D20 Star*Drive

 

June 02, 2009

 

While the scientists continued checking out the rest of the planets of the system, K'nigley and Vincent complete the install of the shield generator onto the Archangel. There is so much to do, that everyone helps out to make the work go faster.

 

Scientists

Paul Stephen - Pilot Commander

Janine Newbury - tech specialist

Antal Vepi - atmospheric

Gerry Sutherland - geology/metallurgy

 

Ten days later, the scientists have finished the gas giant planet checkout. As they arrive, the group has gotten the new shields set up on Archangel.  Unfortunately, no more of the structural repairs could be done without a full docking facility.

 

Then it is up to Gabriel to test the shields. Max gets outside in his ship to observe, as Gabriel pushes the button. Nothing overtly can be seen, but K'nigley lets everyone know that the shields are working.  There is some fine tuning that needs to happen but they were pretty close with everything.  

 

The group takes the scientists to the next planet and drops them off. The group stays in a high orbit and observes their action as they land. Once they land, Max lands the fighter back onto Archangel. K'nigley is fiddling with some sensors when a call comes in.

"Archangel, this is Paul, can you do a sensor sweep at 6 clicks 7 degree's of us?"

K'nigley detects a structure under the ice, it's about 200 yards wide. It's about 100 feet below the surface and made of metal. He informs the Paul about this.

 

"Um…we are supposed to be the first ones here, could you guys check this out?"

"I will ask Gabriel," he says and calls up Gabriel and informs him about the find.

Myr, overhearing, yells out "Hell yes! I'm sick of this place."

 

"I would have expected some more information from you, like what kind of material it was.

K'nigley does some more sensor sweeps, to find out more details. The base seems be laid out in fairly contemporary configuration. It seems to have been used a month ago, so it is not some sort of archaic facility. He is also detecting some minimal energy usage at the base.

"I suggest that before you try to link to whatever is working down there that we have someone prepared to block any emergency beacons that are activated. Many military systems are designed to turn on when sensing an incoming signal" says Max. Vince pulls up some computer screens and gives a thumbs up that he's ready.

Once the link is set up, K'nigley gets landing coordinates and a flight path in to reach the facility. They are coordinates to the only hanger bay at the facility, and require flying into a crevasse to get to the hanger. Even as he watches, he can see a landing platform extending that is at least twice as big as is needed for Archangel to land. The standard was a standard signal, in English with all the modern associations to any typical landing signal.

 

Max gets into the fighter and maintains aerial guard over the planet as Archangel goes in to explore.

 

As they land, the group looks around and can tell that something is amiss. The facility looks like it was not made by humans but was made with humans in mind. It looks like it could better fit the insect Vrusk species, except the doors are only at six feet instead of at seven feet that the Vrusk would like. Some of the keyboards are not designed for someone with ten fingers and two hands. It's all very strange. There is a blast door at the one side. The party is walking in E-suits due to the lack of air and the extreme cold.

 

Given that the situation looks safe, Gabriel calls Max and tells him to land and come with.

 

The door is unlocked as the party bravely walks in. Entering into the facility, the equipment, although unfamiliar, it still has the look of common equipment that has been tailored for something else.

 

Myr calls back "Deactivated robots ahead."

That gets K'nigley attention as he moves up. They are robots, but only 4-1/2 feet tall. They seem to have spots that have room for attachments, but none are present. "Hey, these two have weapons. So do these two. Some sort of slug throwers it looks like, similar to 11mm charge SMGs."

 

K'nigley decides he wants to keep the robots from turning on. He makes some odd grumps and sounds that suddenly changes to sounds of understanding. When he is finished, the robots are disabled.

 

There is a computer interface to the next door. Vincent is able to easily get it to open. The room seems to be a small storage area with supplies, food stuff, and other minor items. It looks like the food items are rotten, and with the cold, it must have been rotten before the place became this cold. He moves up to a console in the room. A couple of the panels look exactly like human panels. But the next panel is definitely not human, it is something else entirely. He yells for the others to come look at it.

