Gilded Sands: A Sign of Zeta

Nausicaä (Yushkep Fordite)

River (Lim Freejoy)

**Gilded Sands: Cobalt Revolt** is a one-shot set in the Promise System, the star system that houses Aureate. It's set 15 years after the events of Gilded Sands. The People's Republic of Aureate has taken back their planet, and have broken the barrier to space—with the Dodonan Tribunal presumably recovering in hiding, the PRA face the Tyranon Dynasty's VII Fleet as their primary foe.

Following the assassination of Iskra Garomedon, the one-shot follows the crew of the Osetr-class light carrier 'Cobalt' as they support the Unfettered Course in breaking a number of their members out of a prison on the occupied jungle moon of Groniz.

## Characters

### Player Characters

* Auxesia's Acantha (she/her), the Scout. A wayfarer former serf from Groniz, recently liberated by an underground Satellist saboteur/guerilla group.
* Lim Freejoy (he/they), the Aligned. A young Tyranon former serf from Aureate, and a volunteer of the the experimental pilot-augmenting Kaleidoscope Program. Pilot of the rover Alclad.
* Noyade Vidhava (she/her), the Leashed. A veteran Psalm from the Universal Choir, retired after the death of her Chord. Pilot of the bell Honey Bee.
* Yushkep Fordite (they/them), the Engineer. A Nadezhdan scrapper from Aureate, with a rare experience in zero-G conditions. Pilot of the rig Wagtail.

### NPCs

* Mariya "Riya" Stone (she/her), Captain of the Cobalt. Nadezhdan former smuggler, transporter, privateer, and revolutionary veteran.
* Diaphenes Modi (she/they)
* Severyn's Sirah (she/her)
* Frakkas Bereswek (he/him)
* Aret Shackleborn (she/her)
* Bergamot Uladiv (she/they)

## Sortie Summary

*The Sortie was played on the 12th of August 2021.*

The crew of the Cobalt have been given a mission to break into a prison by the name of Gravewell Gaol ('gaol' pronounced like it looks, *not* like 'jail') on the VII Fleet-occupied moon Groniz, in order to rescue several members of the Unfettered Course. Their primary objective, however, is to rescue Severyn's Sirah, one of the leaders of the Course. The prison is guarded by the Shackleborn Wardens—a band of lowborn bullies.

As the carrier approaches the prison from above, Noyade Vidhava makes preparations with Diaphenes Modi, and Auxesia's Acantha spends some time assisting Yushkept Fordite with mechanical tuning. Before the team is ready, Lim Freejoy decides to launch before everyone else is ready, to give the guards of the prison little time to respond. He takes off in the Alclad, a mech resembling a jet fighter, able to shift its shape between a form with arms and legs, and an aerial form offering greater mobility. Inside, the mech connects to Lim's brain, enabling them to make use of their Kaleidoscope augments that improve combat effectiveness.

### Launch

However, Lim finds himself harried by a formation of Heliodor Soarforge *Lanzas* on his way down—a large number of fast jet interceptors—and ends up in a tight spot. Yushkep quickly an unceremoniously takes off after them in the Wagtail, a rickety-looking Friendly Construction Company *Sofia* unit equipped with a number of drones, but they're unable to provide much help as they continue parachuting down into the jungle. From below, the Shackleborn Wardens—a heavily armoured infantry unit—is attempting to fire up at the attackers.

Meanwhile, Vidhava activates her bell, the Honey Bee. When piloting, she wears it as a sort of liquid latex suit, around which the bell forms as an enormous (40m tall) metallic crustacean resembling a low-poly black knight with a sunken head and a thorny halo across its shoulders, and an open cavity in its chest where Vidhava is, channeling the song of the Deep as she pilots it. Picking up Acantha, she cloaks the Honey Bee so it can approach the prison without harm.

### First Strike

Acantha is deposited on top of a bell tower that crowns the Gravewell Gaol, in position to attack the Wardens' flank using her massive rifle made from a knecht's anti-infantry cannon. Elsewhere, an underground silo begins to open, and Vidhava quickly takes off to fend off whatever is about to emerge from it. Acantha loads her rifle with a homemade round of explosive tehomic ammunition, and lands a shot among a cluster of infantry that leaves a pearlescent sheen once the damage is done.

