”I have an explosive blast, but I don’t want to see you hurt by it!”
There's a torrent of fire throughout the room, when the blasts clear, only Janzi's missiles connect. Booker's shot missed by less than a hair's breadth!
Round 12:
Dunklezahn: Go
Kish: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Hack-it: TBD
Gig: TBD
Booker: TBD
Xavra: 135, Attunement 0
Still struggling, Dunk doesn't get close enough to bother the remaining enemy.
The kish, knowing that his wounds are adding up, and confident in his ability to take Booker out, follows him to the corner and slashes with the blade:
for
Round 12:
Dunklezahn: Miss
Kish: ATK
Janzi: Go
Hack-it: Go
Gig: Go
Booker: Go
Xavra: 135, Attunement 1
”I have an explosive blast, but I don’t want to see you hurt by it!”
I'd rather see him hurt by it than dead by that! Janzi says, trying to pin KishBoss down with some laser fire.
Hack-it and Hum get to a reasonable angle and join in on pinning down the kish.
Round 12:
Dunklezahn: Miss
Kish: ATK
Janzi: Harry
Hack-it: Harry x2
Gig: Go
Booker: Go
Xavra: 135, Attunement 1
Booker delays .
Booker grunts as impossibly thin blade finally draws blood. He grunts again, in surprise this time, when bloodied Dunklezahn lumbers forward rather than snipe from the rear. He would yell, but knows that he cannot change the vesk's mind in a hurry.
Instead, knowing that neither of them will last, Booker unloads everything he has -- hoping for a lucky shot.
CRITICAL
He drops his empty gun.
for
The kish turns to look at Dunklezahn, shocked at the blow. He then gets lucky, dodging with powerful instinct as Booker shoots.
The combination of turning and dodging is too much. The angle highlights the exposure of flesh under rent armor. Booker takes the shot.
The shot blasts through center mass.
Without so much as a final curse, the master of the renegade kish slumps to the ground.
After the longest combat of your lives, you can catch a breath.
As KishBoss collapses, the room falls silent, save for the heavy breathing of everyone.
See, Janzi says, his voice breaking the quiet as he holsters his gun and moves up to the wobbling Vesk, bats have wings and rats don't, for starters.
Gig draws upon his 2nd level spell slot to cast another Magic Missile at the deadly Kish
When all is silent, Gig wipes the sweat off of his fury brow, takes a huge sigh of relief, and looks around the room.
"I cannot believe that we are all still alive! What was that creature and why was that foe so difficult?"
Booker slowly lowers his raised grenade. He looks up from the corpse of the kish at the vesk opposite him. "You look rough," he says with nonchalance.
Hack-It takes a deep breath, ignoring whatever Janzi is talking about. He heads over to Dunk and checks out the vesk's wounds. "Alright buddy, time to take a break before you kill yourself. You're a bloody mess."
He then throws a glance back at Gig. "You too. Hell, we all look like garbage."
Hunkering down, Hack-It swaps out batteries from his pistol and Hum's mounted rifle. "I can't wait to get off this rock."
"You can say tha' again," Booker agrees. He spits a wad of blood a phlegm onto the floor and goes to collect all of his scattered weapons, changing out the cartridges and batteries before taking a seat next to the dead kish leader. "One tough bastard, this one." He strips the kish of his gear and spends the next ten minutes cleaning the armor and weapons of blood.
While taking a moment to rest and recover, Booker systematically and dispassionately strips off anything useful from the kish.
The grunts have only archaic gear, but the leader had a handful of items which you would think were anathema to the zealots:
Now calm, the party looks into the room. Shelves holding a staggering array of datapads line the walls and stand freely around this room. A small desk sits in front of a shuttered window adjacent to the room’s only entrance. A balcony holding even more shelves stretches across the eastern, western, and northern walls.
Looking for the information randomly could take hours at the least. The datapads are ancient, but you've interacted with them enough to know you might be able to hack in.
You're in! Make another Computers check DC 21 to locate the main filing system index.
Boom! You've found it. There's a datapad labelled "Stellar Degenerator" on the balcony. Shelf 2, Row G, 5th pad in.
