Play date: November 30, 2013
Game date: July 10, EY218
Location: iLanga system, uBuntu, on the island of isiQhingibi on iziMpilo, the north sea
Previous events: weird goings-on inside isiQhingibi, the cursed island
It's time to leave this bizarre, mind-destroying warren but this is made complicated by three of the group in need of being carried. Malcolm volunteers to lug Bishop's unconscious body while Rans easily hefts Chig over a shoulder and Volkova likewise doesn't have much trouble with lanGalibalele. Jillian and Seo carry the bulk of the sleeping bags, water, and food while they follow the trail of Jillian's posters. They're loathe to leave any supplies behind in case the journey back goes poorly.
Jillian's done a good job with the posters and the trek back outside is about as easy as clambering over and under protrusions while carrying people and loads of supplies can be. All the same, it's about eleven hours until they get back outside. Even with frequent stops to rest and stretch there are minor injuries. Rans and Volkova are fine but Malcolm has hurt his back and Seo has done the same, only more so, and Jillian's feet are blistered from the extra weight.
At a guess it's about midnight when they see sunlight and can finally breathe clean outdoor air. They don't go far before dropping their bundles among a relatively short clump of fleshy plants. Those with sore body parts are treated with first aid and then everyone sleeps for the rest of the "night", keeping watch just in case. Bishop is still out cold from his knockout draught -- which was made strong enough to lay out Volkova, after all! -- but he's tied up just in case, as are Chig and lanGalibalele.
Bishop quietlycomes to during Volkova's watch and starts to surreptitiously cut his ropes on a providential sharp rock that's next to him. He knows that he needs to get back inside the island and that his friends will try to stop him. Volkova, intently contemplating the yellow plants and their taste, doesn't notice and the plants here grow thick enough to mostly hide his movements in any case. It's slow work and he's not done by the time Jillian's woken to take watch. He feigns unconsciousness until it seems safe to resume his work, and after a while he successfully cuts himself free. He waits until Jillian's looking the other way and then leaps to his feet and makes a break for the cave mouth!
Jillian's after him in an instant, yelling for him to stop and also making noise to wake up her friends. Rans and Seo don't wake up fast enough to play a part but Malcolm and Volkova snap awake and charge. Bishop's just made it into the cave when Jillian catches up with him and tries to pin him down. Unfortunately for her she's got no real skill at this and Bishop keeps wriggling momentarily free until Volkova barrels in like a diesel train and easily grapples Bishop in an iron grip. He's carried outside, tied up again, and left right in front of Jillian, who notices with some concern that her bare, blistered feet are now stained yellow from the plants she crushed while running after Bishop. What if the sap is now in her bloodstream? Luckily, she doesn't feel the ravenous hunger that possessed Volkova. Not that it keeps her from fretting, of course.
July 11, EY218
The rest of the "night" passes uneventfully and although Chig's much the same everyone's happy when Bishop's father seems to have recovered from his daze as they prepare to walk down to the shore. He's also more annoying -- instead of the silent and fairly passive attempts to enter the island's interior he's now loudly insisting that they head back in and struggling against his bonds. Jillian manages to convince father and son that a better entrance can be found near the shore, making the trip down the slope much easier.
It's an eight-hour march down through the plants to the shore where the Diatom is happily still waiting for them. While the ship sends over its rowboat a protesting Bishop and lanGalibalele are tied up and tossed onboard. Everyone is soon on the ship and heading back to uLundi while the Hummingbirds tell the Diatom's crew what happened. During the three-day trip Jillian talks incessantly to Bishop, trying to improve his state by playing on his vanity and trying to convince him that going back into the island would make him ugly.
July 14, EY218
Her shallow arguments work or maybe he's made of generally tough stuff: either way, Bishop seems totally fine by the time the Diatom ties up at uLundi's docks. His father, on the other hand, is still much the same. At least the yellow plants that were growing on him aren't to be seen any more, unlike Chig's infestation. The Diatom's crew seems happy to be rid of them and their mentally-damaged friends. It turns out that the isiQhingibi is a cursed island after all, and now they have proof!
