Dead Planet

Arthur7: Android

Iggy Teamster

Jeek: Teamster

Ship: The Delicatessen A Sabaco RAS-62 Salvage Cutter with Rancid smell permeates cabins, a number of Viewports blocked with foam sealant and a. Warp Core that fails 10% of the time.

Mission: To Recover the Alexis, missing Jump IV Class II Research Vessel, lost after last jump from [REDACTED] To Core Systems Xeno Research Facility on [REDACTED] managed by [REDACTED]

The crew awake from cryo, having jumped to the likely location of the Alexis. After Iggy finishes heaving up whatever he ate the weeks before when he entered to tube (yet refusing to take a stimpack for his cryosickeness, his sense of machismo forbidding it) The crew makes their way to the command center of the Delicatessen and takes in the sight of local space through some of the few viewports on the ship that are not caked and obscured with sealant foam. A large barren reddish planet consumes most of their view, wispy rusty grey clouds drift across here and there. A single barren moon , roughly the size of phobos hangs to the right of the ship’s vision, roughly half the distance from its planet that Luna orbits the Earth.

Front in center though are the ships, derelicts of all sorts just drifting, anywhere between  a half dozen to a dozen depending on how one decides to count. The closest to the crew  registers as the Alexis, the objective of the crew's mission and the ship that they must reclaim at best, salvage at worst, to receive their payday. The crew has picked up some strange readings, which leads Iggy to make his way back to the jump drive to check out what is going on (since the computer is giving strange messages) while Jeeks steers the salvage ship to set up a connection with the only discernible airlock on the research vessel.

What Iggy finds once he arrives in the jump drive chamber defies explanation. His shadow peels off of his body and begins to drift around the room, just as other shadows of objects big and small have already done. The blobs do not seem to be responding to the normal rules of physics, sometimes drifting over light sources without dissipating or obscuring the light. The drive, which has a history of not always working the best, is reading nominal, however the rudimentary ships AI, which handles some of the nav calculations, claims that jump status is incompatible and “jump capacity nul” Iggy tries all the old spacer tricks, but nothing seems to permit the apparently functioning jump drive to calculate, or by extension initiate, a jump. He calls up to command, leading to Arthur 7 to investigate, though the synthetic quickly becomes unsettled by the lack of sense the readings and the shadows make and their subsequent impact on his logic core. He initiates a diagnostic, though it will be about 6 hours before the AI comes back with a full detailed report.

Jeek docks successfully and the crew suits up to explore the alexis. The ship has stable air and power, but the engines are deactivated. The crew also is picking up strange energy readings all over the ship. Immediately across from the airlock is a ladder alcove on the Alexis that moves up to the other 2 levels above. Arthur 7 decides to make his way to the top in search of the ship’s command. They come across  an airlock, which the teamsters manage to pop the seal of.

Voices can be heard on the other side, one is rambling about retrieving information and about lost memories, the other has clearly heard the seal pop and calls out to see if anyone is on the other side. Determining that there is no threat, Arthur 7 rolls the airlock door forward and the crew enter to find two synthetics, one whose body has been ripped off at the hips, synthetic tubing and dried pseudo milk hanging out. By the damaged android, who identifies himself as Kranot, are the dead bodies of two of the crew, laid out carefully. With a bit of questioning the crew learns that some creature killed the crew and that their jump drive works, but is giving the same Jump input insufficient, jump value null” type of messages. 

The other android, who Kranot names as Pandar, becomes increasingly distressed at the gaps in its memories, as does Arthur, who decides to remove himself from the room. As he turns to go, the ship begins to shudder, the low level lights flicker, the bodies spasm, shake and flop while the eyes flutter and their mouths gape open and closed like a beached flounder. All 3 androids, Arthur 7 included drop to the ground and an aerie ever present wailing scream can be heard throughout the ship. It is at this point that Jeek and Iggy, using Jeek’s paracord, try to lower the synthetic down the ladder and book it back to their airlock. Fortune will not be on their side.

As Iggy waits for Arthur a creature, horrible in its appearance a writhing drifting mass of shadows, tendrils,  claws and biting, gnashing teeth makes its way down the hall , making a blood curdling scream that chills all who hear it fearful to their very bones before advancing on Iggy. Iggy pulls up his foam gun, hoping to coat and trap the advancing horror , but is not able to discharge the foam gun before the creature slashes through vacc suit flesh and bone like a hot knife through butter. Iggy gets up, slaps a stimpack on and crawls off running through back to the Delicatessen closing the airlock inside and sealing the trapped creature on the Alexis with Arthur and Jeek.

Arthur 7, dangling partway down the ladder, comes to be completely unaware of what is going on or how he got in a ladder tube.  As far as Arthur knows, the last thing they did was  get ready to board the Alexis. He tries to get himself up the service ladder before whatever is making the horrific noise down below can find or go after him. Jeek helps him back up to the command deck just as Kranot and Pandar come to, neither remembering meeting the crew or what happened to theirs. They don’t know anything about a “monster” on board and as far as they recall, they arrived here only a short time ago. Jeek seals the airlock he and Arthur try to formulate a plan, cut off from their ship, uncertain of their next move.

Arthur 7 Stress 10

Iggy Stress 5 w(h) 1(1)

Jeek Stress 7

Arthur 7 and Jeek attempt to use the security cameras on the Alexis, but cannot see any sign of the beast that attacked Iggy. What they can see though is the foam that Iggy sprayed against it is still there. They use a drone to explore further and see that whatever the creature was, it left a relative imprint in the foam, seemingly disappearing without a trace. They also explore where the creature came from as see the artefact, a gruesome sculpture of twisted limbs and grotesque faces. Six members of the Alexis crew are knelt down, hands or heads pressed against the base, long dead.The crew use their salvage drones to carefully cut the umbilical connecting both ships. 

Having taken every precaution available to them at the moment, the duo leave the command deck wearing their vacc suits. They make a leap from the Alexis’s airlock across to the Delecatessin’s. Jeek makes it but Arthur 7  misses the mark. Jeek tosses a cord to him but strikes Arthur in the faceplate causing it to crack and, shortly after, shatter blinding the synthetic temporarily. With everyone back onto the crew’s ship, they try to recover from the experience, especially Iggy who took the brunt of the creatures attack. While taking care of business the diagnostic scans the crew started had completed. The AI has picked up 3 locations where life signs can be picked up, a nearby freighter, the Geronimo drifts in orbit, a small number of life signs register. The moon, though barren and lifeless, shows readings of human lifesigns on the moon several dozen above and below the surface. Finally the dead planet itself is home to a small number, but is exuding a radiation that is interfering with their otherwise fine Jump Drive. 

The decision is made to explore the Geronimo for resources and possibly answers. Before they do that, they are all in agreement tht the Alexis should be shot down. They line up the shot and fire, first blowing out the lower deck and  then missing somewhat, destroying the rest. The damage means that the ship is no longer able to maintain orbit with the remaining compartment losing orbit and eventually crash landing, it is discovered that the laser cannon’s calibration is off, something that would take more time that is currently available to fix. Jeek steers the ship in the path of the Geronimo carefully, preparing to sync airlocks. The three have their fingers crossed, mentally or in reality hoping they will find the answers they need… 

High Scores

Arthur 7 (2) Stress 12 (

Jeek  (2) Stress 9 ( )2

Iggy (2) Stress 6  (17)

Docking with the Geronimo, Iggy and Jeek make use of their drones to make first contact with the damaged freighter. The Galley Kitchen and surrounding area; clean. Indeed there appears to be enough canned and preserved food for several months. While some of the foodstuffs have been sitting out for a while there is evidence of more recent consumption and activity in this area. Iggy brings his drone Scooter,down to the first hab level, noticing that the low level radiation that permeates the entire ship seems to be more intense down here; at least that's what Scooter’s geiger counters seem to be telling him with its increased chirping.

Iggy has Scooter open a few of the crew quarters, and gets the picture of an environment hastily left and not revisited. After opening about half the doors, there is a twip twang and a crash as the drone goes off line. IT seems that something has struck the craft.

Meanwhile Jeek has taken Rover up to the common area, only to see signs of utter carnage! About a half dozen bodies have been beaten smashed and torn open, their blood splattered and congealed over the sofas, tables walls floors and even ceiling. There is very little indication of what has done this gory deed, and the cause of death seems to vary from having one's guts ripped out to being beaten to death with a barbel. Rover continues onward into the cargo bay, overseeing from its ledge boxes and crates that, according to earlier scans, holds landscaping equipment and archeology samples. A noise can be heard. And the group moves the drone up and over the hold as they themselves move over onto the ship. They discover a group of people,5, rifling through garden gnomes in a broken crate. They appear to be smashing them open and taking contraband. 

As they watch from the drone, the trio move up and examine the dead in the common area. It would appear that most have horrible burrowing style wounds in the area from the adam’s apple down to the diaphragm. Some partial footprints can be seen in the long dried blood but none can confirm who it was that caused these deaths. They move on to the cargo bay, as the upper deck is the only way to reach the jumpdrive. While climbing up (Iggy having hung back on the Delicatessen to control the drone) suddenly, the lights flicker and Arthur blacks out. This is bad news for Jeek as he is directly beneath the android on the ladder and tries to catch him.

Unfortunately Jeek is not successful and, due to this, both hit the landing with a thud. This alerts the 5 in the hold, some of whom draw weapons and, instead of moving forward to investigate. They back away as if afraid of what may have made it. Iggy tries to move the drone back, the group notices it and tries to get its attention. Asking if they came to rescue them. The two groups are loud at first, approach one another (with our crew having the high ground) and work out a deal.

The 5 crewmen of the Geronimo, Matthew Evan Von, Dan and the drug addled Taylor, start to make their way up the stairs to the crew, finally happy with the prospect of rescue. They explain that their jump drive just stopped working (confirmed by Jeek) after doing a few odd things like only permitting green light. They say it seemed to attract some sort of worm creature, which burrowed into “Chirs “ and transformed him into some sort of monster. The crew further learns that scooter probably met his fat at another crew member's trap, one of the higher ups went insane. Iggy decides at this time to try and retrieve his drone with Jeeks and steer it in that direction. All seem to be in positive sprites.

That all changes in a heartbeat. A horrific whaling echos from the other side of the chamber, his thing…witisted, hunched back 9 feet tall with legs too short and arms too long with bizarre fingers that seem either quintuple jointes or tentacle like in nature. It runs, on two, sometimes four limbs, supernaturally fast in the direction of the crew, who are booking it for the Delicatessen.

Taylor is the first to fall, Von stays back and tries to gun the creature down. The group seals the cargo bay door, as Evan runs towards it. The last the group sees of Von is the horror leaning over him. Evan was a touch too slow and his left foot gets broken and severed by the heavy door. Once everyone makes it to the Galley, Dan insists that someone go back for Evan, all refuse to help. Dan calls them cowards  and heads back for his teammate, having convinced the crew to hold off on sealing the door until he gets back.

A few minutes go by. Iggy, having successfully hooked Scooter with Rover, is carefully flying it up as Dan bursts back onto the scene the entirety of the front of his body is covered in blood. He runs, and when he runs the creature catches up. The door is shut before either can make it and the bizarre fingers of the creature pop through Dan’s back for the back, spattering blood everywhere. They disconnect the umbilical but without sealing Geronimo's side causing some decompression, suchking the creature and the body of Dan out into the black.

