Starfinder Fly Free or Die Solo Campaign

Game Master Clebsch73

Emersohn and Zeph teamed up to disguise the ship. The identifier had not yet been programmed into the ship, so Emersohn suggested they visit Akiton and get it forged. It was not hard to find someone on Akiton who could do the forgery and while they were there, they had the exterior of the ship painted and then distressed to make it look old.

The discussed what to call the ship, since everyone agreed they should ditch the name associated with it at EJ Corp. The settled on Black Butterfly after the Goddess of distance, silence, and space.

With those tasks done, along with a little shopping to sells some of the gear they collected and purchase supplies, they flew to Abasalom Station, found a berth in the armada and took a space taxi to the station to look for Tarika.

While the repairs were being done, Zeph sent Tarika an encrypted message filling her in on their situation, saying only enough that Tarika could get the gist of their theft of the Oliphaunt, avoiding Sinjin, and disguising the rechristened starship.

Tarika sent a similarly guarded message instructing them to return to Absalom Station and she'd try to have a job lined up.

When the crew arrive near the station, they stayed in the armada and sent a message to Tarika. She replied with a docking bay location.

When Zeph entered the address into the computer to get a view of the area and information on the location, she said, "Uh, Captain? This docking bay is for ships bound to or from Eox."

Scherzo looked at Zeph's monitor and huffed. "Those undead sentients give me the creeps. Still, last I checked, they pay in credits like everyone else. Let's check it out."

Shasta navigated into a docking area and slowly settled into a vacant berth. Nearby were various ships typical of those with undead crews, with ash grey hulls resembling rib cages of giant beasts. An exception was a large luxury liner that appeared to have been badly damaged with blast marks typical of battle. The area where the power core and drift engines usually reside was broken open as if from an internal explosion.

Scherzo walked to the front window to get a better view. "Zeph, look up news regarding any Opulos Drift Cruisers. I seem to remember something about a pirate attack." Zeph confirmed that there had been reports of a pirate attack on one of the star cruisers that had resulted in the loss of all on board.

Once she ship was shut down, Scherzo led the crew out into the dock and along a walkway that ended at an airlock into the station. Everyone had the environmental shields activated to protect them from the vacuum. Near the airlock the slender form of Tarika could be seen conversing with one of the corpsefolk at the airlock. When she saw the crew, she squealed and ran excitedly to greet them all.

"It’s so nice to see y’all livin’ and breathin’!

Tarika pointed toward the wrecked luxury liner. "Believe it or not, that unfortunate wreck is our next meal ticket. The Harlequin’s Prayer was a Vercite starliner. Got popped by pirates. Hull burst. Killed almost everyone on board. Sad, but how does that keep us in credits? Well, I found a buyer on Vesk-2 looking for fifty tons of black hearts. Those are necrografts—strips of dead flesh you can get attached to your insides to, you know, ignore stuff that kills us living people, like vacuum and radiation. And where do we get enough corpsicles for all those necrografts? You guessed it!" She gestured dramatically to the wrecked luxury liner. "There’s a broker named Rishae who handles stuff like this. She’s at the Revenant Urge, a club here on the station. Wha’dya say? Should I tell her yer comin’?

Scherzo had heard that corpses were frequently sold when next of kin could not afford to have it cremated or destroyed in other ways or shipped to a planet for burial. There was obviously no place for burial plots on a space station. So the bodies were sold to be converted into various commodities, including necrografts.

"I would think that those who can afford such luxury cruises would prefer other arrangements than having their loved ones converted into spare parts and such."

"Dunno 'bout that, but I've been assured all the legal types have taken care of those who specified any other arrangements and these are what's left. Pro'lly didn't read the fine print when they signed the ticket contracts. Anyways, there are special circumstances that make this a high payin' job. You in?"

Scherzo glanced at the others. Nobody objected. She sighed and said, "I guess. Who's the buyer?"

