Deepnight Revelation #3

Captain's Log - T028

Preliminary scouting having been completed on the uninhabited planet Astrography named Prospect, an advance party was sent to the surface to establish a campsite at the selected location, where we planned to allow the crew some R&R on the first habitable planet we have come across since our transition through the wormhole.

During their journey to the river to set up a pump station and sewage processing plant, however, the vehicles Tech Team 6 were traveling in attracted the attention of the large birds encounter by the scouting teams earlier. The team broadcasted a loud noise from the sound system on the vehicles, which repelled the birds. Unfortunately, the same noise appeared to have attracted the ire of a herd of the large herbivore also reported by the scouting team. As the lead vehicle crested a rise, it came into close proximity with a large male, which rammed the vehicle and caused it to overturn and roll downwards, eventually settling on its side at the edge of a cliff overlooking the river.

The other vehicle was able to withdraw to a safe distance away, and from there team leader Petty Officer Milo Deems sent out a call for help to the team at base camp. Upon receiving the call for help Lieutenant Xebac took off in the pinnace alone and headed for the team's location, but was ordered back by Lieutenant (Dr) Balilaika, the commander for the mission, to return and pick up the rest of the team.

When they arrived at the site, the team found the herd of some 40 animals stood between them and the first vehicle. The team were unable to get a respond from Crewman Lydia Torrent or Crewman Scott Zane, who were in the vehicle, and it was assumed that they sustained injuries which incapacitated them. The male animal which had rammed the vehicle was next to it, and appeared wounded and agitated. Dr Balilaika determined that moving the second vehicle into the herd might have caused a stampede and result in the first vehicle being pushed over the cliff in the confusion, but the urgency of the injuries likely sustained by the crew made waiting for the herd to eventually wander off a non-viable option.

The teams on the ground decided to resolve the situation in a two-pronged approach. One team, led by Sergeant Ahab, took the second vehicle and reached the opposite bank of the river, from where they would be hidden from the view of the herd. There, Sergeant Ahab, Trooper Iaqta, and Crewman Talon Var scaled the cliff and entered the vehicle, while Mr Ajax and Dr Balilaika approached the male animal on foot, the former using his psionic ability to calm the beast, while the latter stood by with a dart-gun loaded with a tranquiliser he had created based on the tissue samples of one of the bird he had obtained earlier. The duo were successful in their mission, and the first team were able to secure Crewmen Torrent and Zane and lower them to the team below - Crewman Torrent had sustained an open fracture of her femur and had lost consciousness from blood-loss, while Crewman Zane had sustained head injury. They two casualties were conveyed by vehicle to the pinnace, where they were stabilised by Dr Balilaika and then returned to the ship by Lieutenant Xebac.

Supplemental: Commander Khomen had completed his investigation on the matter of Lieutenant Xebac's second instance of reckless action in our mission thus far. It turned out that it was no coincidence that both incidents involved Crewman Torrent - the two are involved romantically, and his concern for her well-being led him to react impetuously on both occasions. I have adopted Commander Khomen's recommendations as Chief Flight Officer that Lieutenant Xebacbe grounded and restricted to administrative and maintenance duties until further review.

Captain's Log - T033

The landing team despatched to the surface of planet DNS-AQ-306 to investigate the magnetic anomaly returned with our first "first contact" with a sentient species in this galaxy.

The magnetic anomaly was in fact the wreck of a spacecraft with a primitive hyperspace drive which had crash-landed on the uninhabited planet some 12 standard years prior. The lone survivor of the crew was a scientist called Akranika. With the help of Mr Ajax, Mr Goldfone, and Dr Tsoukalos, we were able to learn that he and his crew called their own species Alikaia, and they came from a system a little over a parsec away. The Alikaia had never before encountered another starfaring species, and it must have been overwhelming for Akranika to not only make first contact for his people, but first contact with some many alien species at once.

Illustration of Akranika from the module, from the artist's website

Work on creating a database for our auto-translator is ongoing, but so far what we have learned about the Alikaia's social structure is fascinating. Their species is divided into four classes, which translate loosely to: the Mothers (who are female), and the Thinkers, the Warriors, and the Workers (who are all male). The Mothers are not verbally communicative as the rest of the species, but are able to communicate their desires and intentions by other means not yet understood by us. They are considered the leaders of their communities, and are held in a position of great respect by them. They also hold the decision on which members of their communities may fertilise her eggs; individuals who are rejected by her are called "rejectees", and become in a fashion outcasts from their communities, and must live apart from the main communities, though the vast majority of them continue to serve their communities - warriors, for example, form warrior enclaves on the periphery of their communities, where they look after the defence of the communities, while rejectee scientists take to exploration, as Akranika had. Some individuals voluntarily become rejectees to pursue the profession, and these are viewed as self-less members of their communities; as we are all volunteers on Deepnight Revelation, this has resulted in Akranika viewing all of us as some sort of heroes.

The Alikaia's hyperspace technology seems to be primitive, and their extra-terrestrial colonies are so far limited to planets and moons within their own system; Akranika's mission was one of the species' first foray outside their home system. He is of course reluctant to reveal too much about his homeworld and their technology to strangers, heroic or no, and I have likewise advised my crew to be circumspect about the amount of information on our mission we give to our guest. I have, however, agreed to give Akranika a ride home, and see if we can make a new friend and ally in this galaxy.

Our next destination will be the system DNS-AQ-406, where we plan to make a refueling stop, before continuing to Akranika's home system.

Prepping and Running the Game

The two main encounters in this session both come from Book 1 of the module.

The first encounter was once again a non-combat one. I find non-combat obstacle/encounters a good way to introduce players to a setting or a set of rules, as the encourage players to interact with the setting first, and then see how I resolve their actions using the rules (or not, as may be the case).

The members of Tech Team 6 are created by a fellow-forumer on an RPG forum I frequent. I had the idea that they are specialists in airlocks, and told my players that they were the team that converted one of the missile bays to a special laboratory for researching on samples of the Entity which they plan to obtain, and that because of their expertise they are given the nickname of Seal-Team 6.

Hey, a GM is allowed to have fun.

I did not have a chance to roleplay all the members of Tech Team 6 to their full potential, but I will likely try to use the characters in future scenarios involving tech personnel and build them up as we go along.

One of the players picked up on the potential for Prospect to be colonised later, which was something that I had planned to address much later on in the campaign. I am planning to have the Tadpole Galaxy be sparsely populated, and for most of the species here to have a lower level of technology than the United Confederation or the Tazanian Empire; this makes the whole galaxy ripe for colonisation by either polity. Once the news that a stable wormhole exists between our own galaxy and this one reaches home, it will likely start a land-grab and trigger a third interstellar war...

The second encounter is the start of another lore dump, which unfortunately will be a feature of this kind of campaign. The Alikaia are the first of a number of scripted major arcs for the campaign, and next session will hopefully see more role-playing, and some combat.