Slaughter on a Spaceship

After we got to the bottom of the situation with the missing crew, it was up to Yannick to set everything up and Cole to remotely steer the vessel into and out of interdimensional space. This time, without any pre-tech artifacts interfering with the engines.

As the work was taking place, Jokkenson had the brilliant idea to revist one of the storage rooms we walked pass on our first venture through the ship. Mainly, the weapon storage. After a quick look for Encumberance rules, it turned out that he was capable of carrying nearly every single weapon in storage. We witnessed a cybernetically enhanced barbarian armed to the teeth, quite literally, walking back to our ship at a comfortable pace. A typical example of the things roleplayers will get to.

Just before SS Aurelia re-entered and left interdimensional space, Keiran once more looked into the future to see if the entirety of the ship would turn violent after our attempt at solving this problem. He did not see any danger on a large scale so we proceeded with our plan. The ship reappeared shortly after being remotely steered by Cole and we boarded it once more. As we entered, Keiran started to act weird.

From the perspective of his crew, we had the impression he was having a conversation with someone but we could only hear his side of it. Cyrus confirmed our suspicions when he saw there was some kind of telephatic link established with the captain. When his conversation ended, he explained that whoever he was talking to, didn't want them on board and took our presence here as an act of aggression. We were not ones to balk at threats so we moved deeper into the spacecraft.

You get the idea

Suddenly, a woman materialised in front of Jokkenson, grabbed the rifle he was holding and disappeared. This enraged him to such a degree that he ran off towards danger. Moments later, as we ran after him, we were in the midst of combat. Unknown to us, the crew of SS Aurelia seemingly developed psychic abilities and we found ourselves in a strange fight. Ian and Cyrus had to avoid fire being thrown at them while one SS Aurelia's crewmember disappeared from Ian's and Jokkenson's sight. We had the advantage however, Jokkenson cut in half two crewmembers, including their captain, while Ian and Cyrus wounded some with a gun and mind respectively. Although Keiran tried to reason with the other crewmembers to lay down their arms, they did not care to listen. They attacked us with intent to kill so we had no choice but to defend ourselves.

Cole rejoined the rest of the group as soon as the coast was clear.

Investigating the Ghost Spaceship

Figuring out how to board a ship that's unresponsive proved to be quite tricky. A brainstorm erupted between our engineer, pilot and programming wizard as to how to proceed. Around a middle through the conversation, they were interrupted by Jokkenson who looked like he was trying to focus his eye-sight on a fly. We had no flies on board.

As it turned out, other than a full cybernetic arm, Jokkenson also had cybernetics in his skull and on part of his face, one of his eyes was inorganic, in fact. Keiran asked what was going on with him to which he replied that the ancestor spirits are giving him a beautiful vision of the ship all in blue but with two red dots. We took it as some form of scanning device and asked him to point to where those red areas were. As it turned out, the areas were the engine room and the cooling system which made us think it showed heat signatures. Logically, there would be more heat signatures on a manned flight but the ship appeared to be deserted inside.

We had no more time to stand idly by. It was clear at this point that something had happened to the crew and the refugees. We had to board and investigate. Cyrus managed to hack remotely into the SS Aurelia's systems and bypass security to open a cargo hold area which would allow us to enter but first Cole had to match the ship's speed and align ours to match trajectory. We connected both ships but before we opened the door, Keiran zoned out for a few seconds. Cyrus noticed this with his psychic senses and asked about the spell the captain has just cast.

We didn't want to get into the discussion over semantics between our respective cultural terms for psychic abilities so Keiran just explained he had a quick look into the future to see if anything dangerous will happen to the team that will enter the ship. When Keiran was assembling a team, Cole made it clear that he would remain on the ship just in case... until he realised that the captain saw nothing unwarranted would happen to the people entering SS Aurelia, at which point he joined the rest of the team.

Empty spaceship? Not spooky at all!