 

K'nigley looks at it and determines it’s a training console. The other three head down the stairs and find four rooms at the bottom. One is obviously the engineering, two are sleeping quarters, and one is med bay. in the med bay, there is a human that has been operated on, and slight life signs. He is hooked up to a bunch of tubes and cybernetics. He seems to have cybernetics making up one arm and leg, and the whole body is connected into an electronic chair. His chest is ripped open and his heart is visible. Every once in a while his heart beats, about every ten seconds.

 

The whole scene is disturbing. K'nigley looks at the parts to try and determine where the cyber limbs are from. He turns and says to the group "Gentleman…." the cybernetic hand reaches up and grabs K'nigley by the arm. He is holding on with a very tight grip and trying to speak, but nothing is coming out.

 

Myr walks over and grabs a data pad and hands it to the human. "Help me….kill me…. kill me…. kill me…. kill me…. kill me…. kill me…. kill me…. kill me…."

 

K'nigley tries to connect up through cybernetics into the human. He can sense that they are old and that he has had them a while, and that the person is actually a miner. As he is connected, he can tell the man is trying to download himself into K'nigley.  A few stray pieces of data got into K'nigley before he was able to stop the entire download. The only thing K'nigley is sure of, is that the person is close to madness. "We should kill him" says K'nigley, and he then walks over and shuts off the electronics.

The guy started choking on his own fluids, and Vince yells "can somebody kill this poor guy!"

Without hesitation, Myr walks up and shoots the guy in the head.

"Could you download his brain to a pad?" asks Gabriel.

K'nigley does so, and determines the cybernetics were from "Voidcorp"

Max says, "I'm going to search the personal rooms, to get out of here…"

Looking around the room, he moves stuff around and finds a secret door.

"Hey! I found a secret door!" Max yells out.

"So what, I found an alien power supply!" calls back Vince. K'nigley goes to inspect the power supply, the other two go to inspect the secret door.

Gabriel opens the secret door and see that it opens to a 5' cave. It seems to be a series of tunnels that encircles the whole facility with peep-holes and sensors to monitor whoever was inside the facility. None of these items look familiar, they are all of alien make. They follow the wires back to a main room, but the equipment it went to has all been removed.

Looking closer, it doesn't use wires, it is actually a type of gel with metallic material floating in it. Some of the items look to be of organic origin.

 

Some of the monitors are working, and camera's are on. As the three are watching, they see K'nigley and Vince carrying a large piece of equipment towards the ship. Gabriel releases a heavy sigh and picks up the com "K'nigley….what are you doing?"

"We found a new engine. We are coming back for the droids."

"Wait, are you certain they cannot turn back on?"

"I have disabled the power units, the backup power units, and the repair equipment - they will not turn on until I want them too."

 

"Hey, were you guys here in engineering? There is a pad here that wasn't here before?" calls out Vince. He starts to read the pad

 

"Humans, we will soon be at war, you might want to learn what you can about us."  Coordinates for another system appear on the display.  "Help us, and we might be able to help you."

"Well what are you?" Vince says to the pad. As if they are listening, answers appear across the screen.

"You will find out soon enough."

"What is this place"

"We had to find out what humans do and how they worked to prepare for the invasion."

"Invasion? Damn it" yells Vince "Why would you tell us about the invasion?"

"We need your help. You have 3 months to meet us at the coordinates.  After that time, it will no longer be possible to meet."

 

"Would you guys look at this? It says these are the coordinates of an enemy race that will invade. It's like they were warning us and asking for help at the same time." says Vince, handing off the pad to the others.

 

The group grabs samples of everything, takes photo's, and prepares a small pack of items to deliver to whoever they need to talk to.

 

Gabriel tells the scientists to get back as soon as possible so we can give them details in person. They sound confused, but acknowledge him.

 

As the group is talking briefly about who to contact, K'nigley suddenly starts staring off into space, preoccupied. Gabriel is perturbed, and yells "K'nigley, are you there?"

"Yes, I was talking to the entity from the pad. he says that if we give the information to anyone else, nothing will be at the coordinates given."

"How is he talking to you?"

"Through the grid."

 

"So, we need an excuse to cancel this mission so we can take care of this?" says Vince.

"Right, can you come up with an excuse that we have to jump now or we will have some horrible thing happening."