After cleaning the kish's armor, Booker takes a minute to don it. The tensile reinforcement on the shell is solid, much more solid than his old suit. He takes a moment to rearrange his pack, gear, and guns, and dumps a healing accelerator into his mouth.
"Let's get to it," he mutters, gesturing at the library. "Gig, can you get inta that network? Hack-It, see if you can rig tha' pistol t'fit batteries from this century? Torin an' Dunk, see if you can spot which shelves've been disturbed. Dust, an' the like."
Booker himself busies himself dragging the bodies of the three kish together and covering them with a shroud made from the leader's cloak.
|
As the kish leader falls to Booker's gunfire, Dunk lets all the tension in his body go. He collapses to his knees as if the puppet stings holding him up had finally been cut.
I feel like s$!#. I'm just going to sit here for a minute.
Seeing everyone collect themselves and start moving, Dunk hauls himself to his feet with a grunt.
Mission first. Sleep later.
Dunk starts looking over the shelves as Booker's directive.
Hack-It picks through the items, then picks up the old pistol. "Yeah, I can probably do a retrofit for modern batteries. Lemme do that. Gig, I can help with the datapads if you want. Just say the word. "
And then there are the tails. You can clearly see a rat's tail. Bats, not so much.
Hack-it immediately sets about. He's confident he can do it now that he's looked at it, but it'll take an hour.
Dunklezahn, while being attend to, looks around. Looks like the mess isn't too bad, but it'll be a function of what Gig finds.
"An hour?" Booker grunts, lugging a kish body into position. "Nah, do it later. You wanna take a crack at the network? Gig can help."
"Fine, fine" he says to Booker, still longing to tinker with the pistol.
Yet he is unable to suppress his curiosity. Hack-It walks over to where Gig is looking at the datapads. "Oh, that's neat. The have an interesting wiring scheme to them. Works off a low-frequency electrical surge to act as binary messaging to the operating core. Here, I think I know this one..."
Within moments Hack-It has shouldered Gig out of the way, and is in full on tinker mode.
"And... I'm in. Alright, tell me your secrets."
"Hee hee! You tattled so easily, you silly minx," Hack-It says to the datapad he's holding. "There's a datapad labelled 'Stellar Degenerator' on the balcony. Shelf 2, Row G, 5th pad in. Wanna get that?"
Booker raises an eyebrow at the ysoki. "Minx?" He chuckles and lays down the shroud over the bodies. "Yeah, I'll get it."
He stops. "Huh. If that Cult was smart, they'd booby-trap it. Torin, you've got eyes. Can you take a look?"
You'd think they would consider, y'know, not labeling the destroy-the-universe thing, maybe? So ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking.
At Booker's request, Janzi heads that way with a running commentary. Rats have pretty keen vision, but bats do not. They rely on echolocation to get about. So many differences between the two.
Once he's looked it over, he gives Booker the okay.
Booker jumps up to the balcony, eschewing the convenient ladder . He heads over to the shelf and grabs.... a datapad labeled "Quantum Fluid Dynamics." It's not where it should be.
Gig jumps in and tries to shoulder his way back in with Hack.
"No, no! Let me push the buttons!"
After Hack gets the computer work done, Gig scans the area with a detect magic to see if he can pick up any auras.
After a while, Gig asks, "Are we ever going to rest? That last battle was exhausting."
"Soon as we're done, yeah," Booker responds, grabbing the specified datapad. "Uhhh... you sure that's right? This says 'Quantum Fluid Dynamics.' Here." He tosses it down to Gig. "See what's in that."
"Hack-It, what shelf's Quantum Fluid Dynamics supposed to be on here?"
Hack-It looks up that title and finds that it's on Shelf 5, Row G 2nd pad in.
The party quickly rushes over to the other location. And there it is.... the Stellar Degenerator!
No one wants to spend another minute in Istamak, so it's a quick trip to the Sunrise Maiden and a jet to orbit.
