Book 2, Part B

Welcome once again to the Shifting Horizon blog, or as I like to call it, "Let's kill everything the GM throws at us before it has a chance to shoot back." Your time is coming, guys... your time is coming.

First, introductions; unbeknownst to the others, two more crew members were sent by acting Captain Grainer to help out; the followed behind the others, arriving at the mayor's office just behind them: an android engineer named Gadget, and a female Kchk'Trrs - a medic, finally. And also a pacifist. How she got on this ship, I'll never know. Anyway, they joined Gus the android and Kiri and Julian the humans to talk with the mayor, a pleasant man who didn't seem upset when the Kchk'Trrs drank half his liquor cabinet...

The mayor had a problem, and had been watching the crew long enough to see that they were quite capable. A gang had been forming, starting fights and getting people hurt; people were worried. They were mostly outside the city proper, so he couldn't get to them. And speaking of which... he handed out maps:

If you click the image, you can zoom in - it's pretty big. They began in the purple building in the very center, the mayor's office. The mayor offered them $1000 each to stop the criminals. Of course, rather than jump into action, the crew decided to actually hang out and shop first. Kiri, still wounded, went to the hospital (in red, #14 - the trapazoid); in a thoughtful act, the medic purchased a card, some chocolate, and some flowers, and had them sent to Kiri's room. Meanwhile, the two androids went exploring, hoping to buy some gear; they had little luck. They did, however, get rejected from touring Science I (#20), the grey's laboratory, though they were able to get a quick tour of the Ralva Tech Center (#22). Poor Gus was shown an AI science lab, and the trauma of seeing (and hearing!) the injured AIs gave him a major phobia - he won't be able to see disassembled robots without reliving that traumatic experience. He's going to need some major repair work, I think... However, the medic received a quest from some symbiontoid scientists, as well as a biology lesson: Symbionts are actually a symbiotic collection, made up of:

• The brain, the only sentient part of the body, which controls the rest through electronic nerve pulses;
• The skin, a form-fitting lump of a creature;
• The circulatory system, a toxin-filtering plant;
• The digestive system, a nutrient-expelling omnivore;
• And the splanch nodes, something akin to a slug that can grow coral, used as bones and muscles.

The scientist wanted the group to fetch a number of each (non-sentient) creatures for further study, hoping to grow them in a laboratory setting; it was much easier than shuffling off to the forest every time someone had a baby.

