| ckobbe |
First off, many thanks to Jessica Catalan, our group had a great time with this adventure.
My group finished Gifts Ungiven as 0-level apprentice characters all coming over from D&D with it being there first exposure to Paizo games and systems. There has been a 4 year in-game gap and now they are back together with this adventure serving a lead-in to Guilt of the Grave World. The group consists of Trouble in Flight a barathu solarian free spirited comicbook artist who has been traveling the Pact systems for inspiration and naively thrown in with space pirates thinking it would be fun. Emec-1M a vesk inventor who has been working in the Diaspora for Ulrikka Clanholdings developing experimental drone mining technology. Poo Two a skittermander precog witchwarper ex-athlete with a gambling addiction who has been trying to make it as a stupid stunts podcaster/influencer. And finally Skaven a ysoki shadow mystic follower of Lao Shu Po working as a festival medic who aspires to lead his own cult.
Emec-1M has hired the Nova Rush and her crew on behalf of Ulrikka Clanholdings to explore a mysterious signal in the Diaspora and while on Absalon Station reconnects with his old scouting friends Poo Two and Shaven. Coincidentally, they need a ride to the Diaspora for a music festival and decide to hitch along for free. Unknown to them the Nova Rush Crew has a pirate infiltrator that gases everyone to sleep mid-flight and they all wake up in the cargo bay after Captain Phaedra Firestorm has already intercepted the Nova Rush and taken it over. They and Captain Vidia Vane (dragonkin prismeni) are all in the cargo bay facing the blackness of space. Firestorm makes a speech about choosing the best hostages for ransom, Vane protests and back-talks, Firestorm unceremoniously kicks Vane in the back throwing them through the force field sealing the cargo bay and the group watches as Vane dies while floating off into space. At this point Trouble in Flight floats out from behind the other pirates and objects to the merciless killing. Firestorm says she wont have any mutineers on here crew and promptly shoots Trouble in Flight twice in her bell and she goes down in front of her former friends. (This was all worked out before hand with Trouble in Flights player and was pulled of to great shock around the game table). Everyone is stripped of their gear and thrown in the brig, and realizing that Trouble is not dead yet, Skaven heals her, saving her life. A lot of interesting roleplaying around her being with the pirates ensues.
Days pass, I introduce the ships mechanic ME Pebble (ME stands for Master Engineer) a pearl dragonet who lairs in the munitions room and has a hoard of specialty tools he wont let anyone else touch. ME Pebble survived the takeover of the Nova Rush due to his intimate knowledge of the ship, has no allegiance to Captain Firestorm and subtly clues the group into the smugglers compartment in the brig and that there gear is stowed in the command room. When the ship is ambushed by multiple Corpse Fleet ships, Captain Firestorm orders some of the pirates to space the team so the Corpse Fleet will slow down and collect their bodies allowing the pirates can escape. Simultaneously, a shot to the Nova Rush shorts out the force field containing the characters and they are able to get the gear from the smuggler compartment and fight back. Its a tense battle spread across the entire rec room with everyone taking a lot of damage. While all the PCs get in some damage, Bubble in Flight with her movement augmented by Stellar Rush and the Poo Two's warp field, along with some great dice rolls, ends up finishing off and killing all four of the pirates sent to space them. While Skaven heals every one back free spirit Bubble in Flight gets to roleplay some trauma reactions to the pirates trying to kill her and her first kills. Captain Concierge pops up, expo dumps and Poo Two instantly hates the holographic skittermander and doesn't trust it. While in the medbay Bubble in Flight recognizes her artist kit has been used to paint a mural of Aucturn and realizes that one of the pirates she bonded with, Bimmy, is the artist and advocates for not killing her friend Bimmy if they run across him.
Moving to the control room, the groups fights two pirates (Free Captain Knaves from Alien Core), its a tense fight with the knaves demoralizing multiple PCs several times, almost taking out Bubble in Flight. At one point Poo Two leaps up on the control console and sees that on the monitors two pirates have been sent out to dislodge a death's curtain necroglider that crashed into the ship and has disabled the port turret. On the monitor he can see that a corpse trooper has exited the necroglider and has already killed one of the pirates and is fighting the other. After one of the knaves goes down, Poo Two gets the final kill by first using Telekinetic Projectile to wound and then his stomach mouth to rip the face off of the last pirate. When they check the monitors after the battle the pirate and corpse trooper are not visible on the monitors.
We took a quick moment to have a flashback to Emec-1M undergoing a disciplinary review with Belenze Shadraz for his many costly experiments that have resulted in massive medical bills, search and rescue bills and questionable power outages at Ulrikka Clanholdings facilities. To recoup the losses he is being tasked with hiring a crew to investigate a mysterious signal and report the finding back to head office. Whatzon Whatz-Gurz has him sign many legal documents formally separating him from the company and designating his status as a subcontractor with debt owed to the Clanholdings.
We move on to the bridge and the team splits the party to enter from either side. Poo Two wins initiative enters the bridge and immediately makes a coercion check to tell the pilot he is a better pilot and he can get them away from the corpse fleet. He rolls ridiculously high and the pilot stands up to give him the chair, Poo Two immediately uses Telekinetic Projectile to attack him, unknowingly wounding Bimmy. A short, but great fight ensues with burst pipes and lot of people falling prone at one point due ship battle environmental effects. Trouble in Flight is almost killed by Captain Firestorm with her Vitriolic Swing, but Bubble crits and does 22 points to Captain Firestorm in one strike, then finishers her off in the next ground, getting revenge for almost being murdered by the Captain at the start of the adventure. The pilot manages to survive and introduces himself as Born-in-Malice, but the unchosen call him Bim or Bimmy. I show the team the orocoran picture from Galactic Ancestries page 165, and after some quick role-playing they all instantly bond with Bimmy. I remind them that the Corpse Fleet is still attacking and they chose to space all the pirate bodies (after looting them ;)) to distract the corpse fleet. Poo Two hops in the pilot chair, Emec-1M rolls a successful Deception check and says he has coordinates for a nearby safe haven, but instead enters the coordinates for the mysterious signal.
Absolutely no chance I'm planing on having Captain Firestorm revived, take over a Corpse Fleet ship and be a reoccurring nemesis as the team goes through Guilt of the Graveworld, no chance at all (evil lol). The team also forgot to follow up on the potential corpse trooper on the ship, we'll have to see if anything comes of that on the trip to the asteroid during our next session.
If you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed the recap of our groups take on Battle for the Nova Rush and/or can mine it for ideas for your own adventures.
I'll be cross-posting this to the Starfinder2E Reddit thread.