"They ain’t interested in telling us who they are until we arrive, goods in hand,” Tarika warns. “And they’ve advertised this job across the Pact Worlds. Whichever crew tracks down the cargo and delivers fastest gets the prize.”

Shasta cleared her throat. "The Butterfly's a fast ship and we got the space to haul a lot." She seemed interested in a job that required her skills as a speedy pilot.

Scherzo shrugged and said, "All right. Where do we find this club?"

"Excellent! The Revenant Urge--lovely name i'nit?--is dedicated to Urgathoa. It's in the Downlow district. Rishae may have what we need already on hand and, if not, she’ll know how to get them. Sorry I can’t be of more help but, y’know... corpse trading is kind of a niche market."

Tarika taps her comm unit a few times and the address of the club transmits to Scherzo's unit.

"Once you get the goods, let me know, an' I'll get the 'xact location of the buyer. Luck!"

As the crew began to shuffle toward the air lock, Tarika added, "Hey now, we aren’t the first people to try to make some creds out of this tragedy. A bunch’a goblins already came by and made off with the Drift engine from that wreck! I don’t know what they think they’re gonna do with it, but the Harlequin’s Prayer had a Signal Booster—a big step up from the basic Drift engine in most starships, including your fancy new Oli ... ah, I mean, Black Butterfly." She winked and waved them on.

Before leaving the docking area, Scherzo instructed the crew of the BLack Butterfly to fan out and see if they can learn more about what happened to the ill-fated star liner.

Orion didn't learn anything that couldn't be discerned from the condition of the ship itself. Benny and Zeph found out the leader of the alleged pirate attack, Tremeshkan “the Razor” Carva, a notorious shirren space pirate and Free Captain. News bulletins visible on large monitors showed his picture.

Shasta and Zeph learned interesting tidbits about the ship's owner, a Verthani fashion mogul Otan Saema, who was also on the ship when it was attacked. Saema was in debt to Blackwind Engineering, who now owns the ship and leads the salvage operation. Blackwind sold the dead bodies to a... specialized broker: Rishae Tulvauran.

Scherzo found a talkative dock engineer who inspected the ship when it arrived, who informed her that only an internal explosion could’ve caused the kind of damage dealt to the ship’s interior.

"Seems like a lot of sharks swimming in these waters," Scherzo observed. "This may be an 'inside' job, if you take my meaning."

The crew left the docks and headed to the Downlow section of Absalom Station, located below the main residential and business areas of the station, home to the lower classes, maintenance workers, and plenty of riff raff. The found the club and looked it over.

The Revenant Urge’s aesthetic combined the haunting and traditional with the ultra-modern and chic. The building resembled a macabre cathedral decorated with a towering spire at each corner and flying buttresses, pointed arches, and ornate columns of onyx and black marble. The entrance was an oversized door of coppery metal framed by pillars of bone and adamantine and the rib bones of a giant undead beast. Above the door, a circular rose window made of holographic crystal projected the silhouette of the goddess Urgathoa—depicted as a woman with a skeletal lower half dancing with a scythe. The acrid odor of burning plastic and chemical solvents lingered in the air, and the pulse of muffled bass throbbed behind the door.

Moving inside, the double door opened to a vaulted hall; seven floors with open balconies overlooked a crowded dance floor, along with one more floor at the building’s summit. Gigantic speakers blared hypertronic sludge house. Floating above the crowds of dancers, undead dancers whirled about in hovercages while brandishing bladed weapons or caressing dangerous animals. The patrons themselves—mostly undead—writhed and contorted to the music, illuminated by flashing strobes. A few clubbers jumped from bungee cords tethered to the upper floors, their silhouettes bouncing in and out of view. Each of the four spires that anchored the building contained a lavish elevator with walls made of holographic crystal.

