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Fortunately, all three managed to grab Jzero somewhere, immobilizing him while Evesk closes the door.

The moment it's closed, Jzero regains his mental facilities.

Jzero, if you want to role-play your reaction to suddenly "waking up" and finding your comrades all wrapped around you, feel free...

FWIW, the Merchant's meet point with you all was miles from his warehouse. Don't know if that affects your plans in any way, but thought I'd mention it...

Wren - you don't detect anyone acting suspiciously near you.

Anybody else want to describe the day's outing before having dinner? I'll wait a day or two...

Jzero, please make Athletic rolls against Ceri, Crastor, and Velrek (in that order). If you have any special options with Athletic rolls from some of your Fighting Edges, you *must* use them.

Evesk says "I'm on the doors, Velrek!"

Jzero drops his bow and arrow, and starts to slowly walk towards the double doors.

Evesk sees this and shouts "Jzero is being mind-controlled! Everyone try to tackle him before he gets thru those doors! I'll try to close the doors!"

Tackles are grappling (opposed Athletics rolls between opponents).
Crastor, Velrek - you make your Athletics rolls (can always re-roll), Ceri will help. That gives a +2 gang-up bonus to your rolls.
Jzero - you also need to make *THREE* Athletics rolls. They will relate to which PC in alphabetical order of their names.

Ceri tries to tackle Jzero :

Athletics & Wild: 1d6 + 2 ⇒ (3) + 2 = 51d6 + 2 ⇒ (2) + 2 = 4 = 5 (Jzero's TN to not get grappled)

Jzero is up!

So, someone take the lead and describe your plan of attack (others are free to tweak it or suggest alternatives)...

Crastor - calling Nualia's journal a "letter" threw me off for a while, but I finally found where you described a bargest to the group in-game previously, so everyone can read the spoiler in my previous post for a reminder.
My intention with the "speak-only initiative" was for everyone to discuss whether or not you all want to fight it. Now that you've explained your reasoning, if that's how Crastor wants to handle it, that's fine with me.
ALL - the "non-action Skill roll" was meant to allow you a Common Knowledge roll to realize what you're up against. Since you all already know, unless you can think of another Skill roll that might help, that's no longer needed (unless you want to go for a Raise and get more info).

Ceri says "This thing seems to be bound to the room, so do we really need to fight it?"

Velrek is up!

Well, it looks like everything's written using English letters, and the words that are understandable are English, so...sorry, no.

Hellion, VeeSix, Angel?

ALL - I said to make the roll and wait for my answer before making your statement, so Crastor, now you can make whatever statement you want to the group about what you know. I'm ret-conning your first statement out of existence.

Velrek puts the disk on the door, and turns it. It takes all his strength, as if turning the disk is moving many heavy things within the door.

As you open the doors, a creature rushes at you from within. It is 8 feet tall, and looks like a 400 pound wolf with a hunchback and large bat ears, but it walks on only its hind legs. As it reaches the door, it suddenly collides with an invisible barrier, and is thrown back a few feet. At first it roars loudly with frustration, but then it shouts "LET ME OUT OF HERE!" in common.

Initiative
Crastor - AD
Ceri - KD
Velrek – 10D
Jzero - 5S
Creature – 3C
Evesk - 2D

This is not a "true" initiative (no physical actions allowed) - I'm doing this to determine who has a chance to speak in order to come to an agreement about what to do before the creature acts - this time, please post only when I say you're up. You can speak up to about 25 words.

You can also make one non-action Skill roll before you speak if you wish, and after I give you the results your PC can incorporate that knowledge into their statement.

Crastor's up!

Brook - thanks for the clarification. However, she(I) did state that you can't tell a lie in a telepathic communication without it being detected before she started the link, so that's canon. ;) So, everyone can take what she's said so far in the link (including HERE) at face value. Altho you can't automatically detect if someone's hiding something...

A little ret-con : the moment Brook broke out of the telepathic link on his own, Lynx looked directly at him, which he noticed.

After Brook speaks, Lynx breaks the telepathic link with everyone and says "Of course, it takes time to build trust. Telepathic communication is the best way to do that, since any intentional deceit is immediately detected, altho the truth is not automatically revealed.

We have some rooms always reserved at a nearby hotel, one of us can take you there. Feel free to shop, dance, drink (but not so much you get too talkative) or whatever you want. Do *NOT* discuss any of this amongst yourselves while you're in public, and not even in your hotel rooms. When you're ready for dinner, come back to this building where we can converse some more in guaranteed privacy. I'd be glad to answer any questions, unless they veer into classified topics, like what our ongoing missions are."

Daisy, your post would go here...

"There's a little coffee shop next to the hotel, I like their dark roast myself."

What do you do?

