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A9 - crew quarters.
Lulora’s team used the crew quarters. The rooms are furnished nicer than the ship’s technical spaces. Save for the crew members’ personal items, the three rooms are nearly identical, each containing two bunk beds, a desk with a computer terminal and an office chair in front of the desk, a bedside table with drawers for personal items, and a closet for uniforms, tools, and other service equipment. All computers and datapads in the rooms contain uninteresting work-related files unless otherwise mentioned.
A9a: The halfling brothers, Rosm and Kelm, lived here. The bedside table has a collection of small figurines which Rosm made from scrap metal. One of the drawers in Kelm’s desk contains a notebook filled with sketches of various creatures and machines, as well as a half-finished schematic for a contraption that looks like a reconnaissance drone. In the closet, there are a few spare uniforms sized for a halfling, and a collection of tools and spare parts.
A9b: The barathu, Lipuvae, lived in this room. The bedside table has a small glass jar filled with glowing plankton, which emits a soft blue light. A datapad next to it shows a map of the Revelry’s layout. A poster on the wall shows a complex star, and a notepad on the desk is filled with calculations.
A9c: The lashunta solarian, Aurinkar, Lulora’s second-in command, and the ship’s human pilot, Pinjatar, stayed in this room. Aurinkar’s datapad has a locked folder titled “projectrevelry”.
In it is a video message to Lulora dated two days before Lulora’s last transmission. Aurinkar seems anxious to investigate the Revelry. They describe their experiences with unusual energy patterns while they’ve been near the Revelry, including strange visions. They finish the entry with “It’s as though the ship were beckoning to me.”
A day later, Aurinkar received a reply. Lulora says in a hushed voice: “Aurinkar, I wish you success on your mission. Please remember to be cautious when using your solar powers on the Revelry.”
The drawers in the table contain a lot of books about ancient civilizations, history of solar systems and the universe, and theories on the Gap. The closet holds a few medium-sized articles of clothing. These items all belong to Aurinkar.
Pinjatar’s belongings are scattered throughout the room. Her red flight jacket hangs on one of the closet doors, and her flight helmet rests on her bed. A small picture of her family—a group of wealthy looking humans smiling as they gather in a nice park on Absalom Station—is tucked into the corner of a mirror on the desk. The backside of the picture contains a handwritten message filled with love and encouragement for Pinjatar’s work with the Starfinders. A framed certificate of achievement for her piloting skills is mounted on the wall opposite her bed.
A10. Escape Pods.
Six ovoid metal pods sit evenly spaced on the floor in this chamber, their semi-transparent lids covered in a thick layer of frost that blocks the view inside.Tthe control panel shows a status dashboard of the six pods. Five pods have a yellow warning symbol blinking over them, while pod F displays a red warning symbol and the label “launch unsuccessful”. Each “open” button on the dashboard is initially grayed out, showing the text “defrost in progress” and a timer counting down from four hours, which started the moment you restored power to the ship.
A11. Lulora's Quarters.
This room boasts wood panel walls and a plush gray carpet. A large bed in the corner looks inviting, with fluffy pillows and warm blankets. An owl-shaped antique clock sits on a desk next to a computer terminal, ticking softly. Bookshelves line the walls, with the free space left open decorated by a painting of a ysoki family. A drawer in the desk holds Lulora’s access keycard, along with a pair of fuzzy socks with little stars on them and a knitted purple scarf.
As for the bridge ...
The bridge features seats for the officers, as well as numerous screens displaying data about the ship. In front of a control panel, a female ysoki attempts to scan her pawprint, but the screens show “read error.” She groans and slams her fists against the control panel, to no avail. The ysoki turns around, revealing an angry, strangely translucent appearance while floating a foot off the ground. (see slides)
What is the meaning of this? she demands in a voice that sounds hollow and otherworldly. My crew and my ship are in danger! You better have a good reason for invading my bridge!
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Flenn plays the video, glancing meaningfully at the group's Solarians.
In Lulora's room, he takes the keycard. "This'll save us some work, I wager ..."
Flenn, not being one of the point people, raises a heavily pierced eyebrow, then glances at some of the more charismatic members of the group to take point on how to deal with this.
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Kenji would have accompanied the tour through the ship; they would have paused for a minute to hold and inspect the glowing jar of gaseous plankton in Lipuvae's room. "Hello, Little Ones." Per our orders to retrieve personal affects of (presumed) deceased, they would have stowed what seemed meaningful, including the plankton.
Kenji would also share Aurinkar's video logs with the team.
