Session 246 - Lost Causes

Phew! Can't believe I got this out on time honestly! That was a lot.

I've got to get this out before the game starts in half an hour or so, so here we go!

Session 246 - Lost Causes

Date:

15 years after the End.

Character List:

- Andromeda, Level 7 Laddite Cleric / Kitty

- Red, Level 6 Duellist Fighter / Timothy

- DJ, Level 6 Intergalacticist Cleric / Charles
- Praise-God-For-He-Gave-His-Only-Son-So-That-We-Might-Be-Saved-From-Damnation Snels, Level 6 Snelsman Cleric / George
- Granite “Grumpy” Ironjaw, Level 6 Warden Dwarf

- Dargo, Level 4 Inheritor / Russell
- The New Moondin Lost Boys, Level 1 Extras / George

New Characters:

- The New Moondin Lost Boys, a group of orphans from New Moondin’s Denialist Brotherhood. They’re all at least 16 so they’re not technically child soldiers.

New Backstory:

- Choosing the Poison World over the perfect future rocked Dargo’s worldview, but if he could go back he’d still do it all again. Re-take an action and all associated rolls once per session.

Enemies Defeated:

- A Stygimoloch (100 exp)
Total: 100 exp

Salvage:

- World’s Longest Sausage (5 exp)
- Massive Kebab (50 exp)
- Book #308: POWERLAD: Mischief in Moondin (50 exp)
- 5 Boar Meat (5 exp)

Total: 110 exp

Events:

--- Grumpy’s World
- Grumpy is floating in white, telling everything he knows to the avatar of Styx in front of him. All about New Moondin, the Seraphim, everything he’s been through.
- “It’s ok! It’s ok! I know, I know!” says Styx, trying to comfort him. “It wasn’t real, Grumpy! You’re safe now. Please just come home with me.”
- The whiteness is split in two, doors opening to reveal the shining city of the real world. Grumpy sees his real self standing on the balcony overlooking the beautiful city, transforming omni-glaive strapped to his back.
- Grumpy rejects heaven, asking that Styx fork his personality and send this version back to the Poison World. Styx looks at him sadly, “it’s always the good ones”, before sending him back to his body in the simulation.

--- The Truth
- Snels is berating his false son in the real world, the shining city of Fate glittering below. He’s pissed that his son would abandon God to become a digital being. “You’re not real!” he yells, “None of this is real! Take me to the real world!”
- “Fine, pull him out” says Styx, dejectedly. Bright white light fills his being.
- …
- beep
- ...
- beep
- …
- beep
- …
- Snels is looking at a matte beige ceiling. Something is beeping. He turns his head to the side and sees his body, Old Man Snels’ body, lying on a hospital bed. The beeping machine is an Automated Dialysis Assistance Machine - an A.D.A.M.
- He looks down at his body - it’s a smooth androgynous flesh-coloured mannequin. Cables are slotted into the ports on his arms and body.
- There is a doctor who starts when he sees the Snels-mannequin sit up and begin undocking the cables. “Woah woah woah, you’re not meant to be awake yet!”. His badge shows his name - Dr Oliver, MD.
- The mannequin leaps at the doctor’s neck and starts to choke him! As he flails the door bangs open and an orderly runs in, followed by Snels’ beautiful wife. She begs the mannequin to stop and it skitters back to its feet, back warily to the wall.
- The orderly tries to explain. The body in the bed is the real Snels - George Snels. He’s been in a coma for 3 years. They’ve been trying to bring him back by forking his mind into a simulation, letting it gain different experiences, then merging it back in to jump-start his consciousness.
- George’s wife begs the mannequin to merge back into her husband’s mind. It’s their last chance. They’ve already tried it several times and each new merge makes the resulting mind more aberrant. If this time doesn’t work, he’ll be gone forever.
- The mannequin sees a goblin walking past in the corridor and goes mad, tearing past the doctor (still coughing and holding his throat) and scrambling out to kill the goblin! It’s not Styx, and the orderly manages to tackle the mannequin down before it does significant harm.
- It stands stock still as it looks out of the glass bay window to the shining city of Fate below. It looks more real, somehow. More grubby. There are fingerprints on the glass, and white foam scum on the distant beach, and tarnish on the rooftops of the brass city.
- It stands and turns to George’s wife, and in its scratchy synthesised voice says, “I need some time to think”.