Having thought that the worst was over the crew begins to figure out what they all know while Iggy decides to wake up his pal Jill out of cryo. A warning notifies of a breach, the creature has forced open an airlock ear cryo causing decompression. They manage to force the creature back out into space with thankfully no issues, but the very fact that it can survive is concerning enough as is. Matthew mentions that there is something going on on the moon and that whoever was down there  had fired a large harpoon gun at it. What awaits our crew there?

Highscore and Stress

Iggy Stress: 10 ; Coward

Arthur 7 Stress: 15 ; coward, doomed

Jeek Stress: 14

Introducing Jill! Stress: 6

Jill and Clive wake up to intense nausea as both immediately succumb to the effects of cryo sickness. Iggy is able to help them both out and moderately catch them up, despite looking like he took on the world and lost. Both make their way to the main hab area, though Clive offers to help stitch up Iggy’s wounds, to find Jeek, Arthur and the sole survivor of the Geronimo, Matthew. Matthew is in the middle of regaling the crew of the Delicatessen about their trip near the moon and magnetic grappling harpoon that shoots up for the surface.

The group knows that there are life signs in three places. One appears to be a tightly packed subterranean cavern, the second is some sort of surface settlement centered around a junkyard or ships graveyard, and the third, with a single lifesign, seems to be the remains of a colony ship called the Perennial Tyrant. Much conversation revolves around where to investigate and how to get there and it is decided to explore the derelict colony shi[ and head down via the Delicatessin’s drop ship. Making sure they have everything they need, Iggy and Matthew stay behind and the others pile into the dropship making sure to suit up and bring what they may need before heading over.

While the ship approaches the moon, sure enough ot Matthew’s warning a magnetic clamping hook fires up from the planet, Jeek just manages to turn the dropship in time to avoid being hit, but the maneuvers and the magnetics have messed the dropship up enough that it makes a rough landing off course. That fully everything on both crew and vessel seems to work fine. A quick scan shows that they are roughly 30 km from their original destination, using the APC stored in the back of the dropship they could close that gap in no time.

They make their way across the red silicate dunes kicking up dust and grit as they move. The gang can see someone or something also spraying gas and rocks up into the air coming right at them. It is quickly identified as another APC but much more beat up than the crew’s. Jeek stops and they stop and one of their number exits in a vacc suit. Jill also exits and converses with the man but he seems to be the definition of shady, making every hair on the back of her neck stand to full attention. In addition the man, who claims to have come from where the harpoon was fired from and says a lot of contradictory things about life on the moon, keeps changing his story. Jill reenters the crew’s APC and gives everyone the low down of the encounter. They machine gun the local APC and drive off, with the locals in hot pursuit.

Both vehicles race across the barren surface of the dead moon, trading machine gun fire with each other. A well timed shot by the locals costs the crew’s APC its armor. The approach a crater, in which a man in a vacc suit crawls as if waiting to die. Authur gets the idea to fire off the smoke grenades, hiding the steep drop off and sure enough the locals race over it, tumble, roll and come to a stop with their APC upside down having crushed and pulped the unfortunate wanderer.

The crew keeps going over the dunes until they reach the wreck of the tyrant. They pick up one life sign, human, and try to reach him on open comms. The man is insane, muttering about his nightmares, about having to “build it” or/so they will come back, asking for teeth to help with his work. They shut off the open comm ending the insane muttered mumblings of the madman and decide to head west to investigate the small settlement that is responsible for the harpoon. They stop, close up to the edge of a dune which on the opposite side a community woven into and under the middle of a scrapyard/graveyard can be found. This is the source of the harpoon gun, its mounting can be seen amidst the carcasses of long since stripped ships. Life signs read at approximately a dozen. The crew hasnt been noticed yet and seem to have the upper hand,  but what will they do with it? 

High Scores and Stress

Arthur 7 (4) Stress: 17 W(H) 3 (10/15)

Jeek (4) Stress 16 

Jill (1) Stress 7 W(H) 3(7/ )

Clive (1) tress 4  W(H) 2(13/13)

Iggy (4)

The crew watches the scrapyard, noticing a few stand out structures among the piles and mountains of wreckage from untold derelict ships “salvaged” by this location. They watch from the distance as a single individual comes up out of a partially hidden airlock and run across to a large olive green structure, smoke billowing up from its exhaust. The crew get Jeek to steer their surviving drone in and around the location, carefully as to avoid detection, to get a better lay of the land. Jeek notices a second airlock, that the harpoon gun has a weakness (its steel braided cord is open to the elements) a conspicuously empty and clean part of the scrapyard, and that the olive structure seems to be some sort of reducing and recycling facility.

The plan is to use the laser cutter on the drone to cut the rope and then perhaps cut the barrel of the cannon lengthwise to prevent it from being used going forward. As Jeek navigates the drone into position and begins to slice through the steel cord, easily wider than a man in thickness, a pair of “raiders” or “scavengers” emerge from the airlock and try to shoot down the drone. One misses and catches shrapnel, causing a breach in his vacc suit and leading to him fleeing back in. The other keeps trying ot hit it with a revolver, but misses. His efforts are halted by a long shot from Arthur’s smart rifle that tears through the man and bursts out the other side, slow motion spraying blood everywhere. The doomed man tries to flee for the airlock but falls dead mere inches from the panel.

Jill and Clive move in, Jeek stays with Arthur in the Dunes, covering them. They take the time to search the dead body, and are assured that he is dead.before blocking up the airlocks with the debris found all around. This achieved, they decide to make their way to deal with whomever is in the olive green structure. Whatever it once was, the majority of the letters are missing, leaving only ‘JANIS’. They enter immediately seeing their bubbles fog up from the heat and their vision obstructed by the intermittent random lighting. The hissing, buzzing, whooshing and humming of the various machines is deafening, making it impossible to hear even over the comms. They head towards the compactor on a whim, and come up behind a man working a machine one-handed, the other sleeve of the suit dangling as if it were empty.

Jill comes up behind him with the vibchete pulling him back. The man is completely taken off guard an has little to no idea what the pair want of him. He blubbers out any information that he thinks is helpful, who he is, what he does. He denies being pirates, just scavengers. That they don’t “hurt anyone” they just take whats there. Jill realizes that the man, Pelle Castro, has no right arm. When askes he admits that he gave it up for the community but that its just a rite of passage. That they don’t eat people, not really, only those who want to join the Tyrant Beggar lost colony and even then the amount give was voluntary. He gave extra because he wanted to be on the breakers, who get all the best jobs and “even get to spend time petting the goats” that allegedly make up their actual main food source.

Jeek, while listening to all of this, has begun to inspect the columns of wreckage while keeping his eyes open for any trouble makers who might be on route to the salvage yard. He notices a few items of interest in the piles, some cryo tanks a medbay bed, armor plating, but mostly is taken in by the actual lack of such things in the wreckage, as if almost all of these things have been picked clean. He watches as the pair drag Pelle out of JANIS and back towards the dunes. They don’t get far. A man, dressed in an advanced battle dress that looks like it has borrowed pieces from 2 or 3 suits and toting a beat up looking laser cutter, emerges from the other side and trains his weapon on the crew. 

The man’s grizzled voice with a surprisingly cordial tone comes across the channel. He identifies himself as Brekt, head of the Breakers which are responsible for collecting salvage from ships in orbit around what he calls “The Dead Planet”. He makes the offer to simply talk with the crew to try and work things out, no need for anyone to “throw away their lives” on either side he claims. They talk, Brekt tells them the short version of the colony’s history, including the Perennial Tyrant’s initial encounter with a “Gaunt” and how many  people he lost putting it down (more than he would care to remember, a fact the crew wishes they did not learn). Though not normally his job, he invites the group to join their colony, he explains the tradition of giving a part of one’s self to the colony through ritual cannibalisation, the community pooling of positions etc. He admits that it doesn’t sound to be the most appealing to newcomers, but no group that has refused has made it, and the colony does have food,water, air, and community. Things that may seem not too important now, but in a couple of weeks folks “tend to think differently”.

Brekt is not super worried about the damage to the cannon, claiming he and the breakers can fix it in a day or two. In exchange for giving up Pelle, Brekt promises to not target their ship or dropship, after all no one escapes the dead planet and eventually the crew’s resources will be the colony’s, they just need to be patient, and they are very patient. He agrees to keep communication and to keep it cordial, but does mention that he answers to the actual community leader, a woman by the name of Malta. He takes Pelle and disappears with him back around the corner of JANIS, leaving the crew on their own.

The crew has much to think on, having heard that one of the Breakers heard a few transmissions coming from the surface. Some have shown a desire to at least look into the Tyrant Beggar colony, others wish to get back to the drop ship and get going while the going is good. Time will tell whether the choice they make will lead them to salvation…or to utter ruin.

HighScore

Arthur 7 (4) Stress: 17 W(H) 3 (10/15)

Jeek (5) Stress 16 

Jill (2) 

Clive (2) 

The crew leaves the salvage yard behind and decide to swing by what they understand to be the Tyrant Beggar colony. As they move along they can at times feel the energy from the planet above, it is not a pleasant feeling. Having repaired the APC enough to get it moving, they thankfully only need about 40 or 50 minutes to cover the distance.

They arrive at what appears to be a buried structure, likely salvaged from a number of fallen ships. A bit of time passes and then a large figure in a vaxx suit emerges with something stuck to its back. As it gets close enough to engage comm, it turns around and displays the naked torso of a female looking android strapped to its back. The android, wearing a comm’s mask, engages the crew identifying itself as Kalm, and its porter as Verger. IT deadpan welcomes them to the colony, and begins to outline the requirements of joining. The crew refuses and tries to drum up men or resources, all of which the colony refuses. The legless android sees the crew’s choice as unfortunate as it is futile, noting that everything they have will eventually be the colony’s when they die. Kalm says that they mean them no harm or ill will, but it just seems that the crew are throwing their lives away needlessly, and would wish that the colonists were to do the same.

The crew leaves on unhelpful but not hostile terms. Kalm shoots down any chances of cooperation, stating that Mandy would not accept anything other than the crew agreeing to the colony’s terms and joining them. As they drive off, this time in the direction of their own ship. They come across a woman in a fairly worn vacc suit, one boot appears to be at an awkward angle. They stop to investigate and the woman identifies herself as Xenoesoterist Sonya Hatch, last survivor of the Research Vessel Nirvana. She has been living in the colony for 3 years since her ship crashed on the moon and simply could not take it anymore, she tells the crew that she had decided to leave and die alone under the stars, but the Dead Planet, overing high overhead, had thwarted even that last desire.

Based on what the group has learned, and the honest sorrow, misery, and hopelessness of Sonya, they invite her to come with them. She is overjoyed, describing the terrible living conditions, and the creepy statues colonists have been making in “the garden”, including one in the rough shape of an arch. By the end of her tale the crew is glad to see the drop ship appear on the horizon, and immediately notice an interloper trying to gain entry. The man, or as it turns out kid, is Dean, one of the crew that Brekt mentioned. Dean wants off of the moon and wants to go to the planet. He claims that he’s picked ups signals from a marine transport on the surface, though he doesn’t know what they mean as they were not totally in english. Seeing no harm in taking him with them, especially since according to both colonists Dean is an outsider who is not liked by Mandy and others with position of authority. He is grateful to the crew, pledging to do whatever he can to help them out.