When it comes time to crack the bridge, Kenji would be there, near the front. Upon encountering a translucent Lulora with an otherworldly voice hovering off the ground, Kenji would reach out with their blindsight to see if she's registering as "Life" or not.
Like Flenn, Kenji isn't a very convincing conversationalist, so they'd leave the talking to the more charismatic group members. But, recognizing a fellow Exo-Guardian in trouble, they'd thumb off their scythe and lower it to a non-threatening stance, and activate their Starfinder Insignia.
"It's okay - Ixthia sent us. How can we help? Can you explain the danger?"
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Terminatrix raises hand to greet the translucent ysoki "This is an expedition of Starfinder society, ordered by Ixthia. Our mission is to investigate fate of Lulora Remis and her crew, while they were responding to a distress signal from Revelry. I am called Terminatrix-42. Can we help to fix that control panel for you?" he tries to sound friendly
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Momo takes a little figurine, and has a look at the sketches. She points out the notebook to Kenji, for collecting personal effects.
Momo makes sure to memorize that map of the Revelry.
Be careful when using solar powers? Momo says, looking a bit alarmed at the other Solarian in the room what does that mean?
Launch... unsuccesful... does that mean? Momo wonders somebody tried to get off, but couldn't? And why would they be frozen?
The ticking of the clock reverberates in Momo's ears, feeling every tick as if a hammer is banging on her skull. She picks up the socks with stars on them, softly humming a few lines
♫ A sparkling sea of lights
Gaze into the distance and try to find a
Single one more bright
Whichever one could you be? ♫
Captain Lulora? Momo says as she sees the ghostly figure, Is that you? We are here because we picked up your distress signal. Ixthia sent us, and we're here to help. We've repaired the capacitor array and restored power.
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Bridge:
The screens in the room show information about the ship’s power levels, escape pods, and other details you may already have been able to glean from around the ship. A hatch in the floor serves as the entrance to the docking umbilical.
Momo confirms that Captain Lulora is indeed a ghost.
What's your mission she demands angrily.
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Hearing an angry voice from the bridge, Castana scrambles to see if she can try to defuse the situation.
We are Starfinders and we are here to conduct an investigation on what happened to you Lulora and what happened to your ship when you were investigating the Revelry. Some strange things have happened to me, but that's neither here nor there. We saw some signs of undead, or rather I did. But we had wanted to rescue you, I realise now we may not be able to. We investigated your quarters, the laboratory, we want to try and save anyone we can try. We wanted to start here before heading to the Revelry.
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Flenn sends a text message to everyone's comm unit directly from his neural exocortex, so it comes across your comm headset or heads-up screen in your armor, for those who are configured in that way, "She thinks she can activate the bio-scanner. I don't think she ... knows that we can't help her. May want to go easy, delay her realizing her situation, and maybe we can get some information before ... things go badly."
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At a minimum, certainly undead based on evidence found in the lavatory, both physical and magical. Also some strange force field or element was blocking our scan of the Revelry when we first inspected your ships. The scan indicated the ship wasn't even there even though we know that is patently false. Power was drained from this ship. That gives us some information to narrow it down, me thinks.
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Flenn says, "The ship was powered down. We repaired the capacitor array and brought power back online. Everything appears to be operating, but, aside from yourself, there's no sign of the crew on board."
He frowns slightly when Castana mentions "undead," and continues. "Once we have everything squared away here, we're going to turn our attention to the Revelry. What intelligence can you provide? Do you believe your crew might be over there?" He also provides any other information he gleaned from his knowledge of Physical Science, unless he thinks it might set the creature off.
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Castana will hang back and let Flenn play bad cop. Meanwhile she will just tell the facts and tell it like it is.
I'll let my crewmates speak for themselves, but whilst most laypeople know me for my work in the music industry, since retiring, I've been on several starship missions with the Starfinder Society. Though my faction is of the Advocates, I've done work both inside and outside the Pact Worlds with at least 4-5 missions dealing with the complete unknown. My specialty is in diplomatic matters but I have the equipment and training to put up a full frontal fight where needed. And have done so. In fact I've just fought through a massive battle, the Battle of the Bulwark where we faced mass casualties and had to think on the fly with a tremendous amount of moving pieces.
If that experience doesn't prepare me for this mission, amongst others, frankly I am not sure what will.
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Castana then pipes down after getting off her soapbox. In character, she hates when others question her competency, goodness knows how much she has had to deal with nonsense in the music/show business. She resents it even more in the Society, having seen a more diverse group of colleagues and associates being able to work together despite vast differences in experience and backgrounds.
