It was lovely to have a full house of players tonight, first time in a while. Technology all worked really well and the session was enjoyable. The supply burn was a noticeable clock as we played with people looking a little nervous whenever I called them to mark supply. Andy is doing a great job of coordinating the supply burn.
Graham made a spectacularly successful roll earlier on, which was then followed by his character trying to fix an anti-gravity shaft and then stepping into it and falling 10m, breaking their foot. He'd been convinced that the single success was enough to be safe but I knew the shafts were technically dead, so I was looking for 2 successes to have a minor fall, and 3 for it to function as designed. I did consider stating this, but Paul had used his character's intuition skill which meant I had to tell him a truthful answer which was to 'talk Lieto out of doing this'. I loved the way that Graham played the confidence of his character, taking no precautions and just stepping out before anyone could help. Lieto could possibly get a job on the Prometheus.
They managed to talk down a potential combat situation, and also save the NPC who was fried with a lightning bolt. It was interesting watching their reaction when they realised that the NPC didn't have a working suit and that they'd failed to fix it, so they couldn't leave the complex. They probably have a 3km walk to the location they now believe the Singularity Sphere to be, and a similar distance to the cache. The Rover is another 4km on.
Again, I left this on a cliffhanger as they heard what they suspected were Mining Combine forces approaching.
- Arda Qamar, a Guild Surveyor and Traveller who came from the Far Colonies from a Mining Combine operation. She’s the bird handler and Scout for the team. (Played by Hattie).
- Meristo Koulas, an Esoteric Coriolite Seer who grew up in the Fog of the Haze, and has ties to the Black Toad. (Played by Paul).
- Lieto Miesma, a Scholar specialised in Builder Archeology who came from deep inside the Factory City of the Turbine Halls, with a background in the Machinist's Guild. (Played by Graham)
- Fassour Faradi, a roughneck deep miner who also came from somewhere the eternal fog of the Haze, and - like Merits - has ties to the Black Toad. (Played by Simon)
- Rashid al-Masri, a scoundrel Hull Cutter who came from among the hulks and wrecks of Hull Town, and has connections to the Gardener's Guild. (Played by Andy).
- Corvus the Bird, a specter; cobalt blue, with a long beak, always observing. Usually handled by Arda.
- Gina Zee, a Black Toad aligned expert ruin delver going under a pseudonym. (Hired by Fassour).
- Dr Layla Jaspel, a medical doctor and botanist from the Gardener's Guild. (Hired by Rashid).
- Karmelia Merest, a Navigator's Guild Algebraist, fascinated by the Singularity Spheres and apparently also a lover of Zinti novels. Very much angling to be Arda's BFF. (Hired by Arda)
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| The New Seekers (Corvus, Arda, Meristo, Fassour, Rashid and Lieto) |
The Session (Spoilers for The Flowers of Algorab).
The expedition was already divided across two levels of an ancient Builder installation. The upper level held crystal glass-fronted control panels; below it lay a dusty circular passage, reached by shafts that appeared to be part of an anti-gravity lift system. Meristo had fallen down one of the shafts trying to get down, damaging his faceplate, and Rashid had repaired it with epoxy. Meristo could remember neither how he had arrived nor who he was, though his instincts still guided him through familiar tasks such as managing changes of filters and air bottles. The atmosphere inside the installation was just breathable, and Rashid reported seeing a glowing, apparently armed figure appear and vanish to the crew on the floor above.
The party secured a rope for the descent with Gina’s climbing equipment. Rashid and Gina stayed on watch while Arda, Fassour and Lieto searched the rooms around the ring. Most were dusty and empty, but the search uncovered shards and a crystalline cube etched with glyphs. Lieto identified the cube as a piece of late-era Builder artwork, a lesser artefact with potential value. He was delighted by the find, and couldn't resist sharing his enthusiasm with his compatriots. Between the searchers, they found seven further shards.
Arda pressed ahead around the passage and came upon the yellow glowing energy enshrouded figure. Believing it might be from the Mining Combine, she introduced herself as such. The figure replied that she should have had her weapon ready if she was from the Combine, and struck her with an energy blast. Arda was thrown against the wall and left badly hurt. As the figure ran off, Alda noticed a badge identifying it with the Sharzad Collective, a rival of the Mining Combine. Running to see what had happened, Meristo saw a yellow glow near one of the downshafts, but it vanished before he could speak to the figure. The group suspected the stranger had some kind of unfamiliar cloaking or energy-field technology.