There's someone waiting for them on the dock. She introduces herself as Thabisa and claims that she's seen them in her Dreams and knew she was needed. Tall, extremely thin, and carrying a confident air, she doesn't show any surprise at what happened to them despite not having ever been to the cursed island herself. She saw it all in her Dreams, you see.
Thabisa seems trustworthy enough so they invite her to come along to sKukuza, the inn where they left Bishop's sister. They hire two cycle-rickshaws while Malcolm unsurprisingly rides his motorcycle to the inn. The inn's owner is happy to see them -- Bishop's sister Ntombizanele attempted to sneak out of the inn and hide on the Diatom almost as soon as everyone left over week ago and the owner barely managed to keep her here until he was sure they'd left. All in all he's found her to be more than a handful and although he treated her well he's glad to have her off his hands.
Ntombizanele is distraught when she sees what happened to her father but Bishop insists that he'll get better and she manages to hold herself together. Rooms are booked until the maglev comes back, which should be on the 22nd.
It's best to see the matriarch of uLundi as soon as possible and tell her everything that happened. Everyone heads over to her mansion, Thabisa in tow, and they're immediately given an audience with Busiswe. Thabisa's recognized by the matriarch, which cements her as someone the crew -- with the exception of the relentlessly suspicious Malcolm -- can trust. A scribe copies down everything they say as they recount what happened in as much detail as possible with the exception of Bishop's attempted dash back into the cave, an event they find generally embarassing.
The matriarch is especially interested in the idea of getting the machinery under the planet working again. A means of communicating with the rest of the galaxy, and perhaps beyond, is an opportunity too intriguing to pass up! The Homeworld Office for the Acquisition of Xenotechnology should be informed, of course, she says, but the Hummingbird's crew convinces her that Hoax is best left out of the loop, detailing their experiences with the organization. Seo in particular tells them about what she and Tigd endured at Hoax's hands on the von Däniken research platform in Providence. Busisew is surprised that a governmental agency could act that way, showing that although she may be the leader of the most important city in the system -- despite what amaThemba's matriarch, Mobise, might think about uLundi's ranking -- iLanga really is isolated from the rest of the cluster.
Busiswe doesn't have any great desire to turn her people -- or anyone's people -- into cave slaves and the idea that the repairs could be carried out by non-human animals seems the best path. To that end asks the crew if they can somehow arrange to get animals shipped to uBuntu and they agree to do their best. Perhaps they can pretend that they're setting up an animal husbandry program. There's no way that this will work on such an arid planet, so the disappearance of almost all of the animals can be easily explained as the general failure of the program.
When the shell and skeleton that they found is presented the matriarch confirms that nothing like that lives on the planet now, or at least to her knowledge hasn't ever been seen. The crew takes it back to pass it on to the Bureau of Xenobiology, the "good" governmental organization.
Back at the inn Thabisa looks into helping lanGalibalele. After a long Dreaming session, during which she impresses Bishop with her healing abilities, she thinks that she can get him notably better in four months or so. When she tries the same with Chig she thinks that she can help the Grob Dreamer in three months, though the alien's mind makes that less certain.
Over the next week everyone waits for the maglev to come back north. Bishop helps Thabisa with her healing attempts and takes care of his sister, Jillian mostly hides her own freaking out about how easy it was to kill Flint Cardesco, Malcolm takes his motorcycle to Rosey Shlimann's sex ranch, uKuala, to spend the week sleeping with people there, and Volkova comes to the realization that since she's been inside isiQhingibi something's changed: she's become a Dreamer! When she informs the rest of the crew of this Bishop finds it hard to believe. He humours her by Dreaming with her and shockingly finds that, yes, she is indeed now a Dreamer, though a very rough and untrained one. He finds this creepy and personally thinks that it cheapens what it means to be a Dreamer.
July 22, EY218
The maglev comes to town on the 21st and departs the next day, the party and Thabisa on board. It seems that the matriarch was impressed with what they found: they have a full car to themselves, just like on the trip up north. They also have a letter from Busiswe for Mobise. Although the details of the note between matriarch's aren't known it's likely about what the Steel Hummingbird's crew found and the plans to bring animals to uBuntu to repair the alien xenotech device. Without having to put on a show at every stop things go smoothly and uneventfully for the first four days. Everyone also seems used to the lurching movement after experiencing it and the Diatom's rocking, which is a relief.