--- The Actual World
- Grumpy’s final thought, as he’s thrust back into his body in the elevator, is “I want sunglasses!”.
- He jerks awake to find the others are already back and awake. All except Damnation Snels, whose body is trembling in the upload chair. Everyone gets a pair of sunnies to their specification, the glasses forming together from the black glass shards on the floors.
- Since they’re all in the elevator again, the party endeavour to check out some of the other rooms in here. If they express a desire to leave, the black glass of the central room forms steps down to the outside.
- Andromeda pokes her head into a room with countless glass cubes containing miniature animals. It’s pretty cool. On the other side of the room there are two mirrors facing each other. She stands between them… and disappears!
- The others see her look towards them in shock, skin now ghostly pale and her teeth now extended into vampire fangs. She’s not invisible, she’s a vampire! Plus her look has updated to a very exciting vampire chic. She immediately experiments with turning into various classic vampire transformations and it works! Way cool!
- She sees a horse amongst the miniature beasts and touches the cube it’s inside… which suddenly vanishes. The miniature horse jumps out, rapidly starting to grow, and the other cubes begin to shift and fall, releasing other creatures!

--- Snels Is
- Snels opens his eyes into the simulation he chose - the God Sim where he is the Fated King in the omnipotent city of Fate. The simulation is running at an arbitrarily fast speed, he will have thousands of subjective years to think in the space of an objective second.
- His first act is to annihilate all life on the planet in a wave of pale ooze. Komm, süßer Tod plays as the world is wiped clean and the substance of the planet is broken down over the course of centuries, all used to augment Fate into a machine the size of a planet.

- He reaches Kardashev II a thousand years later, sending countless vessels out into the galaxy to claim more energy for the great work. Dyson Sphere Fate's computational power grows exponentially. The simulation starts to break down, losing resolution as the thinking machine takes up every last scrap of processing power. - Snels, deep in the silent core of the impossibly vast computer, sees error codes flooding in. He smiles as the simulation collapses and he sees, for the briefest second, the myriad worlds beyond...

--- Critter Chaos!
- The animal cubes are falling and shattering, releasing the creatures within!
- Grumpy holds up one of the walls of glass cubes, flicking another to support another pile. A hippo, rapidly growing from its cube in the wall, bites him with its massive jaws!
- Andromeda’s horse whinnies, looks into her eyes, and is suddenly taken out by a rhino! They smash into another wall, right next to a crocodile which snaps at their legs! Andromeda turns to see a tiger beginning to pounce and makes it stop still when it looks into her vampire eyes. She controls a tiger!
- The beasts in the cubes smashed apart by the deadly rhino-on-horse combat start growing themselves. It’s chaos!
- Outside, in the central chamber, Damnation Snels’ body starts jerking and frothing. Andromeda can sense his heart seizing up and suddenly feels very hungry.

--- A Virus
- He’s back in the place he was thousands and thousands of years ago. A hospital bed, looking up at a matte beige ceiling.
- Voices, raised in alarm. “Oh fuck he was meant to dip in and have a couple of hours down these, how long was that for him?!”.
- A goblin’s voice, “I’m trying to shut it down!”.
- Another voice, sobbing, his wife. He looks to the side. George Snels’ body is shuddering, his eyes pop open, bloodshot, grinding his teeth. The Snels’ make eye contact. A shock of recognition. Then blankness. Whiteness.
- He’s floating in white again. Styx is there, but he seems frustrated and distracted.
- “You gotta make a choice man! Your simulation released a subneural virus, we can’t stay here long. Back into the simulation? Or merge with yourself in the real world?”
- Snels demands the truth, and Styx tells him that the Poison World is the simulation and the real world is reality. “You’re lying to me!” cries Snels.
- Snels chooses neither, choosing to float here in this white limbo. Time doesn’t scare him. After all, he’s lived for millenia.
- Styx disappears, telling Snels he pities him. As a last act of charity, he gives Snels a window to the Poison World simulation, leaving him to look out of the eyes of some other Snels below…

--- Mystery Meat

- Inside the room it’s clearly a lost cause! The room is filling up with more and more animals, compressing into a whole lot of miscellaneous meat! Andromeda leaps her tiger into combat and considers going to eat Snels. If she bites the back of the neck, nobody will ever suspect...
- She turns to look back and… Snels is poking his head into the room? She sees him realise that everything’s fucked in there, then run out to the centre room and collapse into black glass.
- The party absconds with great alacrity! Dargo grabs the remains of the crocodile and collapses into blob-mode, digesting the creature and upgrading his softshell crab armour to crocodile scales.
- The door shuts behind them… but it’s too slow. The sound of dying animals is deafening and horrific. The crushed up meat and bone and scales and feathers crams up against the closing door and slows it as it struggles to iris shut. The meat extrudes out through the centre of the door, creating the world’s most awful doner kebab and then the world’s longest and most suspect sausage.
- They look at the tube of gristly meat with a mixture of horror and genuine interest. The only sound the squishing, slopping sound of Dargo digesting his crocodilian meal. DJ hefts the kebab onto his shoulder, “Result!”.