The next morning, all four trooped over to visit the Queen of the Apes. Kiri attempted to communicate with some outside, perhaps trying to become the next Jane Goodall. No such luck.
Inside the court was cool and beautiful, and filled with red apes scurrying around on one task or another. They were lead into the queen's chambers, where she was seated on a huge puff-ball of flowers, nearly immersed. Her face was much more human than the other apes; as the crew would soon learn, the queen controlled the other apes through a psychic link. Only queens and short-lived males were intelligent; the drones were part of an animal-like hive mind. Unlike the other red apes, the queen was quite human, and spoke clearly. She greeted them warmly, and stood to welcome them. As it turns out, the ape queen did enjoy the customs of the other apes, in that she wore no clothing. To make it worse, she had the kind of radiant beauty that transcends the boundaries of race... Gus and the medic managed to keep their eyes front, and most likely will receive medals; Gadget, entranced by the, uh, symmetry, prolonged his gaze somewhat longer than strictly polite, while Kiri... sigh. Kiri barely managed to keep from tripping over her own tongue, lolled out on the floor. When the Queen touched her shoulder, she felt a psychic touch as well, and obsessed over it for the next hour. Meanwhile, the queen asked if the group (she too had seen their work on the surface) could assist her.
When a red ape dies, the queen gathers its consciousness to herself, then implants it in a dormant egg, which births a new red ape; however, her children had been vanishing - not only did she not know where they were, physically, but she could not feel them through her psychic connection. Each time a red ape went missing, she felt a piece of herself vanish. She pointed them to the north-east corner of the city; the medic almost immediately decided it must be the grey's lab they were kicked out of earlier. Kiri managed to come to her senses in time to begin asking more and more intrusive questions, culminating in asking the queen to place a red ape personality into herself; the queen firmly denied the request. Even if it did work, the act would destroy Kiri's mind. Kiri was crushed, but vowed to find a way to renew that psychic bond she felt. However, she did ask for more resources, using the queen's connection to the mayor to beg some more money. Sigh. Murder hobos, indeed.
For those of you keeping score at home, this is three quests, zero action thus far.
As soon as they left, Kiri and Gus went to get outfitted, purchasing ungodly amounts of explosives, knives, and so on. Gadget and the medic investigated Science I; as the android annoyed the secretary, the medic crawled into an air vent and crept about, eventually managing to get a picture of a cage, with some red fur just visible. However, before she could return the way she came, she saw two guards heading towards the entrance; she turned around, but made enough noise to alert another guard. Scrambling to get out of the way of the guard's laser rifle, she called over comms for Gadget to create a distraction. Gadget took off running at top speed, leaving the guards in his dust, and laid out 10 feet of blast wire behind him. As soon as the guards were in range - boom! Both were reduced to a pair of smoldering boots in a stunning double-homicide. He also trapped four guards in a room, which he hosed down with flames; two sustained burns. The medic managed to escape her pursuer, as the androids and Kiri met up outside. Bolstered by the medic's picture of something vaguely red, the three decided to murder basically everyone. As they approached the door where the four guards were still struggling to get out, one guard finally managed to bend the doorknob enough to wrench it open, and fired uselessly at Gus. Kiri, taking affront to this, nuked them all with a sonic-tipped arrow, knowing it wouldn't injure the android.
As it turns out, the red fur was not a red ape, but a red ape skin - though they didn't know it, it was donated to science by the red queen, and had nothing to do with the abductions. No matter! The four found an elevator and rode it down to the lower floor, where they were met by six guards. Six slow guards... somehow unable to surprise the group, the guards were so slow on the trigger than Kiri blew up three of them, Gus hit two more with a sonic grenade, and Gadget incinerated another with his handheld flame-thrower, leaving... oh wait, that's six.
As Gadget freed the caged red apes they discovered, Kiri menaced one of the scientists cowering in the back corner until he spilled the beans; they were hoping to clone the apes into mindless servants to run the city, operating from funds provided by an anonymous grant. The cages that cut off the psychic link were incidentally using the same power supplies that Gus and Gadget found at the tech center... Coincidence?
The red apes freed, the heroic crew talked among themselves, trying to decide if they should murder all the surviving grays. As it turns out, the red queen had her own ideas, and asked them to leave; more red apes were waiting above, having rounded up the other grays on the surface.

For saving all the apes, but mercilessly killing all the guards, the group was awarded 4 XP; tune in next week, as the group slaughters indiscriminately, and still managed not to be locked away! Probably!

A Time to Kill

This was a brutal session, with the group plunging headlong into battle after battle, but they made it through intact, for the most part.

Book 2, Part A, Chapter 2: The Colorful Tribe (aka, Hunt the Wumpus)

After their, er, fun night, the intrepid explorers asked the natives a few more questions, including, "Is there anything unnatural nearby?"

A few tribesmen seemed a little uneasy, but refused to speak until Kiri and Julian put some pressure on them. Finally, they admitted that they knew where something like that was. The chief, seeing an opportunity, suggested that the group go after a large beast that had been bothering them; the creature like to smash stuff up, and that included their village. After a bit of fuming, the group set out on foot to find this creature, something called a wumpus.

As a point of note, this beast is an elephant-sized creature, with powerful legs and a huge buffalo-like head. Its mouth is set with rows of razor-sharp teeth, and the adult males have boar-like tusks.

Book 2: Wonder; Chapter 1: Highs and Lows

And so begins the second book of their adventures, cunningly placed at the end of the semester!