The report contains the information about the Stellar Degenerator’s history and eventual storage, as well as a warning that all research into this subject has been terminated:
Thousands of millennia ago, before the inhabitants of Golarion discovered even fire, an ancient race known as the kishalee crafted technological wonders and flew among the stars, seeding colonies all across the galaxy. One such territory was on the planet Nejeor VI, a gas giant with virtually inexhaustible natural resources. The kishalee built floating cities among the clouds, the grandest of which was Istamak. Colonists came from far and wide for a chance to live in this shining metropolis, ready to work on the gas-mining platforms or study the planet’s unique weather patterns.
Then the kishalee’s war with the sivvs began. It raged for centuries, and the resources of Nejeor VI were vital in keeping the kishalee fighting. A weapons-research facility and factory, called simply the Foundry, was built in Istamak in an effort to find an edge against the sivvs that could end the hostilities. The sivvs created their own superweapon first—the Stellar Degenerator—but kishalee agents ended the war by capturing the weapon before it could be fired. Bankrupted by the creation of a weapon of system-wide mass destruction, the sivv civilization collapsed soon thereafter. The kishalee then turned many of their civilization’s resources to studying and understanding the Stellar Degenerator. The Foundry was sent vast information about the weapon so it might participate in the study and analysis of the doomsday device.
In time, the kishalee decided that they currently had no need for the Stellar Degenerator’s massive destructive power, so it should be hidden away, in part to store it for future use and in part to keep it out of the reach of any other enemies. The best and brightest kishalee technomancers created a demiplane in which they would store the weapon—a place accessible only through a titanic structure called the Gate of the Twelve Suns, which was constructed far from the Nejeor system. The study of the Stellar Degenerator in Istamak came to a close, and all information on it was archived within the Foundry.
Years passed, and the kishalee came into conflict with other species. Though the Stellar Degenerator could destroy the home system of any opposing force, the kishalee used it only once. So horrifying was the terrible, dark fate the Stellar Degenerator imposed by cursing worlds to sit in dark orbits around a dead sun, the kishalee never again called upon the superweapon after its sole wartime use.
The datapad also holds the coordinates of the Gate of the Twelve Suns—an artificial megastructure deep in the Vast that acts as the entrance point to the demiplane holding the Stellar Degenerator— which allows you to plot a course there. The Gate of the Twelve Suns consists of a dozen stars arranged in a circle, each orbited by a single planetoid; the devices that control the gate, further examples of advanced kishalee technology, are located on these planetoids. From the datapad, you can gather that only a small crew is required to operate the gate.
"Get us somewhere that we can resupply, Booker," Hack-It tells the pilot. "I got a feeling that this might be the final push, so let's do this right."
He then heads to his quarters to begin his work on Hum. "Alright, you flying tin bucket, time to make some modifications."
After a montage showing the drone in various stages of assembly, with close-up shots of the flame of a welding torch, a sweating and swearing ysoki, the raising and lowering of protective goggles, and other cliches the job is done.
Standing up, Hack-It punches a few commands into his wrist console. The drone floats over behind the mechanic, transforming into a backpack-like shape. Two metallic bands stretch from the drone to wrap around Hack-It and, with a light push, he takes flight.
"Now all it needs is about 10% thrust and-" with a sudden jerk he slams into the ceiling. A lot of swearing ensues. Only after about an hour does the random crashing sounds abate.
While they travel to the nearest trade planet they can find, Hack-It is literally inseparable from his drone, flying around the ship. He retrofits any of the ancient items they found to a more modern specification, monitors the computer systems of the Maiden, tries out any of Dunklezahn's latest culinary creations, and generally annoys Booker in all the ways you'd expect.
In other words, everything returns to normal. Except he's flying.
...see, what's funny is, bats and rats aren't even that closely related, Janzi says, more or less following Booker about the Maiden. I mean, they're both part of class Mammalia, but really, after that...
Other than time dodging Hack-it and trying out some of Dunklezahn's latest gustatory creations, the drift travel is reasonably calm. In [dice=3d6+6[/dice] days time, the Sunrise Maiden docks at a commercial station known as "Mercant-Aisle 1."
Booker activates noise-canceling on his headset to selectively shut out Janzi's ramblings and sets up in one of the cargo bays, sorting gear. After that, he settles contracts with several suppliers to refit the ship with a new gun and power core, and heads off to the arms markets.
