Date: 2018-08-21

Player Characters (344 points):
ESA1000 45460 (4-5 for organics), humanoid engineering robot
Gaichu Koschei, android infiltrator/assassin
James Titus Kane, human legendary starship Captain of the Stewards Navy (retired)
Alva von Kirchess, aasimar diva / Captain of the Knights of Golarion (retired), breach and clear specialist
Julianne Margeurite Sadayo Aletta Mackenzie Kawakami-Rose-Albert III (or just Jill), human brilliant inventor / industry mogul, dilettante adventurer/explorer

The group spent a day in their crashlanded ship, resting from the previous delve into the jungle pyramid. Gaichu’s familiar, Greg, healed Gaichu, while Jill repaired 4-5 as well as Gaichu’s and 4-5’s gear which was corroded by the gelatinous cube. The next morning they made their way to the pyramid again. From now on, there would be five people but only two of whom could pilot a hoverbike. So the solution was for Gaichu and Alva to ride with Jimmy and 4-5, while Jill was towed on another hoverbike by 4-5.

Along the way, while flying over the savannah, the group noticed a band of natives on what looked like a hunting trip. They were human-sized but big and burly, pale blue-skinned and wearing patchwork metal armor. They did not seem to have noticed the party. That changed soon, however, since Jill took a pot shot at one of them out of “curiosity”. He dropped into the grass and didn’t get up again. The others noticed the group, ducked in the grass, and started aiming towards them with what looked like primitive slughthrowers. They didn’t shoot, because the party was rather far from them and moving rapidly away on hoverbikes. A discussion ensued on what to do with the natives, but no conclusion was reached before the group flew out of eyesight.

Reaching the pyramid, the party did what became their standard procedure – they left the bikes a hundred yards away, camouflaged them, and stealthily approached the building. Everything was clear, so they proceeded below. They went through the tunnels to where they blew up the gelatinous cube, encountering nothing new on the way. They didn’t continue down that corridor, however, opting instead to go through the stone door in the north-western corner of the room. It was a bit stuck, but 4-5 effortlessly budged it open. The corridor beyond was very snaky, and even though its majority was spread to the north-east of the previous room, it eventually led to a door to the nort-west. Gaichu checked for traps, but didn’t find any.

Beyond was an 8×8 yard room, with a small dried-out fountain in the north-west corner and a stone balcony on the east side. There were stairs leading to it on its south side, and stone beds carved into the wall could be seen on top. A stone door was on the north side, under the balcony. Alva decided to take a look at the balcony, and climbed the stairs. Reaching the top, she noticed four corpses on the floor of the balcony, previously unseen because the balcony’s railing was blocking the view from below. As she approached, they started raising up and she opened fire.

She did some minor damage to one of them, and then again on the next round, when the remainder of the party could also start shooting since the corpses were now in sight having fully stood up. One of them attacked Alva, while the other three jumped in huge leaps down at the rest of the party! They went for Gaichu, 4-5 and Jimmy, attempting to impale them on the sickles they had instead of hands. Jimmy and Gaichu managed to dodge or parry their attacks, but 4-5 was “hooked”. The corpses were tough, but could for the most part not get through the party’s defenses. Jill was free to pick targets with her holdout laser while the rest were engaged, and they eventually blasted them down suffering only minor injuries, except for 4-5 who received a nasty impale from the initial jump. But Greg took care of that after a quick retreat to the surface in order to facilitate the casting of healing spells (the entirety of the Pyramid has so far been a low-mana zone).

The corpses had nothing of value on them, but there were a couple of gems in the corner of one of the stone beds. The party proceeded through the north door. The tunnel beyond was basically a big, snaky U-turn, but it was nowhere near as long as the previous one. It effectively led to a room which was directly to the west of the one where the battle against the corpses took place. The door to it was a bit stuck, but 4-5 took care of that.

Immediately after opening it, the party noticed an orange glow coming from within the chamber. It was quite large, a some 20×20 yards, with a 3-yard wide chasm at its center. The glow emanated from it, and it was crossed by a 1-yard wide stone walkway. Ancient tapestries covered the walls, and contrary to all others encountered so far, they were completely untouched by time. As most of the team were examining the tapestries (they seemed to be depicting some abstract motifs) Jimmy approached the chasm and looked down. He didn’t like what he saw – there were five giant, orange-scaled lizards clinging to the chasm wall. They hissed at him and climbed up, just as he opened fire on one of them.