The crew of the Delicatessen, now two stronger than when they left, arrives back on the ship and decides to take some much needed rest. Clive helps everyone heal as best as possible and conducts a med scan on the new arrivals. While malnourished and underweight (Dean’s eyes are particularly light sensitive, due to living most of his 14 years underground) he determines that they are fine. Arthur is not though, and has decided to conduct a mental defrag, meaning that they will likely wake another member of the crew still in cryo, but who will it be?

HighScore

Arthur 7 (5) Stress: 17 W(H) 3 (10/15)

Jeek (6) Stress 16 

Jill (3) 

Clive (3) 

Once everyone is aboard the Delicatessen once more, Arthur decides to wake Max Lightning from Cryo, as in his professional opinion the crew will need backup that in present condition, Arthur cannot at present provide. Everyone meets back up in the common unit to discuss the present condition. Dean plays the messages for the crew, who are able to determine that much of it is some sort of code (Jill speaking French can understand the meaning of much of the code and identifies it as nonsensical in the context of the message. Arthur is able to date it to Napoleonic era French, and picks up the few bits of Vietnamese expression as a fatalist expression for “whatever happens happens”). Unable to escape the area due to the strange energies emanating from the surface, a plan to take the dropship and still functioning APC down to the surface begins to form.

Matthew, having spent time between doing some minor repairs, has detected a number of energy signals from an island on the surface. One he has no idea what it could be, but seems to be centered on a high plateau in the middle of a strange storm. The other, a humming thrumming energy source, is more unstable but still of unknown composition, can be found in the south east side of the island. He has also traced the source of the radio broadcast and a distress beacon to an area near the southern side of the island. The air is breathable, but the water, acidic and brackish. There are also pollutants in the air which will cause discomfort to the throat and to breathing with time. 

It is decided that Matthew and Iggy will spend time trying to fix some of the issues with the ship, with Iggy fixing the blocked portholes and Matthew, drawing the short straw, dealing with the rancid smell. Dean refused to stay behind but Sonya, who broke into tears just stepping onto a well lit working spacecraft, is more than happy to monitor comms. Dean joins Jill, Clive, Max, and Jeek as they suit up, grab what they need and head down to the surface of the Dead Planet. 

The flight is a little bumpy but Jeek manages to bring them down to a fairly central location, which so happens to be the safest the readings could determine. The storm is visible to the north, indeed Jeek had to navigate around it here and there just to make the landing. Their travel south is largely uneventful, although they do run afoul of some of the area’s natural lifeforms, including chitinous crawlers that pull themselves across the ground with a myriad swarm of tentacles that pop out from beneath their plating as well as distended intestine-like worms that flap around of membrane bat-like wings. Max, Jill and occasionally Clive with his fancy revolver make short work of all but a large swarm of the “slime worms” (so called due to the slimy mucosal substance that they spew and splatter everywhere when shot up or shot down) that they had the misfortune of crossing paths with. What the crew couldn’t shoot down with their quickly depleting stocks of ammo, Jeek was able to outrun or out manoeuvre.

The crew also learns that they are…or at least were…not alone on the dead planet. They come across an escape pod, largely picked clean safe for a few tools and other items. They find a camouflage tarp, the final resting place of a ghillie suit wearing sniper who appears to have died of starvation and dehydration waiting for a target that never came (his vibchete and his smart rifle welcome additions to the crews dwindling armoury). Not all of the finds are good…a storage locker, boobytrapped with a makeshift axe that propels forward when opened spells the end for the third and final salvage drone.

The crew continue south, steering around wreckage of fallen and broken ships, the occasional dead and petrified tree, acidic lake, searching for a way to get the APC where it needs to be down the occasional cliff face without having to abandon its safety. Eventually, after an hour or so of driving, a large red tower extends up into the sky on the horizon. The tower which appears to have been the site of a number of firefights, at least according to the scene present at its ground level, appears to be the source of the human made distress signal Matthew picked up. The group decides to pass on investigating at present, instead continuing towards the transponder signal of the Defiance. 20 maybe thirty minutes later the ship appears in the distance. It has made a crash landing, the gouge that its belly cut in the landscape is evidence enough of that, but appears to be entirely intact. The group parks the APC nearby and approaches with caution. Who knows who…or what…they might encounter here on the surface of the Dead Planet?

HighScore

Jeek (7) Stress 16 (?)

Jill (4) Stress 7

Clive (4) 

Max (1) Stress 6

Iggy (5) --

Arthur 7 (6) --

Having arrived at the crash site of the Defiance, Jill and Max decide to make their way inside by way of the access hatch, left open, in the back. Clive, escorting an over-excited to be here Dean, follows behind. This leaves Jeek alone in the APC to keep an eye on the surroundings. The ship is quiet, dead, and seemingly abandoned. Not too abandoned as Max discovers a tripwire grenade booby trap left behind by the ship’s crew. He is able to disable it without blowing them up and passes out the grenades to all who wish to have one on hand (NOT Dean), before venturing further in.

Each side of the long hall has two levels of cryopods aligned along each for a total of 80. All but 8 are empty and even some of those are simply filled by the corpses of fallen soldier, preserving them for what likely should have been their final voyage home. Each grouping of cryopods has what appears to be a gun rack next to it and a small storage compartment at the foot for armor and other personal gear. Most of these have been picked clean, but the crew is still able to find a few shotguns and SMGs. While they have found 3 living people still in cryo, they decide to venture further into the ship. 

Cautiously ensuring no further traps are behind the following doors., the crew find a ladder to a top side hatch, an elevator in a tube that is sealed with a rigged access pad. A quick look determines that if tampered with or hacked incorrectly the mechanism triggers a 5 second self district of the ship while launching the vault-like cargo bay to safety. A ladder makes its way down below to engines, the jump drive looking like something that has exploded and then some. Their is a sealed door to the command that Clive and Dean run forward to. Clive, stopping the overly excited Dean for a moment, listens at the door and hears a bizarre unidentifialbe noise. They decide to wait for the marines to investigate further.

Jeek, sitting in the APc and fighting the impulse to take a much needed nap, keeps a keen eye on the horizon while listening to his friends on  the ship. Just when it seems that this will simply be a babysitting routine, he notices…something advancing from the north. As they get closer Jeek is able to discern that what the is seeing is a swarm of crawlers, namely in the dozens. Jeek brings the APC down closer to the ship while radioing those inside to warn them.

With all this information the crew decides to wake up one of the survivors, a female marine who immediately freaks out as if she had been “disintegrating” in the freezing cryo pod. IT takes her a minute to compose herself and identify as Nicole Vassili. Once out of the pod and once she had a few moments, hse is able to confirm that the Defiance is a private contractor and they were on their way back to the core after dealing with some striking foresters. She has no idea where they are or where everyone else is for that matter, only that they should not be here.

The crew needs access to the bridge to seal up and to assess the best way to avoid the group of crawlers who will swarm over anything in minutes. Entering the bridge the source of the noise is discovered. An android, damaged and seemingly driven insane by events of the crash leaps to its feet to attack. IT swings its fists with the determination and fervor of a crazy man, landing its fair share of his before it goes down one final time to hails of bullets and vibrechete-blows. The crew managed to wait things out, quietly letting the swarm of insects crew overrun the craft and continue on their path with no conflict or trouble. With everyone together and now also with a slightly larger crew. The group must plot their next move, do they follow the marines to the red tower? Or do they have somewhere else in mind?         

HighScore

Jeek (8) Stress 16 (?)

Jill (5) Stress 7

Clive (5) 

Max (2) Stress 6

Iggy (6) --

Arthur 8 (6) --

The crew woke up the two remaining marines, Lee Marston, a light skinned african american man with a calm and cool demeanor, and Jackson Gericksky, a heavily-muscled barrel chested slavic man with a jarhead haircut. As they wake (flawlessly) from cryo both end up discussing the strange and unpleasant dreams that they had. The others, a bit confused by this, check in with the resident medical expert Clive, who confirms that any sort of dreaming, nightmares included, are very atypical in cryo. Once introductions and briefings are complete, everyone suits up and loads into the APC ready to make the journey back to the Red Tower, and hopefully answers.

The drive is short and, with the exception of some slime moths that Jeek successfully outmanoeuvres and outruns, without incident. The group carefully sweeps around the side of the red tower. What appears to be the main door to the lobby is blocked by a stack of debris in front of the door. The group continues around and makes entry in a gouged out hole in the wall. The room they make their way into seems to be full of broken and damaged wooden furniture. The crew, with Jill taking the lead, continues past this into a dark hallway, passing a door with “alive inside” spray painted on the outside of it. They continue past an empty storage room and into an area with broken, mouldy,  tossed wooden and faux leather furniture that resembles a waiting area of some sort. The only door here, which reads “lobby” in perfect english, opens to a room filled with shattered glass and debris.

The desk, broken, holds a single K ration. A pair of doors appears to lead outside, blocked by the debris (the APC is visible in the distance). Jill, investigating the doors behind the reception desk, find an elevator leading up and down but also a store room with a hatch leading below, effectively barred by a metal hatchet jammed between the handles. Not wanting to delve too deeply yet, Jill makes her way back to reception and follows the spiralling oblong hallway to what appears to be a staff room, filled with broken plastic furniture with “run away” sprayed on the wall.

The group decides to investigate up above with the elevator, having gone over all of the ground floor. A large atrium, a dead garden and meeting rooms, all empty and devoid of all but bits and bobs is on this level. It would appear that higher up in the tower is just empty and for show. With this in mind the decision to head below to the basement level is taken. Jill, enjoying neither ride on the rickety shaky elevator, panics. She leaves the elevator and heads off forward perhaps a little too quick. Making her way partways down a ramp, she finds herself stuck in an area that looks like it might be used to decontaminate, but how and with what agents. A slow hissing sound begins, what’s next?

High Score

Jeek (9) Stress 14

Jill (6) Stress 10

Clive (6) Stress 7

Max (2) Stress 6 (needs to make a short rest check)

Nicole

Lee

Jackson

Dean

Jill is stuck between the two rooms, she heads back up the ramp as the alarm continues to blare,the word “contaminated” flashes in red letters along the wall. The group gets Dean to cut through the door, while Jill waits and then cut through the door on the other side so that they can proceed, though Max has his reservations.  They are greeted by the sight of a machine gun pointed at them, the momentary jump in fear quickly turns to concerned relief as they realise the entire barrel of the tripod mounted machine gun has been slagged, the floor of this and the security room covered with spent shells and phosphorus flares. Moving onward cautiously Max finds a locked safe and spilled ammo which Dean gathers up. They move from room to room, the armory near empty, the social space, a warzone with sofas and overturned tables, bullet holes, and phospher burns along the walls that all point to the barracks. 

The group contemplates going further into the area, thinking that maybe the missing marines and the distress signal might be inside, but as Jill presses her ear up against the door she hears a terrible wailing sound on the other side and hastily abandons the idea. With the exception of Jeek who checks the washroom, the group goes into a control room where MAx is able to turn down the stress inducing alarm and turn up the lights with a bit of time and even find a map of the overall complex. While all this is going on Jeek finds nothing but grim, stale urine, and depression. 