In character, she also doesn't entirely agree with Flenn's approach to dealing with Lulora, but she's not going to bark orders or get into a shouting match with anyone in this moment. Just show or describe the evidence and tell things as they are. And no, not outright tell Lulora she's dead, but nudge her a bit towards the realisation as to what is going on.
She looks back at Lulora trying to bridge the gap with her in case Flenn's worsened it.
It is unfortunate I haven't gotten to work with you before this incident but we will carry on and make sure to bring back alive whomever we can if at all possible and make sure we honour whomever we cannot. We did that at the Bulwark and we'll do the same here. If we did not have the requisite experience we would simply not be here.
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Even though it may not be the approved way to speak to an angry spirit, Flenn does score a success. The spirit seems satisfied, for now.
One last thing. My ship no longer obeys my commands. It’s as though I wasn’t here. What’s going on? Is this another anomaly related to the Drift?
If you tell her the truth - roll Diplomacy
If you lie or have no idea - roll Bluff.
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Castana tries to put two and two together for Lulora.
So let's see if we can't put this all together now. We were originally sent here because Ixthia, we picked up fragments of your distress signal. It's far worse than I....only way....destroy it. Literally only the words came though but your voice was recognisable. Do those words ring a bell?
We investigated your ship. Notebooks from your crewmates indicated some tasks were not ever completed. One of my crewmates was in the escape pods. Someone clearly tried to escape but the reading says launch unsuccessful. With the power gone, we surmised it was too cold, but it seems like that area is thawing, maybe because power was restored. When we entered, it says "defrost in progress". There was a timer counting down from I think four hours. Does that ring a bell? Were you even in there?
As for me, when I was in the lavatory, an image of me in the mirror turned into undead. I don't know what that was. But it was what I saw for a split second. Does that mean anything to you.
If any of these events mean something, and then when you add it up with the fact the bio-scanner is not responding to you....well...it probably means it's not responding to you because you are not the being you once were. Maybe we can help you with the bio-scanner or something.
I'm sorry if what I have said upsets you, but we are here to help even if we have to do it the hard way. You care about your crew, and so do we. And it seems like the only way out is through.
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Castana waits with bated breath for Lulora's reaction, gently using her hand to motion anyone else behind, so that if anyone takes damage, wrath or abuse, it's her and her alone. She's been in tough negotiations before both in her first career and with the Society on diplomatic missions on the Vesk planets and some tense interviewing of Starfinders even in the Bulwark, but she'd never had to negotiate with a ghost before.
Sometimes you have to push the envelope a little and take a risk. Did I make enough rapport with her to say the things she may not want to hear?
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That is actually a success.
Lulora’s ferocious expression softens and she drifts to the ground, looking weary and more transparent than before. Examining herself, she says: I’m fading. I no longer feel anger, only fear. Quick, I must tell you everything before it’s too late.
As you know, we received a distress call and found the Revelry. We soon realized the ship had not fully returned from the Drift. But I was able to create a hybrid ritual that allowed us to enter the ship. You see that hatch there? The docking umbilical is still connected, and that’s the only way to access the ship.
As I continued studying the strange aura around the Revelry, I realized something had taken control of my ship, draining it of its energy and slowly consuming it. I don’t know what this entity is, but it isn’t friendly. I can feel its hunger, and once it’s done with my ship, I fear it won’t stop there.
I sent my crew to investigate the Revelry, but the ship had transformed into a living nightmare. They were beaten back by a horde of mutated creatures relentlessly attacking them at every turn. However, they did discover something important: a series of haunted locations and gravitational anomalies, all connected like a path. I firmly believe this trail of wrongness leads to the source of the unknown threat. Knowing that we and our ship were in grave danger, I sent them to the Revelry to end the threat. But they never returned, and I can only assume they perished.
Lulora’s form keeps fading, her voice a mere whisper now. I need you to finish what my crew and I started. Follow the trail of anomalies, discover where my crew was headed, and find a way to destroy the threat, she says as she fades from view. Hurry.
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"Horde of mutated creatures relentlessly attacking ... Sounds like we might need that grenade launcher and the grenades we found earlier. Terminatrix, you got that, right? Be sure it's loaded up. I can't use the launcher, but I might fancy taking one of those grenades off your hand, in case of an emergency."
Flenn walks over to the bridge console and datajacks into it. He tries to pull up any data related to these anomaly and sends it to his exocortex, and also mirrors a sealed data packet over to your ship, in case the Revelry doesn't make it out of here. He sends a message for their ship to transmit a distress call back to the Starfinders if he doesn't signal it in 24 hours.