The others joined the fight when the lizards were already on top. Alva advanced with her gauss shotgun, Gaichu started shooting plasma projectiles with his gauss crossbow, Jill with her plasma pistol, and 4-5 with his modified arc cutter. The beam weapons and Gaichu’s projectiles seemed to have little effect. As the lizards advanced, they breathed fire on the party. Jimmy started to retreat since the lizards were ganging up on him. Gaichu shot a tangler bolt at the biggest of the lizards, which occupied it for a couple turns. When the lizards closed in, they caused a few nasty cuts with their bites. Gaichu eventually switched to cryo and piercing bolts when he noticed his plasma bolts were ineffective. Half a dozen turns in, Jill and Alva went into melee with their knives and 4-5 with his wristblade. Jill eventually retreated, Alva kept the lizards busy but didn’t inflict much damage, while 4-5 went all-out crazy stabbing lizard skulls. Eventually, the lizards were defeated, but the party was seriously injured by bites and burns. They retreated outside of the pyramid for healing provided by Greg, and that’s where we stopped.

Date: 2018-08-14

Player Characters (342 points):
ESA1000 45460 (4-5 for organics), humanoid engineering robot
Gaichu Koschei, android infiltrator/assassin
James Titus Kane, human legendary starship Captain of the Stewards Navy (retired)
Alva von Kirchess, aasimar diva / Captain of the Knights of Golarion (retired), breach and clear specialist
Julianne Margeurite Sadayo Aletta Mackenzie Kawakami-Rose-Albert III (or just Jill), human brilliant inventor / industry mogul, dilettante adventurer/explorer

At the end of the previous session Gaichu found and disarmed a trap on the eastern door of the room lit by soft magical glow where they found the stone tub and a halfling corpse. Eventually, 4-5 recovered from his water-induced psychodelia, and the group started along the corridor beyond.

The corridor pretty much made a 20-yard long U-turn, and ended in an iron door facing westwards. It was rather atypical for this place, as all doors have so far been made of stone. Gaichu found two long, thin cracks in the wall, one to each side of the door, at neck’s height for an average person. He also discovered a trigger mechanism underneath the plate used as the arm rest while pushing the door to the side for the opening motion. He disarmed the mechanism, but couldn’t open the door as it was stuck. 4-5 stepped up as usual and swiftly opened it.

The room beyond was roughly 12×16 yards across, with no distinguishing features at first look aside from some remains of tapestries on the walls and minor rubble on the floor. A squared archway led into a corridor to the south, while a stone door stood on the west wall opposite the door the group just came through. They spent some time searching the room, but didn’t find anything of interest. Eventually, they decided to go through the archway and explore the way beyond.

As Gaichu turned the corner just beyond the archway, he felt as if he bumped into something big and got stuck seemingly in the air. Stuck of the sticky kind, unable to move. The rest of the group were luckily right behind him as they just entered the corridor, and they opened fire around Gaichu. Jimmy didn’t see any effect from his gauss pistols, but Alva’s gauss shotgun caused the air to “splash” at the points where she shot it. 4-5 and Jill also managed to singe the air with their weaponized plasma cutter and custom holdout laser pistol, respectively. It was a gelatineous cube! What ensued was a slowly retreating curtain of fire against the cube, as it made the slow but steady progress of 1 yard per turn towards the group. Gaichu was stuck on it but in no immediate danger since the cube’s corrosion had a way to go until it would eat significantly into his armor. He struggled to break free, fruitlessly, but managed to free his arms just enough to shoot at it every now and then. At some point, 4-5 didn’t retreat, and the cube bumped into him so he got stuck on it too. Shortly thereafter, the cube absorbed both him and Gaichu into itself.

The whole time, Alva was querying the group via their Tacnet if she should throw a plasma grenade into the cube. Now she has had enough, and finally threw it with a three-second timer. What ensued was a frenzied struggle to get Gaichu and 4-5 out of the cube before the grenade went off. They couldn’t break free from within the cube, but they did manage to hold on to their weapons and shoot the cube from the inside. But alas, it wasn’t enough and the grenade went off with Gaichu and 4-5 still inside the cube. Fortunately, the cube was big, and the grenade was stuck just far enough from them so they only received significant but not mortal damage.

When the air cleared from the explosion, the two were laying scorched on the floor, while the cube was reduced to chunks of gel scattered around the corridor. They themselves were injured, and their armor was damaged by the cube’s acids, so the group retreated back to the ship for repairs and recovery.

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Short session, but the fight against the cube was hilarious. After the session, I thought that I forgot to take into account the x3 wounding modifier which is applied for internal damage, and that Gaichu and 4-5 would have been able to destroy the cube from within before the grenade blew. But taking a look at the paragraph which describes that case on B415 (Explosions in Other Environments, Internal Explosions), I see that this modifier is a result of treating the damage as an attack on the vitals, which Homogenous targets lack. So it evened out after all, and I learned something.