You find no traps, and hear no sounds.

But, the door is locked, and there's no obvious keyhole to pick. However, there is an indentation in the door in the shape of a seven-pointed star, with slots and dimples within it.

Jzero doesn't know of any religion that uses such a symbol or device.

More conversation, or move on to another room?

The recipients of the repaired V'Sori goods have been given code names in the ledgers.

Good idea, but Lynx did ask you all to stay with her on the asteroid base to act as intermediaries, so you wouldn't be able to guarantee delivery of the cargo by a certain date if you deliver it afterwards.

Brook - I'm a little confused : you've said you left the telepathic union, but nothing about waiting waiting until Lynx had left the group (and I haven't said she has), so you're saying all this in front of her?

And, she *did* tell you about their organization, in my post dated Dec 9, 2025, 01:44 am, so why did you say they didn't tell you anything about themselves?

The hand tools could be wrecked pretty easily, but the heavy equipment would probably have to be blown up, or hit with some pretty powerful energy beams.

The thing is, Lynx is asking you to take her to the Unseen Servant's asteroid base. If you want to do a shipping run, you'd probably want to go to the planet or star closest to it. Finding a job that would take you specifically there would take more time in-game, but I'm not going to make you roll until you hit the right planet. Also, Lynx would not want any other unknown passengers on-board, so we'll change the Type of Job to cargo. Want to roll for the type of freight?

There are no traps and no sounds coming from behind the door. Map updated - you're in E9.

Walking up a short flight of steps, this room contains three tables, covered with a bizarre selection of tools, saws, long-bladed knives, and objects whose purpose is not obvious.

A strange collection of humanoid-like bones lies on the floor near the southern table—too many to be one skeleton, but too few to be two. The skeleton seems to be a two-headed man with an additional partial skeleton of a smaller man growing from the small of his back.

Sitting on the easternmost table is an object that obviously isn’t a tool — it's a silver-and-gold seven-pointed star about the size of your hands. One surface is studded with blades and small hemispherical bumps, and the other side has a thin, curved handle.

After a few more minutes, Noetic finds a ledger which appears to be a list of items available to sell. Many of the items have been crossed off, indicating that they've been sold. Their prices range from a few hundred credits to tens of thousands of credits.

What next?

Jzero and Crastor find nothing unusual or extraordinary, but Crastor is struck by the quality of the stoneworking of the walls, and especially the throne, which was definitely made for someone with a lot of power. Jzero successfully writes down the sounds in the message.

What do you do now?

Fortune drops the intangibility, and as the invisibility for both her and Noetic wears off, she listens intently to the sounds of the tumblers on the safe (which fortunately sits right under the window, minimizing her chances of being seen), and opens it up.

If Noetic goes tangible, both of you can scan the papers in the safe, but it's slow going in the dim light inside the office.

You learn that The Merchant isn't as big a player as his rep indicates. He buys damaged V'Sori equipment in small lots from many different sources for cheap (many times only one purchase per source that you can tell), repairs them, and sells them to whoever's interested.

That explains the V'Sori tools (both hand-held and bigger) that you noticed in the shop as you walked thru it - it's those that allow him to repair the V'Sori equipment. His repairmen must be familiar with at least the basics of V'Sori technology as well.

About 15 minutes have passed since you entered the building - what do you do?

You don't notice anything out of the ordinary other than what's already been described, and the image is speaking in a language you don't even recognize (like, you might be able to recognize Spanish or Italian even if you can't speak it).

What do you do?

I'd allow the Teleport Other option - it says -1 to your Focus roll for each person. Assuming the safe weighs 500 pounds, and a typical person is 180 pounds, that'd be the weight of about 3 people, or -3 to the roll.

Map updated - you're in E8.

You all open the door and rush in. You see an almost empty room with a dais at the north wall with a marble throne on it. On either side stand statues of a man holding a book and a glaive.

A ghostly figure sits on the throne, a human who looks like the statues. He appears to be speaking to an unseen audience as he moves his hands about, but the words he's speaking are difficult to make out because they're barely louder than a whisper, and in a strange language.

After a few seconds, the image flickers and starts over - it appears to be on a short but endless loop.

What do you do?

The north door does not appear to be trapped or locked, but Crastor can barely hear the sound of a voice within. It appears to be talking, probably to someone else.

What do you all do?

From my last post, there's a 3'x5' window in the wall next to the door. The guard is basically standing in front of it, with his back to the office. That means the office is dimly lit from the bay area lights.

Yeah, the inside of the safe is pitch black, so no chance of seeing anything.

Just a reminder, there is a Darksight spell which enables you to see in darkness...

Arabella had a good idea, statements inside < > are telepathic communications...

