The Widening Gyre Campaign/Session 3

The party has made it to the center of (what used to be) Bishant. In its place stands a massive, decaying graveyard of ships, varying wildly in age. It's not an exaggeration to guess there may be millions of craft built up here, and rumors have abounded of the same ships washing up multiple times, thanks to the etheric eddies and the time loop phenomena. It seems improbable to pass over it with any sort of speed, for fear of being smashed up by the eddies. Flying too far above the graveyard will attract the attention of smugglers, so our best bet is to approach on foot.
Captain Marley directs us on a path he assumes will avoid any local stragglers. Our first choice: find the point of approach that will give the best balance between travel time and stealth. At the tip, where the newest ships wash up, travel will be fast, but smugglers will likely be there, scavenging. The wider, older portion would likely be easier to avoid trouble, but much slower. Using the data from the previous ship, we narrowed our landing spot down to a smaller wedge of the graveyard. Quill asks his soul computer for advice on the best possible path, and it calls us foolish, recommending we blast through the hollowed-out husks of ships with depth charges. A quick adjustment to avoid attracting attention coerces it, petty attitude aside, to give us a reasonable minimal-risk point of approach.
What lies in the graveyard? Automata? Unlikely, or else the older ships would have been processed by now. Rumors are widespread, ranging from unlucky stragglers to angels to a Leandran presence. It's also unclear whether our data is accurate, as the graveyard shifts significantly enough to cover up landmarks quickly after being carved out. Sylvia steps out to divine the local aether and its pathing. Combined with efficient scanning and piloting, we avoid the scavenger patrol, watching a small skiff and its unlucky crew get caught, harpooned, and dragged to their demise.
Our scan, combined with Sylvia's study, reveals the presence of likely "dead zones" we can enter and avoid having to relocate, as well as the chance to glide in along the eddies, minimizing the need for the engines. Our second choice: once we glide into a dead zone, we can kick on the engines to get into place before tethering down, or we can tether in with crawlers (though the latter would be more likely to be detected from any internal presence). We decided to use the engines. Zylch is a bit off, and we're nearly blown off course, but thanks to the combined efforts of Johansson, Quill, Ferdinand, and Fritz, we stabilize. We must scan again to find a new eddy or a new dead zone. All this time outside leaves Sylvia with some nasty burns, but she's alive, guiding us to the next safe harbor.
Upon entering the safe harbor, we noticed it was still, undamaged, and bare. The shape of the junked ships flaring out from this culvert indicates we're close to the crust of Bishant. Our third choice: how do we travel? On foot? By crawler? How many crawlers do we take? After a discussion of the expendability of our crew and how many sherpas we need to drive, we decided to take all 3 of our crawlers, for both speed and space to haul our loot. We leave the ship tethered but floating to allow for easier defense, and the crawlers descend. Our crew consists of:
* Crawler 1: Zylch (pilot), Quill (copilot), the capuchins, Bartholomew, Brent, Felix, and 2 marines.
* Crawler 2: Frank (pilot), Gundahar (copilot), The Kidney + power armor, 2 assistant therapists, and 2 marines.
* Crawler 3: Sheila (pilot), Sylvia (copilot), Ferdinand, Bradley, Fritz, and 3 marines.
We begin our approach by tunneling through the debris in a single file column, in the order listed above. The initial approach is slower than traveling on foot. Quill directs the column using his soul computer to pockets that allow us to speed things up a bit. The segmented nature of the crawlers also allows us to stretch over gaps between the ships. However, we're not looking at our surroundings thoroughly...
Gundahar sees something approaching the lead crawler in a stilted, marionette-like fashion. The figures drop flashbangs on the crawlers. All the PCs are blinded except for Sylvia. One of the capuchins on Quill's shoulders (George) is killed when his optics get fried. The other (Tim) goes berserk, saddening the rest of the capuchins in the back. Tim manages to see Quill and Zylch as friends, so he opens the hatch to the back of the crawler and tries to fight the other capuchins. Their lack of reaction manages to calm Tim down. Frank manages to track where the flashbangs came from, crawling up the side of a junked ship and shredding the assailant to pulp, laughing like a maniac. Gundahar mildly empathizes with the pulped man. The resulting chunks fall on to Crawler 3, and Sheila swears, activating her tiny windshield wipers.
We hear chanting outside. Something like heavy weights lock Crawler 1 in place midway over a gap in the ships. Quill commands the marines to do something. One of them (Garp) pokes his head out and gets sniped, collapsing forward, body continuing to be peppered with gunfire. The other marine (Patch) goes up to avenge Garp, using his body as cover. Patch fires a volley of grenades at the attackers. Zylch stubbornly tries to pilot out of being stuck, somehow not destroying anything but getting more stuck. Meanwhile, Sylvia tries to figure out who these people are based on the chanting. It seems like they're cultists of some kind, and the chant indicates a sacrificial attack, as though they assume this is a suicidal gesture.
The Kidney steps out in power armor to assess Crawler 1's situation. It sees at least 8 shooters and 6 cultists holding the crawler in place with pipes, and takes some potshots at the shooters, hitting one and sending them into cover. Sylvia has Bradley survey the area and he sees everything, counting 21 total assailants. Fritz readies fire. One marine (Dirk) fires a dart gun at a grenadier, splintering them badly. The cultists don't do much in response. Everyone can now see except Zylch. Quill uses his soul computer to pinpoint the cultists' locations; despite this, Patch manages to miss all of them. His first round of grenades, however, manage to collapse the gantry the grenadiers are standing on. This also causes Frank to dislodge from the wall he was on and fall directly on to The Kidney, who is critically injured in the best way possible; Durham takes significant mental damage and fails to remember who he is. The Kidney goes into emergency triage mode and shuts down. The power armor has saved it but is destroyed in the process.
Sylvia directs a marine (Trip) to fulfill the cultists' sacrifice fantasy by burning them alive. Trip only has an assault rifle. She encourages someone to shoot something, and Dirk shoots a dart gun at The Kidney, but it deflects off the power armor. She negs Dirk into devotion to her. Meanwhile, the pipers are starting to retreat. Zylch tries helplessly to pilot blind again. Felix tries to help, and Zylch swats at him in response. Felix is pissed and decides to grab Tim, dropping him on Zylch's head. Zylch instinctively swats at Tim, who is now pissed and starts attacking Zylch. The cultists manage to kill Patch, whose brains explode out of his helmet and fly on to the capuchins. They dislike this immensely. Patch's grenades dislodge from his launcher but fall outside the crawler. The remaining grenadiers try to throw more flashbangs. One of them falls and breaks their neck, another manages to throw a flashbang at Crawler 2. Gundahar fails to deflect it back and gets blinded again.
Zylch calls Quill over to dislodge Crawler 1. He somehow manages to calm Tim down, despite not being able to see him, with some encouraging (definitely not traumatic) words and holds him in his arms. Felix is still angry but fails to wrangle another capuchin to attack Zylch. The marines in Crawler 2 (Plumtree and Stansfield) coordinate to take another cultist out. Sylvia encourages the gullible Dirk to keep shooting, and he manages to splinter the last grenadier. Finally fed up, the cultists retreat and regroup, leaving 2 injured and primed for interrogation. We pick up the pieces, and Zylch is still somehow blind.
Category:Session Summaries