Date: 2018-08-07

Player Characters (340 points):
ESA1000 45460 (4-5 for organics), humanoid engineering robot
Gaichu Koschei, android infiltrator/assassin
James Titus Kane, human legendary starship Captain of the Stewards Navy (retired)
Alva von Kirchess, aasimar diva / Captain of the Knights of Golarion (retired), breach and clear specialist

After healing up and resting for a short bit (no more than half an hour) at the pyramid’s entrance, the party decided to head back in. This time they took the door near the staircase, since they have explored everything they could reach through the opposing corridor. The door was very large, made of stone and rather thick by what they could estimate. A cursory check revealed that it was stuck. Since Gaichu was at it, he decided to investigate the opening mechanism. He found access to it in the tight space between the door itself and the wall, where the door would move sideways into the wall as the opening motion. Inserting a snakecam, he discovered that some of the gears in there were jammed by chips of stone. Improvising some tools from his lockpicking set, he managed to free the gears. 4-5 stepped up and pushed the door into the wall.

Beyond was a large hall, some 15×20 yards across and almost 10 yards high. There were two other doors leading out, one on he east side and one to the south (the players entered through the north door). Those were much smaller than the door they just came though, of the “regular” door size so far encountered within the pyramid. There was a large stone table in the center, some remains of long-ago rotted away furniture and tapestries along the walls, and a bit of pebbly rubble here and there on the floor. The ceiling seemed rough and uneven, not straight-cut like the rest of the place. It seemed uninhabited.

Taking just a cursory look at the room, the party grouped around the eastern door. It was locked, so Gaichu got to picking it. Soon after he started, Alva (who was standing watch) noticed something shifting on the ceiling. Six winged humanoids with coloration/texture of stone were flying down, long spears at the ready. She fired a three-round burst at one of them, but missed.

What followed was a relatively one-sided battle where the gargoyles rolled extremely poorly and didn’t manage to inflict any serious injury on the characters. Them actually being undead didn’t help either, it just protracted the fight due to Unliving. They kept their distance from the PCs by hovering while poking them with spears, all the while being whittled down relatively reliably by guns. There was an interesting bit, however. Alva decided to use her Judo Parry for her defenses, and started throwing the gargoyles into each other. While it didn’t do any significant damage, it resulted in a couple of them being grounded and even knocked down.

After the scuffle, they found a pouch containing some ancient coins on one of the gargoyles, and a tome bound in fur on another. It was written in common, but contained completely nonsensical content. The sentences contained words which had nothing to do with each other, and the group determined that it was surely written in code. Just which code, they couldn’t determine.

Gaichu eventually finished picking the door, and the party continued down the corridor which presented itself after taking a turn to the right directly beyond the door. Some 35 yards down there was a T intersection with the party coming down from the base. The right path took another right turn immediately, eventually leading to a door. Gaichu checked it for traps, finding tiny holes on the walls on each side of it. He found a triggering mechanism on the door “handle” and disabled it. After picking the lock, it turned out (as expected) that these were the south doors in the gargoyle room.

The remaining way from the T-intersection led down a corridor which started to wind several times after a while, leading to a metal portcullis revealing a large chamber to the north. A couple of the characters tried raising it with no success, but then 4-5 stepped up and did it almost effortlessly. The chamber beyond was similar in size to the previous one but the ceiling was much lower. A heavy stone door was on the west side, and a regular one on the east. It seemed to contain nothing of interest – some empty stone shelves, an empty fireplace, and some scratches on one of the walls. The group didn’t think much of it and proceeded to the east door. Not willing to wait for the rest, 4-5 attempted opening it but it was stuck, so he just bashed it open as many of the doors so far.

A roughly 8×15 room opened beyond. Unlike most of the pyramid so far, there was a soft magical glow within, almost producing the effect of a light fog. There were some niches in the walls, and a large stone tub against the east wall. North of the tub a “normal” stone door seemed to lead further. 4-5 approached the tub. It was filled with water! Upon closer inspection, he determined it was fresh water, filling the tub via thin, long incisions on its bottom, coming from some kind of an old plumbing system. He sampled the water and… critically failed Perception. There must have been some silicon-transmitted computer virus in that water, because he started seeing many-colored stars everywhere. He was useless for a while, and in the meantime the others searched the room. In one of the alcoves Gaichu found a small skeleton with an appropriately sized what appeared to be a polearm, specifically a horse cutter. It was of Fine quality and branded with an intricate design. While examining the skeleton they also found a pouch with a couple precious stones in it. The group determined that it did not in fact belong to a child but to a full-grown halfling instead.

While 4-5 was still indisposed, Gaichu took a look at the eastern door. He found a trap – a set of holes on each side of the door, presumably firing some kind of projectile once the tripwire before the door was triggered. He disabled it, and we ended the session there.

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The session took place three weeks ago at the time of this writing, so that is one factor to me not writing out the undead gargoyle battle as detailed as the previous ones. The other is the fight being the first one against multiple opponents, and remembering which one of the monsters did what exactly each round would be impossible for me even directly thereafter. Since we play via voice, there are no detailed recordings of what took place.

