Deepnight Revelation #5

Captain's Log - T046

The parade the Alikaia held in our honour was interrupted by a sudden and unprovoked attacked, which we subsequently learned was launched by the Kadiaz faction. The main party were able to make our way to the airport and take the shuttles back to our ship - we were not the primary targets for the Kadiaz faction; the admin party comprising of Mr Goldfone, Dr Balikaikam, Corpsman Wootue, Trooper Blick and Mr Ajax were unable to make it to the airport in their vehicle, and were forced to abandon it and their communications equipment and proceed on foot. During they journey they were attacked by soldiers from the Kadiaz faction, but they were able to overcome the opposition and reach the last shuttle off the surface.

Once back onboard we were able to determine that the attack on the city had arrived on three main prongs, and seemed to be aimed at capturing the leaders of the various cities. Simultaneously, mobile columns were launched from various locations from within the Kadiaz territories, heading for the other free cities.

Deepnight Revelation was contacted by the various factions on the planet, with the Kadiaz faction warning us against interfering, while the other factions begged us to help them fend off the attack. After a conference with the Mission Command team, we made the difficult decision to not intervene in the conflict, and left orbit.

While I understand the decision was made in the best interest of the mission, we were unable to resupply our ship as we had planned, and the crew are no doubt disappointed by the turn of events. I can only hope that our next contact with a civilisation in the galaxy will turn out better.

Captain's Log - T053

Upon arrival at the system Astrography had named Entrata, sensors detected a debris field near the gas giant we had planned to conduct refuelling operations.

We were able to determine that the debris was the wreckage of a starship of approximately 15,000 tons in displacement. The ship was shaped like a round hut. A large breach was noted on the side hull, and the "bottom" of the ship, where the drive section would have been, had been completely sheared off. Adrift in the space around the ship were humanoid bodies, some in vac-suits, some not.

An away team was sent to investigate the wreckage, and found that the bodies belonged to a single species of humanoid with facial features resembling a possum. Some had died from exposure, no doubt ejected from the ship when the breach was made in the hull, and others were killed by fusiform missiles, which Dr Balilaika was later able to determine to be organic in nature; he was unable to detect any form of known toxin or chemicals which might indicate some sort of propellant on them.

Within the ship the team found signs of battle, with impact marks on the bulkheads made by the energy weapons used by the crew. There were no signs of the body of the attackers who had used the missiles.

The breach in the hull appeared to have been made by physical impact, and no energy residue or burn marks were detected. The same was also found to be the case for the lower section of the ship - it appeared that the whole drive section had been torn off by brute force.

As for the nature of the vessel, the crew found that it appeared to be a commercial vessel, carrying chiefly consumer electronics such as music players, televisions, cameras, washing machines, cooking appliances, as well as small generators meant to power them. At the main deck of the ship were what were unmistakably store fronts and workshops or service centres.

The away team was able to retrieve the computer from the ship's bridge, but despite our attempts to access it, the display showed the same script, which we interpreted to be an error message.

I have ordered the crew to salvage some of the electronics for research purposes, and to catalogue the dead, so that we might pass the information on to their people when we encounter this species in the future.

Captain's Log - T056

The away teams sent to Entrata-3 had returned to report that the world is inhabited by a species of humanoid who appear to have a Bronze Age level of civilisation. They look like humans, but are shorter in stature. There is no evidence that the species from the commercial vessel we found had made contact with the inhabitants.

They practised farming and animal husbandry, and the possibility of obtaining supplies from them was discussed, but rejected by the Mission Command team.

While we do still have sufficient supplies, most of the crew had not left the ship for a month, and the events of the past couple of weeks have not helped morale.

Captain's Log - T066

Engineering has informed me that the damage Deepnight had sustained from our exposure to the gas plume at proto-gas giant QQ-784 had damaged the Jump drive, which reduced our effective speed by around 50%.

Effecting repair will require access to a space dock, or a planetoid without an atmosphere, but in the latter instance it will take considerable time to set up equipment and gather the resources required.

The Mission Command team was able to come up with the idea of scanning for transmissions based on the frequencies used by the commercial vessel we came across, and we were able to locate a source in a nearby system.

We had not had any luck with accessing the computer we recovered from their bridge, but attempts to access the personal devices on the dead crew were more successful, and Mr Ajax was able to learn the phonology of their script based on the displays on their music players and the lyrics of the songs, and infer a few words of their language based on the songs. From the photos and translation programmes he found in the devices it appears that the species had contact with several other species - perhaps they are interstellar traders.

I have ordered a course to be set for the source of the transmission - hopefully we will be able to find what we need.

Prepping and Running the Game

The first part of the report was actually played during our previous session, before the lockdown. I had decided to report it in this post for continuity, as I had expected the players to intervene in the Alikaia civil war on the side of the free cities. Unfortunately for me (and the Alikaia) they decided that they could not risk the losses they might suffer from intervening. While I agree with them, it was still a little disappointing. As you can see from the photo, I had in fact purchased 2D flats miniatures to represent the Alikaia - they did not arrive in time for the combat we played last session, and I posed them for this report. Perhaps I will recycle them as another alien species later in the campaign.

The second encounter was a minor plot point to foreshadow an arc later in the campaign, but it turned out to be rather interesting. The original wreck was supposed to be a battlecruiser from a civilisation in the module which I decided to leave out. In its place I substituted a commercial vessel of a species which I plan to feature quite a bit for the next few sessions. Exploring the vessel, wondering about the identity of the attackers, as well as determining the nature of the vessel took a large part of the session. What was fun was how the players and I tried to figure out what they can learn about the species from their commercial electronics - in a way it is asking: if an alien found our smartphone, what will they learn about us?

We decided that it was able to reconstruct the script and the phonology from the devices, without necessarily understanding what a particular word meant. It was also possible to determine words like "hello", "thank you", and "goodbye" from watching videos of people interacting.

The best moment came when they made radio contact with the species towards the end of the session (which I will report on in the next post) and were trying to establish a visual with them: we realised that they could transmit and receive visuals by using the data format of camcorders and television sets!

The crippling of Deepnight Revelation by fiat and forcing it to dock sets up the next arc of the campaign, where the crew will be limited to scoutship-based missions which they will perform for the aliens to pay for the repair of their ship. The missions are more traditional in format, which hopefully mean they will be easier to prep for and run.