They decide to  explore the library, finding blood spattered books and phosphorus burns as if the room was the site of another pitched battle, though no bodies remain. They commandeer the elevator to C level and step out to a lobby home to a series of mounted machine guns, both slagged, and jungle clipped pulse rifles, shells, broken glass, flare wrappers, and other carnage is all that can be detected. Wisely deciding to avoid the barrack (after again confirming the baleful moaning inside) and unable to bypass the blast door to the right, they take a long hallway that comes to a fork-shaped intersection.

The group, having come from the right side, choose to go down the middle.Here they encounter what appears to be an unengaged blast door. Spending a bit of time to see if there is a way to engage it, they hear moaning and shuffling coming from behind them. Three horrors with antlers where eyes are, gapping needle-toothed mouths extending from nose to collar bone constantly spewing acidic vomit or blood pus  long claw-like fingers ending in razor sharp nails, make their way towards the group. They decide to stand and fight rather than plunge into the unknown, which starts off well as shotguns and SMG light up the creatures. All goes wrong when Lee shoots and Jackson, not paying attention due to freaking out at the horrors, steps in the way and incurs a sucking chest wound.

Jackson falls to the ground bleeding and the guant monsters fall upon him. They also try to devour Jill and John with only moderate luck. Thankfully luck appears to be on the side of the Delicatessen’s crew, but victory is not gained without challenge. Lee slips in Jacksons blood and knocks himself out. Clive, who is trying to keep the young Dean safe, gets hit by the discharge of the youth’s foam gun and hardens, falling over. He tries to free himself while an apologetic Dean goes for his crow bar. It is when Dean stands over him, crowbar raised, that Clive realizes what a poor idea this is going to be and is knocked out cold by the errant blow.

After the last of the horrors has been dealt with the crew take a break as, realizing that Clive is not dead like the blubbering mess of Dean seems to think. He starts to revive once some time is given. Two paths, seemingly safe, lurk ahead, which will be salvation?

High Score and Stress

Jeek (10) Stress 17 2W (Haunted)

Max (3) Stress 14 3W (Coward)

Jill (7) Stress 15 3W 7/17H (Haunted)

Clive (7) Stress 13

Dean (Loss of Self Confidence)

Lee (Haunted)

Jackson KIA

Kendall, Thos and EMHA-L13 wake up in rooms in the second class wing of the BAS penobscot. This is a bit strange for EMHA-L13, who typically goes by Emilie, as she does not have a room in the passenger module of the ship as she works for the company. She looks around, something is off, something unseen is watching her, she can’t see it and it doesn't make sense but…she knows it's there. She can feel its invisible eye boring into her pseudo flesh from every angle, She feels the need to leave, to find the other crew. Unable to find anything of use, she leaves.

Thos, feeling hungover from the cryo sickness decides to head out in search of medical help MEanwhile Kendall’s cryo sickness is a bit more…explosive. The others can hear her cursing and complaining through their shared walls and even out in the hallway. She slaps one of the stimpacks she has on trying to deal with the bad bout of the illness while the others make their way towards the atrium level.

The pair,Thos leaving before Emilie, have seen the violet cloud outside in their room’s porthole. It is clear that they are not at their scheduled destination, the violet cloud is still visible once they arrive at the atrium level through the glass up top. Thos investigates a number of places, seeing an older man barricaded inside a noodle bar and  what appears to be a projection of a woman in the neighbouring jewelry store  window. The woman appears to be saying something, and actual sound, muffled as it is, is coming from the projection. A deep unsettled feeling washes over Thos as she realizes that there is nothing in or out of the store that is projection, and sure enough the woman turns in the window to face him, still muffled shouting at him and appearing to bang on the glass from within. Unsettled, she makes her way back to the first place intent on speaking with the only other human being she’s seen. 

The older man, clearly a retired marine based on his appearance. The man, after establishing for himself that Thos is real, signals her to come over. He explains how insane this place has gotten, where he and his brother went to try and find someone in the crew area, but suddenly their skin was missing! The left and were pursued by this “purple cloud” smoke like. He was out in the front and when he turned to check on his brother both the cloud and his brother were gone.

Upset, despondent and afraid, Thos leaves the marine to the supposed safety of the noodle shop. Meanwhile Emilie has made it to the android lockers. There is no sign of any other ship androids here. When she goes to reach for her things in her locker, she notices that her psuedoskin is missing. Freaking out at first she determines that the skin only looks gone, it seems see through showing everything beneath she continues to the nex tarea the human crew’s dorms. Though the doors are shut and it doesn't seem anyone is around, she notices something, an open door, some sort of figure, she does not wait around. Running through to the other side, she enters the crew storage and hides, waiting for whatever it is to come for her.

Meanwhile Kendall, still annoyed over how crumby she feels makes her way to the bars of the atrium level to treat her condition with hair of the dog, she makes her way to a jamaican themed bar where she hears some sort of commotion out the back. As she moves to the door to investigate it flies open exposing a man, naked and covered in blood, panicked expression on his face. He notices Kendall and screams about how “They” are here and how “They” are coming for him. He runs off out of the restaurant disappearing from view. Seeing that and no one else is here. Kendall resolves to find better diggs to drink in.

Its at this point that she hears Thos calling for any other people she responds, they meet up, share their bizarre experiences, and decide it would be best to try and find medical supplies crew or weapons. Starting with the clinic, they quickly regret the decision as the entirety of the facility is covered in a violet and green coloured fungal growth, they pull back hoping that they did not breath in any spores. Unsure only time will tell. They decide to try their luck with the crew and, Thos remembering the android that she saw earlier, make their way towards the crew quarters. Both are initially freaked out when it looks like they have no skin. After a few minutes they manage to pull it together. They are about to search the area, having calmed down a bit (Thos is convinced that this is all a visual effect) when they hear a noise coming from the next door.

Emilie, after waiting a number of minutes, decides that whatever she saw has liklehy vanished or moved on. She gets into the armory, takes an SMG, and pulls on some standard battledress. Seh then makes her way back towards the atrium stopping when one of the crew dorms opens, Emilie recognizes the crewman as medical staff,a Doctor Grey McGavin. He is armed with a scalpel and  warns Emilie that he can hears someone. Still, nervous, she gets him to drop teh scalpel and kick it across the floor. This is the  sound the others here,

After a brief negotiation, the 2 staff and the 2 passengers meant up, both crew are fascinated by how just walking into the room seemingly makes their flesh disappear. They do this repeatedly, which is something that greatly disturbs KEndall, who already feels like she has mentally had enough today. Then make their way towards the locker when a purple fungal looking tendril  uncoils out of thin air and whips down cutting McGavin in half. It also manages to lob the left arm off of Kendall and fley skin from the back of Thos and they escape in different directions. Kendall finds herself alone and bleeding, she slaps a stimpack over the hole, and looks into how to get into body armor on and cock a shotgun with only one hand. She pockets a pistol and waits, biding her time, she notices that a small number of cyst-like growths, violet and fungal in nature, have begun on her body.

Emilie and Thos recover in the “no skin” room. Emilie gives Thos a stimpack, but it inadvertently causes the fungal infection from the med bay to accelerate noticeably. The fungus and the tendril and well everything, puts Thos in the mid of a presentation given by the Sophontologist Emmanuelle Castille, who believes in higher dimensional begins made of fungus who could manifest in higher dimensional space, Thos also saw a machine that she had which supposedly, when finished, would allow human intelligence to fold up to the level of reality these creatures call home. They resolve to track this scientist down, maybe she’s responsible, maybe she can help. They decide to backtrack and head to the exec ring

They are greeted in the atrium by a woman, her torso on one side, her arms, shoulders, and head on the other side of the observation ring. In the middle, her spine organs, blood vessels and nerves have been stretched impossibly long, they still work. She weeps and whimpers and begs for death, Kendall points her revolver between the woman’s eyes and ends her life.the organs and veins slow and stop pulsating.

They make their way up to the connector between the atrium and the ship’s exec ring on B Level, as they move through, they are again confronted and attacked by the tentacle, which seemingly uncoils from nothingness. The crew mount a fighting retreat, but Emilie takes a violent whip across the face, sloughing off a strip of pseudo flesh in the process. They retreat and, as before, try to wait it out, Using Emilie’s bioscanner, they are able to see when it is no longer present. They take the opportunity to make their way across the corridor, least it come back.

The exec ring is plush and fancy, it resembles an upscale 19th century hotel complete with plush red carpet, elaborate frescos and chandeliers. They are aware from the crew manifest that Castille has  a room here. As they are about to knock or enter, her neighbour, a brass cocky mid level c-suite comes out and starts berating the group for the crummy service that he is currently experiencing. He is so irritating that the group knocks him on his backside and tranq gun’s him into blissful silence. Here they find themselves, outside the door of likely the only person that can help them…or possibly doom them.

Stats

Kendal Stress 6 wounds 1 health 17

EMHA-L13 Stress 10 Wounds 1 full health: Paranoid: the wall have eyes

Tosh Stress 11 Wounds 1 Full health.

Once the crew has Clive awake and out of the foam, Jill looks around the corner of the hall and spies a number of offices and what look like cubicles. Jeek takes up position on the other hallway. It is not long before the sound of Gaunts can be again heard. The crew all falls back towards the elevator and turns the long concrete hallway into a kill zone. The gaunts, similar in appearance to the last, but this time wearing the clothes of C-suites, rush their way down. Gunfire and grenades damage but do not kill the horde of these creatures. The crew makes a break for it, and Jeek developes a death wish from the stress of it all.

Making their way back up the elevator and back to the APC the crew decides to head back to the dropship and head back into orbit, hoping that they can recover in safety enough to keep going. They are most of the way back when they see a marine being swarmed by slimemoths, as injured and stressed as they are, they can’t simply leave the man, who looks to be slowly loosing the fight, behind to die. Jeek throws a fishtail  and the group opens fire while Jill rushes out to drag the man into the APC ( a plan to use smoke grenades for cover having unfortunately failed). The youngman on board, the crew barely gets a word in when he gets too close to Jeek, who flips out and fires on the stranger, damaging the back hatch of the APC causing it to descend and be stuck in that position.

Not only that but while the crew wrestles with Jeek, no one is driving, the APC slows but not before hitting a bump and  turning on its side, the crew are jostled and Lee breaks a foot in the chaos. The slimemoths approach, Max tries to stand his ground but cowardice gets the better of valour and he flees, running in the direction of the dropship. The slimemoths swoop down biting and drop Jeek to the ground, Jill Stimpacks him and Clive takes care of the wounded. The crew manages to gun down the slime moths without any additional trouble or losses. After they are able to chase down Max before he gets too far. Speaking of far, the group estimates that they have about 15 kilometers more to cover, and now they must do so on foot with injured crewmembers, not an easy task for even an experienced crew….

High Scores

Jill Stress 14 W3 7/17 Haunted, Deflated

Jeek Stress 19 1W 9H Death wish, Haunted 

Max Stress 20 2W 4/14Coward

Clive Stress 16 W2 3H

Lee (broken foot)

Dean Loss of confidence

Nicole

Newcomer

The crew along with newly rescued Joe Dingo, a marine who has been on the Dead Planet for, in his own words, “far too long”, have a problem. The drop ship is 15 km away and their only means of travel, the APC, rests on its side. They all attempt to rest, but no one truly feels rested while on the Dead Planet. Especially not Jeek, who has a nightmare where an unknown figure has him strapped to a table. The unseen nightmare man cuts off his head and cauterizes the wound. The intensity of the dream causes him to wake up in a panic. He now feels suspicious of all.