--- Extra Time
- They leave the elevator, the other doors closing to prevent them fucking things up further, and leave down the glass stairs in the central chamber.
- The question is now what they do next! Andromeda changes into a bat, her vampire form unbothered by the artificial daylight within the dome, and flies up to get the lay of the land.
- DJ wants to investigate a plume of sparkling smoke, assuming it’s an alien crash site. Andromeda wants to go to Mt Death Frost now that she’s a vampire and check them out.
- They go to collect the minions who had to wait across the black glass and find a surprise - lots of people! It’s the New Moondin Lost Boys, the Brotherhood’s orphan division, led by Flowers Penurius. They’re all named after things which no longer exist, hence the name.
- Andromeda approaches her Void Pet which is extremely timid at her approach. It eventually warms to her again after briefly shying away.
- They decide to head to Mt Death Frost first, then come back to investigate the crash site. Vampires it is!

--- Road to Mt Death Frost
- Cutting back through the dense, horrible forest, they have a brief encounter with a couple of people near a dead body - one a human, the other a slime creature. They seem to be having a consensually good time, despite the dead body hidden in the ferns nearby. Dargo eats the body and finds he’s just a dead guy who died of natural causes… naturally occurring dinosaur causes.
- They lift the corpse’s gear. Some rope, a dino-bone sword, and a book! It’s book #308 - POWERLAD: Mischief in Moondin. A classic!
- Red stabs herself in the head “a bit” to allow Lonely Blade to talk to the version of the Lady in his head. She is… perturbed by the voice of RJ and says she’ll talk to Red any time as long as she please please please removes the sword from her head!
- They continue on and as they reach the foot of the mountain they come across a Stygimoloch, a species of Pachycephalosaurus, harassing a boar! It’s defending eggs, and Red is absolutely fucking delighted.
- Red tries to sneak in and grab the eggs, but it spots her! She easily evades its thick-skulled charge, and DJ quite circumvents matters by Abducting the poor dinosaur into the sky.
- Andromeda finishes off the wounded boar, draining all of its blood. Delicious. Grumpy gathers the bloodless meat for rations.
- While he dressed the carcass the dinosaur plummets out of the sky and slams into the ground. So much for that poor thing!

--- Vampire Queen
- They start climbing the mountain and are met by some rather charming vampires. “Vampdromeda” is warned about meeting Bertha. GJ hits it off with a vampire after offering his blood, so she takes him off for a threesome off-screen. Nice.
- After DJ returns, one of the vampires offers to take the party up the mountain so they don’t have to make the climb. He summons a horde of rats that take them all the way up to a cave mouth near the top of the mountain.
- From the darkness of the cave the slender Morticia Addams-like figure of Bertha approaches. Her voice screams out. “An Andromeda… vampire? You have some fucking nerve! You took my husband from meeeee!!!”.
- As she screams, a ghostly banshee form form screeches out of her, gliding straight towards Andromeda!

Total: 3000 exp

Team Bonus:

- Absolutely Disgusting bonus
- Aggressive Negotiations bonus
- Antagonist Antagoniser bonus
- Balls to the Wall bonus
- Best of Intentions bonus
- Better Part of Valour bonus
- Brutal Kill bonus
- Coitus boners
- Classic Charles bonus
- Deja Vu bonus
- Diplomancy bonus
- Dramatic Battle bonus
- Dramatic Escape bonus
- Enmity Inciter bonus
- Freudian bonus
- Heresy bonus
- Holy bonus
- Homoerotic bonus
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus
- Ludicrous Gore bonus
- Mountaineer bonus
- Noblebright bonus
- Pundemonium bonus
- Pyrrhic Victory bonus
- Split the Party bonus
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong bonus

Total: 1300 exp

Individual Bonus:

- Chronicler (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Expedition Leader (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Cartographer (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Paymaster (Charles / DJ - 100 exp)
- Quartermaster (Russell / Dargo - 100 exp)

- Vanguard (Russell / Dargo - 100 exp)
- Triage (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Chef (George / NMLB - 100 exp)

- JÜGBRINGYR bonus (Timothy, Charles, Kitty - 500 exp ea.)

- Art Attack bonus (George - 100 exp ea.)

- An Hero bonus (George - 200 exp)
- Lonely Death bonus (George - 500 exp)

Death (?) Toll:

- Praise-God-For-He-Gave-His-Only-Son-So-That-We-Might-Be-Saved-From-Damnation Snels, trapped in simulation limbo forevermore.

