PDQ# SciFi Game Actual Play – Session 2 (05/02/2009)


TL;DR: We played PDQ# in a space opera setting and the second session got freaky


The Cast:



The first session of this game can be found here.


Related links:


The second session opened with some light conversation and some You-tubing while we waited on Zac to arrive from Chattanooga. We got started early without him after calling him.


The crew had just killed a rampaging Gel Cube while Jarl had gone out to deal with the pirate Exo-suits. Jarl made brief line-of-sight maser contact to report that he was damaged fairly badly and would check in once he was in more safe place.


Homeboy did some poking about in Nicco Reese's luggage and found a suit of tactical armor two pistols, a carbine, a sniper rifle, and two grenades (one frag grenade and one incendiary). He noted that these had seen some usage and didn't seem to be samples used by a salesman, but more like equipment used by someone in the field. Being a robot, Homeboy didn't give it a huge amount of concern. He then moved outside the ship to remove the rings affixed to the hull to allow breaching the hull walls during the boarding action. He finds that the rings are a simple, recently fabbed device that makes use of a ring that is traced with micro-channel hyper-circuits similar to those found in the coins. The ring, unlike the device, is 6,843.62 Solar years old, according to his sensors.


While outside, Homeboy also notices that the utility cloud that is doing repairs on the hull is taking a wispy human form to do so, instead of a much more efficient and more fluid form. He inquires with the computer to see why and is told the utility cloud is getting override commands from the now-dead Captain. He files this data away.


Ang works to get the ship parked in a safe place in the media cloud. As he does so, he notes that the explosion flashes he sees in the media cloud couldn't be coming from just a single Exo fighting a group of pirate Exos. He reports this to the rest of the crew.


Homeboy returns to the ship interior and drops off the rings in engineering. He makes a report to Luna and Marion. As he explains what he saw out on the hull, Luna notices that Marion shows signs of knowing more than he is letting on. When she presses him, he admits that the circuits of the ring are very much like those on the coins he found in the disappeared corpses at Port Austin. The three speculate on what the data may mean with Ang on voice chat from the bridge.


Homeboy knows that the latest update sent to the ship's ulitity cloud at Port Austin has similar design elements to the ring. This update was sent out to numerous systems through the Morgan Corp Customer Update system and was free of charge to existing users. It seems obvious that Morgan Corp has leveraged some of this technology. Ang has heard of some rumors in the conspiracy underground that Morgan Corp had some special dig teams on Draco V that were blacklisted and whose data was not shared with the scientific community. They are musing over this new information when Pardim calls down to announce that Jarl is checking in.


[Sometime around this juncture, Kevin gets called into work and has to leave, making Homeboy less integral to what is going on. Zac had just recently arrived, so it was almost a tag-team deal, with some overlap. We also ordered food around this time.]


Jarl checks in on tight-beam. He sends a bunch of encoded signals from the exos and reports that are infighting and he cannot discern a difference in sides between them. He also lets them know the pirate Frigate controlling the boarding crews is on the other side of the large asteroid that the Voltage Normal is hiding in the sensor shade of – just a mile and a half away from the crew's poition.


Luna does a scan of Jarl's health through his flight suit. Jarl has taken what should be fatal damage, but some sort of advanced technology is keeping his neural systems working and physically rerouting blood and other body functions past damaged areas. As she is looking the data over, she sees Marion lean into see the data better and beam momentarily with pride. Luna orders Jarl to come in for medical attention as soon as possible and turns to ask Marion his opinion. As he begins to give it, she slugs him to the ground.


Her punch glints off a defensive field of some sort, but Marion is knocked to the deck and is startled by her sudden action. Luna presses her advantage by telling the passenger that it is truth time. Marion admits that he used a coin to put some technology into Jarl and to make a copy of his persona information that he placed in a phylactery. He says that he learned to use this technology during the war in this system (but he does not say the most recent war between the Core and the Alliance). He confesses that he is running from some fellow soldiers, all of whom had done some work with bio-weapons during the war and who Marion was trying to flee to attempt to redeem himself.


Luna accuses him of harming Jarl, but Marion explains that he did it in order to keep Jarl from being harmed while he was out there alone. He explains, with some sincerity, that he sees the crew as a chance to begin his redemption and that the crew had treated him decently and he wanted to repay that. One he and Luna arrive at an unspoken equilibrium point , he explains more about the fungal bio-weapon that the contained pirate is infected with.