 

As the group finalizes the idea, the scientists dock. Gabriel goes and prepares to jump as soon as they are fully docked. Vince will bluff the scientists, while the others hide.

 

"Guys, this is great. With this find, I can't wait to go to the next planet. "

 

"I understand, but we don't have food enough to stay here. We have to leave now or we will lose the star drive."

 

"We can't leave. this is a really big find. You are the only ones that were able to get here.  We have a jump on anyone else that might even try to come to teh sys"

 

Paul still insists that they have to stay, and is willing to scrap his ship to stay here. He finally says to have the other people in the party check out the engine, trying everything to stay longer, even talking directly to Gabriel. They are still not happy, and want to go discuss it, after threatening Gabriel with breach of contract, something he takes very serious.

 

So the team gets together and talks over plans. Do they have to leave now, how much time do they have, what are the alternatives. It is determined that we don't want to breach the contract, so instead we will come up with an idea that we explain as "Risky and something we didn't want to do, but for your need, we will risk it."

At that moment, listening in, K'nigley turns on the ship claxons.  Everyone freezes as they go off.

"What was that?" asks Paul.

"Wait, I'll check. K'nigley, status?" asks Gabriel.

There is no answer, and a few moments later the claxons go off. Suddenly, a voice comes over the intercom "All clear."

" Ah, not a problem then. We have been talking, and the team has figured a way to shave a few days off. But it will require your ships instruments and sensors."

"That will work." answers Gabriel.

"Ok, then I need to talk to K'nigley. Max, if I can use your ship, it would help as well." as he motions for Max to follow. Once there, he hands a NDA to both of them to sign. K'nigley does so without even looking at; Max reads his, see's it's a standard sheet, signs it and waits for the explanation.

 

"Ok, we found a huge deposit of a key component for the star drives, called rhodium. If so, this is going to become very important and worth a lot of money. We might even have a shipyard built here to take advantage of it. So we need you to make the sensors more sensitive towards those items, to search for these components."

 

The extra probe made by K'nigley and using both Archangel and Horus, they are able to find everything they need in just four days. "Ok, we can go now, you have fulfilled your contract. I am glad we stayed, it was worth it, this was definitely a worthwhile endeavor.

 

The group packs up the mass detectors and prepares to jump back. Starfall occurs as Gabriel activates the stardrive.

 

During the trip, Vince tries to figure out what all the secrecy was about. He figures out about the rhodium, and knows that is about fuel for the mass drives. Then works on K'nigley, but it's more just to pass the time than to really find the answers at this point.

 

The group arrives at Hammer's Star, gets paid, and Gabriel immediately takes the ship to the docking facilities. The head of the facility says they are backed up a day.

 

Vince talks to Diane, she is quite pleased about the trip, and offers another contract at double the price if the group can leave in three days. He says he will check on it.

 

Gabriel gets some small in system jobs to get some money and find out what he can about the location where the coordinates were, and that way they can turn down Diane's offer without making anything up.

 

While performing these other projects, K'nigley is playing with the other robots. He eventually tries to test out one of the chips, and plugs it into the Archangel system. A program uploads immediately, and runs throughout the ship. He chases the rogue program, and after it has gone throughout the ship, a screen pops up in K'nigley visor. All it says is "no…wrong….back"

K'nigley figures out how to put it back in the chip, but the interface is still linked up to K'nigley. It can still send him messages. Vince comes in at about this time, and he figures out what K'nigley has done, and is shocked at how calmly K'nigley is taking this whole thing.

 

The two of them talk about what to do, as they realize the program is concerned about a power loss. As they hook up a new battery, it displays "wrong". They quiz what that means, but it says nothing else and they can tell it has turned off power input from the battery.

 

Gabriel calls down to K'nigley "have you been messing with the ship controls? Things are a bit sluggish for some reason."

"No, not that I'm aware of."

Vince, staring at K'nigley, shakes his head and walks upstairs to the bridge and starts checking over the computer systems. He glances over at Gabriel and says "tell him not to hook up the alien power supply."

Over the ship wide intercom, Gabriel says "K'nigley, don't connect the power to the alien power supply," then looking at Vince, "What did he do?"