A squax near where they entered sat up on its hind legs and stared at the group. Once eyes adjusted to the low light levels of the club, they saw it a robot made to resemble the small mammal common on Castrovel and a popular pet across the Pact Worlds. It proceeded to scamper across the entrance area and over to a bar where it jumped up next to a dragonkin. Hesh wore a white longsleeved pullover shirt with some graphic design on the front, brown cargo pants, with a belt full of tools. Hesh had violet scales, yellow eyes, and a pair of goggles resting on his horned head. Hirs tail tapped the head of the mechanical companion. Hesh waved at the crew of the Butterfly and invited them over to join him.

When they approached, hesh said, "Call me Dizzy. This is Digit." The dragonkin looked around at the gothic ambiance of the club and raised a drink to hirs muzzle. "First time in this place. All seems a little much, you know? Like, they’re trying too hard. I hear on the weekends people bungee down from the seventh floor while laser turrets open fire on them. That sounds… fun?"

Emersohn sidled up and asked, "So, what's a dazzling and very much alive dragonkin like yerself doin' in a joint like this?"

"Same thing you are, I expect," Dizzy replied. "Trying to pick up some black hearts from Ms. Tulvauran. I'm with the Wintermourn, and our captain, Niva Rovo, is upstairs right now, haggling with Rishae, like I suspect you all intend to do. I’m sorry we got here first, but, you know, speed is everything in this business. No hard feelings.

Scherzo considered trying to interrupt the meeting to make a counter-offer, but thought better of it. She and her crew chatted with Dizzy about music, starship maintenance, and latest trends in robotics and computers.

Eventually, the captain of the Wintermourn returned to collect Dizzy. She was an ysoki female, with white fur streaked with grey stripes. Her face had several scars. She wore heavy armor, the type worn by miners working in hostile environments. Wither the captain was a tall, muscular human female who had colored her skin bright red. She sported a white mohawk, wore freebooter armor, and a bravado handcannon.

A fourth crew member joined the three from where he had been mingling with the club crowd. He was a verthani with blue and black skin patterns. He had a laser pistol augmented to his right hand. He greeted his crew mates with gestured that indicated they communicated with signs, although his body language said he was able to hear the music, as he was shifting his body in time to the throbbing beat.

Emersohn's ears twitched as he saw the verthani approach. He gave a similar hand signal to what the others had made and they shook hands.

Scherzo and the others looked askance at this, so Emersohn explained, "This is Jinx! We crewed together for a while."

He turned back to Jinx and said and signed simultaneously, "It's good to see you're still around." Jinx signed some response and Emersohn laughed.

Dizzy completed introductions. "Crew of the Black Butterfly, meet the crew of the Wintermourn. Captain Rovo meet Captain Scherzo Vivaccismo. Orion, Benny, Zeph, Shasta, and Emersohn meet Jinx, and Nemolith Zyoan."

The two crews acknowledged Dizzy's introductions various ways, except Nemolith, who just glowered and looked bored.

Dizzy continued. "The The Black Butterfly is an EJ Corp Sledgehammer."

Jinx said, "That's a fast ship, but the cargo capacity sucks."

Scherzo and the others nodded as if in agreement but casting sly glances at each other when no one was looking.

Niva briefly looked over the other crew and commented as she departed, "We’re here to work, not sip necrotinis or whatever the hell they serve in this place."

Dizzy gave directions before hesh left with the others. "Top floor. Last confessional on the right."

Scherzo took Emersohn with her up to the top floor. In the last confessional on the right, they found Rishae looking at something on her comm unit. She was a lucanrian, a fey race descended from beings of light. Most have milky covering over their eyes, but Rishae has smoldering red wraith motes instead. She had skin the color of moonlight, with purple hair, a number of metal objects and opaque white stones embedded symmetrically on her face.

After introducing herself, Scherzo explained that they needed 50 tons of black hearts.

"I’m not sure I can help you," she said. "I’ve already sold the necrografts to Rovo, and I don’t have another 50 tons of spare black hearts just lying around. Even if I did, you heard her; they’re already on their way to your mystery client."

Knowing they have a way to possibly get an engine upgrade that would boost their speed, Scherzo negotiated the purchase of another 50 tons of black hearts using up most of their capital from their severance deals.