To deal with the problem at hand, MAx modifies one of the APC’s mortars and plants it strategically under the side of the APC. His calculations are a bit off, however the APC is still righted with only minor damage to the exterior, as well as an alignment so badly out of wack that Jeek has to fight the wheel to keep it going straight. They are able to make it back to the dropship and from their up to the Delicatessen. Iggy and Arthur decide to rejoin the active crew, and Hillary, fresh from the cryotank, joins as well while the others all take a much deserved rest.

The trio decides to enact the plan that they have all come up with, Essentially they need a big enough ship to ram into the plateau on the planet to destroy whatever is up there. They find an old, depowered patrol vessel orbiting the planet that seems to be smuggling weapons grade uranium based on readings. Even better, the ship has no life signs. It is depowered with no life support, gravity or lights beyond the occasional flickering emergency light.

They make their way over in the dropship and attach to the primary exterior airlock, which they need to manually force open. Once inside they float through the command decks, finding a sealed medbay, the glass smeared with blood on the inside, the currently inoperable life support system, which they decide not to enter, and the pressure caps beneath which is the smuggled uranium, having long since broken down the measure to obfuscate its presence on a ship that was truly never equipped to properly transport it, Iggy’s geiger counter goes wild.

The crew floats up to the next level only to encounter a gaunt, its eyes replaced with eye stalks that end in lamprey-like  mouths, as do its elongated fingers. The figure is comically juxtaposed by the plaid suit and neon pink bowtie that it wears, they flee to the airlock, where it catches up with them. Forced to fight in close quarters, the crew make use of vibchetes and forearm blades, first cutting off the monster's outreached arms and then splitting its head in two, thankfully killing it. 

They return to the upper command deck, more wary than before, after having scoped it out with a drone. Water reclamation, Computer/AI terminal, and the command deck, which is currently littered by the torn apart floating body parts of …someone. While there is damage to some of the consoles found here, the real impediment is the lack of power. They have found the corridor which leads to the reactor, however the drone is too large to fit. Iggy and Arthur make their way though while Hillary stays with her drone. The Jumpdrive is connected to the reactor, and Iggy detaches it, worried of what might happen if he restarts the reactor while it is still engaged (the two crew that Arthur noticed melted into the corrugated steel floor only served to open his mind to the possibilities)

The moment it is disconnected a gaunt, possibly hidden up in the machinery, possibly  just coming into existence, appears and attacks. It resembles the malformed body of a human woman, completely naked save for a gas mask fused to her face. Hillary tries to navigate the tunnel to get to them, but Iggy and Arthur largely must fend for themselves. They manage to cut it down with Iggy’s laser cutter and Arthur’s forearm blade, but its razor sharp bony finger claws leave their mark int the process. Now “safe” once again, they turn their attention back toward reactivating the reactor and putting their plan into action.

Highscores

Hillary: (1) Stress 3 No Damage

Iggy: (7) Stress 14 Health 17 (2/2) Lack of Confidence (Athletics)

Arthur 8: (7) 4/15 HP, 3/3 Wounds, 8 Stress

Jeek (12)

Jill (9)

Max (5)

Clive (8)

Dean

Lee

Nicole

Sonya

Matthew

Joe

Clive, who was delayed because Dean called, worried about Lee having worsened the injury to his foot and trying to help. Clive walks the kid through triage before telling Dean to get Lee to his quarters before either of them does anything dumber than they already have.  Afterwards,  Clive goes to meet up with the rest by the reactor, but as a result of the call he thankfully misses encounters with both Gaunts.

Iggy, who has previously managed to disconnect the jumpdrive from the reactor, turns it on just after Clive arrives. He makes sure that everyone is on the other end of the tunnel beforehand, a move that turns out to be very prudent as klaxon style alarms come online, ringing throughout the ship. A message calls out in Microsoft Sam levels of urgency that there has been a foreign contaminant detected and a resulting, self destruct countdown has been engaged. Only 5 minutes remain before the Duncan explodes, taking them with it.

They all try to rush to command, Arthur and Clive get stuck behind an closed bulkhead, Clive being very animate about their impending death, and Arthur silently stressing out so hard he almost pops a processor. Hillary, gets stuck in zero-g on a bent door handle. She freaks out and takes a bit to figure out how to unhook and catch up to Iggy, who  gets to the command deck, tries to puzzle it out but fails to arrest the countdown. Hillary arrives and points out the one minor misstep in his process, allowing the two of them to stop the timer with 3 seconds remaining.

They get the bulkhead up, then try to lock in a collision course for the ship into the plateau and to rig it for a bigger detonation. Hillary is not able to get a nav lock on due to the strange energy, Arthur cannot override the safety precautions without smashing them (which he does), and Iggy…rigs the bomb for the right time but due to difficulty the others have had, doesn’t calculate for their mishaps in his timing.

Having taken the steps as best they could, they exit the ship not long before it enters the atmosphere of the dead planet and collides with the plateau. And collide it does. It does not, however, have the hoped for effect. The storm on the plateau expands, the gate is now a hole in space time the size of a city block. Realizing they made an error, they head back to the ship to plot a new course of action, hopefully with more success than the last.

On the way back, Nicole calls. Lee has been found dead; murdered with bite marks and flesh cut off of his body. Matthew is livid, and they have put the rest of the crew all on house arrest (Matthew and Jill can attest to each other’s location, as can Max and Jeek.) Matthew suspects Dean, due to the signs of cannibalism. The crew arrives and questions those on the ship. Nicole found the body,  and has a tenuous alibi,the rest of the crew was alone at the time. The crew (especially Clive)  doesn't believe that it is Dean, they all recall that the cannibalism was ritualistic not “nom nom nom i’m hungry” cannibalism. Jill takes over the investigation a bit. They first look at the body, Clive makes note that the stab and cut wounds were made by a standard issue combat knife, something that only Nicole, Joey, and Lee had. Lee’s knie is missing. They find it searching Nicole's room, she claims she took it as she was worried about Lee, who was in a dark place after killing Jackson by accident back in the tower. They get her to bite cardboard to see if her teeth match the bite. They collected the bite of the others. Dean, with his bad teeth, was immediately ruled out as the biter, Sonya’s might match, same with Nicole.

They approach Joey, his bite is not a match, though he wears dentures due to contacting a mutated form of Collin’s Symplex as a youth, which destroyed his teeth and upper gums.. He does not have his combat knife having lost it somewhere when back on the ship. He’s not sure where as he bumped into Lee, Sonya, and Dean (he suspects Dean). His bite obviously does not match. The crew still feels that there is something off about Joey, so they make a plan to get im out of the room so they can search his belongings. What will they find and will it give them the answers they need?

Highscore

Clive (9) 6 stress wound 1 health 18

Iggy: (8)  16 Stress.Wounds 2 full health.

Hillary (2) Stress 5  Full health.

Arthur 8 (8)  stress 11.

Jeek (12)

Jill (10)

Max (5)

Clive (8)

Dean

Lee          KIA

Nicole

Sonya

Matthew

Joey

Jill convinces Joey that she needs his help to interrogate Nicole, that having another marine on hand would help when dealing with her, as after speaking with him and “clearing” him, she is the most likely culprit. Joey comes along, convinced to not return to his room first, and they make their way to the galley where Arthur 7 and Nicole sit at a table. Jill starts off with a long drawn out recap of the events so far, asking multiple clarifying questions that seem to hyperfocused on ridiculously small details that don’t seem to matter, while having Joey watch her hands for reaction.

This is all to give Hillary, who has doubled back to the cabins, time to search Joey’s bunk and possessions. Taking note of his desire to go back for his jacket. They start there, discovering a hidden compartment holding a gruesome set of dentures, each tooth real and seemingly from a different person. Emboldened by early success, they keep searching, finding a bloodied pillowcase below the mattress. The Android makes their way to the galley where Nicole is getting understandably frustrated and directly confronts Joey regarding the contents of his bunk.

Joey attempts to explain for about 7 seconds before flipping the table and running. Jill and Hillary are in hot pursuit while Nicole and Arthur remain taken aback by the sudden turn of events. Hillary is unable to do more than slow Joey down, but Jill gets off two devastating gunshots, the second of which ventilates Joey’s head.

The mystery of the Cannibal Killer onboard solved, the crew turns their attention to what must be done next. They decide to return to the moon colony, hoping to use the meat of joeys body to enter into a barter, Dean suggests that they contact Brekt at the scrapyard (as the colony can receive but cant broadcast, “contact” is a loose term). Dean spills the beans about the ship they have been building, and mentions the Breaker’s plan to do what is called a “coffin run” to the nearest inhabitable system. They have everything they need save for some cryopods, cyrochemicals and a proper navigational computer system. The crew hatches the idea to get these things from the wreck of the defiance, hopefully the colonists will see the sense of an arrangement. They broadcast their intentions and begins the day plus journey to the camp.

During this time each of the crewmembers’ rest is plagued my terrible dreams. A repulsive man causes Jill to vomit in dream and out, Arthur casually slaughters pigs in formalwear that turn out to be those he most cares about, and Baretta, freshly awakened to the horrors of the dead planet form cryo, sinks beneath a landscape of human and inhuman bones their weight and rattling crushing her. No one gets a good sleep upon the Delicatessen that night.

Thankfully, things go a bit more smoothly in the waking world. Brekt, for all that is working against him and his sanity, is fairly reasonable to deal with. They come to an agreement to fix up the APC with the parts they need and trade personnel to keep everyone honest. Iggy stays behind to help with their secret ship and the bergdorf brothers, Falak and Khanh go with the crew. The only weak point in the deal is Brekt’s desire to try to convince his ex girl Leer to come with them, as he still worries for her. The crew convince him to wait as to not tip off MAgda and the rest of the colony to their plans too soon. The Dropship departs from the moon, and they make their way to the planet aware that the new reality of the plateau will make their landing a rough one…

Jill (11) Stress 5

Arthur 7 (9) Stress 16

Hillary (3)

Baretta (1) Stress 13 Full Health

Iggy (9)

Dean

Nicole

Matthew

Brekt

Joey (KIA)

Falak and Khanh Bergdorf

Dean, having played around with what was left of Jill’s drone, has finally been able to cobble together a working replacement, dubbed “Scooter Jr.” The crew turns the Delicatessen back towards the dead planet hoping to brave the disturbance and land near the defiance. It takes roughly a day in transit to make it within a safe distance to deploy the dropship.

No one on the ship gets any real rest. Jill has a nightmare of being under an undulating cloth, people running and bumping into her, flashes of metal, screams of horror and pain. She is knocked down, people laugh, she can’t get up as feet keep pushing her down, people running across her back. She cannot get away, she wakes screaming for help.

Clive marches across a painful desert of broken jagged glass, trying to reach a red, warm lantern on the other side, feel the cold oblivion behind him, getting ever closer. No matter how hard he tries he can never seem to make any ground or catch up to it. He wakes aching and sore. Beretta is in a dark formless landscape, too dark to see more than a few feet in front of her. Her nose is full of the scent of candy and rot. A porcelain mask with a large chip out of it appears, chasing her. All Baretta knows is that she must flee it but can never get away from it, she wakes with a jolt, tired and sweating. The crew overhear Falak and Khanh  discussing nightmares with Dean, despite scenarios proposed by Jill and Clive, the brothers inform the others that this whole planet is simply cursed and that the dreams, which have become more frequent, are a part of that curse..