Our first obstacle was the door to the cargo hold. Jokkenson's attempts at opening by force didn't work, as did Keiran's attempt to guess the code but Cyrus opened it with ease. The ship's corridors were the right size for people to walk through but they couldn't accommodate Yannick's mech which he had to leave behind. During our exploration of the inside of the ship, Jokkenson was given another vision which showed him where the ship's bridge was located. We followed his direction and upon arrival noticed he didn't lead us through the shortest route.

On our way we noticed signs of life. There were blankets lying around in some areas, mugs left on the table and personal effects scattered on the floor. It seemed as if the crew and refugees simply vanished. At one point, Cyrus's psychic senses allowed him to see silhouettes of people around the ship. When we stopped the ship and went through its recent logs, we concluded that something caused a malfunction in the engine room which caused the ship itself to leave interdimensional space but leave the people behind.

We needed to investigate the engine room but couldn't leave the bridge unattended so we did the unthinkable and split the party. It is an age old roleplaying tradition that one is not supposed to split the party for this draws the attention of evil. Fortunately for us, the Game Master must have been in a good mood because he didn't use this opportunity to menace us with random threats. Keiran ordered Cyrus and Ian to stay behind as the rest would go to the engine room.

Although we were in the exact same room physically as players, our characters were not, and since both me and Cyrus's player sat next to each other, we decided to engage in friendly banter between our characters while the rest had their own scene going on. Cyrus started talking about his life on his home planet and his studies as a wizard, talking about the various disciplines there are and his experience studying it. Ian isn't a talkative person but as someone who had to hide his abilities, he started to develop a kinship with and, perhaps, an admiration for Cyrus. He still didn't like the out-dated terminology Cyrus employed but he spoke of what it is like to be a psychic on his and Keiran's planet and why he followed Keiran as he had to leave the planet.

I wouldn't try breaking it

We were interrupted by a message from the captain who requested Cyrus's presence in the engine room. While we had our chat, the other part of the team found a black box that Yannick noticed was entirely out of place next to the engine. Within it, they found an unearthly white sphere and needed Cyrus to have a look at it. Unlike the rest of us, he saw the globe emmanate a white light and refused to touch it. Mocking his concern, Jokkenson took the spehere out and simply tossed it over to Cyrus. He caught it out of reflex and felt his psychic abilities being enhanced while Jokkenson got a stern talking to from Keiran for his handling of dangerous equipment.

After a moment of deliberation, Cyrus decided it must be a piece of pre-tech, a technology that dates back to the Golden Age of the setting where technology and science were focused on psychic phenomena more than anything. Cole noted that it would fetch a very good price at the black market, even though he certainly wouldn't know anything about it, and that someone must have been trying to smuggle it onto the planet.

It made sense and reviewing footage from the ships time in interdimensional space showed that there was an individual hurriedly walking into the engine room shortly before the ship returned to this dimension. This person left the box with the pre-tech close enough to the main engine that it interfered with its function which, we assume, is what caused everyone on board to remain in interdimensional space.

Before the seesion came to an end, Cyrus and Yannick decided that the best course of action would be to make a short jump into and out of interdimensional space in order to properly synchronise the ship and its crew with the regular dimension.

No One Will Hear You Scream (in Space)

Fear is not a well known emotion to a roleplayer. Player characters, by their very nature, are the types who will run towards danger for the sake of the story. Whether that danger be the man who killed your father, a fire breathing dragon or an outer dimensional monstrosity is immaterial. The party will stand their ground knowing that if it has Hit Points, we can take it down!

However, ask a player to give away their character sheet and they will know fear.

Deal out characters!

This is exactly what happened as we sat down to the much anticipated first session of Stars Without Number. I was truly looking forward to getting into the character of Ian. Most of my idle thoughts this past week were considerations of his personality and behavioural quirks. You cannot possibly imagine the horror I felt as we've been told to pass our character sheets to other players.

I was sitting there, staring at an unfamiliar character sheet and worrying that someone else will add some unsavoury characteristic to my very own creation. Fortunately, the Game Master quickly explained that we'll go through a prologue as NPCs and these sheets are there only to make use of skills for rolls that we might attempt. This shuffling of characters was nothing permanent.