I am also considering stopping doing such detailed writeups of sessions and producing just summaries, since I need about 2 hours per report. With life having kicked in after the first couple weeks of this blog, I’d rather spend that time on other things I’d like to write about (campaign/setting/rules ideas etc). But I don’t want to give it up just yet, since reading such detailed reports was one of the reasons I started this campaign after a long gaming hiatus, and the primary inspiration for starting this blog. So I’d like to give back.

Date: 2018-07-31

Player Characters (336 points):
ESA1000 45460 (4-5 for organics), humanoid engineering robot
Gaichu Koschei, android infiltrator/assassin
James Titus Kane, human legendary starship Captain of the Stewards Navy (retired)
Alva von Kirchess, aasimar diva / Captain of the Knights of Golarion (retired), breach and clear specialist

Notable NPCs:
Archibald Grey, renowned explorer

The session started with our intrepid band of explorers getting their bearings after crashlanding in one of the tropical valleys of Glacigneous. Only due to the skill of the legendary starship captain Jimmy Kane did they actually land in the general area where they originally wanted to land anyway.

Jimmy executed a rather smooth crashlanding, and most of the damage the ship suffered was actually due to the debris field when they exited the Drift. The sensor array was damaged but repairable in reasonable time, one of the cargo holds was badly damaged and needed to be sealed off if the group wanted to keep hostiles outside of the ship, but the most damage was taken by one of the two reactors and the reactionless drive. Both were damage beyond repair without notable replacement parts. While the ship still had enough power from the remaining reactor for basic operation, that did little good since it was unable to take off.

So 4-5 and Gaichu put their repair skills to work by stabilizing the ship as much as they could, Jimmy and Archibald spent some time with the comm systems trying to detect any transmissions in range, while Alva scouted out the immediate surroundings. She found no immediate danger, although she did spot tracks belonging to native humanoids and animals. There was also a fight between Alva and Jimmy about sending out a distress signal and who’s supposed to be in charge, but they resolved it as all other of their “old couple” fights. The distress signal was not activated in order to not draw any unwanted attention.

After setting up a perimeter, the group took to hoverbikes in order to deploy sensor probes at a pair of points in the valley, which would together with a probe deployed at the ship give them some nice sensor readings of the area. 4-5 and Gaichu rode on one bike with Jimmy riding on another. Alva remained back at the ship with Archibald.

The ride was… interesting. 4-5 managed to pilot his bike into some thick vegetation and a small pond. Jimmy was busy being surprised and laughing so he got clotheslined by a tree. Nobody suffered significant damage from their respective crashes and 4-5’s bike was banged up just a bit. He needed a couple of hours to fix it. The group was observed by a pack of man-sized dinosaur-like creatures for a while during that time, but the encounter didn’t escalate and the dinos eventually went their way. The party resumed their ride.

The first scanning point, on a bluff overlooking the plains was uninteresting. The probe did it’s thing and nothing eventful happened. The second point, in a jungle clearing, was reached much quicker than the first one, primarily due to no accidents along the way. After the scan, 4-5 and Gaichu noticed something glinting in a nearby tree. They approached it and took a look, the object apparently being some kind of a dagger stuck in where one of the higher branches was coming out of the trunk. Jimmy tried shooting the branch off with his gauss pistols but his needle-like ammo didn’t have much of an effect, so Gaichu blew it off with explosive plasma bolts from his crossbow. The dagger looked quite interesting and ornate.

After getting back to the ship and deploying the final probe there, the group transferred the scan data from the probes into the ship’s sensor computer. As it was processing the data, Gaichu summoned his cyberimp familiar Gregory who pulled out a tiny wrench and fixed 4-5 up, also healing Gaichu with a huge syringe. The sensor computer generated a nice 3D map of the valley and pointed out three locations containing artificial structures. One seemed to be some kind of an overgrown, abandoned jungle outpost, together with the remains of radar dishes and AA turrets. The other was the remains of two small spacecraft landed on the plains, while the final one was some kind of a four-sided stone pyramid, also in the jungle. The group weighted their options and decided to explore the pyramid first , with Archibald remaining on the ship to conclude the sensor array repairs.

The journey was uneventful, and took noabout an hour and a half with hoverbikes, primarily due to relatively difficult terrain. The group got off the bikes a couple hundred yards away from the pyramid, camouflaged them, and stealthily approached. It seemed unoccupied, and there was a single entrance at it base. It actually didn’t seem very large, something like 15 yards at the side and no more than two stories high. The entrance opened up into a hall some 10 yards on the side, with a staircase winding down along the walls. There was nothing but dust inside.