The crew have a rough landing of the dropship, which must go off course to avoid ducking into the ocean. The dropship crashlands on the edge of what appears to be an enormous city filled with buildings of varying heights, shaking up everyone on board and causing Jill to twist an ankle. The brothers assess the craft telling the crew that they can fix it, but will need at least a day and that some systems may not work right after due to cannibalising them for parts to get the bird back in the air. Meanwhile, the crew decide to explore a few nearby towers. A cluster of octagonal buildings roughly 4 storeys tall is the nearest thing to them.

It becomes quickly evident that this building houses models and vacuum seal remains of a number of animals, and on the upper floor  possibly intelligent life that may have been the original inhabitants of the dead planet. Bones and skeletons that held piscine and avian traits can be found on the ground inside and outside the towers. The crew posits that these sites are some sort of natural history museum, and only finding a few items, gems, funerary masks etc, they decide to leave after only checking two of the 7. Making their way towards a 30 storey obelisk, the crew hear horrible haunting howls in the air. Having seen some examples of bizarre wolf-like creatures, they prepare for the worst. A half dozen creatures, six legged, horribly jaws, come into view, already trying to surround the crew in a U shape. What will they do? Will they survive becoming simply another broken skeleton on the surface of the dead planet?

High Score

Jill (12) Stress 14 Wound(Hits) 1(17) Twisted Ankle

Beretta (2) Stress 11 Wounds(Hits) 0(8)

Clive (9) Stress 9 Wounds(Hits) 1(12) 

Dean

Falak and Khanh Bergdorf

The crew come out of cryo, an anomaly has been detected while in jumpspace. A strange signal and apparent identification of a non-human settlement has been discovered in the HAL-3367 star system on the 4th planet.  As per contract and interstellar regulation the crew has been woken from cryo by the synthetics oswic and burger, the information relayed. There seems to be some solar activity, and the planet is barren, but other than that there would seem to be no issue. Oswic and burger crew the dropship as teamster Geri, marine Tamati, Erin the planetologist, and doctors Davinder and Lewis descend from the ship to the surface.

It’s a bumpy ride as unexpected atmospheric currents and storm suges present themselves during the descent. Oswic manages to land the craft, but the damage is notable. According to the android, the dropship has only a 3% chance of a successful return to orbit in present condition. Geri freaks out and  the crew heads out to survey and salvage while she and Oswic try to do what they can with the little they have.

Davinder takes Burger and Tamati to the nearest dome, they determine that the odd structure is some sort of observatory. They notice several free floating rings and a chair about 1.5x too tall for a regular human. After some fiddling with the systems Davinder manages to fire the lasers directly into Burger’s eyes, injuring the both of them but allowing Burger to  see the star from space, he notices that there is some very irregular solar activity and it is quickly coming in reach of the 4th planet where they are. When pressed he figures that there are maybe 10 hours before the flares sweep the planet, killing anything on it. Tamati, who fluked into turning on the ring's visual displays, has found images that suggest the same, although no one can read the alien language.

 They leave, though Tamati notices what appears to be a figure in the distance. They come across an individual, non human, around 3 metres tall, arms twice the human norm and with 2 elbows and double jointed knees. The creature appears ashen, long dead, perhaps even mummified by the conditions, curled in the fetal position. Davinder gives Burger the sample kit to see what can be collected while Tamati keeps his combat shotgun trained on the corpse.

As Burger starts to scrape, the thing sits up with a raspy scream and attacks, it misses Burger, who stabs it with its pen knife, but gravely injures Tamati, who goes down screaming. The moment it makes contact the alien freezes, and then crumbles to dust as Burger dive tackles it. Tamati is in severe pain, Davinder gets out his stretcher and the pair bring the injured marine back to the dropship, only to hear that Erin has been struck by lightning while taking geo-survey readings. Lewis is bringing her back.

Once the injured are brought in the crew shares what they know. Oswic is concerned and turns to Davinder as to what to do. Geri, Davinder, and Burger cross the ditch and enter through a hole in one of the 5 domes there. They come across signs of conflict, the hole appears to have been partially melted in the unknown alien metal and their are scraps of metal plating, which Geri is confident can replace the plating missing from the dropship, all around. The trio grab what they can and head back, only to hear that strange things are happening to the injured parties. Their hair is falling out, their eyes are going black and their skin is losing pigment and becoming ashen. The two doctors take readings as best they can but aside from having very high body temps, there is nothing that any of their instruments can detect is wrong with the two. The doctors need not explain the commotion, seeing the creature emerge from the drop ship. The crew flees in the direction of the installation, the “Ashman” in close pursuit.

Burger 1(10/13) stress 4

Davnidir 1(7/17) stress 9

Jill gets the drop on one of the dogs with her rifle, injuring it severely, the others start shooting as the gaunt hounds rush in. The first hit bleeds out before it can close the distance, dean uses the foam gun to trap on of the beasts, and the Bergdorf brothers take the brunt of the assault. Beretta opens up with her shotgun and Clive with the SMG. One of the hounds clamps down hard on Falak’s forearm causing the cannibal to drop his pistol. A misplaced volley from Clive’s SMG catches Falak in the chest, neck, and eye, killing him outright. Enraged, Khanh tries to grab the killer beast and shoot it in the head, the beast jerks causing the shot to go wild, hitting Jill in the shoulder. Thankfully her armor holds, but she will surely have a colourful bruise as a result.

The beasts turn on Clive and Khanh. They savage the surviving brother ripping him apart and spraying all nearby with blood, Clive is also gored, hanging on by a threat, causing Dean to rush forward and try to help his mentor/surrogate uncle. Dean slips on the first brother’s blood and sprays foam off into the air, while Baretta, out of shotgun ammo for the time being, switches to her revolver and lands a few light hits through the melee.

Jill, switching to her vibchete, carves up a few of the beasts and moves along with Baretta in defense of Clive. Injured and outnumbered, the last beast turns and flees, leaving a trail of viscous forest green blood in the process. Clive will pull through, but the brothers are beyond help. Jill grabs what she can off of them, along with a head of a gaunt hound that she decapitated, and the others make their way to the inside of one of the large obelisks.

Standing over 30 meters tall, the obelisk is a single floor structure, what first looks like columns made of unknown black metal inladen with onyx and black opals are actually articulately stacked piles of jewellery. There are 8 figures here, resembling a cross between a 8foot tall praying mantis and cockroach, reduced by time to their exoskeletons and some tattered time worn rags. Each carries a staff made of intricate wrought metal with onyx characters on the side. Beretta and Jill apply a stimpack to Clive, and Jill takes a staff. Immediately the onyx letters and imbued and illuminated by a purple inner light. Tapping the staff on the groun, or perhaps the location of her grip, causes a beam of violet energy to shoot out, blasting a crater in the inner wall of the obelisk (but not punching through the thick stone and marble walls).

They decide to try and rest here, lick their wounds and recover. The night is not very restful and in the morning the resolve to continue to the trapezoidal prism in the middle of the necropolis, grabbing up the staffs and passing by a number of tempting locations (Jill does take a good amount of the jewellery, recognizing its value, without limiting her movement and mobility) They make it to what can only be loosely called a park, white grass waste high the texture and consistency of old spider web, bone white trees, shine like lacquered, devoid of any foliage, basalt stone panels obelisks and monuments jut out and bizarre angles, and on the other side about a half a kilometer away; their destination, so large here that it blots out the sun. The crew decides to continue through, careful and on guard, not wanting to risk their already vulnerable decision. The choice is taken from them when first one, then about a half dozen more, loud long howls echo from behind them.More Gaunt Hounds. Do they stand their ground and fight again? Or do they make a run for their destination?

High Scores

Clive (10) Stress 4 W(H) 1(14)

Jill (13) Stress 18 W(H) 2 (Full) Loss of confidence: Athletics

Baretta (3) Stress 16 W(H) 3 (8) Loss of confidence: Archeology

Dean

Falak and Khanh (KIA)

Basil wakes up in his cryo pod, confused. This is not the Anderson Research and Development station. Nauseous from the irregular fashion he has exited cryo and from the unexpected nature of the situation, he becomes ill but eventually frees himself from the confines of the pod using the internal emergency release. This world, with its massive seemingly alien details, fetid tasting (but at least breathable) air, and the bones, clearly belonging to something inhuman, is causing the engineer no small level of distress. Just when the situation could not get any worse, the long, low howls of…well something in the distance just adds to the worry. Basil hears a woman shouting, not in fear, but what sounds like orders. He can make out a few words and while in normal circumstances he might be hesitant to approach, Basil recognizes that these are far from normal circumstances as he heads in the direction of the shouts.

Jill has gotten everyone to use their staff weapons to knock down some of the monoliths and statues in this garden to set up a defensive position to fire from. This is not the crew’s first rodeo with Gaunt Hounds. They know all too well what to expect. A man, Basil appears from behind them starling Jill. After a brief and tense exchange, she entrusts him with her drone Scooter, which Basil pilots out to assess the situation. There are 4 hounds and Basil, having never seen these creatures before, is taken aback at their horrid appearance. He manages to graze one with Scooters laser cutter, then uses the drone to distract the hounds. While they rip it apart, the crew makes a break for the doors of the giant trapezoidal prism structure in the centre of the necropolis. Jill, Dean, Baretta, and Clive all make it and force the doors open, however Basil starts to fall behind. Dean and Jill pick off the lead hound with their energy weapons, causing it to burst into flame from the intense alien energy. Clive picks off another one as they push the heavy metal doors shut. They can hear the remaining hounds scrap their terrible claws against the exterior of the doors, like nails on a chalkboard.

Even before the soft violet lighting engages, JIll knows they are not alone here. Using IR goggles she has picked up heat signatures about a half meter in length. The lighting confirms the presence of nearly a dozen pill bug-like creatures pulling themselves along floors and walls with incalculable numbers of tendrils. Clive notices that they seem to be moving in tandem, like ants and other colony insects do. Worried about being swarmed by a new and unknown enemy, the crew needs a plan.

Basil, thinking the crawlers can be distracted, hucks a chunk of rock nearby, a few turn, but that’s it. He throws a second stone closer, and it gets the attention of about half of the creatures who go to investigate before returning to the others. The crew uses this idea to make loud noises with rocks and debris while they very quietly  move towards the door. They successfully lure the crawlers to the other side of the chamber and make a quick dash into the next room, which is dark and empty of anything save for a flight of onyx black stairs that decends into the depths of the earth. The humming noise is now louder, and sounds as if its source is coming from below. With no other options, the crew hastily descend into the stairway.

As the go, it gets darker and darker, the mechanical humming becomes more pervasive, and light sources seem to lose their effectiveness.  Clive turns, suddenly alone, a hulking creatures smelling of rot and artificial sweetener, indecernable save for its chipped porcelain mask is pursuing him. All he knows is that he must get away and not let it catch or touch him. He backs away carefully down the stairs, SMG drawn.

