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.