Descending, the party ended up in a series of underground corridors made of large blocks of dark stone. They were 2 yards wide for the most part. Bunches of small, phosphorescent mushrooms grew along the floor’s edges, providing dim greenish light. Not that it mattered since everyone had visors with infra- or hyperspectral vision. The place seemed undisturbed for a long time. Gaichu was uncomfortable, as the place seemed to be a low-mana zone. He took point, looking for traps, while Alva took the rear guard. Soon after exiting the staircase, there was a T-intersection. To one side there was a large stone door, while to the other the corridor continued on. The group chose to explore the side opposite to the door first.

After about 20 yards and a turn, there was a much smaller stone door. Gaichu didn’t find any traps, but it seemed stuck, so 4-5 stepped up and forced them open. Beyond there was a roughly 7×7 yard room. There were some small rocks in the walls glowing in a soft orange light, a large stone table, and some iron debris which on closer inspection proved to be the remains of a cauldron. The group sniffed around the room a bit discovering nothing special, and 4-5 took the iron. Opposite the door they came in through, on the south side, there was another similar stone door. It seemed locked so Gaichu started picking it, but 4-5 saw that as inefficient and simply bashed it open.

On the other side there was a snaking corridor, and after about 15 minutes of going down it while looking for traps, the group came to yet another T-intersection. The way forward seemed to end in a dead end after a couple of yards, while the way to the right seemingly led further. The dead end was suspicious to Gaichu who went ahead to investigate it. His hunch was correct – he found a door expertly concealed in wall construction! He started to check it for traps, but 4-5 seemed to have caught a bug from the last time and simply went and bashed it open. Beyond there was another 7×7 room, with a stone fountain and a flowing spring of water in the middle, as well as what seemed as ritual markings and spell components spread in a circle around it. Gaichu concluded that the fountain was used for summoning water elementals. Not wanting to mess with it, the group left the room, even though the scene felt somehow weirdly familiar to Alva (but she couldn’t peg anything concrete to it).

Following the remaining way forward from the last T-intersection, the party eventually arrived to a large, very sturdy looking stone door, similar to the one near the staircase. Gaichu found no traps on it, and 4-5 bashed it open. Beyond there was yet another 7×7 room (the builders must have had a thing for the number 7), empty except for a pyramidal stone pedestal against the opposing wall, on top of which what looked like an ornate stone staff rested. As the group approached, the pedestal transformed into some kind of a spider-like stone construct and attacked!

4-5 reacted first as always (due to his Enhanced Time Sense), and singed the spider slightly with his weaponized arc cutter. And then… Alva flipped out and started spraying the room with her gauss shotgun, including 4-5 and Gaichu who were in the line of fire between her and the spider. She has Phobia (Spiders). She missed Gaichu, but hit both the spider and 4-5. She didn’t manage to penetrate the spider’s stone hide, but inflicted a major wound to 4-5, who failed his dodge and drop roll. He at least managed to avoid the stunning. Gaichu fired a burst of plasma bolts into the spider, only managing to injure him slightly. The spider bit him twice with his mandibles, but he deftly parried the attacks while sidestepping out of Alva’s line of fire. Jimmy opened fire from behind with this dual heavy gauss pistols, managing to injure the spider the most of anyone so far.

4-5 crawled out of Alva’s cone of fire, and managed to shoot and singe the spider slightly. Alva continued spraying the room with her shotgun, with only the spider in her killzone this time, managing to injure it a bit this time. Gaichu bursted down the spider with plasma bolts again, and singed it a bit once more. The spider attacked him again, and Gaichu defended by parrying its attacks and retreating. Jimmy continued his modus operandi, but the spider managed to dodge a couple shots so he only injured it a bit.

Next round, 4-5 loaded in his gunnery program. Alva was still spraying the room, only this time, besides the spider which she missed, Gaichu was in her line of fire as well since he carelessly retreated right into it. As a result, he received a major wound in the back, fortunately passing the knockdown roll. He ran across the room outside of the killzone, reloading instantly with his Quick Reload and shooting the spider, but missing. The spider decided to jump on top of 4-5, who was still laying on his back on the floor. He tried to dodge but failed, with the spider biting him for a couple points of injury. Jimmy did another round of pistoleering, injuring the construct solidly.

Then, 4-5 shot the spider at point blank range with his plasma cutter, hitting with most of his 10 shots, splitting it in half. As the noise of the battle died down, only the clicking of Alva’s empty shotgun’s trigger could be heard.

The group decided to retreat from the pyramid’s underground level, back to the entrance chamber for healing (primarily motivated by Gregory having no penalties to his healing ability due to low mana). Once Gregory was summoned, being his usual mischievous self, he pulled out a circular saw while getting to work on 4-5. That freaked him out so much to refuse treatment and chug a dose of repair nanites instead (healing potion for robots, ergo not cheap). Greg was a bit more gentle with Gaichu, producing only a rubber glove for that purpose.