We shortly find ourselves on SS Aurelia, a starship transporting refugees from a planet engulfed in civil war between the governing body of the Hanuun Conglomerate and the Purity Front. It was explained to us that the Purity Front believed the planet was suffering from pollution caused by space wreckage in close proximity to the planet's orbit and their only chance of survival would be to blow it up. This was a view that the government didn't agree with, hence a civil war erupted. We were refugees on board this ship.

Each of us had to come up with a quick character name and a description of what they were doing while the ship entered multidimensional space. Nia tended to the wounded, Rob spoke with captain Emily Ryan about what happens to him and his family upon arrival to Hild, Derrick helped fellow refugees in writing correspondence to their loved ones, Bob worked out while Clive avoided people.

The most elaborate side plot belonged to Duncan who snuck out of the cargohold, made his way to the mess hall and used their version of a replicator to create fish casserolls for the refugees. He was soon found by an imposing crew member but managed to convince him to let him go with his meals that he then distributed among the starving refugees.

The next scene transitioned to a briefing room in the headquaters of a company called Seven Sons. They were contracted by the government of Hild to check refugees coming to the system for potential threats. We were informed of this by a higher ranking official, given details of the starship and its coordinates after emerging from multidimensional space. This was our first mission as a team so we headed straight into character introductions.

First was Jokkenson, a massive beast of a man who has clearly seen his fair share of battles. He carried a chain axe and assured the Lieutenant Captain Warchief that he will gladly pulverise anyone who dares to go against the chain of command.

Next we have Cyrus. A young man who graduated from a wizard academy. Low-tech planets such as Jokkenson and Cyrus hail from consider psychic abilities to be magical by nature so it was very interesting to listen to a conversation between him and the next character who would be our ship engineer.

His name is Yannick and he clearly has some kind of device surgically implanted in his skull. Anyone who heard of the procedure would be able to tell this from the scarring on the side of his head. Other than his role to keep our ship in one piece, he is also a mech pilot. This machine takes quite a lot of space in our small vessel.

Our pilot introduced himself as Cole. His personality truly shined when we got to the ship.

Ian didn't say much about himself other than he served with Captain Keiran on Shakti and that they left the army together. I described him as wearing a standard uniform, smoking a cigarette and having a scar going down his neck and under his clothing.

Finally, we get to Lieutenant Keiran, formerly a captain in Shakti military. He gave off an amicable demeanour to his crew that couldn't help but note that the standard uniform he wore looked much better on him than anyone else. His current rank and Ian's insistance on calling him a captain caused the confusion Jokkenson was experiencing with ranks and titles.

Overall, we ended up with an interesting mix of character personalities. I decided that Jokkenson's respect for Keiran's position impressed Ian enough that he would develop a liking to the character. Personally, I also like how both characters have similar characteristics but their personalities go in opposite directions. Jokkenson appears very talkative and eager to fight while Ian does not.

Spaceship!

Soon after the introductions and initial character chatter, we made our way to our ship, SS Bullet, and took off into space. During the flight Cole made sure to make it exciting with his pilot announcements and treating this flight as if it were a public transport aircraft. Jokkenson assured Lieutenant Captain Keiran that he can kill the pilot for his foolish behaviour with just one word from him but Keiran assured him that for all his flaws, Cole was an excellent pilot and some level of eccentricity was perfectly fine. Ian, being used to Cole's piloting, ignored the pretended turbulences and enjoyed his cigarette. Meanwhile, Yannick made some quick modifications to the ship.

During the journey, Lieutenant Keiran assigned positions to each crewmember and made the crew perform some drill exercises before reaching our destination. When we arrived at the coordinates, SS Aurelia emerged from multidimensional space and we hailed it. After two attempts to garner a response, Lieutenant Keiran ordered to board the ship despite the starship failing to answer.

We approached the ship while our pilot entertained us with the ships detailed specs, to the extent that he provided us with the number of screws required to build a ship of that size.

This proves to be a very interesting party and the mission is already not going according to plan.