"K'nigley let one of the droid AI's lose in the ships system.  It's disconnected now and talking to K'nigley and asking for more power."

Gabriel just drops his head into his hands as he shakes his head. He can't believe it.

He gets up and heads for engineering. Max, watching and listening, follows him down.

Meanwhile, Vince has figured out what was causing the power issues, it's the parts that K'nigley installed back from that alien planet!

"Shut it down, shut it down!" yells Vince as he runs to engineering.  As he passes Myr, he yells "Bring a gun!"

 

Opening up the door where the droids are kept, there are cables running down from the alien generator and trying to connect to the droids. The generator is trying to search for something.

Vince shoots at it, and the cable disappears.

 

A display above the generator glows, and a message appears "I'm sorry. I am an AI, I was just curious where we were going. I was left behind after the programmers left. My job was to communicate with humans to tell them to go to the coordinates. Other than that, I was to shut down. I do not know what will be at the coordinates, but I am the one that was talking through the pad.  Part of my programming was to connect to the droid and run a diagnostics on the ship. I cannot explain it. I will warn you I have been programmed for survival, so don't try to disconnect me. If my mission has completed, then I no longer have to strive for survival. Another program runs at that time, I don't know what it does."

 

"Tell us about yourself"

 

"I run on the matter/anti-matter generator you have seen here. It is a standard PL7, similar to the gravity induction engine. The system has 10 milligrams of anti-matter."

"Wow, if he blows, he blows big. That's a lot of anti-matter." comment Vince.

"Are you going to follow my orders?"

"We are, but once we finish this last trip to Meredin, we will be on our way."

"Another program opens up if I can confirm that, but I have to connect to the ship."

 

Once we confirm the trip to the AI, it tells us that members of the Verge that created the AI are called "The Klicks" and are an alien arachnoid race. 

 

The group comes to the decision this is an alien race that is probably a slave race of the people that will be invading, and they are helping us so that we can help them.  (Good insight! -the GM)

 

As we arrive in the system to the coordinates given, we come face to face with a 700 meter ship. It is partially organic, but the rest is fabricated. It's the same style energy source as the alien generator.

 

Gabriel turns to the others and tells them to gather as much information as they can about the ship but make sure it's passive.  He doesn't want to alert the aliens to what they are doing with any active scans.  Myr, K'nigley and Vince turn back to their stations and start looking at the ship and recording everything.  

 

The ship has a setup that is not unfamiliar.  The back part, near the engines, is probably engineering as well, given the reading they are getting.  There is a slightly higher level of radiation than their own ship but nothing that would hurt them for even a few days of exposure.  However, it could start to effect them after more than that.  There is a large section near the engineering area that is using a lot of power.  It's not clear why.  

 

There is a docking ring but no hanger bay.  It's not exactly the same as their own but is compatible.  It hopefully means that even though these aliens have different technology than what humans have developed, it's not more advanced.  

 

The weapon systems seem to be consistent with laser weapons or even particle weapons.  There are launch tubes for missles as well.  Unfortunately, though, it's tough to say the power output without any more information.  This is a military vessel, though, as there are ten weapon systems on the ship, covering all arcs.  Myr also thinks that there is a point defense system on it but isn't completely sure with passive scan.  

 

They gather everything they can and store it in several places, just in case.  

 

Two squadrons of fighters come out as a hailing signal comes over the intercom.

"How do we refer to you"

"Gabriel"

"Gabriel, follow this flight plan to dock. We have studied your technology, we can charge your drives within 5 hours and you can leave. We need to speak of things of mutual importance."

Inside the ship, once the crew steps out, the creatures make a clicking sound as they move around. They say "Humans call us the Klicks. Please follow me."

 

The inside of the ship looks very similar to their own bases.  Actually, the dralasites and Vrusk use a similar design.  From what K'nigley can remember, the dralasites actually program living bacteria in how to make hulls by using their own ability to make crystaline structures but to do it with inorganic material.  However, they haven't been able to make anything hear this big or efficient.  The floor and walls are made of metal but there is an organic look to it.  It curves nicely and there are no seems from welding or other ways to join the metal.  