<We've heard references to 'blue hands' too, but that is something that is ultra-top-secret within the Alliance, and we're not going to dig too deeply into that lest we alert them to our presence.

We can put you up here in the city for a few days if you wish to spend some time out of the ship, otherwise I can be ready to leave for the asteroid base in a few hours.>

You hear a loud grinding noise, and the tower of coins starts to drop into the floor (for some reason, the coins do not fall over as the tower starts to descend). They hid an entrance into a room.

You see no immediate threats, and so go into the room - there's three doors, on the north, east, and south walls.

Map updated. You're in the room without an identifier.

Which way? 24 hour rule-of-two in effect.

You pass silently by the guard near the door, and enter what appears to be a small office. There's a desk covered with papers strewn all about, a filing cabinet, and a safe. There's a 3'x5' window in the wall next to the door.

I figure it took you about a round to walk from the front door to the office, but that started me thinking - you had to have been some distance from the building when you went invisibile/intangible to avoid being seen, so let's say it took you 2 rounds to get to the building. That leaves 1 round on the invisibility, and 2 rounds on Fortune's intangibility...

What do you two do?

Actually, Velrek - you've been looking at the tower o' coins pretty intently, you can make a Smarts roll too and look at the spoiler if you Succeed.

Sorry, I meant to describe the people inside, but then forgot...

As you move around, you see a couple of workers busy working on a large machine. There is one guard at the front door you passed thru (literally), and you can see 3 other guards walking randomly around the floor. Before you move south, Fortune catches a glimpse of a guard near the southeast corner.

Jzero, you can make a Smarts roll too, and if successful, read the previous spoiler...

After heading straight south, at the south-west corner you think you can see a door in the far east wall.

Sorry, Brook - what's your opinion as well (I often confuse PC names, I meant Brook when I typed Harold in my last post)?

Crastor, please make a Smarts roll...

You see a typical high-end machine shop, filled with small but heavy-duty individual machines (like drill presses, etc.), areas to do welding, and larger areas to work on entire pieces of large equipment.

You don't see any interior walls with doors, but your view is obscured to the far east, far south, and far south-east by the machines and equipment.

Which way do you want to head? Whoever posts first will decide.

Fortune - you did need to make the rolls, in case it had taken more than one attempt to activate them (it's normally one attempt per "round" even if we're not in combat yet) since they each have a duration, and each attempt spends a Bennie. I'm assuming you'd activate both within 6 seconds of each other (to maximize overlap), so you'd subtract 2 from both rolls, which doesn't change anything. Just analyzing the situation...
And you're correct, Running dice do not Ace.

Fortune and Noetic - I'm looking at a floor plan of a machine shop. For reference, the normal front door is in the northwest corner, and the large-truck-sized double doors (for loading and unloading) are in the middle of the north wall. Tell me which wall or corner you enter thru, and I'll tell you what you see. Whoever posts first decides the direction of entry...

Harold, Arabella - what are your opinions?

Velrek feels his sword's tip scraping up against something, but the gold is not scratched. However, while he is investigating the pile of gold, he spots two small slots created by the absence of gold coins at the bottom of the pile, one on the far left of the pile, and one on the far right.

Crastor does not hear anything or detect any traps at the south door.

"We captured a Reaver once, and tried to read its mind. It put our telepath into a mental coma. We've avoided them completely from now on. We have no idea where they come from."

Velrek leans in on his sword to put his weight behind it, but nothing happens. The sword tip rests on the stacks of gold coins, which don't move.

You're in room E5. Velrek is at the east end of the east-west corridor

The sword's tip stops as it touches the surface of the stacks and stacks of coins, and you do hear a sort of a "clink". But none of the coins shift or move at all.

Unfortunately, there are no windows at all in the building (The Merchant probably picked it for this feature to prevent anyone from seeing what was going on inside), and in a previous surveillance Noetic had spotted a huge air conditioner on the roof, which is big enough to handle the entire building.

"So, we would like you to act as a liaison between us and the Unseen Servants, at least for the time being until trust builds between our two groups. Would you be willing to take me to their asteroid base so that I can begin negotiations?"

Crastor - I rolled your Notice for you in the Preview...

Crastor doesn't find any signs of traps.

What do you all do now?

Since Crastor is indifferent, we now have a consensus with what to do with the goblins.

There's only one door out of this room, which leads to the hallway, which has only one unopened door (directly across the hallway), which leads to a very short hallway with only one door, which leads to a large hallway that leads south and east.

The south end ends with a pair of stone doors carved with the depictions of two skeletons reaching out and clutching a skull between them.

The east side of the hallway narrows down to frame a circular stack of tens of thousands of gold coins that rises from floor to ceiling, blocking further passage.

Map updated.

Which direction do you want to explore first?