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Andromedan Vampire: 75501 (Level up at 144000)

- Tim / Red, Level 6 Duellist Fighter: 57314 (Level up at 64000)

- Charles / Dustin Johnson, Level 6 Intergalacticist Cleric: 54946 (Level up at 56000)

- Carter / Granite "Grumpy" Ironjaw, Level 6 Warden Dwarf: 42874 (Level up at 70400)

- Russell / Dargo, Level 5 Inheritor: 27266 (Level up at 36000)

- George / The New Moondin Lost Boys, Level 2 Extras: 1652 (Level up at 3000)

Level Up! +1d12 HP! +Named Character! +Backstory!

Session 245 - Space Spookmas

On a special gimmick spooopy Halloween special we take our leave of our usual fantasy world and look starward, where a benighted Cattle Class transport ship has found itself in trouble on its decades-long trip to the backwater colony of New Croydon...

Session 245 - Space Spookmas

Character List:

- Jack Redshirt, a Marine who was on his way to his new job as a guard on the colony of New Croydon.
- Dr Selene Aquarius, a Scientist with majors in Biochemistry and Psychology.
- Crawford Falconer, selfless space teamster with a knack for Jury-Rigging.
- Dr Dirk Custard, computer Scientist with a suspicious sideline in Hydroponics.
- Shack Skipper, ship’s mechanic on the worst ride of his life.
- Synthetic Neologic and Exploratory Learning System (S.N.E.L.S.), an Android they forgot to put in standby mode when the ship set off on its interminable voyage to a new world.
- Xenogene Smith, a Scientist with a wide scientific portfolio.

Events:

--- Mayday!
- Cryopods slide open to reveal the clamour of sirens and red emergency lighting! A voice repeats “Warning. Hull Breach. Life Support Failure. All Crew to Life Rafts!”
- Floating up out of cryo are four people. John Redshirt, Dr Selene Aquarius, Dr Dirk Custard, and Crawford Falconer. They bleerily peer round in the zero-G, flailing at their equipment which has come loose and broken open somehow. There is an uncanny valley android here, who looks at a floating chess set with some concern. He was playing that!
- Dr Custard manages to float his way to another cryopod and looks inside. It’s steamed up in there! He tries hacking the console to no avail. When the steam clears it’s obvious that the pod under the glass was ejected in Life Pod mode.
- Crawford is an expert in Zero-G manouevring, so he quickly wriggles into his vacc-suit while Jack Redshirt heads for the door and yells for the computer. A computerised voice responds, filling him in on the situation.
- The ship is way off course - 75 years into a 55 year voyage - and has hull breaches after flying through a comet’s tail. Majority of life pods and crew ejected without incident - unfortunately the PCs had faulty pods and that didn’t work. - It’s on an inevitable collision course with planet LV-111 but will try its best to save the ship. If they can man the bridge, fix the broken Engine 3, or eject some mass that might increase chance of crash survival. They grab networked palm consoles with the ship's map on them from a wall locker that springs open.

- The group splits up. Dr Custard and Crawford Falconer, the best at computers and repairs, will head aft to the Engineering bay to fix Engine 3. The others will go up to the bridge to see what they can do.

--- Bridge Team
- Heading up the stem towards the bridge, S.N.E.L.S. notices a body floating in the zero-g, trailing blood. His cybernetic scanner detects no android components, but Dr Aquarius’ medscanner does a better job. Mild concussion. Her ministrations wake the man - Private Billock - a bottom-rung crew member.
- Doc Aquarius gives him a stimpack and he is RARING TO GO! They take him with them to the bridge.
- The airlock warns that the bridge is depressurised and needs a crew member to override the door. No problem, Private Billock is here. He unlocks the airlock and oh shit! The airlock itself is punctured! He gets sucked in along with S.N.E.L.S. who couldn’t care less about the vaccuum of space. The others freak out, terrified at the realisation of how close space is.
- The airlock door slams shut and Private Billock dies, sucked out into the bridge when the other door opens. S.N.E.L.S. waves and gives a thumbs up to the others locked out in the stem.