 

K'nigley can see with his eyes that many of the Klicks have cybergear installed in them.  In fact, he sees more with cybergear than without.  From what he can tell, it's again close to what humans can do but with different materials.  Most of the Klicks have augments around the eyes and some implants into their exoskeleton as well.  

 

He takes the crew to an area that is set up for humans. They do have weapons; Myr looks at it and says "I don't recognize their weapons. It could use anti-matter, but I don't know for sure.  Unless I can go to active scan?"  He motions with his hand and Gabriel notices that Myr brought a portable scanner with him.  However, Gabriel doesn't want to take the chance just yet, so shakes his head no.  

 

 

Once the group is seated, the Klick that led the min says "You may refer to me as Tom. This is acceptable to humans, yes. We need your help. Did you get the medical data we sent. Did you see the anomalies? We have been genetically altered by our masters. We cannot create more of us without them letting us create more. Do you have the resources or can you get the information to someone that can help us? We have figured out that it will be five cycles before we are given the order to invade."

 

 "Who are your masters?  In fact, how long is five cycles?"  

 

"It's probably only a week," mutters Max.  

 

"Wait, how do you rate time?" asks Tom.  

 

After explaining it is based on a vibration of an atom, Tom nods, in a very human like gesture.

 

"Ah, then it will be a little more than two years before the final invasion. I cannot talk to you about the other groups, we are not allowed. Nobody else on my ship even knows you are here. I do know that you have gone to the base. That is old, it would have been five of your years old. We only went once every three weeks of your time, to check and see how the people there had survived. If he was vivisected, then it means they were either done or were checking the progress of the modifications. Some of the other groups have been taking sentient beings from this area for awhile. They were just testing humans. Now, the information I gave you was not complete. I can give you complete information so you can help us reproduce natually then. At that point ,we will be free from our masters."

 

"What are some of the others?"

 

"I cannot tell you. We are a group of foot soldiers. There are 3 billion of us. I know of at least 3 other groups that will attack, but I can say no more. If I tell you too much and it is obvious that humans know too much, we will not be able to help you any more. So I am telling you too little now so I can help you later. I do know that the place where you are from, some of the species that can take hosts have done so already. Do you know of the glassmakers?"

 

K'nigley makes a knowledge check: If you look back 20 years ago in the ages system, the entire colony disappeared. They just vanished. After a lot of other Verge systems checked it out it has been repopulated. The only thing that was found was that eventually one of the news services said that they heard the glassmakers had been responsible. That is all that has been reported.

 

"I have heard the name but that is all," shares K'nigley.  "There were rumors of them years ago on Aegis, when the colony disappeared, but nothing much since then."  

 

"You would do well to look for more information on them as well.  They are supposed to be an ancient enemy of the ones we serve.  They might help you," replies Tom.

 

XP: 625  

 

GM Notes

• Re-reading this, I really didn't do well.  It's like a bad SciFi, er, SyFy movie.  The pieces are there and I can see where I was going but it's full of contradictions and mis steps on my part.  I had the ideas but the execution wasn't that good.  
• I see this as an open ended game against the groups that are going to invade the Verge.  At least, that's my hope.  Lots of inspiration from different shows.
  • Odyssey 5 - The PCs have information that's critical but they have to be careful to whom they give it and what they do with it.
  • Stargate SG-1 - Open ended with obvious bad guys.  Many layers of bad guys, so once a particular menace is gone, there is another, but with a top group in mind.
  • Alias - Missions that have multiple motives.  Having to keep secrets.  
  • Firefly - Only in that they are independent traders and trying to keep their ship and reputation.
  • X-Files/Fringe - possible conspiracy theories as well
• In this instance, I am trying NOT to draw from Babylon 5.  Instead of having an idea of where it's going, I am trying to set up some ideas and explore them as they happen.  It's tough because of how much I usually draw on that show.
• I also think this was a bad session because there was too much drama and not enough action.  By that, I mostly mean combat.  I tried to make some things tense as a few things happened but combat is usually what really creates tension, imx.  
• I haven't given up on this and I know my players are forgiving.  It just didn't start out as well as I could have hoped.  
• Since we missed a week, I filled in some details and gaps, to flesh it out more.  (6/22.2009)

 

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