The fungus infects a host through open wounds in the skin and begins to co-opt biological system with its own biomass. It makes first stab at the central nervous system and grows next to the bloodstream and finally to muscle tissues and related functions. Only the skeletal structure remains of the victim and the rest becomes part of a green, fungal mass mind of sorts (which is unit named “the Ork”). The fungus is sentient and adaptive to harsh environments. It was used by Marion's unit, the Brotherhood of the Black Skull during the war because a city infected with the fungus would begin to prey on itself and their masters had made some sort of treaty or deal with the mass-mind behind the infection.


After this explanation, the crew discuss what to do with the infected pirate and, though Luna objects on several counts, she is voted down and the group decides to space the entire sealed med-table with the sedated pirate inside. They disconnect the table's systems and wheel it into the hanger area to space it. Chance is boarding an M-Pod and Ang is getting the table positioned in the hanger when the Ork makes his move.


It bursts out of the seals of the table and attacks Ang all-out. Ang, not bad in a fight - but also not expecting an attack, takes some serious damage in the first round of the duel, but the Ork is also mildly damaged. Chance gets in the M-Pod and orders Luna to open the hanger doors. On them. Ang kicks the Ork into the waiting arms of the M-Pod and dives into and airlock as Chance and the Ork tussle and Luna opens the hanger doors.


Ang and Luna are clear when the hanger door opens. The Ork tears one of the M-Pod's arms off and begins smashing the vulnerable cockpit window with it. Within no time, the Ork bashes in the window and the M-Pod is taken out by his weak structure and the Orks fierce attack. Chance fades out just as he sees the Ork kick off from the M-Pod to climb up the outer hull of the ship. That view is replaced by Jarl's Exo grabbing him and and tossing him back in the hanger. Bob the robot helps extract Change and get him into an airlock, minimizing the exposure to hard vacuum for the engineer to something less than fatal.


Luna orders Jarl to kill the Ork and he takes some snap shots at it (and the ship) as he tries to take it out with his Exo's weapons. The Ork escapes custody. Jarl is forced to disengage after he loses sight of the quarry. The ship's computer is told to put the utility cloud on alert to attack the Ork if it is encountered on the the Hull and it acknowledges it will task them thusly.


Both Chance and Jarl do some triage time in the Med Bay with Luna while the rest of the crew sees to damage control, tracking enemy movements and decoding signals. Pardim decodes the signals to reveal that the pirates are attacking each other because the Ork infection they have is now taking hold of the crew of the Exos and the Frigate, the “Villainous”. The Ork has activated the navigation transponder from the ship in an effort to let his fellows know how to find the ship, but the sensor shade protects them from the frigate.


Luna gets Chance fixed up as much as time allows and tells him to get in the Exo and go kill the Ork. Chance does so, taking his time as he is by no means skilled. He uses the Exo tutorial to target the section of the ship's hull the Ork is on and finishes him off with a single shot. One sortie and one confirmed kill are added to Chance's Guild Resume. Before he returns the Exo to the hanger, he uses it to fetch the Assault Shuttle the boarders used and links it up to the ship.


Luna and Marion reverse the process Marion put him under and patch up his ailments. Marion tells Luna she is quite skilled and that he is very sorry about what he did. He explains that Jarl was in no short term danger and literally could not die physically during the process. Ang remarks that Jarl would love that sort of thing, but Marion explains that those who use the technology too long suffer intense mental illness and become a type of psychotic called “The Undying” who lose their empathy for people and methodically pursue their megalomaniacal principle of choice until destroyed totally or put away somehow.


He also has time to explain that the technology he uses comes from Draco V, which was apparently invaded long ago by visitors from a Hyperspace portal inside the Sun of the system. These beings were composed of precious metals and gems of various types and contained a great abundance of nanotech bound into their forms that was powered by some very advanced hyperspacial power sources. They ruled over the many species of the planet, and fought their wars against each other through the civilizations that worshiped them. After a few thousand years of such domination, the natives of Draco V mastered enough of the technology to rebel and destroy many of their masters and forge coins made of their essence to power the technologies the Masters' shared with them.


Marion's unit had access to technology for rendering and converting biomass to control death states and to renew dead flesh and control it for various purposes – Technological Necromancy, so to speak. His unit has been working in the morgues and using the coins to transition the bodies that disappeared into a hyper-conduit to be used as an army. When he found out it was for payback that would reignite the war he fought in, he decided to leave.


Ang is busy moving the ship away from the location that is still pirate infested, and as he gets a chance, he is able to see that the frigate has been damage by a kamikaze-style attack from an Exo and is being repaired by an Ork crew. As the group pulls away, the group tries to pick what the nest move should be. They decide it is time for more answers about the cargo.