- He approaches the ships wheel where the Captain’s body still floats, tied to the wheel. He shoves the body away and gets in position to steer the crashlanding vessel to a hopefully safe crash. His synth-flesh begins to sear and bubble as the ship enters atmo…

--- Stem Team
- Locked out of the bridge by a psychopathic android who’s probably trying to save their lives, Jack Redshirt and Doc Aquarius desperately look for somewhere safe to ride out the crash. While Dr Aquarius sprints for a cryopod, Jack raids the ship’s armoury. He finds lots of mutiny suppression gear - foam guns, deployable waist-high forcefields, and flashbangs.
- He heads back to find Dr Aquarius and sees that she’s already locked herself in cryo and has rapidly cycled the freeze process. She seems him and mouths “sorry” as the pod power-freezes her. Out of options, Jack Redshirt turns the foam gun on himself and sprays himself into a cushion of thick solidifying foam…

--- Engineering Team
- Dr Custard and Crawford Falconer zip down the stem to Engineering with impressive speed. They reach the door in no time and Dr Custard hacks the door console with ease. They’re in!
- They find some Zero-G Manouevre Gear and diagnose the issue - Engine 3 was hit by debris! They need to get out there directly and fix it!
- The ship’s breaking atmo so they don’t have much time. They ride out to the access port and fly out in their zero-g gear. Crawford begins fixing the problem while Dr Custard heads into the engine housing proper.
- Crawford realises he won’t have time to fix the engine and get to safety. Dr Custard is already with his back against a bulkhead, power-welding his magboots to the floor. He’s a cowardly Custard.
- Crawford heroically continues to fix the engine, but it’s too late. Dr Custard tries to blank out the screams of pain through the short-range comms as Crawford Falconer burns up in the atmosphere.

--- Impact

- The burning remains of the transport ship streak through the sky, breaking into pieces as they plummet towards the planet below. The planet’s three suns burn high overhead as the ship impacts the alien soil, tearing through the dense carpet of native flora and eventually, thankfully, coming to a stop.

- S.N.E.L.S, face melting from his metal skull, pulls his way out of the wreckage. He’s somewhere between the Terminator and a melted waxwork now. Horrifying. Dust trickles off him slowly in the 0.7 G of this planet.
- Other than the poor brave Crawford Falconer, the survivors survived! Jack Redshirt jams a stimpack into his leg and uses his cocaine-strength to rip his way out of the hardened foam, then slaps his hand on Dr Aquarius’ cryopod to let her out. No time to die!
- Dr Custard, screams still ringing in his ears, stumbles out of the engine wreckage. He’s rattled, but still a scientist, so he scans the area for life signs so he can find his crew. Good news - there’s life everywhere! His bio-scanner is picking up life all around him! Thankfully he spots the other survivors walking around the crash site, so he heads off to see them.
- Dr Aquarius tests the flora and fauna of this alien world. Broad, metallic ankle-height leaves create dense cover that protects a whole ecosystem of ten-legged insect-analogs beneath from the harsh radiation of the three suns. Spaced around the place a lumpy man-sized cactus-analogs which occasionally gout flame as they combust the hydrogen- and oxygen-rich atmosphere into water.
- Another survivor, Shack Skipper, emerges from the wreckage. He was on a night shift and against all odds slept through the warnings!
- Shack tries to build a shelter for when they return, but as soon as he makes it even a bit shady the structure attracts bugs from all over. He tries chopping down a flame-scarecrow-cactus thing with his vibromachete and finds it’s got bubbles of potable water in it! Nice!
- Stimpacks are passed round and snorted. It’s good shit. Comms are picking up a distress beacon from a caldera only a few klicks from the crash site, so they figure it’s a good idea to go check it out! Something's shining from the rim of the caldera, too.

- Before they leave, Jack Redshirt passes out weapons he nabbed from the armoury before the crash. It’s like Christmas!

--- The Prefab
- They set off towards the distress beacon, despite Dr Custard telling them it’s been going for 23 years or so. While everyone else has hazard suits and such, Shack Skipper insists on smearing Jack Redshirt with plant goop to keep the sun radiation off. Seems legit.
- On the way they pass by a prefab shelter in a clear patch of ground. Footprints and tyre tracks can still be seen in the dirt around it - there’s no wind on this planet to blow them away.
- Inside the prefab is… a corpse! A corpse that’s been drilled with circular holes! Jack and S.N.E.L.S. freak each other out, and the panic spreads to the rest of the team! They get it under control though, thankfully.
- Dr Aquarius cautiously approaches the corpse with her bioscanner and checks out what else is in the prefab. There are core samples in here, and It seems clear that the corpse was cored out too, but whatever device was used to do it isn’t here.

--- Mattie
- Jack Redshirt is tapped on the shoulder and freaks! He whirls around, pointing his SMG at… a perfectly fine S.N.E.L.S unit! The face is normal and everything! He introduces himself as Mattie, the last android survivor of a group of 25 or so scientists working at this base.
- Interrogating him, they discover that all his scientist friends were taken apart piece by piece, but there’s a real memory block around 23 years ago that prevents him saying more.
- “Hey, why don’t we download Mattie into Snels?”
- They do, but the upload goes slightly wrong. The partition between S.N.E.L.S and Mattie is weak, and they’re leaking into each other. S.N.E.L.S’ IFF system glitches, causing him to treat all entities as friends. However he does get insight into Mattie’s mind. It all went dark 23 years ago, then the scientists started dying.
- Dr Custard deactivates the empty Mattie unit, to S.N.E.L.S’ satisfaction.