Lieto secured encrypted communications for the party. Aeda sent Corvus down to investigate the lower level. The bird detected blight throughout the overgrown area below, along with an unusual moving energy source. Its first attempt to clear the blight failed, despite Arda directing Corvus to use extra energy. Meristo treated Arda with medical doses, while Rashid tried to reassure her. The group considered using Corvus’s more powerful abilities, but the immediate plan became reaching the lower level and investigating the source of the Singularity Sphere signal.
The New Seekers still did not know how to operate the shafts. Lieto confidently tried one, having used his understanding of artefacts and glyph scholarship to try and activate controls, expecting the lift to work, and fell roughly ten metres. Meristo and Arda tried to catch him as he went over the edge, while Fassour also lunged to help, but they could not prevent the fall. Lieto broke his foot; his movement would now be very restricted, and the injury would take days to heal. He also suffered exposure to the blight, though his suit and the crew's efforts limited the effect. Corvus later succeeded in clearing blight from the area. With Gina’s help, the party rigged a rope and lowered Meristo, Fassour and Arda into the overgrown level. Meristo used his remaining medical dose to treat Lieto, and Fassour scanned the surroundings for the stranger.
The lower level was tangled with dark vines and illuminated by bioluminescent growth. A deep central opening revealed a chamber below lined with crystalline structures, where a Builder power core crackled with energy. Fassil spotted the glowing figure watching from behind the vegetation. Arda’s deep scanner, once recalibrated, showed that the singularity sphere they had come to find was not in the immediate chamber: the signal resolved to a location elsewhere in the complex, about two kilometres away. The blighted energy core had been distorting their readings. There appeared to be signs of some kind of spacecraft at the signal location.
Fassil approached the figure cautiously and managed to talk to her. She was Ezira Larkoun, a scout for the Sharzad Collective. She had mistaken the New Seekers for the Mining Combine after Alda had claimed to belong to it. Ezira had been looking for a site that the Collective could use as a resupply base. Her ship had been struck by lightning, and she was waiting for extraction; she had also seen a Mining Combine drop shuttle land nearby.
Ezira was carrying a large octahedral crystal prism taken from the installation’s power core. She had found that it could project a protective field, which she had used to move through the shafts. Ezira insisted the artefact was hers. Fassour, with Lieto’s help, explained that a glyph on the core meant “balance”, and that the matching pedestal was empty. The power core was becoming unstable without the crystal in place. Ezira was persuaded to return it, though she wanted the party’s help against the Mining Combine, which they agreed to give. Corvus indicated that the prism was carrying blight.
Lieto had examined the glyphs on the power core from above and identified the inscription “balance”, but there was a second glyph superimposed that would modify it. Once Ezira entered to power cord and cleared the obscuring blight from a second glyph, Lieto translated it as “world shaper” or “creator”. The signs suggested that the installation was a terraforming station. The party rigged a climbing line so Ezira could descend to the core. Using the prism’s field to reach the platform, she replaced it in its pedestal with Lieto guiding her. As she did so, the core erupted in a powerful surge of lightning. Fassour hauled Ezira back up. Her suit smouldered and shut down, but she survived. Rashid attempted to repair it, without success; once her helmet was removed, Azira could breathe the installation’s atmosphere, though she was shaken and coughing.
The rest of the crew searched the area while Ezira was brought out of the core chamber. They found sixteen more shards and a moss-covered spiral rod, which they decontaminated using one of Meristo’s kits. Understanding the rod would require a full shift of study, so its purpose remained unknown. Rashid also found a sealed capsule of preserved seeds, which he recognised as a significant discovery for the Gardeners’ Guild and carefully took charge of.
With Lieto injured, Ezira’s suit disabled, and supplies running low, the party decided to retreat towards the rover and resupply before continuing to the singularity sphere’s location. Ezira agreed to wait in a safer, non-blighted part of the installation until the party could return with another suit. Rashid left her eight supply units. The group expected to have just enough to reach their supply cache, though their suits would be nearing the point where low supplies might cause trouble.
As they climbed back towards the entrance, the New Seekers heard several people making their way into the installation, with the sound of clattering equipment. They believed the newcomers were likely the Mining Combine. The crew began preparing to hold the entrance, but the session ended before the approaching party came into view.
Source - initially Tabletoprecorder.com, heavily edited for names, clarity and brevity with some parts injected to explain or catch elements missed in the summarising.
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