In order to get into the sarcophagi, they think looking in Nicco's briefcase is a good idea. Inside, they find a false bottom that hides a badge identifying him as an undercover Internal Affairs agent for Morgan Corp Security Forces. He also has a briefing packet that contains a handwritten note that says : “Not trying to tell you your job, but what were they thinking? Ship is 'Voltage Normal'. Jump it at Port Austin and ride in. Check in at 1 day intervals. - R.G.” and is attached to a sheet describing a cargo element from the special bay in the hold.



The reporter asks a great deal of questions, and is largely ignored by the crew until she asks about the ghost that went into the cargo bay. She shows the crew footage she took of a blue and red swirl of wisp in human form that walks into the cargo bay. She shows them more footage that shows that she tried to enter the bay as well, but the sarcophagi stopped her cold with a force field of some sort.



The crew go into the Bay and use the badge from Nicco's stuff to open the cargo boxes. The first box they open has two suits of ancient armor, complete with shields and swords of an alien design. Each of them has a design crafted into it of either a black skull or a flower that bears considerable similarity to the sun of the Draco System. Chance dons the Black Skull Armor and it arranges itself to fit him. When Marion sees him upon coming into the cargo bay, be drops to respectful kneel. Luna asks him about this reaction as he rises up, having noticed it was Chance he bowing to, not a Noble of the Brotherhood.



Luna asks Marion about his reaction and he explains the two factions fought in the last war on Draco V to control a bridge that lead through hyperspace (via the Styx Belt) from the planet to the center of the Sun (using some sort of technology stolen from the visitors – the Dragons). He was “lost for a time” when the bridge was destroyed in the final war. According to him, he awoke after the war when a ship cruised into the Styx Belt during the Core-Alliance War and his essence merged with that of the crewman. Forty seven crewmen of that ship were printed with the essence of Brothers of the Black Skull, merging into a being with the memories of both entities.



The Black Skulls were death cult started by the Chromatic Dragons (so called because they used precious gems to form their avatars) and the Marigold Order was started by the Metallic Dragons (whose avatars were styled from precious metals). The two factions continued the Dragon's civil war well after the Rebellion had put down their rule. The Marigold Order made it final move when the Styx Belt once more returned the the skies. When the belt stretched between the planet and the sun, they mounted an exodus of people to abandon the blighted world behind and go to the Home of the Dragons – destroying Draco V in the process. The Brotherhood had been told by their Dread Master (an Undying Dragon-blooded) that the Home of the Dragons was destroyed millennia ago, prompting the original Dragon invasion. They tried to warn the people of the folly of the plan, but their previous evil actions caused few to take them seriously.



The final war was fought at the gate that lead to the Styx Belt portal. It was massive and epic and Marion's group was but a small part of it. When all was said and done, the bridge shattered from feedback and the inhabitants of Draco V were either killed on the planet by the hyperspace feedback, or lost on the bridge to flat amongst the unreal Styx Belt for eternity.



The crew absorbs this and then opens the next box to find racks of coins of gold, copper, silver, and electrum. As well as some potions, scrolls and a Large Crystal Dragon's Skull. All of it documented and with data-wafers explaining the findings of the Morgan Corp scientists who has studied them. Once the group sees the contents of the box, La Roix sums the contents up with the phrase, “There's enough gold to buy a war!”

NOTE: The phrase “There's enough gold to buy a war!” is one my group uses often because it was the most memorable line uttered by a fellow PC in the game this scenario hopes to redeem. The line was uttered by the PC that the rest of us were trying to kill because he was doing a load of dumb stuff to try and get us killed, and was being protected by the GM. We hunted him for the whole game he just kept living.

NOTE2: When Ang took damage in the Ork fight, he marked off “Musical Prodigy” as his first rank to damage, which gives it a Story Hook according to the rules. This worked out VERY well because, in honor of the big reveal, I had written a parody song and Ang's story hook gave me a way to work it in while only bruising the fourth wall.

When Ang sees the racks of coins and hear's Ms La Roix's assessment of them, he immediately pictures in his head a giant musical number from old-style movies with Alliance, Core, Pirate, and Morgan Corp soldiers and Exos dancing with the crew and passengers – alive and dead. All of this is set to his new composition, a ditty detailed in this handout I distributed. When Zac heard Vince marked Musical Prodigy off first, he called it by saying there would be a big song and dance number later. Once the whole cast is back together, we intend to record the singing of it, which we did at the table and had a fun time, I must say.