But as they were leaving, Rishae caught up with them, furious about something. Scherzo wondered if they had somehow insulted the broker.

"That two-timing, double-dealing, swindling… ice-miner! She’s ripped me off! That whole time she and her witchwarper sidekick had me chatting upstairs, their pilot was stealing the black hearts from my own storage yard! And you. You!"

Rishae poked Scherzo with her index finger.

"You are going to help me get even. I don’t have your necrografts, but I know where you can get them. Rygan Vuul runs a necroforge in the Sparks with all the equipment to make what you need. His cult worships him as a living god or something. I stay away from him, but maybe you can persuade him to cut you a deal."

Scherzo looked at her comm unit, which still had the contract for the black hearts on the screen.

Rishae tapped her own comm unit and the contract was canceled. "Keep your credits. Just beat that rat to the sale and we're even!"

Scherzo led the team out of the club before discussing the team's next step. "We should try to find that booster before we try to obtain the black hearts. I won't be a point to getting the merchandize if we have no chance of beating the Wintermourn."

Scherzo contacted Tarika, who gave them the location of the goblins who got the drift engine from the star liner. She said to poke around Docking Bay 87 for a lead. Asking around the docking bay, they learned the goblins had a work area in the Botscrap neighborhood.

When the team got there, they found a large public junkyard, called The Heap by the locals, a massive pile of derelict starships, power armor, vehicles, and other techno garbage.

They could see and hear some activity at the top of one of the largest piles.

Climbing the pile of junk was not easy, particularly for Orion, whose bulk made it harder for him to find stable hand and foot holds. Benny, Zeph, and Orion arrived at the top decidedly winded and a little weak from the exertion. The other three paced themselves better.

The top of the heap had an area where the junk had been cleared away. A drift engine was on the far side of the clearing. About fifteen feet from the clearing, half covered in other junk was a rusted gun safe, half covered in other junk, with the door closed. Goblin voices could be heard whispering from inside the safe. A squeaky, unsure voice spoke softly, "But shouldn’t… shouldn’t we go have a look? What if that thing zapped Goog?"

Someone with a raspier, gruff tone replied, "If you’re so worried, you go out there. You’re the reason we’re in this mess. I says, ‘Let’s replace the containment unit.’ But nooooo. ‘I can just repair the Drift leak,’ you says. ‘Let me laser weld the manifold,’ you says. Now look where we are! Hidin’ in a metal box prayin’ we don’t get electrocuted!"

The whispers stopped as the muffled sounds of a petty scuffle ensued.

Scherzo opened the door to the safe and two space goblins--one male, one female--tumbled out wrestling and throwing ineffectual punches at each other. They stopped fighting when they noticed a group of strangers staring at them.

The male gestured for the group to get as far away from the drift engine as the top of the heap would allow, then said, still talking in a whisper, "Thank Triune, you're here. We were repairing that drift engine, Goog, Fleagreb, and Rattlesnap," As he said the names, he pointed at the drift engine, the female, and himself. "To do that, we had to connect power to containment manifold. There was sparks, then a creature shooting lightning everywheres. Goog was wounded. We fled here. You has guns! Shoot lightning beast. Save goog!"

As Rattlesnap talked, he acted like a space ship captain, giving orders, pointing with his stubby arms, showing his teeth and spitting as he tried to be emphatic while keeping his voice down.

When Scherzo tried to question him further, he pointed toward the drift engine and said only, "Save brother Goog," crossing his arms

The group started to look around for the beast the goblin mentioned. Benny said, "Oy, mates, I see the bogan hidin' in the drift engine."

Shasta began a slow creep up toward the engine.

Something dark swooped down behind Emersohn and Benny. It had a vaguely humanoid shape, with white-blue skin. Dark clouds swirled like black hair from it's head and its lower torso appeared as a black skirt that dissolved into black clouds where feet should be. Sparks crackled all about it and the air smelled strongly of ozone. It sent a surge of electricity into Emersohn. He was taken by surprise and all the electrical energy surged through his body and into the heap below him.