Up in the sky, Lim continues to fight off the Lanzas, eventually managing to drive off one of the formations. Yushkep parachutes into the jungle, and attempt to drive the Shackleborn off with a battlecry, but they're not deterred—instead, they fire on the Wagtail, causing it to crash land in the heavy forestation below. Vidhava, meanwhile, quickly approaches the silo and shears through it with the Honey Bee's tehomic greatsword, dealing a solid hit to the emerging *Hohenzollern* unit—which houses Frakass Bereswek, the tyrannical head of Gravewell Gaol. With Frakass at a disadvantage, the two begin to fight.

Having hooked herself to the bell tower and begun to rappel down as the Wagtail came in for landing, Acantha sees it crash into the jungle, and quickly turns around to fire off some rounds at the Shackleborn below. However, her attack is cut short by a Lanza careening by and firing on her, which fortunately only grazes her in the leg (which, it being a mech cannon, still does considerable harm). However, following close after, Lim in the Alclad sweeps the Shackleborn Wardens below, wiping them out.

### Infiltration

The Wagtail is a smoking wreck for now—it's not destroyed, but Yushkep decides it's best to leave it behind and recover it later. Instead, they quickly attempt to construct an impromptu cloaking device—which they manage to get to work, with the inconvenient caveat that it's eventually going to overcharge and explode. With a clear path to the gaol, Yushkep meets up with Acantha, who lowers a rope down for them to climb up. The two of them climb up to the base of the tower and break through a narrow window leading down into the pit of the complex.

By the silo, Vidhava and Frakass continue to fight, until Vidhava manages to cleave off one of the Hohenzollern's arms, leaving Frakass open to a finishing move. While she doesn't wish to kill him, the song begins to try and sway her to do so. She resists the urge, but it's proven to have been in vain when the Shatterglass unit *Tyrfing* swoops onto the scene and kills Frakass in his mech with its glaive. It's piloted by Bergamot Uladiv, and Vidhava is locked in another fight with her.

Inside the prison, Acantha uses a map she's obtained to guide herself and the cloaked Yushkep through the complex. With Yushkep scouting ahead unseen, the two easily find their way to the pit, where prison cells are hung over a giant hole from something resembling a water wheel. On the edge is a woman clad in heavy armour, pointing a gun at a bound woman with rusty red hair—the former is Aret Shackleborn of the Shackleborn Wardens, and the latter is Severyn's Sirah.

Aret urges Acantha to stop, but Acantha takes a moment to try and suss out how to deal with the situation as she talks to her. Aret easily makes it clear she's not interested in anything but getting away clean. Before she can do anything else, Yushkep uncloaks, and offers a deal: trade Sirah for a cloaking device that'll make it easier for Aret to escape. Aret agrees, and lets Yushkep strap the cloaking device to her back—clueless that it's going to explode once it's out of charge.

### Final Blows

However, unwilling to accept Aret's deal of letting Sirah go at her extraction point rather than here and now, Acantha activates the thrusters on her suit's exoskeletal frame and jets forward, grabbing Sirah and swinging over to the other side of the pit using a hookshot. Yushkep keeps up the distraction, and as Aret is facing them, Acantha loads up another tehomic round in her rifle—this one an anti-personnel round that emits a discordant scream as she fires it directly at the cloaking device, detonating it in a pearlescent blast and killing Aret.

Outside, Vidhava continues her fight with Bergamot, supported by Lim. I'm sorry for how extremely anticlimactic this is going to sound because I forgot most of this part, please expand on it if you can!! Eventually, after a hard fight, Bergamot jets off. She opens comms with Vidhava, inviting her to come fight her without help next time, and Vidhava responds by giving her her contact information.

As the fight concludes, Acantha and Yushkep help Sirah out of the prison, and open the cages for the rest of the prisoners as well. The remaining underpaid House Nessen guards escape, and the crew of the Cobalt bombard the prison on their way out, denying the VII Fleet the use of this asset again.

As the carrier withdraws and the crew gathers and cools down in the hangar, the song shows Vidhava the sound of dozens of relieved, joyous voices. With the help of the Unfettered Course, the VII Fleet has lost some of its iron grip on the moon of Auxesia. Will the PRA be able to fight back against the tide, or was this merely a lucky break?