After opening the first two boxes, they left the third closed, knowing what it had in it. Marion finished telling his story, with LaRoix present at this point, filming the treasure contents. A considerable amount of discussion erupts about how to handle the cargo now and who can be trusted with it. Marion points out that the Human Race has considerably more fabricating technology than the post-rebellion species of Draco V had, so they can make much more sudden and terrible use of the alien technology. He fears that this may reawaken the Dragon Essences once they have enough processing power to do so.



As the discussion gets underway, the Morgan Corp puts out an all systems bulletin saying the Voltage Normal was attacked by terrorists or pirates and is presumed lost. The Administrator of the Morgan Corp Station, Ronald Garielle (R.G.?) , reveals the three boxes contained potent WMDs and that there is a 87.6 Million Credit reward for their safe and unopened return to Morgan Corp.



The group absorbs this and begins making preparations for swiftly “Getting the Hell out of Dodge” when their sensors report a broadcast into their section of space from an Ork “Captain”, the Warboss Kocha Vruff of the captured pirate vessel “Villainous”. A Core Vessel and an Admiral Russ of the Terran Core Worlds Federation returns Vruff's signal and asks him why is he sending a signal into open space to the Voltage Normal. The Warboss tells him that is he knew where the “humies” were, he would be negotiating not with his radio, but with his axe. The crew takes this as an indication of poor faith.



The crew formulates a plot to get in touch with the Core Vessel as well as get info to the Alliance and Neutral System to let everyone know at near the same time what the Morgan Corp has found and what the danger of it is. They start getting underway to to put the plan in action. At this point, Everyone gets to their stations except Chance, who lingers to destroy the Monolith, but cannot bring himself to when he opens it, as he sees a set of co-ordinates in the Styx Belt in his mind and knows he cannot destroy the Dread Master's portal.

La Roix asks him why he stopped and Chance admits he can't bring himself to do it and says he saw co-ordinates in his head. LaRoix ask him what co-ordinates and he tells her. She sighs in relief and turns to her camera floating behind her and says, “You got that right? Finally!” Chance closes the monolith's box and turn to confront La Roix as she grabs up the Marigold Sword and shield and spins to confront him. They fight briefly, but Bob shows up to hold her back with some gunfire. La Roix dives behind a box as Chance drops his sword and has Bob “toss” him a gun.

Chance orders the sarcophagi security systems to kill LaRoix, but they refuse because an agent is in the killzone. Chance promptly kumps out of the gel cube hole and repeats the order. La Roix gives Chance a wilting look before the flash-burn effect reduces her to ashes – dropping her sword and shield to the floor.

After the commotion, Marion tries to destroy the monolith, but begins to cry as he sees the monolith and cannot. Bob the Robot tries, but says he has a First Law problem destroying it because if he does, he knows the Dread Master cannot return to life. The crew, stymied by the ill, controlling nature of the device, reseal the sarcophagus with the Monolith inside.



Meanwhile, the Ork and the Core have been trading insults, which the Core battleship ends by firing off some weapon system that pulses a wave of gravitic force from the style belt at the Media Cloud where the Ork Ship, and the the Voltage Normal are. The Ork ship slams against an asteroid and takes considerable damage.

Ang rides out the wave by pouring on some skill to the ship's engines. He spares the ship, but the resulting maneuvers burn out the engine control systems. The crew get to work on fixing it, but it will take and hour and a half. They also need to fix the Assault Shuttle they recovered earlier, which will take less time, and make a probe to broadcast their message to the various powers of the system. They are aided in this by the ghost in the Cargo Bay, which Marion reveals is Brad Fincher, the former ship's Engineer. Marion uses a coin to make a Quija Board mouse control for Brad and Brad starts aiding in the Engineering tasks using remote drones. This becomes the first instance of séance engineering in Guild history.



The Core Battleship comes out to face the recovering Ork ship between the Media Cloud and the Styx Belt. The two launch Exos and start trading spit. The Ork Exos stop short, and the Core Exos pour on more speed to close the gap. As the Exos are ready to clash, the Ork Warboss transmits to Russ, “I see your wave and raise you FIRE!” A single missile is fired from the Villainous and the Ork Exos escort it through the Core Exo group. As it closes on the Core ship, the point-defense guns begin to open up, but the Ork missile detonates and a nuclear blast lights up the area, destroying the ship utterly and letting the Ork ship, who saw this coming, to see the surrounding area – and the Voltage Normal. It turns to pursue...



End – Session Two



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