Shasta rushed into the drift engine. She spotted the problem with the drift engine, a thermal sensor allowed energy from the elemental plane of air to leak into the material plane. She could not attempt to fix the problem without getting in range of the sensor, so she did her best to avoid the blast of electricty and debris blown by blast of wind that erupted from the damaged containment manifold. Most of the damage was not serious, but the space goblin, Goog, hiding to one side of the manifold where the heat sensor was blocked, got zapped as well, although the worst of the blast hit Shasta.

Shasta yelled at Goog to get out while she tried to work the computer controls to shut down the part of the program that powered the manifold. The controls were not familiar to her, so she wasted some time hitting dead ends, knowing the leak would send another blast her way in a few seconds.

Benny and Zeph recognized the creature attacking Emersohn as a lightning elemental, a creature from the plane of air.

When the elemental attacked Emersohn, Emersohn, Scherzo, and Zeph were hiding in a line behind some debris piled up at the north end of the heap, with Orion further east from the elemental. He was too far from it to attack it with his doshko or claws or even his newly acquired tactical pike. He could run around the pile of debris to try to get at it from the south, but Benny and the two goblins were blocking his path to the enemy. So he stepped a bit further east as he pulled his laser rifle from where it was slung on his back.

He fired, but the laser beam passed just over the being's head to be lost in the cloudy mass that appeared as hair blown by a gale wind.

Fleagreeb and Rattlesnarp retreated south toward the drift engine. They drew their infamously unstable junklasers and fired wild shots at the lightning elemental, but did come close to hitting it.

Zeph moved away from the creature, yelling, "That's a ligntning elemental! Electricity won't hurt it!"

She drew shards of junk in from another universe and caused it to explode just behind the elemental. The junk ripped through it, disrupting the arcane energies that kept it going.

She heard Shasta calling for help back at the drift engine, so Scherzo said, "Zeph! See if you can help Shasta. We'll keep sparky away."

Benny held his ground, drawing mystic energy to surround his hand. Then he reached out as the elemental moved his direction. The energy exploded into the outsider, further disrupting its matrix of air and electricity.

Shasta remained at the control panel and endured another blast of wind and lightning. This time she anticipated it and ducked her head and torso out of the path of destruction. Then she initiated the manifold shutdown program. It remained to disconnect the power to close the leak.

The lightning elemental retaliated against Benny by slugging him with a blow that crackled with electricity. Benny's armor absorbed the brunt, but the pain of the blow reverberated through his body.

His doshko swiped through the core of the outsider. It did not spill blood, but a dark gap remained, filled with wind and arcs of electricity. It was almost finished.

While Goog cowered and nursed his wounds, his brother and sister retreated further before firing more shots at the elemental with their junklasers. Fleagreeb's shot was just as wild as before, but Rattlesnarp's came dangerously close to hitting the elemental's head. The intense clouds that wreath its head, however, dispersed the laser light harmlessly.

Zeph ran toward the drift engine. She had to pick her way through the junk littering the ground until she got closer to it. She scampered the last 30 feet, just getting into the mouth of the opening where the top had been removed. She saw Shasta just finishing her computer work. "How can I help?" she yelled above the noise created by the winds and crackling electricity around the manifold leak.

Emersohn initiated a furious attack on the elemental, missing with one swing of his sword, but then, taking advantage of an opening that miss created, he slashed straight through the torso region. The elemental imploded on itself amid a rush of air toward the spot. Then it was gone.

Emersohn remained en garde for a moment before letting out a deep sigh of relief.

"Well done, Benny, Emersohn! Now let's hustle to see if Shasta and Zeph need our help," Scherzo called out as she herself moved toward the drift engine.

Shasta yelled, "We've still got to disconnect the power!"