After all the excitement with the murder, the Captain decided to hand over command to Commander Grains, and entered cryo. No one seemed to be terribly upset. With the prisoners also in cryo, the Commander made the executive decision to thaw another officer: Kiri Haeri, a survival expert. Hopefully, her expertise will keep the away missions a little safer. The android, meanwhile, bought himself a few upgrades, including a size increase, and Frosty purchased a repair droid to help him out.

Book 1, Chapter 5: Whodunnit?

To begin, I offer two quotes, taken out of context:
Julian, about Dr. Lundquist: "Now I really wish I knew what she keeps up her dress."
Also Julian, also about Dr. Lundquist: "I tell the android to interface with her data port."

This was an amazing session. We had three people join as we were playing, so things were a little disjointed at first as everyone tried to get up to speed. Still, it all came together in the end. And how!

At 3:36, Frosty went to visit Dr. Becly, the jumpspace scientist from the burning planet. Frosty visits frequently, as he mentioned, discussing jumpspace. The guard at the door knocked for him, but there was no answer. The guard explained that they had brought the wrong food yesterday morning, and the grumpy doctor had gotten upset, refusing his lunch as well; "So, he doesn't want to eat, he doesn't get to eat."
Frosty entered the room; Dr. Becly was dead! He alerted the captain, who decided there would be a heading that night at 8 pm, where the most guilty party would be locked up. He instructed the available crew, at the time Julian and the android, to search for the killer. They began in the room; the med techs placed the time of death at 3:18 am, and the cause of death as a single surgical strike to the kidneys with a mono-filament blade. The guard, meanwhile, were devastated; somehow, the killer slipped in and out under their noses without them seeing a thing.
Julian and the android searched the room, and found a top, a notebook missing some pages, and the lack of another book, as well as the data pad with all the jumpspace research on it.

Next, they combed the security footage, and found an anomaly - a shadow. They followed it down the halls, and eventually to the civilian dining hall around 3:30 am, where they eventually lost it in the morning diners, just before 6 am.

The next step they choose was to interview the diners; the engineer, Lucia Belo, was there all night, working on some math, but didn't notice much. Jiahao Wong, physicist, arrived around 5, but was preoccupied and didn't see anything. The cybernetics doctor, Dr. Theresa Lundquist, was the next in, at 5:30 am. She did see the invisible shape, but thought it was just her eyes playing tricks. Finally, Mark Grenson, pioneer, aided, not long before 6. He didn't see anything, but he was acting suspiciously; enough that Julian took him to the crime scene. He didn't know the crime had even occurred. Tina Fey, having finished some more boring jumpspace calculations, arrived, and pulled Mr. Grenson aside. Her good cop might have been a little more flirty than she intended...

The end result was a few tantalizing clues, but nothing solid. Back to the drawing board... luckily, word came from the med techs about something suspicious: a crew member, Jenny Ovesen, was found unconscious by the garbage area near engineering. She refused to answer any questions.

As it turned out, she and Julian knew each other; they grew up in the same area. Last Julian had heard, she was mixed up with the wrong crowd. After a bit of prying, Julian managed to get her to confess - she was part of NorSup, the drugs and human trafficking gang. She knew of another NorSup member, as well: Mark Grenson.

Exposed, Mark caved, but still knew nothing new about the murder.

After still more questioning, Jenny admitted that she had retrieved a package - a backpack - and ran it through a scrubber. She was supposed to leave it, but stayed, and got tazed from behind.

Another dead end, it looked like. Worse, the guards were running their own investigation, and Frosty, the android, and K'Aps were at the top of the list.

Things looked grim, at least until the group had Jenny look for matching gear; nothing on the ship, but a network search located a match: it was a ghost suit. Another guard, Rein Stroble, remembered an assassin and thief who used such a suit: code name Breathe.