We decided to end the session there.

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This was the first time when all 4 players could attend, and it was a very fun session. The friendly fire incident was hilarious, and it was a good thing I forgot to apply Suppression Fire when Gaichu retreated back into the killzone on his own turn, instead just applying it on Alva’s next turn. It could have been really, really bad that way.

Real life caught up with me, so my posting on the blog was nonexistent the last couple of weeks. In the meantime two additional sessions happened, which I hope to chronicle in the next couple of days. After that I have a campaign idea inspired by a game I’m playing currently I’d like to put to paper.

Date: 2018-07-26

Player Characters (333 points):
ESA1000 45460 (4-5 for organics), humanoid engineering robot
Gaichu Koschei, android infiltrator/assassin
James Titus Kane, human legendary starship Captain of the Stewards Navy (retired)
Alva von Kirchess, aasimar diva / Captain of the Knights of Golarion (retired), breach and clear specialist

Notable NPCs:
Archibald Grey, renowned explorer

The session started with the PCs packing up for their expedition to the planet Glacigneous. They eventually made their way to one of the hangar bays, where Archibald was waiting for them with his ship. It was a small shuttle-class vessel, among the smallest types normally used for interstellar travel. It had a cockpit, a small cabin and medbay, a 4-bed bunkroom, some cargo space and a blaster turret on top. Archibald was just about done with loading it with his equipment as the party approached. They boarded, made themselves comfortable and didn’t dally a lot. They took off of the Wanderer and jumped into the Drift a couple minutes thereafter.

As soon as they entered the Drift, the alarms started blaring. Floating pieces of a hilly landscape could be seen around the ship, as well as four draconic-looking flying creatures twice the size of a man. Angrily swarming the ship. The drift drive seems to have ripped off a decent chunk of another plane.

Jimmy, who was already at the helm, started evasive maneuvers as the draconians’ intention was clearly to board the ship. Alva took the turret seat and started blasting while 4-5 manned the sensor console supporting her targeting efforts. The first shot missed its target, but none of the draconians could keep up with Jimmy either. The second shot turned its target into a pink mist, but one of the remaining three managed to latch onto the ship. Next shot was aimed at him, but he successfully dodged. Jimmy didn’t have much luck either and the remaining two draconians also latched on. The first draconian dodged another turret blast. Fortunately, that kept him from making any progress on ripping through the ship’s hull, which seemed to be their intention. Jimmy attempted to shake them off, but managed to lose only one. The third draconian started ripping through the hull. Alva finally managed to score a hit on the first latch-on, misting him. Jimmy managed to evade the airborne draconian, but the remaining latch-on got another round of hull-tearing. Alva tried to shoot him just as he was jumping into the ship, but he dodged. As he jumped down through the hull and into a corridor, Gaichu revealed himself from the shadows and shot him full of gauss crossbow bolts. Unfortunately, they didn’t penetrate his thick scales. Jimmy, on the other hand, managed to keep the remaining flyer at a distance. Next round, Jimmy managed to avoid the flyer the final time, as Alva blasted him out of existence.

The boarder, however, attacked Gaichu with two claw attacks and a bite. Gaichu dodged the claws and teleported himself a couple of hexes away to avoid the bite, simultaneously vanishing in the darkness. He striked right back, this time managing to damage the draconian. Alva and 4-5 both started running in the direction of the fight, but Alva had to fetch her shotgun first. The boarder repeated his attack pattern against Gaichu, who also repeated his defenses and the vanishing act. His crossbow burst, unfortunately, again failed to pierce the target. 4-5 arrived to the fighting area, in the opposite side of the corridor where Gaichu was currently in relation to the draconian. He drew his modified plasma cutter. The draconian did a claw-claw-bite against Gaichu, who once again dodged and teleported away from his attacks, but this time not vanishing into the shadows and ending up between the draconian and 4-5. He shot the draconian with a variety of ammo using his Dial-a-Round, unfortunately to no avail even though most of them hit.

Alva finally reached the fight and shot a burst from her gauss shotgun into the draconian, who unfortunately dodged all of the hits. The draconian once again attacked Gaichu to no avail, who started reloading his crossbow. 4-5 loaded his Beam Weapons program into his Computer Brain. Alva fired another salvo, but the bullets did not penetrate even though the draconian didn’t dodge. The draconian performed yet another series of attacks against Gaichu, who yet again successfully evaded them all. He finished his reloading and threw himself with his back to the floor. 4-5 finally shot the draconian with his modified plasma cutter, over Gaichu, but the draconian dodged the beam. Alva emptied the remainder of her clip into the draconian, again to no avail. The draconian wasn’t successful in hitting Gaichu either, who shot him with a full RoF worth of tranquilizer bolts. Unfortunately, for the couple which did penetrate its DR, it passed its HT rolls. 4-5 shot and missed yet again. Alva started reloading and the draconian flailed once more in Gaichu’s general direction without success. Gaichu shot another burst of tranq rounds, this time bringing the behemoth down. They finished him off with a starknife to the base of the skull, and after Gaichu took some trophies, they dumped the body into the Drift.