Shasta did not know enough about how the engine was constructed to attempt to depower the manifold, but she had been learning about the mystical ways of magic from Benny and Zeph during the drift time, and this allowed her to notice that there was a magical element sustaining the leak as well. She reached out with her mind and found she could perhaps break this connection to the plane of air.

Her effort paid off. Deprived of the mystical energy that was also empowering the leak, the leak sealed and the wind and electricity die away, leaving Shasta's fur and Zeph's silvery hair standing on end and dotted with sparks as the charge in the air began to normalize. Shasta and Zeph embraced and then began to double check everything to be sure there would not be a return of the leak.

After Zeph and Shasta emerged from stabilizing the drift engine, Emersohn entered the engine interior to inspect the mechanism. He was puzzled as to what would cause an engine to get such a leak.

After poking about, grunting at various discoveries, he took out his comm unit and took a few pictures of different parts of the engine innards.

When he emerged, Scherzo was negotiating with the goblins about the possibility of purchasing the engines. "Captain," Emersohn interrupted, "Take a look at this."

Scherzo did not know what she was supposed to see, so Emersohn explained, "The star metal housing of the drift manifold is normally made strong enough to prevent this sort of thing. But notice this line of melted metal. Something very hot was applied right along that line that weakened the housing and allowed the leak. That would be enough to cause the explosion that disabled the starliner. These pictures show residue of something that lines the gash. Looks like sabotage to me."

Scherzo patted Emersohn on the back and said to everyone, "Good team work everyone, as usual. Rest up, while I negotiate with these folk to get the signal booster off this engine so we can have a chance of catching up with the competition."

Then she added, "Emmo, send me a copy of those pictures. I want to show them to the stewards."

While Scherzo was distracted, the goblins had taken to talking excitedly.

Fleagreeb said, "We will have enough credits to buy Doomcaller! We can force Stink Craters gang to bow to our superior ..."

"No, no, no," Rattlesnarp interrupted. "I can get what I need to build my comfy chair with portal to food synthesizer! At last I'll ..."

Goog clapped them both on the backs of their oversized heads, saying, "Stop it! Every wakin’ minute, you squabble and nitpick! What does it get us? Extra crispy and half dead! Well, it’s time for the head of the family to take charge, like Mom always wanted. And I say there’s no point in selling that engine, ‘cause you two will just waste the credits on terrible inventions that have no chance of ever getting us off this crummy station!"

Goog turned away from his brother and sister. "There’s nothing here for us anymore. We want to go with you, wherever you’re going. Just let us see the stars
aboard your ship a little while, hop to a planet or two, until we find the right place for a fresh start. Do that for us, and the Drift engine is yours."

"How about you fix that leak," Scherzo said, "and modify it to fit on our smaller starship, and if you get the job done in less than 3 days, we'll either pay you or take you with us when we make our next shipment."

This satisfied the goblins who began work immediately. Emersohn showed the others two transparent gems. Benny and Zeph recognized them as elemental gems, which would summon an air elemental. It was just a small one, but Zeph knew that they could be useful, even if they only had enough magical juice to stay around for 20 seconds.

After a rest and a little research, the crew located and traveled to the augmentation shop of Rygan Vuul. It was located below the main level of the station, in the Spike, a district called the Sparks. His shop was in a vacant engineering bay. While traveling to the shop, Zeph did some research and found some of his advertising. Vuul was an elebrian corpsefolk, intelligent undead who had become members of the Pact Worlds, in relatively good standing.

Zeph also found that Vuul espoused a philosophy he called “singularity,” by which he meant the pursuit of an infinite existence through undeath, and he preferred to sell his hand-crafted augmentations to fellow believers. As a result, many of his clients had become his followers, revering him as a living god.

His necroforge, as such crafting areas of undead augmentations were called, occupied a one story building that stood alone in the area, about 100 feet long and 70 feet wide. It had an entrance in the southwest corner with an empty waiting room. It was brightly lit and the exterior was well maintained.