Basil finds himself alone as well. He can smell something awful, like a mix or rotting meat and defecation. Stripping out of his hazard suit, he suddenly understands, as if a voice in the back of his brain has clued him in, that the horrible stench is coming from his bones. His bones are rotting and he has to get them out. He struggles with the enormity and incredulity of this circumstance, he eventually succumbs to the reality of it and starts calling out for someone, anyone who can hear to give him a knife.

Jill watches the shadowy figures of Dean and Clive try to ward off and/or fend off an unseen assailant. Both lose their footing and fall down the stairs as she is unable to grab them in time. She has more luck with Basil, who, after watching hims remove his PPE and start screaming for a knife, she gives a sharp hard slap to that helps rouse him out of his dreamlike stupor. Once both of them are sure that he is ok  the descend the rest of the stairs as quickly as they can to check on their friends. 

Clive looks like a wreck. Battered, burned, bruised and more during the course of the adventure, he looks to be on death’s door. This does not stop him from checking on Dean who he assesses seems to be suffering a concussion. They have both spilled out onto some sort of landing overviewing a large open chamber with seemingly dozens of jumpdrives, impulse drives and reactors, some clearly not of human make, are wired together, causing the hum and, as Basil can surmise, is easily putting out enough energy to facilitate something like the jumpdrive disruption and possibly theoretically even the gate on the plateau. All that remains, how do they stop this, and will it be enough?

Highscore

Clive (11) Stress 8 W(H) 1(2)

Jill (14) Stress 20 W(H) 1(16)

Introducing Basil (1) Stress 7 W(H) 0(9/15)

Beretta

Dean

Borrowing Jill’s magboots, Basil makes the descent down to the large open area where the dozens of reactors and jump drives are linked together. Using his skills and know how he figures it will only take shutting down 9 generators to disable the network, Dean comes down to help and both take their time, Basil as the lead and Dean as the helper and disable the first two reactors in the chain while Clive Baretta and Jill keep watch from above.

The moment the second generator shuts down completely a horrific scream echos through the cavernous chamber. A man-shaped creature with pustules and tumors leaking an orange fluid approaches, its head opens up like a tulip with random eyes and teeth embedded in the fronds. It rushes at Basil and Dean as Clive screams at them to run. The pair get separated and it veers off after Dean, goring the kid with its ragged claws as Clive screams. Beretta and Basil try to shoot it but are unable to hit, aiming wide due to worry of hitting Dean or the reactors, But Jill has some success.. It turns on basil, shredding the engineer’s  hazmat suit. Dean levels his staff weapon and blows a gory orange hole in the creature's chest killing it.

They try to go a little faster with the third as Clive lowers himself down on the extension cord turned rope  (falling and snapping his tangled ankle in the process). The device gives off a pulse of radiation to those nearby. Thankfully Basil has patched his hazmat suit, unfortunately Dean has no such protection. The kid falls unconscious finally succumbing to his injuries. Clive, a complete mess at the sight, checks Dean’s vitals and determines that the boy is in a coma. Clive knows a few places that could possibly help Dean, but they are all off world. The grizzled medic tends to the boy as the rest work together to shut down the other reactors and manage to do so just before the sun sets without any further issue.

Dean strapped to Baretta, they carefully make their way back up the stairs, which seem less dark than before. They carefully peak at their surroundings and discover that the crawlers appear to be unmoving and unresponsive to any stimulus. They conclude the creatures are dead but do not take this for granted, not after everything they have been through. They slowly pull open the big metal doors, worried about alerting trouble both inside and out, but none turn up. Walking back to the obelisk, they note the absence of hounds and also the absence of the storm that has been ranging out of control since the crew crashed a ship into it.

After patching up the dropship and harvesting the Defiance of its cryo beds, they return to the ship. Matthew would rather just leave, fuck any deals, and Nicole supports him. They talk him down and get him on board with going back to the moon like they promised. They arrive at the scrapyard and Iggy gives them a heads up Brekt has snuck back to the colony to try and convince his ex to go with, but everyone at the Tyrant Beggar camp is now dead.

Jill finds Brekt, alone highly depressed,holding a bloody blindfold. He tells Jill how Leer’s statues and sculptures “came to live” and killed everyone. They even lost some of the gang, but 4 people, including Iggy, got out. The statues crumbled to dust about a day ago, no explanation. Jill again offers for them to go about the Delacatessen, and this time Brekt accepts telling them he will be there in a minute. The moment that Jill reenters the common area, a single gunshot rings out. Sure enough, Brekt is dead, revolver in hand and a single hole in his left temple.

It takes little time to get everyone, along with the repaired APC back up the ship. It has been recognized that the alien energy, the believed source of the problem befuddling Jumpdrives. Arthur gets them settle and begins the Jump process. As the crew counts down to slumber, so too do Arthur and the drive vanishing as the android reaches 0….

Fin

Final Scores

Jill (15)

Clive (12)

Basil (2)

Baretta (3)

Iggy (10)

Matthew

Nicole

Hanna

Aiko

Dean (comatose)

Brekt (KIA)

The Crew docks at Frontier Station, contracted by station owner VasTech to discover why the station lost contact, recover the hard drive, and if possible restore the comms. The station itself does not appear to have any power, so while the ship’s umbilical connects, they must manually process the airlock on the station side. Immediately the smell hits them, brassy, copper, foul, a bit like a condemned butchers. Lindsay goes back for one of the vaccsuits, concerned with both the smell and potential for infection, before heading in to the rec area.

The rec room appears normal, though it has no power so everything is in the dark. Moving forward the mess hall is a different scene. Plates of meat, unfinished and rotting sit on the table while a trail of blood runs from a pool on the floor to the kitchenette. The pair have  a bad feeling about this, and that feeling is confirmed with the discovery of a rotting severed human hand under the table along with, strangely, a bag of catnip. Someone has written “A test of the Flesh. A great hunger.: on the wall. The crew is starting to get the picture of what happened here. Backtracking, or possible just putting off the suspected nightmare that awaits them in the kitchen, the head back to the rec room to try the crew quarters.

All but one door is locked. The unlocked door seems to belong to someone called Francis B and alongside his art projects and his books is a bed. On said bed is a man, ID tag identifying him as Francis, lying peacefully with arms folded and a smile on his face. With nothing to show for their search but a faulty noisemaker, they head in the direction of the kitchenette

The floor in the kitchenette is covered in dried blood, a skeleton with only the faintest scraps of withered dried flesh is laid out on the table. The forearm ending in nothing suggests the hand found earlier belongs to it. “Fresh food” is written on the pantry door and, after much deliberating, Sue forces the door open with her crowbar. The open door reveals the naked and partially carved up body of Dr. Zoey Khan, project leader, as well as piles of charred and burned food. The doctor as her keycard ID hanging from her neck. The crew takes it and makes their way to the generator room.

As they enter the messhall again, a horrible figure, looming several feet over the crew, with long claws, jagged broken teeth, antlers, and glowing flaming eye sockets that penetrate right down to the soul, rises up out of the table. The team tries to shoot it but have only limited success. The fiend attacks bloodying Lindsay and momentarily blinding her.They flee towards the generator room and manage to shove the door closed behind them, jamming Sues’ crowbar to help.

Once safe they look around and find the body of another test subject lying next to the generator. Besides her, a row of molotov cocktails and an empty revolver. She has a note to her partner vowing to go out fighting. IT would seem that restarting the generator should be but instead they decide to turn on the cassette player they find, and end up listening to the second half of Duran Duran’s hungry like the wolf. After they rewind and get half way through Rio when the creature appears from the shadows of the generator room and causes them to flee back to the mess hall to make a stand. Although it manages to get its claws into Lindsay before the unbar the door, the results go much more in their favor this time, a few molotovs and shotgun blasts are enough to bring the creatures down. It immediately metals into a foul smelling sludge. Making sure it’s dead they then decide to flip the necessary switches to reengage the generator and continue on to life support.

In life support, which seems to be running just fine, they find the mutilated corpse of synthetic which Sue and Ashlynn are able to get in shape enough to half function and communicate. The body identifies itself as Eve, and once it sees they have Dr. Khans ID describes the true nature of the experiment and her role in it. She burned the food and once the doctor found out she was acting on secret protocols and attacked her. After the food was destroyed and they could not reach Vastech on comms (also part of the plan) the crew decided to draw straws and subject 3 drew the shortstraw  and became the body in the kitchen. Something happened to Subject 4 not long after the first “meal”, he changed and began hunting not just the other survivors, but the doctor as well. Eve mentions that the information is in the Data Storage Lab, and that they would surely get some sort of bonus for bringing it back as well.

High Score

Lindsay 12 stress W(H) 1(2)

Sue 7stress W(H) 0(3)

Ashlynn Stress 5

Eve

The team manages to detect the hard drive but in the brief timeframe it takes to do this, The Hunger disappears from the screens. Unsure of where it may have gone, they use the key card to continue onward into Dr. Kahn’s spacious quarters. They begin to poke around and, hear strange sounds from the safe under the desk, decide to investigate.

The sounds resemble those of a cat, Sue using the clues of the room successfully guesses the 4 digit code and is greeted by an orange cat with the name tage Ginger, obviously a synthetic, and a  credstick with around 16 kcr. They complete the loop of rooms in the back half of the station by continuing on into the washroom, but not before providing Ginger with some of the catnip they found earlier. It seems to have been programmed to respond to the herb in the same way as its flesh and blood counterparts and follows along with the crew. The washroom is a mess, a large kitchen knife covered in rust brown dried blood, sits in the sink, the crew adds this to their inventory of stabby and pokey things before carefully transporting Eve’s head, the harddrive, and ginger, back to their ship.

They manage to seal and detach the umbilical, and while they had not managed to repair the communications array, they retrieved the hard drive and managed to achieve the remainder of their secondary objectives. All appeared well as they drifted away form the station…until ginger began to hiss at something unseen at the back of the command module. The unseen quickly becomes seen and The Hunger appears to come out of nowhere.

Seeing its chance to leave the confines of the station and spread its cannibalistic  psychosis across the galaxy, The hunger is particularly savage and the crew, perhaps overly cautious to not damage the fragile metal vessel that will convey them across the stars, are not having much luck against their seemingly supernatural foe.

The Hunger’s razor sharp finger-claws sever first Sue’s left hand then Ashlynn’s right. Sue’s shotgun gets picked up by Lindsay and ultimately they blow several holes in the monster, causing it to once more fall and breakdown into a mass of foul smelling slime.

The crew manages to get it cleaned as best as possible and jettisons what they can into deep space, removing it from their ship and hopefully stranding the creature when it can no longer be a threat to anyone. They make their way to a nearby station and, over the next several months, are able to purchase replacement prosthetics and treat their wounds. Money though, as it always does, begins to dwindle in supply and the time comes to see what is out there to make a quick credit.