July 26, EY218
Bishop's hometown of kwaMbonambi generally merits only a brief stop to take on grapefruits and the odd passenger but Bishop manages to convince the conductor to stop here overnight. Not to belittle his natural charm but being in the good graces of two of the planet's major matriarchs and traveling in the company of actual aliens has its benefits! The trip down the road to kwaMbonambi is somber, as is meeting Bishop's mother given the state of her husband. It's a difficult evening of explaining what happened but everyone knew that there would be risks to the trip to the island.
Thabisa stays with Chig, lanGalibalele, Ntombizanele, Rans, and Seo in kwaMbonambi to help with the stricken Dreamers' recovery. When Chig is better the Grob and Seo will head up the space elevator to the isiBhakabhaka space station and get the station to send a message to the Iof. The planet's field means that the message will basically just be a ping, but the Steel Hummingbird's crew will tell the Iof to expect the transmission and what it means.
July 27, EY218
It's a quiet departure on the maglev the next morning and everyone's fairly quiet on the trip to amaThemba. With only the four members of the Steel Hummingbird in the train's car it feels cold and empty.
July 31, EY218
Back in amaThemba the crew stop by the matriarch's mansion to tell her what transpired up north and to give her the note from Busiswe. She's in agreement with all of their plans and without much else to talk about and eager to leave what's been a generally grim trip to iLanga behind them they take the elevator up to isiBhakabhaka later that day.
August 2, EY218
The two days in the space elevator pass without incident. On the space station isiBhakabhaka in orbit above uBuntu the crew is happy to see that the Steel Hummingbird is untouched and in fine shape. The same can't be said about Ghost though: the poor kitty's in dire shape after a largely vegetarian diet. It turns out that Siyambonga's just not that good with animals...
Bishop and Jillian make arrangements with Commander nKosi to let the Grob contact the Iof when they come up the space elevator and to let the Iof refuel. nKosi's annoyed that they kept the secret of the aliens from him while they were on his station before and, always up for making money, charges them almost the full exorbitant price to refuel the Iof. The Grob are shy about letting anyone from the station onto their ship -- including Mondii, now that the Iof has lost its Dreamer -- but the snub only happens after the refuelling, so any anger felt by the crew of the isiBhakabhaka doesn't have any immediate repercussions.
Backing both ships off to a comfortable distance from the station the Steel Hummingbird and Iof talk about the plan of waiting for their fellow Grob to signal them from the space station. After that they can either let Chig use the "egg" to talk to Bishop or keep exploring the slide points and talk to the Eggen Observatory when they make it to Providence.
With another ten days until the jump gate opens Volkova takes some time to learn about xenotechnology. The Grob have learned how to figure out what xenotech does after coming across equipment from the D'vor, Wyrm, "small squishy ones", and space drives. They're more than willing to share what they've learned but Volkova's size means that pushing her way through the Iof's tangled interior is difficult: the Grob mostly bring her pieces in the cargo hold, where she hunches next to the Wyrm ship and is taught by Vob.
August 12, EY218
The jump gate opens and the Steel Hummingbird passes through, leaving the Iof to wait for their crewmates. For the first time in a long while it's just the four crew. No one else on board, no other ships. Once on the other side there's a long, boring two-week-plus wait for the next opening to Providence. Feeling a little more sociable than on their last trip the Steel Hummingbird's crew hang out with the jump gate's crew, much to the latter's relief. Jillian manages to get Ghost to fatten up back to her previous weight. Perhaps Jillian is possible of not only destroying and killing?
September 1, EY218
After spending three months in the iLanga system and at the "empty" jump gate the Steel Hummingbird flies through the jump gate and back to Providence.
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Interlude: Volkova's XMaS
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 17)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (and she prefers it that way)
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: lots of unspecified sex but we'll count it as one (running total: 5)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 3)