in college about the dangers of working with tachyon emitters. Unshielded or badly shielded emitters could, over several years or decades, cause severe and systemic damage like this in humans, as the tachyons sleeted through their body with no protection.

If Warren had to guess right now, he'd think that the ship was exposed to a massive tachyon source, on the level of a galactic level event. Perhaps something about the black holes, or where the ship was when it was pulled in. Either way, the level of damage would take about 30 or 40 years in a human working every day with a faulty tachyon emitter. For all the corpses to show this sort of damage would require a exposure to massive levels of background tachyon exposure. He can't be sure exactly how long it took the aliens to die, but it appears they didn't know they were dying before it happened. The ship may be severely damaged by the tachyons without showing any outward damage, just as the life forms are. Even the bacteria was destroyed. Warren can't find anything alive in samples other than what the group brought with them. No germs, no cells, nothing.

Group DES

Dev and his companions spend another half an hour wandering around, finding more corpses, all over, including in areas with no apparent fighting, just dead bodies floating in air. This includes more cyborgs with no wounds, just floating, dead.

But Dev's nose leads him to Engineering. The engineering section is massive, with heavy duty jump drives and maneuver drives. This ship could move, would be Dev's guess, and how.

Oddly (to him) the power core is fission, like the phoenix's, and it's massive, and there's multiple ones. The fission cores look quite a bit more advanced than Imperial Fission cores. The cores are off-line. With the differences in technology here, Dev is not sure he could get the drive cores working again, but he's fairly sure he could remove the fissionable material, the access hatches are fairly straight forward. If they are designed like the IMperial power cores, the fissionable material will come out inside a shielded container designed for transport.

It would need to be reshaped and put into the containers for the Phoenix's power core, although who or whatever does the trimming will be heavily irradiated in the process.

It would need to be reshaped and put into the containers for the Phoenix's power core, although who or whatever does the trimming will be heavily irradiated in the process.

Well that is what we have robots for...lol

Dev smiles to himself as he opens the safety valves and accesses one of the fission cores. He takes the shielded core and motions the others to begin to head back to the pinnace.

Scandalous felt her skin crawl at the sight of so many dead bodies. It bothered her that the entire crew and attackers seemed to die the instant they were pulled into this system. What stroke of luck allowed their party to survive the event? She thought. Dev seemed a most competent companion. While she had not realized until now that EAVE could disassemble into two fully functioning bots, it did not seem to diminish the little bot's efficiency.

She had her suit camera feed into her personal recorder and made sure to try and document everything for later editing. The footage would be tell quite a compelling story once they reached civilization. If they reached civilization. Her heart races as they reach engineering and Dev points out the fission reactors. Scandalous films the rectors in detail. She glances down at the chronometer on the wrist of her suit.

Very well done, Muscles. Should we take more than one core before we head back to the Pinnace? Malt will be so pleased.

DES

"We should take all that we can carry." comes the gruff voice from Dev Vorn's shoulder. "Humans are prone to making mistakes and this is an incredible bounty. No need to waste it on the dead."

WET

Scandalous is overcome with joy at the thought that they would be leaving soon. She gives a spontaneous hug to Dev while laughing. Bounty is a good word for it. She says and ending with a victory shout. Load us up.

Dev spends 20 minutes disabling safeties, and double checking the sequences to make sure he doesn't flood the room with radiation.

Then he pulls the releases, and an 11.37 Metric Ton core pulls free, floating in the zero G like a massive ball of death ready to kill anyone that messes around with it the wrong way.

The thing is way too big for the airlock you guys accessed, and you're at 1:30 hours now, your suits are starting to push into the yellowish-orange, indicating you need to head back to the pinnace and perform maintenance and recharge on them before they begin to fail.
You'll need to find an airlock big enough for it (should be fairly easy) and push it out the airlock and then grab it with the pinnace outside the ship. You'll also need multiple zero-g checks to get it to the airlock without killing yourself or anyone else.

Well, let's get back to the Pinnace first, recharge, and make it a group effort. It would be much safer.

You just want us all to die with you. :P Does this game have modifiers for extra time taken?

Why do I get the feeling EAVE is going to push me in front of a moving train one of these days?

I imagine waking to her sitting on my chest with several surgical tools attached to her appendages and saying something like.."Oh no..not enough anesthetic I guess..." lol

Carefully Dev maneuvers the huge core out of the engineering berth and he starts looking for doors wide enough to fit the massive thing.

"Well if we want more it will have to wait. We are bordering of Yellow here and still have to get this brute out and back to the pinnace!"

What is the default for 0-G?? What stat does it use?

@EAVE - Yes, it does.

@Dev - Dex, with a -3 untrained penalty. You might want to get the trained zero-G people to do the moving

You might be right!! lol

Before she leaves, Dev calls out to Scandalous on their comms.

"Hey, get some of the 0-G jockeys down here to move this thing. With my luck, I will squash myself and anyone near me!!'

Dev, you have about 30 minutes before your suit starts inching into the red, and then some random number of minutes after that before it blows a seal and you die with pink acid frothing from your nose and mouth that used to be your lungs. You might want to go with her back to the ship for suit maintenance, food and rest?

As he is waiting, Malt has the thought that he might want to increase the pressure inside the Pinnace to 30 or 40 atmospheres and rebalance the air mixture so the returning crew doesn't get the bends or have their eyes explode out of their head due to depressurization when they take their suits off...

Scandalous makes it back to the Pinnace while following Dev. A big silly grin is plastered all over her face. Malt! We found fuel. A whole lot of it. Break out the libations!

Dev, while happy at finding the fuel, is still leery about how to get it back to the ship safely.

"Yup we have a bunch, but getting it to the pinnace and down to the planet will be a b#$ch! Not to mention fitting the core to our ships mountings...still lots of work to do, but it is a good step in the right direction!'

EAVE's arm sways to and fro as she waits for Warren and Tam to carry them back; she doesn't have a SLOWLY UPTICKING DEATHCLOCK that she's aware of!

EAVE has the hostile environment package yes? So no, she doesn't

"Dev, do you think that this can work if we can get it back?"

"I think so...we really have no other choice, do we. Yeah, I think I can do it...with help!"

Remember the Phoenix also has repair bots as well, they just need to be repaired. I'm sure it can be fitted to the ship safely with all the robotic help we have.