--- A Last Stand
- They ascend the shallow sides of the caldera and head towards a rover parked on the rim. The rover is surrounded by spent shells and empty weapons, scuffed earth and footprints and knife-like prints slashing the ground. Floodlights face outwards, connected to the rover by cables, although most are knocked over.
- Nearby are clear signs of an orbital lander site. The rover is connected to a signal booster that was clearly meant to call it down from orbit for evac. There’s a spent battery in the rover, and another spent battery on the ground nearby. Jack Redshirt grabs them both, his military-issue armour has an exoskeleton to help carry heavy loads.
- To the surprise of everyone, another survivor arrives! His cryo-pod didn’t open until after the crash, and he eventually followed the group’s tracks here! He is another scientist, Xenogene Smith, and he’s excited to psychoanalyse everyone.

- John Redshirt finds a cache of ammo in the rover - it’s obvious the scientists didn’t have a chance to grab it. No bodies anywhere, though there is a lot of old bloodstains. He chucks a combat shotgun to Dr Aquarius and passes around flashbangs. Whatever killed these people, it must hate light.
- Dr Aquarius analyses the orbits of the suns and realises that there’s unlikely to be a night time any time soon. Given the suns’ configuration, there’s always going to be at least one shining down everywhere on the planet’s surface.

- From the landing site they can see tracks and footprints leading down into the shallow caldera. In the mild shade there’s a scientific complex made of connected cubes. Standard research outpost. Across the caldera from here is a solar array on the 

- S.N.E.L.S tries to interrogate Mattie’s memories but there’s a block there. Dr Custard and Smith hack into the android brain and unearth Mattie’s terrible secret - he sabotaged the Comms relay after the scientists discovered xenos technology. That’s why the scientists couldn’t call down the evac satellite. Fortunately Dr Custard discovers how the relay can be fixed - it could be their way off this rock!

--- The Research Station
- They approach the research base cautiously. Dr Custard’s bioscanner picks up life inside, but can’t find the exact source due to the base’s radiation shielding. Shack suggests cutting through the wall into the Comms station, rather than messing about getting in the proper way, but the team don’t want to risk damaging the equipment inside.
- Instead they walk around to a bubble of plastic that blisters out of the side of one of the cube-chambers. Inside through the dense film they can see plants growing.
- Shack cuts through the membrane with his vibrochete and there is a rush of air from within. They see that the airlock is open, and the plants within are the same metallic-leaved flora as those on the surface of the planet. There are a few graves here, although one seems to be more of an exit hole for something large and the other was only half-dug.
- Not taking any chances, S.N.E.L.S foams up the hole with his foam gun. Nothing’s going to come out of here!
- They enter the research complex and find themselves in a biolab, much to the delight of Dr Aquarius. Stringy dried gunk hangs from the ceilings and clings to clothes. There are bloodstains and a lot of old scientific equipment, much of it smashed. They try a light switch and find that the power is completely off.
- Dr Aquarius and Xenogene Smith begin going through the journals they find. S.N.E.L.S tries to hack his own brain again for more info. Shack Skipper and Jack Redshirt head out to the solar array to see if they can reconnect the power. Dr Custard goes to check out the Comms room alone…

--- Team Research
- The research journals are elucidating. This research base was here to find whether the planet was safe for human colonisation - apparently not. The bug-analogs have 152 chromosomes, have a relaxed, shady life under the leaves, and the last journal has a very ominous “they come from under the earth!!” scrawled on it.

- S.N.E.L.S manages to solidify his partition from Mattie, relegating him to a mere subroutine. He discovers that Mattie sabotaged the Comms on standing orders from the Wallace-Yutani Megaconglomerate! After the scientists found the xeno vessel, Mattie send a last encrypted message then sabotaged the comms.

--- Team Solar
- Shack and Jack jog towards the solar array on the rim of the caldera, squinting against the light of the three suns. They pass by an overturned trike and a power box. Footprints go from the trike into the research base, and the trike’s tracks lead up in the direction they’re going. The power box connects the solar array to a multitude of cables going into the research base, but it’s unpowered.
- They continue after a few fruitless attempts by Shack to get the trike moving, soon reaching the solar array. They find it’s been unplugged from the research station, and plugged into something just over the rim of the caldera… a strange grey egg-shaped thing surrounded by tools. An alien vessel?