He returns a short while later and hands a credstick to each of the others. "Four grand an' some change. Spend it wisely. And for the love of the gods, buy yerselves some f**king grenades."
[red][/red]
Book V: The Thirteenth Gate
That which hath cometh before:
A deserted ship named the Acreon arrived at Absalom Station from hyperspace, towing behind it a mysterious asteroid dubbed the Drift Rock. You came to Absalom Station to join the Starfinder Society but soon found yourselves caught up in a gang war instigated by two factions—the Hardscrabble Collective, the scrappy mining clan that owns the Acreon; and Astral Extractions, the large corporation that hired the ship. With both factions vying to claim the ship and the asteroid, the Starfinder Society hired you to investigate the death of one of its members caught in the gangs’ crossfire. After exploring some of Absalom Station and dealing with the gangs, you were then "hired" by Gevalarsk Nor, Eox’s ambassador to Absalom Station, who was serving as a mediator between the factions. Your job was to explore the Acreon and the Drift Rock and learn what happened to the crew. You took a shuttle to the quarantined Acreon, but one of the warring factions sent a ship to attack you, giving you a taste of starship combat. You found no trace of the deserted mining ship’s crew, but did find the ship infested with alien monsters and opportunistic scavengers. You continued your explorations on the Drift Rock, which was honeycombed with tunnels and rooms, and learned the final fate of the Acreon’s crew, while also dealing with an extraterrestrial monster that inhabited the asteroid. You eventually learned that the asteroid is incredibly ancient and that it is a fragment of some larger alien structure or artifact, perhaps a weapon, though its exact nature remained an enigma. You also discovered the Sunrise Maiden, a ship lost in hyperspace 75 years ago, which you claimed for yourselves. But as soon as you left the Drift Rock in your new starship, you came under attack from a mysterious ship!
Now in possession of the Sunrise Maiden, you battled your way off the Drift Rock, eventually finding out that the exiled Corpse Fleet of Eox was behind the attack. Eager for more information about the Drift Rock’s origins, you traveled to Castrovel, home of some of the best universities in the Pact Worlds. In Qabarat, one of Castrovel’s most powerful lashunta city-states and the planet’s primary spaceport, you navigated the politics of academia at the esteemed University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology. Eventually, you uncovered an obscure pre-Gap reference to an ancient, forgotten, elven temple-city on Castrovel called the Temple of the Twelve, which had supposedly found evidence of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization long ago. In search of the Temple of the Twelve, you embarked on an overland journey through the teeming jungles of Castrovel’s western continent, facing some of the planet’s dangerous flora and fauna, as well as members of the Cult of the Devourer, who were likewise interested in the Drift Rock’s secrets. Upon reaching the abandoned and overgrown elven temple-city, you contended with Castrovelian Devourer cultists who had taken over much of the crumbling ruins. After exploring the ruins, you learned that the elves had discovered an almost unimaginably immense megastructure called the Gate of Twelve Suns, which relates in some way to the Drift Rock and, potentially, to an ancient alien superweapon. Unfortunately, the Cult of the Devourer is now also looking for the Gate of Twelve Suns, and though you defeated the cult’s agents on Castrovel, those cultists were receiving their orders from a secret asteroid base in the Diaspora....
Tracking the Cult of the Devourer from Castrovel, you traveled to the scattered worldlets of the Diaspora to investigate the cult’s secret asteroid base. Upon locating the base, however, you discovered that the cult had abandoned it. You found no details about why the cult left the base or where they might have gone, but you did find evidence that the Corpse Fleet had also visited the base, along with indications that the Corpse Fleet may have stolen and deleted files from the base’s computer systems. What you did learn in the Field of the Lost takes you to the dead world of Eox, where you survived both the undead inhabitants of the planet and clandestine agents of the officially disavowed Corpse Fleet. Only then did you learn that the Devourer cult is aleady headed for a distant star system in search of clues to the location of an alien superweapon! To make matters worse, the Corpse Fleet is ahead of you on the trail....