At this point, it was just after 5 pm; with only the hours left, the crew split up and started searching rooms for any clues. Julian found something in room 5, right next door to the murder victim: a holographicly disguised box, with a notebook and data pad! And in the shower, a fragment of changeling skin, a ready made disguise. Now sure that Botty, the poor botanist, was the killer in disguise, the group converged on the man; Tina tried to talk with him, but Julian went straight to the point, trying to shove him in the water. He failed, but K'Aps managed; Botty came out of the water mad as a, well, wet hornet.
The android saw a flash of movement, and he turned to see a man hiding in the bushes; he did not recognize him. Breathe! The crew quickly engaged; the speedy Breathe pulled a sonic pistol and a laser SMG and opened fire, but missed (thanks to a discarded token). Breathe shook off a shaken status, then discarded a token to shake off another. K'Aps moved in to stab him, but ran into a quick counter attack - luckily, it missed. The personal forcefield on Breathe kept him alive; the next round, he managed to wound K'Aps, but took a shaken that he just couldn't get rid of. The others leaped at the chance, and with a really lucky roll, the android added two wounds. Julian finished him off.

The medics managed to stabilize him, bringing him into custody. Behind them came a guard - Jenny had been attacked in her cell, and is in critical condition. Breathe had tried to tie up that loose end only minutes before the battle.

Breathe down for the count, and a gang member behind bars, and still two hours from the deadline. Not bad for a days work.

But what was Breathe doing during the investigation? Where did his ghost suit end up? And why was he going after that data, especially now?

Book 1, Chapter 4: Biothanata, Haroona, and a Ship Graveyard

With the scientist locked up, and the survivors cared for and placed in cryo, the Shifting Horizon continued its journey. The next stop landed in a system with two inhabitable planets; one lush and green, and the other only sparsely populated, and covered with some kind of red liquid. Of course, the group decided to land on the worse planet first...

But, before they could take off, they were hit with a signal - a hugely powerful signal, from far out in the galaxy. As much as they wanted to explore it, though, they just didn't have enough data. On to the planet!

Only a few moments out of the landing pod, and the group met some unfriendly natives: water lizards. These cat-like creatures quickly clamored onto land and attacked, but they were no match for the Frosty's overpowered minigun. He burned through a full barrel of rounds, and eliminated all but one of the beasts. OP, indeed. The final creature was finished off as well, just in time for a group of sickly looking deer to run past, pursued by a number of dog-like creatures. In the spirit of "everything is a target, and there is no such thing as overkill," the group fired at the beasts, reducing them to ash. Even the tough leader of the pack, shrugging off wound after wound, was brought to a quick end. The deer, nervous that they would be the next target, rushed to the end of the isthmus. Julian Tarvis grabbed a small vial to get a sample of the goo, but before he could snag a sample, the goo reached up to grab him! He leaped back just in time as the goo began to climb the banks, stretching towards him and the ship. The deer panic, and one loses its footing, plunging into the red liquid below. It is quickly dissolved, the flesh melting off of it as it screams its last breath...

The crew quickly head toward the ship as the entire sea of red goo begins to splash and froth, then suddenly, with a snap-the-whip motion, heaves a large blob skyward; just as the blob reaches its apex, it bursts into flame, lengthening into an oblong rocket-like shape, and blasting out of the atmosphere! Without waiting to see what happens next, everyone jumped in the ship and gunned it out of the system. In orbit, they could see more of the blobs shooting out from the planet. The ever-helpful AI suggests a name: Biothanata, eater of worlds. The next JPod home will contain a message: nuke the Biothanata to a crisp!

Frosty took a break to get some electronics installed in his head, leaving the others to explore the much less hostile planet. He never noticed his translator being stolen... After a bit of discussion, the group found the Haroona, a peaceful agrarian society of blue ape-like beings. Frosty's translator made quick work of the language, and the group took the opportunity to introduce the peaceful creatures to... well, they had a few options: arms, farming, and technology. They opted for everything, plus fire. What they didn't know is how fast the Haroona can learn... the next time they see their blue friends will be interesting, to say the least.

