Deepnight Revelation #11

 

Captain's Log - T258

Mr Khan's team had been recovered and are now onboard the Deepnigh Revelation. Unfortunately, we have lost three more crew members in the mission, and Lieutenant Nidesh has suffered a spinal injury, although Dr Cho assures me that he will make a full recovery.

The first sign that the mission was going to be more difficult than we had anticipated was when scans revealed that the asteroid had in fact been modified extensively to become effectively a 2km long starship. When the Amelia Earhart attempted to land on its surface, several metallic panels on its sides opened up, revealing themselves to be in fact weapon ports. Deepnight Revelation was forced to withdraw from its shadowing position from the mass-driver weapons, and the Amelia Earhart suffered damage to one of her wings, causing her to crash onto the surface of the asteroid; it was during this that Lieutenant Nidesh suffered his injuty.

Mr Khan led the team onto the surface to try to find a way inside the asteroid-ship to either override its controls or to plant the nuclear charge. Here they were attacked by more of the spider droids which they have previously encountered on the surface of Claimed-in-Hope. The team were outnumbered and surrounded, but managed to make it to one of the hatches that led into the ship, but we lost Troopers Trokh and Kaylan, and Nuclear Technician Feldmann in the running battle.

Once inside the ship, the crew had to overcome more spider droids, but they were able to make it to the command room of the asteroid, where Ensign Soong Jahangir was able to hack into the mainframe and disable it.

Captain's Log - T263

We are scheduled to depart Sovereign tomorrow.

The Erlines have helped us repair the damage to the Amelia Earhart. At Mission Command's recommendation, we have taken into our inventory 43 spider droids found on the asteroid-ship, which the Erlines have helped us to convert to remote-control mode. Our Draysirvian crew have been training with the Erlines on how to operate the controls - these droids will no doubt give us more tactical flexibility and reduce the risk to our crew in future missions.

With the information downloaded from the asteroid-ship, we were able to reconstruct what had happened to the Erline Homeworld. 

The asteroid-ship, named Guardian by the Erlines, was originally constructed by the Erlines to help them fend off threats to their civilisation. It possessed an Artificial Intelligence that had enormous computing powers and was linked to the Erlines' databases. It also possessed construction capabilities that allowed it mine raw materials from asteroids, manufacture spider droids and smaller craft, and eventually to create copies of itself. 

It seemed that a century ago, one of their ships became contaminated by Gren spores and unknowingly carried it back to their Homeworld. The Gren infestation spread, but the Erlines were eventually able to contain and destroy the threat. However, the Guardian regarded the threat of spread to the other Erline colonies to be unacceptable, and decided to not only eradicate all life on the Erline Homeworld, but also send copies of itself to other Erline colonies that were possibly exposed to the spores.

Fortunately for the Erlines, the Guardian and its copies did not possess the capability to create the Jump drive, so it had taken a century before one of them had reached Sovereign.

The Erlines now plan to retrofit the captured Guardian with a Jump drive, and using the information collected from it reach their other colonies and warn them of the threat, and to help neutralise them.

Prepping and Running the Game

I have been lagging in the writing of the game reports, to the extent that the two previous reports did not have a "Prepping and Running" section. I apologise for that.

The plant/biologic and the Erline arcs of the campaign went pretty much as per the modules. What I did not expect (but should have) was the players' request to take over the spider-droids remaining on the asteroid-ship. Since these were of Erline design, I found it a reasonable request, and given that the Amelia Earhart had to be repaired, they would have ample time to make the necessary modifications.

With the biologic and Erline arcs completed, we are now into the final arc and the finale of the campaign, which we will play in the new year.