PDQ# SciFi Game Actual Play – Session 3 (06/06/2009)


TL;DR: We played a short and confusing session


The Cast:



The first session of this game can be found here.

The second session of this game can be found here.


The third session opened with the Ork ship turning to face the Voltage Normal while they worked on the engines. Fortunately for the VN crew, the Ork ship was badly damaged and so the engines were off-line. It became a race to get engines back online to get away before the Orks got done with their repairs. As the group got things done and discussed what to do, Ang noticed that the Orks weren't working on their engines, but were instead pulling something out of their hold that was giving off traces of hard radiation.


The group double-times it and gets the engines online. They boost away to the very tip of the Styx Belt, the hyperspace ghost of an asteroid field. Many hours later, the group gets to the Belt's tip. Before that time, they see the Ork ship and two Core ships detonate back where they departed from, as the Orky nuke goes off. The group prepares to send a broadcast of what they know to all parties when they arrive at the transmit location at the Belt's tip.


Along the way they hack the security bot-brains running the boxes of treasure and learn that the Dragon Skull and the Monolith had been trying with no success to hack the boxes from the inside. The monolith, it seems, wants to be found. They transfer the boxes into the assault shuttle in case they have to make a quick burn away from the VN. Chance is still wearing the chitinous armor and has dreams of being one of the bug race from Draco V during some sort of Holy War against the Tree Folk (big sasquatch people who bear the “Marigold” sigil). He sees some event where the two Dragon factions manifest and both sides have some sort of crisis of Faith, but wakes up before any context for the event manifests. He asks Marion about it and is told that the Tree Folk ate the larvae of Marion's people all the time.


At the very tip of the belt, they find a section of a giant bridge with an assault shuttle landed on it. There is a small habitat module as well as the remains of a caravan of very large wagons pulled by dinosaur looking creatures, a large glyph, and an atmosphere inside the Quasi-space sheath leading into the Styx Belt itself. Jarl takes the Exo in and gives it a good look-see. Only the habitat module has any signs of life, according to his sensors.


Jarl uses his gun-sight's camera to peer inside the dome of the habitat module and sees an older man from the Core reading inside his holo-study and smoking a pipe. He has two robot butlers attending him (that Jarl refers to as “kill-bots” for the rest of the session). Jarl is spotted by the old man, so he opts to retreat from the scene (since there is no radio transmissions from the conduit to the ship because of the transition to Quasi-space. On his way out of the Styx Belt conduit, he wrecks the shuttles engines to prevent pursuit.


The habitat module starts to use a Aldus Lamp and Morse Code to communicate to the ship, since light is being transmitted through the membrane. He arranges to have an up-link sent out of the conduit to allow better and faster communications and the crew agrees. He converses with the group for a bit, reveals that he was the mysterious party that was willing to pay millions to divert the cargo to him. He explains what his work is and why he wants the materials. He reveals that the materials in the boxes were recovered from the bridge segment and sent by the Morgan Corporation to a research lab to figure out what the materials were used for. Once the data on how to use the monolith was complete, he now wants to use it to open a portal to the Dark Master who lays beyond it. With the knowledge that the Undying and Greatest One can provide humanity, there will be nothing Mankind can't do. He also shows them the subtle majesty of the Harvest Dance, but the sadly limited intellects of the Crew are unable to appreciate it.


The crew refuses to sell the items...


...well, in the interest of honesty, that is not the true story. The true story is that the crew dickered over what to do until Chase and Homeboy decided to sell the materials to the old man. This lead to a declaration of initiative for some serious inter-party throw-down. Zac and Kevin chose to “ret-con” this once is became clear it would lead to a fight with people not making it out alive.


The crew refuses to sell the items. The old man sends a insectoid “troll” from under the bridge to destroy the ship, using its four plasma lances and its teleportation ability. Jarl uses the Exo to fight the bad guy and finally kills the troll with help from Ang in the shuttle firing away at the thing and by pushing a cargo pod loaded with explosives at the troll and blowing it up. The Exo is very damaged, but the crew and ship intact.


As the prepare to leave, the notice a Core vessel coming to investigate the disturbance. The crew answers a laser-aided direct transmission communication and Homeboy uses his ability to mimic voices to pretend to be the old man back at the habitat. He picks a fight with Lt O'Toole, an officer in the Core Navy in a longboat sent from the HIS Valiant Victory, a Ship of the Line with 70 Grav Tendrils. O'Toole and his robot troops asks the VN to stand away from the site so they are not injured and he proceeds to lay waste to the old man's domicile. The old man responds by animating the corpses strewn around the bridge site, but the robots make short work of those ancient, slow dead. The habitat module is taken and destroyed in pace. O'Toole and his robots begin carting away books afterwards. O'Toole then calls the VN and asks if the command staff would like to dine with him on the bridge. Luna accepts, but ask for time to stall so they can repair the Exo. He confirms a three hour delay before dining.


Luna and Homeboy take an M-Pod over to the bridge and Luna, in her Core finery, dines with the officer. O'Toole offers to escort the ship to Draco V to rendezvous with Morgan Corp Security there, who will help the crew destroy the Monolith in a volcano that intersects the planet's hyper-spacial power grid – a unique opportunity to destroy the ancient technology. He assures Luna he wants the evil ended as soon as possible as much as she does. He also hints at a Core/Alliance merger with Morgan Corp and he says that the Alliance used the Ork contagion on the Neutral station in the system, causing an outbreak the Core has been trying to rein in.


Luna asks if she can discuss it with the crew first. O'Toole consents. Luna returns to the ship to mull things over with the crew. The crew think the best thing to do is to set the monolith's box adrift and then have it transmit to O'Toole as the VN runs away back to Port Austin to give the tech to the Alliance outpost there. They do so, and O'Toole is unable to pursue in time and chooses to pickup the monolith instead as soon as the box begins to squelch.


The VN burns hard and then shrouds itself in a cloaking layer replicated from the invisibility potion in the boxes re-engineered by Chance to self-repair when it gets used up. With it, they drift to Port Austin. Along the way, they spot a group of Orks who are gathering up materials from the space battles of late (and of the old Alliance/Core War) and building a nice, Orky Dragon Mech that is, to say the least, HUGE. They roll a pod full of explosives at it as they pass and the Orks are driven mad as the explosion ruins some of their work. Two Alliance ships spot the explosion and come to challenge the Orks (and add some additional spare parts to the Dragon once dead).


The Voltage Normal rechristens itself the “Johnny Five” and then de-cloaks as it approaches the station...


At this point, Kevin had to go, so we didn't get a cliffhanger per se.



End – Session Three



Judd's Notes:

Not a great session for me, in terms of being able to roll with the punches. Lots of things I prepped for didn't happen and lots of things I didn't prep for did. One complaint about the game, and my GMing style in general was that every NPC of mine lies or hides things from the group. While this is a wild exaggeration, it does show a trust gap that explains the play I have seen in the game.

As I stated before, this game is an attempt to “repair” a bad con game from days gone by. I am now of the opinion that the situation is what killed the game. The PCs are told explicitly and implicitly that everyone will kill them to get what they have. While that is a lie, it colors how they react to everyone else on the ship and everyone they meet along the way. Paranoia feeds itself until only paralysis can result. In many ways, the setup freezes the resolution. With a group of players who do not want to recreate those grim tales of heroism under impossible odds or grim-faced buckling to a system too large to escape, you won't have a very fun game.

The next session is the last one for this tale, so it remains to be seen what the crew will finally end up with...



Session One

Session Two


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