What they come up with is a lead from fixer and information broker Otep Dechaun on a forgotten and abandoned research base on a methane and ethane atmosphere moon. They land and make their way to the pressurized airlock of the research base, itself built into the side of a cliff face, which normalises the air and atmospheric pressure to earth normal. They ascend the elevator and check out the observation deck before heading back to the main entry. Everything in the bask appears to be low power and on emergency fluorescent lighting The entrance has a number of vacc suits and rebreathers, as the moon’s surface is largely survivable save for the atmosphere. Next is the habitat section of the largely subterranean base. They search what they can and turn up a gas gun, a journal with a map of the research base, a few pain killers and the regular accoutrement of random items one expects to find in a deep rim research facility. They also learn that the base had shifted its research focus from the flora and fauna of the methane based ecosystem to something called Sample 77A4H. They then head towards the recroom, unsure of what they will find but hoping for salvage, for answers, or both

High Score

Lindsay (3)

Sue (3)

Ashlynn 

The crew, with the addition of Doug who has finally caught up after a small vacc suit seal issue, arrives at the common area. It's clean, bizarrely clean, the only things lying around are bent or broken metal and plastic dishes and cutlery as well as the metal springs and plastic frame of what appears to have been sofas.  There is a strange, pervasinve feeling that something is wrong here, but what exactly that might be is not evident. They continue to the food storage to find every scrap of food gone, save for a couple of dozen MREs in their foil pouches on the floor.

The crew decides to move to security next. The door is jammed shut, a bent metal bar prevents access from either side. Doug, peering in the smallish window, wins the the usual crew  bet. A human leg, shoulder, and arm can be seen slumped on the floor against the wall, the rest of the body blocked form view  by a console. Doug uses his drone to help move the bar and Sue cuts through the door with her laser welder, and after 20-30 minutes they are in.  They discover that the dead body is Nevyn Llewellyn, the engineer whose room they had previously searched. They find a gas gun with a few reloads on him. The word “Sora” is written in blood next to the dried out, partially mummified engineer, its fingertips torn and raw (bloody scratches can be seen on the back of the door.)

Sue uses the cameras in the console to explore what they can in the base. The screens are all black and white, and in some places grainy. A series of buttons and dials allow her to change the images on the screens and they are able to see several items worth salvaging, including some valuable batteries and scientific equipment. They also see the labs, themselves home to a  number of sealed domes, some that contain fauna and at least one that contains some sort of black ooze.The team notes that one of these is broken. A single camera watches something called “the inner cavern” which itself looks like it would fit in anywhere on earth. 

The whole place looks like its fairly ripe for salvage, they eventually get to the medbay camera and see a working cryopod and an android, obviously synthetic due to its lack of “definition”. It looks straight at the camera, freaking out Sue, before stepping out where Doug confronts it. It identifies itself as Sora, explains that some unknown and forgotten (it cant remember) natural disaster is responsible for the station crew’s deaths and asks if they are a rescue team from the parent company, Taltrek Elysium. It explains that another synthetic named Rho is responsible for the crew’s deaths during the natural disaster. Sue moves back to the crew bunks and tries to get into Sora's room, as she feels something is a bit off, and Doug tries to distract Sora and keep it occupied while this happens. However, his cry of “put some damn clothes on” backfired as it headed back to its quarters. Thankfully Sue had a heads up and  and she ducked into another room before the android could arrive. Sora’s room is a very tidy space, with a set place for everything and only a few small stacks of drawings for decoration. When questioned about Rho, the other android, Sora describes it as a similar model to itself with notable visual differences. Sora claims that it has taken its items and fled out to the woods, as a synthetic could survive long term out there. Ashlynn arrives to help keep watch of the android, whose suspicious story is plausible, it could be true but is it?

High Score

Sue (3) Full health Stress 2

Lindsay (3) Full health Stress 2

Doug (1)  Full health Stress 3

Ashlynn

Sora

Nevyn (KIA)

Lindsay starts to evaluate the med bay. Between the diagnostic equipment and the cryopod, which seems to contain…something that looks like a sheet of shiny pleather the group is looking at possibly as much as a million credits in salvage, half that bare minimum. Not wanting to rummage with no one around, she calls the others back in and, after a search that turns up a few first aid kits and a stim pack, debates what to do. Sora joins them and when asked why the pod is engaged, it mentions that someone named Jacy cycled the process, but it cannot remember when or why. Sora, looking perplexed again seems to have difficulty remembering what Rho did to the original crew and how it happened. The android confesses that it feels like it shouldnèt wish to remember what it has lost. A sentiment that immediately raises the suspicions of Sue and Lindsay. 

As they are getting ready to head to the air purifier and reclamation center, Sora asks which one of them deactivated the pod. None did, Sora decide to open it and investigate only to be attacked by a horrifying black mass of tarry ooze. Lindsay, not wanting to get close, shoots and detonates a nearby oxygen tank, splattering a significant amount of the ooze on the walls where is stays unmoving. Attempts to shoot or otherwise damage the creature seem to be ineffective, burning it has no effect. It lands a tentacle hard on Sue, who staggers back towards the hallway, the skin burning where she was touched. Lindsay ushers everyone out of the room and lobs one of her grenades into the ooze, managing to seal the medbay door just before the thing can get out and grab her. A loud explosion bulges the door out which Sue then welds shut for good measure. Trapping whatever is left of the creature and Sora inside.

After the action dies down and the threat is seemingly contained, the group goes to the Contained Atmospheric Regulation System: C.A.R.S. for short, and spends time swapping out the old dirty filters for new ones, almost immediately improving the air quality of the station.  Next they make their way to the generator and doing some work manage to get main power back on line, There are a number of large batteries made from locally source materials that require a cobalt and methane fueled ration to generate power. Getting an impression that these things could have great value, it is decided that Doug and Ashlynn will carry them back while Lindsay and Sue look further into the station. They have found more in the production hub, alone with several other potentially valuable items, when a garbled message from Ashlynn comes though; something is wrong with the dropship.

Making their way out as quick as they can, they learn that the craft has been broken into and the fuel cells responsible for powering the Hall Effect thrusters required to enter and leave orbit safely are gone. They start to discuss the possibility that Rho is real and not something that Sora made up, and start to wonder where it might have taken them, when they realize that it is early evening now and it would likely be too dangerous (or even playing into the renegade android’s hands) to wander around in the dark. They decide to rest up and recover,

A few hours later, something strange begins to happen. Lindsay looks out and sees swarm after swarm of violet iridescent wasps the size of fists and baseballs rising up and rushing in the direction of the dropship. Strangely it looks like the local fauna is dropping away behind them as well. She engages the ablative shielding on the windows, covering them and blocking the only way to see what happened. They close just in time for the first wasp strike. Shortly after they stop and the reailzation sets in fully that the wasps were not running to the ship but away from something moving this way is when the burbling sound of ooze becomes loud enough to hear throught he bulk head. IT pounds on the dropship and batters it around like a cat with an unfortunate mouse, but is mercifully unable to crack the ship. This goes on for 16 hours before everyone finally realizes that the ship hasn’t moved for several minutes. It is at this time that Sora’s voice comes through the comms.

Sora congratulates the crew on surviving, stating that most everything else has been completely assimilated and wiped clean. Sora  then informs them tht he is responsable for the theft of the cells and that now that it has a shi, theirs, it can spread humanities newest predator, the primordial ooze, across the stars. When Ashlynn accuses him of killing the crew, Sora looses its coolé It tells the crew of how the crew were not fast enough, that it cared for them deeply but could not save them. How it watch its friends die screaming in agony as they merged with the ooze, begging for death that Sora’s program at the time could not give. It was completely subsumed by the ooze itself, but due to its synthetic nature it could not be merged. It was the day spend in the ooze with nothing but the recent memories of the death of its friends to keep it occupied that drove Sora mad and corrupted its programming. It killed Kura, and tried to kill Nevyn as well, both having survived the ooze, but had to be satisfied with watching him starve to death instead. It then waited for someone to come and be sacrificed to the ooze, biding its timm till now.

With much to take in Lindsay raises the ablative shielding. Something that might be the batteries appear to be in a crater roughly 10 minutes from the drop ship on foot. The other problem appears to be the fact the drop ship is resting on an angle, is there damage done to the landing gear? And Sora, will it be content to simply let the crew leave? What will they do?

High Score

 Sue  (4) (4/18)0W Stress 9

Lindsay (4) (11/15)0W Stress 8

Doug (1) Full health stress 3

Ashlynn

Sora

The crew makes sure that they are ok, then gets out to examine the surroundings. The ground is dead, devoid of any life, a layer of powdered dirt on hard slab beneath. The ship is a bit battered, and while three out of four of the legs show only minor issues, the fourth is clearly bent and likely will not close up properly upon take off, a problem should the crew wish to return to the ship in orbit. Ashlynn thinks she may be able to take the pieces off to find the issue and hopefully repair it while Sue and Lindsay head off to the batteries in the distance. They leave the salvage drone with the android just in case.

Cautious along the walk, they make their way to the batteries where they find a rock with an quote etched into it. Thinking it may be a trap, they nudge the stone then the batteries. Satisfied that Sora has not trapped them during the megatidal event, they start to drag and carry the heavy things back. As they do Ashlynn’s voice comes over the radio. She tells them that she can get the leg apart but any welding and cutting will have do be done somewhere indoors. The best likely place to do it is inside, not the news the duo wish to hear. They keep trudging along, the batteries weighing them down and making the return trip take more than twice as long as the walk there.

Their return reveals an unfortunate turn of events. Ashlynn is deactivate on the ground. The front of her head, including her entire face, has been cut off, leaving bare the inorganic and metallic inner workings of her head. Thankfully her logic core is not destroyed, meaning eventually they should be able to place her in a new body, but that is cold comfort in the moment. They suddenly realize that the salvage drone and its controls are missing, and that the elevator is ascending the cliff face into the base.

Thinking Sora has retreated, they set up an elaborate series of explosive traps to  deal with the murderous automation should it come back. They enter the ship, bringing the batteries, the logic core, and the pieces of ship, which Sue can fix here. Lindsay stares out the side door window, watching and waiting for the explosion that will signify that Sora is on its way.

The explosion never comes, rather the blade of a boarding axe right by Lindsay’s head buries itself in the plastic and metal of the door. She turns to see Sora wearing Ashlynn’s pseudomilk crusted pseudoskin face as a sort of death mask. It attacks again, driving Lindsay back. She hits the android hard, wounding it and causing it to vomit…something. Something black, something tarry, something alive. Lindsay can hear her heart in her throat as she realizes that the insane android has been carrying sample 77AH4 in its stomach this whole time. She backs up into the docking area and into Sue. Armed with vibchete and shotguns they put sora down but are confronted with the danger of the seemingly unkillable alien creature.

They lead it away from the door, tricking it as they circle around and make their way closer to the front of the ship. Lindsay dumps her grenade with an oxygen tank behind her as they slam the bulkhead door shut. The explosion, so far the only thing that they have seen have any effect on the ooze, splatters much of it inert onto the walls, however a man sized mass survives. Out of explosives, the decision is to open the bay doors and lure it out. Lindsay draws the short straw. She heads out and gets its attention away from the door. It moves to pursue…then stops. IT is making a visible effort to avoid the battery cylinders they collected from the station. 

Thinking that the high concentration in the cobalt might be something this creature simply dislikes as it doesn’t seem to harm it. Disklike or not, the ooze is avoiding the batteries like acid. Lindsay come back around and , pushing the batteries and herding the monster out of the ship.With that resolved and the bay door closed. The pair get to work fixing the ship. They have a bit of touch and go, and one of the ships airlocks are unlikely to function properly for quite awhile. They leave the horrors of CH4 behind them, cargo bay now loaded with over 2 million work of salvaged equipment.

High score

Sue  (5) 

Lindsay (5) 

Ashlynn - KIA

Sora - KIA