Before the group approached, Scherzo pulled everyone together for a few words. "We have to approach this like a regular business transaction, but be on the lookout for trouble. We know the ship's drift engine was sabotaged, and if I had to guess who might stand to profit from a ship full of corpses, well, ..." Scherzo directed her eyes at the shop. "If we can find evidence it was him, I'm sure we can get a much more reasonable price for our cargo. Zeph, when you can, check their computers. Everyone else, keep your eyes out for the material placed on the drift engine, some kind of thermal salve. And be ready to fight. If we confront him with evidence, he may decide to eliminate us. We need him to make the black hearts, so we only fight until he concedes. All right. Let's do business."

The monitor images went blank and words in common and Eoxian said, <Unauthorized access denied> as an alarm sound beeped.

A moment later the screens filled with a man's face looking cross at a computer in a large room with various large machines in the background. The man had grey skin, no hair, and a broad forehead backed up by an enlarged cranium. The general features marked the man as an elebrian, but his skin did not look healthy, suggesting he was undead.

"Leave a message if you want service!" he said, his voice wispy and rough. The monitor changed back to the promotional videos and the instruction to record a message.

Scherzo began to set up the computer to record her message, but as she did so, Zeph managed to use her activity as cover to allow Zeph to get past the access code to look at the system. Zeph gave Scherzo a subtle thumbs up. While Scherzo was recording her message, Zeph began to search through the message log to see if she could find any suspicious references to the Harlequin’s Prayer.

Zeph found a recorded message received about a month ago from Otan Saema, owner of the Harlequin’s Prayer, expressing their admiration for Rygan and inviting him aboard the ship for an all-expenses-paid cruise. Rygan accepted the invitation. Zeph found more exchanges to indicate Zygan had boarded the vessel, received a tour, including a visit to see the drift engines, and also that Rygan claimed he had to leave before the ship departed to take care of some unexpected urgent business.

The same day, Rygan sent an encrypted message out to an area of the Diaspora known to be an area frequented by pirates. There followed a transfer of credits to the same location.

Zeph made a copy of all the evidence and then sent a short summary to Scherzo's comm unit to share what she had found.

Meanwhile, Scherzo said, "Greetings, exalted one. I am Scherzo, captain of the Black Butterfly and new convert to the worship of Urgathoa. I was at the Revenant Urge doing some shipping business with Rishae Tulvauran and she recommended I visit and learn about your philosophy of achieving singularity through unlife. My crew and I'd love a chance to see what you do in person and perhaps purchase some augmentations."

After a short wait, the same voice as before spoke again, "I'm always happy to discuss the singularity. Show yourselves through the recovery room and surgery to the necroforge. I'm having a special on adrenal gland replacement."

Scherzo whispered some instructions to Emersohn and Shasta. They remained in the waiting room until Scherzo and the others had had time to get into the necroforge and presumably distract Rygun from what the two stragglers were up to. Emersohn took control of Zeph's computer, which was already into the system. He then hacked past the firewall and found he had access to the cameras, door controls, and more. He noted that there were some back rooms accessed from a loading dock behind the building.

He spent a few minutes recording what the cameras were capturing in the empty rooms, creating loops, and replacing the camera feeds with the loops so anyone looking at the cameras on a monitor would see the loops instead of what was really happening. Then he and Shasta left and circled back around to the loading dock and entered the door that Emersohn had unlocked.

Inside Scherzo was greeted with a creepy smile on the undead elebrian's grey lips. "Welcome to the necroforge. I shall show you what immortality looks like."

Scherzo kept him talking while the others looked at the equipment and the other occupants of the room. In the center was a control column that had monitors showing the cameras in the various side rooms of the building, now showing innocuous loops of inactivity. On the floor, a ring of red lines filled with mystic and arcane runes connected eight coffin-sized glass covered capsules, each containing a corpse. The ring sent negative energy into the capsules to infuse the dead tissue in preparation for being forged into the necrographs.

Three undead attendants drifted from capsule to capsule and over to counter with other equipment adjusting things in the background.