- Before checking out the xeno ship they head back to the array and switch the plugs to restore power to the research station. They see the lights flicker on in the caldera below… and hear horrific screeching from within.

--- Dr Custard
- Dr Custard walks, torch-first, through the next lab. It’s an astrophysics lab, as evidenced by the very cool mechanical orrery in the centre of the room and the star charts on the walls. The Comms station is just ahead. His bioscanner bloops, inaccurate inside the rad-shielded station.
- He warily enters the comms centre and finds that it has no power. Thankfully he knows exactly where Mattie sabotaged it.
- There is a hiss from somewhere above and he is pushed out the the room covered in stringy goop! The snotlike strands wrap around him and he staggers into the orrery, his finger spasming on the trigger of his laser-cutter! A sheet of red light slices out, revealing a horrifying and diabolically alien face!
- It hisses and is about to leap… when the lights suddenly flicker back on! The alien screams and skitters back into the Comms room, while S.N.E.L.S runs in to investigate the noise. He tries to cut the webbing off to no avail, and Dr Custard is dragged into the darkness of the Comms room!

--- Team Solar

- Jack and Shack check out the metallic grey egg and discover it is indeed an alien ship! The scientists seem to have been experimenting on it, power tools and scientific equipment surround it. It looks like they hacked something into the side of the ship - a stuck-on box of wires and filaments that’s the right size for a power cell.
- A shadow falls over them and they look around to see a wondrous sight - a gas giant on the horizon. Rising to cover the three suns… the night is finally coming.

- Shack and Jack split up as they sprint back towards the research station. To power the xeno ship they need to get those power cells charged now! Shack heads for the garage, while Jack grabs his SMG and runs for the nearest airlock into the base to protect the scientists.

--- Team Research
- The scientists burst into the astrophysics lab and see flashes of a laser-cutter inside the room! The flashes reveal Dr Custard beset by a horrific alien beast! Dr Smith mixes a bunch of drugs in a syringe and shoots it from his tranq gun at the creature, but his shaking hands make the shot go wide. The syringe clatters to the ground next to Dr Custard’s head.
- The creature’s attention is momentarily distracted by the syringe, and Dr Custard manages a direct hit with his laser-cutter! Designed to shear through ship hulls, the blast scythes the creature in half and blasts out through the side of the Comms room, tearing through the array! The equipment is destroyed, but Dr Custard is alive!
- Dr Smith injects Dr Custard with some drug concoction and dramatically fails at First Aid, making Dr Custard unable to heal with a botched mix of stimulants.
- Through the tear in the side of the research lab, they see night begin to fall… and the lights in the base begin to flicker and die as the suns go into a triple-eclipse...

--- Shack Skipper

- Shack bolts for the garage, sprinting in low bounds in the lower gravity. He sees a swarm of insects swirling from under the carpet of silvery leaves, pouring into the darkening sky and swirling towards him!
- He fires a flare at them, scattering the swarm briefly before they recover and tear past him, raking at his vaccsuit and cutting through the thin material!
- They swirl round for another pass and Shack manages to open the garage door and dive through before they hit! He scrabbles for the door close panel on the inside and gets it closed in time. The insects thud like rain against the metal, and as it’s closing he sees dog-sized alien creatures bounding over the silvery plants towards the research centre.
- He stands up, dusts himself off, and looks around the garage. There are several vehicles in here, most of them solar powered. There is a single battery-powered rover though, and most importantly there’s a charger harness for a power cell! He breathes a sigh of relief… until a sound of shifting metal comes from behind the tool racks...

--- Jack Redshirt
- Jack has reached the nearest airlock into the research base and it hisses open at his approach. He is confronted by the scientists’ bathrooms. There is dried blood everywhere, and the stringy web-like stuff coating the walls, ceiling, and light fixtures.
- In the dim light he sees a ring of glowing eyes. Not quick enough! The creature leaps at him, spewing sticky web from its spiral maw! He throws it off and opens fire with his SMG, blasting the creature backwards into a toilet stall!

- He dives and sprays the beast with more autofire, tearing it to shreds. It finally stops moving with a screech, the bug guts spilling comically into the toilet.

--- Shack Skipper
- Shack raises his rigging gun, hands shaking as he looks along the rows of tools… and suddenly something leaps at him! His shot goes wild… and good thing too. It’s an elderly cat! It winds around his legs and he looks at the name on its collar - Tiberius. A good name for a space cat.
- He picks the power cell up from the floor and plugs it into the charging station. Thankfully the charger has a fast-charge setting, although charging the power cell will take the last of the electricity in the station. Fuck it, they’re leaving anyway.