After spending a couple hours patching the hole in the hull, the company continued their flight. The six days of travel through the Drift were otherwise uneventful. Gaichu and 4-5 maintained each other.

Upon exiting the Drift into realspace, the alarms blared once again. The ship was in the middle of a debris field. Jimmy started with evasive maneuvers immediately, with Alva and 3-4 assisting him by manning the sensors. Even with his piloting skills, the ship took a lot of damage in the 5 or so minutes until he managed to get her out. Three sections were disabled: part of the cargo bay, one of the two reactors, and the reactionless drive. Oops. And they were already in Glacigneous’ gravity well. Double oops. 4-5 and Gaichu scrambled to keep the drive at even a semblance of being operational so that Jimmy could crash-land instead of just crash. Entry into the atmosphere was tense. But Jimmy is a great pilot, so he managed to crash-land in the region where they were intending to land in the first place. Even though the ship otherwise suffered minimal damage during the crash landing, the sensor array was busted but much less than the reactor and drive.

After the dust settled and everyone came to, they surveyed their position and assessed the damage. But that is already the story of the next session.

---

The draconian actually did start to use Deceptive Attack after missing Gaichu during the first round of their combat, but Gaichu’s first three defenses in a round are coincidentally almost a sure thing. Especially when they’re against a single opponent and he can step back. He still was lucky though. A couple of hits from that thing would have been bad news. Had more than one managed to board… well, things wouldn’t have been pretty at all.

For those interested, here’s the writeup of Archibald’s shuttle. It’s a SM +7 vessel, and I didn’t bother writing down any stats beyond the sections since they were irrelevant to the game.

Front Hull

• [1] Light Alloy Armor
• [2] Control Room
• [3] Defensive ECM
• [4] Enhanced Array
• [5-6] Habitat (cabin, 1-person medbay, bunkroom)

Central Hull

• [1] Light Alloy Armor
• [2!] Major Battery (turret with light particle beam)
• [3-6] Cargo Hold (15 tons)
• [core!] Light Force Screen

Rear Hull

• [1] Light Alloy Armor
• [2] Hangar Bay (10 tons)
• [3] Engine Room
• [4-5] Fusion Reactor (4 PP total)
• [6!] Standard Reactionless
• [core!] Stardrive

Design Features

• Streamlined Hull
• Artificial Gravity
• Gravitic Compensators
• Total Automation (Engine Room)
• Winged

Date: 2018-07-16

Player Characters (330 points):
ESA1000 45460 (4-5 for organics), humanoid engineering robot
Gaichu Koschei, android infiltrator/assassin
James Titus Kane, human legendary starship Captain of the Stewards Navy (retired)
Alva von Kirchess, aasimar diva / Captain of the Knights of Golarion (retired), breach and clear specialist

Notable NPCs:
Archibald Grey, renowned explorer

After deciding to seek their fortune in the mysterious Hidden Suns nebula, the adventuring company was through their network of contacts introduced to the renowned explorer Archibald Grey. He contacted them online with a job proposal: escort him on a dangerous expedition in search for a specific item, serving as his security detail and performing a wide range of exploration-related tasks. The offer was sound, 5000 credits down payment and a further 25000 after the expedition’s completion (successful or not) for each of them, or an equal share in any treasure found. To be decided at the expedition’s conclusion, which itself should last no longer than a month and a half. Further details he would only reveal in person.

The company accepted the invitation and set out to meet Archibald aboard the starship Wanderer, roaming the Hidden Suns and serving as the base camp for all exploration of the nebula. Recommended by Archibald, they arranged for transport with a tramp freighter captain doing supply runs for the Wanderer.

Approaching the captain to discuss payment, Alva banked on her looks and celebrity reputation to haggle a good price. It didn’t matter – he was star struck to have the legendary Captain James T. Kane as a passenger. He and his entourage were to fly for free. Jimmy Kane!

The flight to the Hidden Suns was uneventful. Alva composed scores for her next album, Gaichu sat in a corner and sharpened his blades, while 4-5 just stood there plugged into a wall socket, browsing the ship’s databanks. He and Gaichu also maintained each other a couple times. Jimmy just enjoyed the captain’s cabin, who graciously turned it over to him for the trip and bunked with the rest of the passengers.

After 19 days in the Drift, the freighter appeared in the Centerpoint system. Asteroids and debris as far as eyes and sensors can see, and a giant metal sphere in the center, letting through what little starlight of the captured star managed to escape it through its rings. The Wanderer was unfortunately at the other side of the system, so they flew another 6 days through the debris.