JPod away, the Shifting Horizon moved on, this time locating a single neutron star... and thousands of ships. Millions. They found an impossible holographic ship, somehow without mass, but with inertia; an ancient J0 ship, far older than it should have been; even a standard rocket-powered ship from World War II (complete with swastikas, natch). Ships from every nation were collected in stable orbits. Finally, the crew found a tiny energy signature: a space-station-like ship with heavy damage. They found that the J-drive had been ejected into space, where it exploded; the blast left the faint shadow of one of the crew on the outside of the ship. Markings showed it was a Russian ship.

Inside, the first few rooms were empty, but past an airlock, they found something... corpses! Julian felt a cold hand brush his shoulder, but managed to keep from wetting himself. For the most part. The room was a burial room, full of the dead, frozen. Past another air lock, the group found the main living area, and four more corpses. One, dead of a broken neck; one from poison; one from hanging (rope around the neck, and a spring on his foot), and the last from shooting herself in the head with a crossbow. It wasn't pretty. From there, there were five exits; straight forward was locked, down was vented to space (and unopenable), right was a dead plantation and a log book, up was a water recycling center, and left was a darkish room with a switch.

The log book contained the last entry from the captain, explaining how he abandoned most of the passengers on a planet out of fear (Pyl'nyy!), but ran out of power in orbit around this star. There are a few basic notes from others, detailing how they tried to get energy from other ships, but failed.

The switch, as it turns out, was a fan; as it squealed to life, the reverberations were enough to wake the dead; once again, however, no one was more than simply shocked. I guess the planet in jump space was enough to harden them against any threat?

As the fan used the last dregs of power, the room ahead clicked open. The android shoved his way in, breaking the (long dead) arm and leg of a man. In the corner of the room was a child-sized medical cryopod, with a tiny baby inside - alive! Frozen for decades, but alive.

As they returned to their ship, they came across another ship: the Gulliver! Its enormous engines were built to accelerate it to near-relativistic speeds; full speed ahead meant the crew traveled from point to point very quickly for them, but days, weeks, even years would pass at every acceleration. The ship was the first deep-space ship to launch, and experienced only about 15 Earth years. Its crew was quite willing to share information, but wanted to resume their journey. They left the crew with a final piece of data: triangulation data for the signal!

As you can see, the exploration is progressing; the crew have covered half the distance from Earth to the Pentacus system. Will they live to see the other side?

Book 1, Chapter 3: Oh #%^@$

Party!

After their experience on the dark planet, it took more than a month of further travel to find anything interesting. In fact, it was the 100th day of leaving Earth, and the good Captain decided to throw a party. It was hardly started before Frosty challenged the Captain to a drinking contest. The Captain, after a moment's thought, agreed; loser buys the drinks. There was a Spin-the-Wheel-of-Drinks, at $5 a spin; the Captain had spun and guzzled two glasses of Sex On The Beach, a Beertini, and a glass of cheap wine; Frosty tossed back two glasses of cheap champagne, a shot of black-label whiskey, and a shot of Snakebite, a mix of alcohol and snake venom. The Captain was actually winning, being slightly less drunk than the insectoid... at least until he spun a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. He chugged the drink and promptly passed out. And then a med tech had him moved to the med bay where he got his stomach pumped.

Book 1, Chapter 2: the Dark Plant and the Crayolians

Shifting Horizon

Book 1, Chapter 2

(Joining the group is Julian Tarvis, a pilot and communications officer.)

Exploring jumpspace is, frankly, boring. There are long stints of doing absolutely nothing in jumpspace, followed by short stints of doing absolutely nothing while calculating where you actually are. After about a week of exploration, during which nothing but empty space or basic rocks-around-a-star solar systems were found, the team found something interesting.

The system itself was quite interesting; it was a binary star system, with a very small red dwarf, and a very large brown dwarf. The brown dwarf was far too large, and yet had not reached fusion; it was large enough to block the light from the red dwarf. The surface temperature of the brown dwarf is a balmy 200 degrees F, and surface gravity is roughly 250 times that of Earth.

Orbiting the binary stars are two objects of interest: first, an Earth-like world, and second, a strange ship. The team quickly decided to take a look at the ship first.