Still on the heels of the Devourer cult, the heroes headed to a distant, uncharted star system, where they found the ruins of an ancient alien city floating in the atmosphere of a gas giant. Exploring the ruins, you encountered the degenerate descendants of a highly advanced species that once controlled the lost superweapon you're searching for. Through the legends and superstitions of these primitive folk, you pieced together clues to the superweapon’s hidden location and the key to unlocking its power—an impossibly huge megastructure that the Cult of the Devourer is intent on seizing! It required you to fight and kill some of the more extreme locals, called kish. Eventually though, you found yourselves in the Drift, rushing towards a weapon to destroy an entire system.
The trip through the Drift to the Gate of Twelve Suns is not without peril. Strange storms of quantum foam and clusters of planar debris litter the nearby space during the journey, though these are easily avoidable and pose no threat given the Sunrise Maiden and her crew. You pull out of the Drift into an extremely thin cloud of debris.
...you catch a blinking light which you've never seen blink... You look at the display and quickly ferret out the cause, you're being hacked! Something is boring its way into the Sunrise Maiden's systems!
The hacker is.... the computer itself?! The system is hacking itself? That doesn't make any sense.
Janzi, not to be shut down so easily, leaves occasional notes with tidbits of rat and bat anatomy about Booker's workspace.
At Mercant-Aisle 1, Janzi stocks up on grenades.
He also picks up a stuffed bat and a stuffed rat, along with a handful of indicator pins for ease of explanation. He places a carefully-arranged diorama in Booker's quarters one night.
Back on the Maiden, he approaches Hack-It. Anything you can do with this thing? Saw a plasma pistol at the shoppe, and while the fire and electricity is cool, they're freaking costly. And I have a grandmother I need to take care of. She's from Canada, you wouldn't know her.
Hack-It takes the pistol, then tosses it onto a pile of spare parts that he keeps in his quarters. "Sure, give me a bit and I'll sort you out."
=============================
"Wait, what the-" Hack-It throws up his hands as if the console were on fire. "We're being hacked by... the Maiden itself?"
He immediately starts to employ whatever countermeasures he can to combat the hacking.
Before leaving the station, Booker taps out a message to the Starfinder Society.
* * *
"Hack-It, can you check that? I don't like that light blinkin' at me."
Booker glances around the bridge. "Wait a min'. Did we leave RIGS back'n the resupply station?"
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|
As soon as they're back on the Maiden, Dunklezahn sacks out in his bunk for a day cycle. Refreshed and famished when he awakes, Dunk goes about making food for twice as many as the current crew and polishes off what the others don't eat.
After a quick purchase on the commercial station thanks to his friends, Dunk spends his time practicing with his new upgrades, drilling over again to ensure that he's comfortable and familiar with all of the new movements required.
Booker glances around the bridge. "Wait a min'. Did we leave RIGS back'n the resupply station?"
Wasn't my turn to watch hi, what do you mean, "being hacked by the Maiden itself?"
Gig makes a purchase of D-suit II Light Armor . When he comes back from the Mercant Aisle, he walks proudly to show off his wares and he is careful not to get any speck of dirt on it!
When he finds out about the system hacking, he replies,"Hack it, stop your kidding! Last I checked, the computer on the Sunrise Maiden was very reasonable. She did not have a mean circuit in her system."
Hack-it's countermeasures are for naught as the system collapses under the attack. Then, in a heartbeat, all is well. Everything returns to normal.
In a second heartbeat, however, everything is not normal. A cloud of nanites begin to pour out of the console around the ysoki. They swirl and coelesce into a strange and august form on the bridge.
“In-in-in-interlopers! You will cease your transgressions and r-r-r-return to your place of origin or be d-d-ddestroyed!”
It's voice is strange, like a thousand chords overlaid upon each other to produce a singular tone. The stutter seems to be some kind of glitch.
Hack-It is flabbergasted by what he's seeing.
...and he continues to be so...
"Har har. Shut it down, Hack. Not a time fer jokes."
...I don't think he's punking us on this one.
Indeed, Janzi knows this is an outsider, likely something known as an Inevitable, and there is something wrong with it.
Completely uncaring of the quips, and not hearing capitulation or explanation, the creature reforms its right arm into a blade as equally keen as Dunklezahn's latest....