Reaching the Wanderer, they docked in one of its many hangar bays. Disembarking, Alva went to look for a rental hovertrolley for her baggage pile. Meanwhile, 4-5 made acquaintance with a local load lifter droid. Alva ended up buying the hovertrolley instead of renting it. The freighter captain thanked them for this wonderful opportunity, and gave them his contact details if they needed him in the future.

The company set out to find the Four Point Star hotel where they were supposed to meet with Archibald. Aboard a turbolift, Alva and Gaichu experienced a slight sickness in the stomach, while Jimmy had to hold down his breakfast in his mouth with his hand, muttering something about accursed mid-section gravity planes. The lift opened up to one of the habitat decks, this one with a simulated day and night cycle. It appears it was around noon. On their way through the streets, 4-5 noticed that the ratio of miniature organics still upgrading themselves rapidly to that of the standard models was lower than usual.

Finding the hotel, which appeared to be decently classy but nothing too luxurious, Alva rented a luxury room (bit below her standard really) for three weeks. Exploring this concept of “renting a room”, 4-5 rented one of the cheapest ones, suspecting the receptionist of ripping him off. The small room with a bed folding into the wall and a view to a bulkhead wall didn’t help. Gaichu just manned the bar until their meeting with Archibald tonight. Jimmy soon arrived there too, accompanied by a gaggle of women. Jimmy Kane! Sometime during late afternoon, he just faceplanted on the table, the girls poked him a bit, shrug and left. Gaichu collected him and paid (out of Jimmy’s pocket, as usual) the hotel staff to clean him up and get him back to his room.

It was eventually evening, and Alva came down to the bar in one of her uncountable night-time outfits after an afternoon of relaxation. Gaichu changed his appearance to be wearing a suit for a business meeting. 4-5 was there too, observing once again this strange protocol the organics have for changing their outer shell periodically. Jimmy was still in his room, and would be until sometime tomorrow when he would wake up with a monster hangover.

Archibald arrived, and led the company to join him in a private part of the bar. After the transparent isolation walls closed, he revealed that he was actually looking for the final resting place of the legendary pirate captain Harkwood, the item he was seeking being Harkwood’s equally legendary ship the Black Star Diamond. He came into the possession of a lead to Harkwood’s last destination, in the form of logs belonging to one of Harkwood’s liutenants written just before his departure, inherited by his descendants. Apparently, Harkwood’s last journey was right here to the Hidden Suns, specifically to the planet Glacigneous orbiting one of the Vertices. Alva was suspicious about how was Archibald able to dig up this intel since the Knights of Golarion have always been on Harkwood’s trail and were looking for him since he disappeared those 50 years ago, but haven’t managed to find out anything so far. Gaichu countered that people don’t just go bragging around that their relatives were space pirates, unless they are themselves similar unsavory types, which is not a guarantee. Archibald seemed honest enough and Alva could smell no deception, so she let it go. 4-5 was confused as to why would anyone spend significant resources and embark on a dangerous journey to find something that they weren’t actually sure it was there. Archibald explained that it was called risk, and that without risk there was no reward. Gaichu tangentially brought up the topic of gambling, which 4-5 went to google in his head straight away. He narrowly avoided mental stun, because it definitively did not compute. But he did recognize that this was what Jimmy was doing so often, and some things about his illogical behavior have now started to make sense. The company accepted the deal, received their down payment, and arranged with Archibald to embark on the expedition in three days, in order to obtain some additional gear in the meantime.

The next day, Alva wanted to find out how exactly was the Wanderer governed, but critically failed her Administration roll. She got the impression that it was a completely lawless hive of scum and villainy. Wanting to find out where she could buy some maps of Glacigneous, she went around intimidating the locals until she got a line on some expedition gear stores. The clerk was somewhat perplexed by her request and didn’t really know which price to ask, so he offered it for 10 credits, which Alva bargained down to 5 since he didn’t really care. Downloading the map, it became clear to her why the clerk was so confused. The map was really just an orbital hi-res photo of the planet. There were no detailed maps of Glacigneous, as none of the planets within the Hidden Suns are actually properly charted. It was a good thing she was in a mellow mood, so she also bought some gear from the store.

Gaichu spent the days, aside from shopping, in the bar drinking on Jimmy’s expense, as is customary after Jimmy ends up needing to be taken care of. Jimmy was also drinking on his expense, just much more than Gaichu and in many more establishments. Just before their departure, Alva rented out a secure storage unit for her stuff, and in the meantime managed to discover that there is a semblance of law here, called “don’t do stupid things or all of the active and retired adventurers who live here will draw on you”. The local crime rate was actually very, very low.