"Alright, then..." He motions toward the umbilical. "Who wants to go first?"
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Kenji sends to the emptiness, after Lulora fades away, "if it is at all possible to get your team out of there, Lulora, you have my word - we'll make it happen." They put on the purple scarf we found in Lulora's quarters, check their gear, and make for the umbilical.
"If there is some..thing draining power and sustenance from the ships, perhaps it would be prudent to keep our ship disconnected from the Vigilance, to prevent contamination. Should we leave it close enough to space-walk to, but not docked with, the Vigilance?"
Kenji would take a look at the umbilical and as ask Montmorency to do that same, to see if there's any obvious threats in the umbilical to the Revelry.
Assuming things are clear, just to make sure, they'd shake their body a bit, and release their nanites: Kenji's sheathe array changes to a cloud array, as they release a stream of microscopic, planty, robots across the umbilical.
If both the perception, and the cloud array test, don't reveal obvious dangers, Kenji would cross.
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"I'll take the launcher and put it to good use. Solarians, do you want to go first and blast them with your energy?" Terminatrix nods firmly to Flenn and turns to Alkekenji "Yes! Thanks for reminding me, no need take risk of contaminating our ship as well. Disconnect it and take as much healing serums and spare ammo as you can carry."
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Well. Castana is crestfallen as Lulora fades away. On one hand I wasn't going crazy about the undead. That might be a sign of things to come. Definitely equip those grenades though I think they will be better off on another's hands.
Castana turns to her teammates. Blasting them away and setting them on fire won't be an issue.
She watches Kenji's cloud array test play out before advancing.
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"Oh," 'paths Kenji, "I have been practicing a nanite application for these situations." They reach out one plantlike tendril, and nanites stream out and down to form into a snub breaching gun, which they place against the ice, to leverage its breach property.
"Where, Montmorency? Further? Here good? Right then," they say before firing a breaching round.
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Kenji inspects the corpse, and then has a private conversation via their neural link to their VI aeon stone. Afterwards, they turn to Momo, and 'path, "Momo, would you please help me check something on the bridge? I wanted to take a look at one more item."
As the khizar leads the human away, Montmorency would flash to everyone's comms, pointedly excluding Momo's, to share that Lulora evidently died of asphyxiation.
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The keycard was required to access the computer. In it are Lulora's video logs.
The logs span the five days that Lulora’s crew spent studying the Revelry. Entries from the first day reveal her initial enthusiasm for discovering the Revelry’s secrets. Entries from the second day document her growing obsession with the ship and her despair as the crew fails to make progress in understanding why their scans fail and they can’t approach the ship. On the third day, she reveals she has begun designing a ritual to pierce the barrier between the planes. She also reports that the crew has started having strange dreams, with Aurinkar being affected the most. Lulora herself hasn’t been able to sleep.
On the fourth day, Lulora admits that the previous day’s ritual failed and that she’s already hard at work devising a fix—she suspects the Revelry is partially locked within the Drift, thus making her magic alone incapable of reaching it. Her adapted ritual involves chaining her magic onto the Vigilance’s own Drift engine. While she admits that failure could destroy their Drift engine, she’s confident in her adapted ritual and doesn’t believe it’s necessary to warn her team of the danger. Six hours later, she reports that connecting a docking umbilical was successful, and the crew is preparing for exploration of the ship. They’ve all been waiting for this moment anxiously, as their dreams have become more disturbing. Lulora laments that she must stay behind, remarking that something is draining the Vigilance’s power core and Drift engine. The halfling brothers haven’t been able to figure it out, and the only thing that slows it down seems to be Lulora’s magic.
On day five, Lulora made only one log entry, which was sent to Ixthia. You realize this is the same message they saw during the briefing, except this time it’s not garbled. Lulora says: My crew just returned from the Revelry. While exploring the ship, they were attacked by seemingly endless waves of hideous creatures. They managed to escape with their lives, barely, but I fear they must return to the Revelry as soon as we’ve managed to patch them up. It’s far worse than I imagined. There’s something much more dangerous than those creatures out there. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not friendly. It’s consuming us, and my ship. The only way to save ourselves is to destroy it.
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Kenji has just enough awareness to know that Momo wouldn't react well to seeing people who asphyxiated, trapped in a locked escape pod, but not enough to know how to react.
"Oh, uh, well, you see, um. Would you believe, I need someone to dance, while I double-check the bridge?" Montmorency helps by playing some smooth Snowfall Renaissance hydrocore cuts.