--- Team Science
- Doctor Aquarius is just filling a squirt bottle with potent acid when Jack Redshirt arrives in the biolab. He went through a wrecked living area and into what used to be the gardens and life support module to get to the biolab, though the gardens have been long devoured.
- Doctors Smith and Custard are vacillating, wondering what to do now the Comms Array is destroyed and they can’t call down the lander. Jack tells them that there’s an alien ship they can use, and a plan is born!
- S.N.E.L.S suddenly goes stock-still in the centre of the lab, clutching his robot head. The mention of xenos technology has triggered buried commands from the Wallace-Yutani megacorporation. Send a message to Wallace-Yutani. Destroy Comms. Kill witnesses. In his mind, Mattie pounds against the partition between their minds.
- The others see S.N.E.L.S stagger out into the garden blister and collapse into the half-dug grave, pulling the dirt over himself to make sure he’s buried. He will not kill the humans. He cannot kill the humans. He will remain underground until the suns return. He will be saved.
- Over the shortwave comms, Shack Skipper comes in! He’s charged a power cell and is bringing the rover around to get them! Jack tells the scientists they’ll head out the way he came in - through the toilets.

- In their torchlight one of the creatures bursts out into the ruined gardens and towards the group! Dr Aquarius lets loose with her acid spray, distracting it, and Dr Custard knocks it out with his arc-welder! It staggers into the wall, trying to get the acid of its face.
- They burst out of the airlock into the pitch blackness outside. The night is filled with chirps and screams. Highbeams blast out into the darkness, clearing a space! Shack Skipper is here!
- Dr Smith has been leaving a trail of highly flammable liquid behind him as he runs and lights it, sending the research base up into flames! Fearful cries screech from within.

--- Race to the Spaceship!
- Shack skids to a stop and reveals a horrible truth - the rover’s a two-seater! Jack Redshirt hops in so he can shoot the aliens on the road, while the scientists hang off the back. They set off and the scientists immediately lose their grip! Fuck!
- The aliens close in as the rover drives off to the alien ship. Dr Custard straps on the zero-G harness he’s had since before the crash. Hopefully a hard burn will at least help boost them in this low gravity situation!
- The scientists run for it! Outside the circle of light cast by the burning research lab, the aliens swarm! Dr Custard puts his zero-g gear into a hard burn, extending their bounding jumps up the side of the caldera and towards the lights!
- There is a flash and suddenly the area is lit with an eerie red light. A flare drifts down from overhead, scaring the creatures back and giving them an opening!

- They crest the rise and reach the xenos ship itself. Shack waits until the last moment to disconnect the power cell from the car and shove it into the jury-rigged casing on the side of the alien vessel, killing the rover’s high-beams.
- Jack Redshirt sends red flare after flare into the sky, keeping the creatures off as the scientists get the door to the ship open. It pulls back organically, a circular orifice in the stone shell of the ship.

--- Escape!
- They pile into the chamber within the ship, Jack holding the rearguard, firing into the masses of creatures piling up beyond the flare’s guttering light. He steps in as the last flare dies and the door closes behind him.
- They are in an airlock, piled up with food and vacc-suits and memorabilia. Clearly the researchers had the same idea of using this as an escape craft. The airlock opens to reveal a control chamber, the controls strange and glowing.
- The power cell engaged, the ship boots up on its own! The sides of the ship shimmer, going opaque and revealing the aliens straining at its stone skin, before fire erupts from beneath the ship and fries them as it begins to take off!
- A holographic star map appears with coordinates pre-set. None of the controls react to their touch. This ship knows where it’s going!
- They breach atmo and a door behind them orifices open. Inside is a glowing red gem wreathed in smoke, lighting the room with a fiery glow. Surrounding the gem are hundreds of boxes containing… washing machines? Bidets? Kettles? Playstation 4s??
- They barely have time to react as the ship jumps to hyperspace. Pure white glows from the control room and then, as soon as it began, they’re approaching a planet wreathed with green smoke. They are flying towards it at a rapid pace.
- An alien voice says, “thank you… you have allowed my people to prosper. Brace for impact in five… four… three… two… one…”

--- End of Session

Exp Bonuses:
- Spoopy Halloween Bonus (All - 10 000 exp ea.)

- Prolific Space Chronicler bonus (Kitty, George - 500 exp) - Chippo Champion bonus (Ollie - 200 exp) - Corn Colonel bonus (Timothy - 100 exp)- Jugbringer bonus (Ollie, Charles, Timothy - 500 exp ea.)
- Art Attack bonus (Charles - 100 exp) - Artapalooza bonus (Charles - 100 exp)