SotB XXI: Xeno-What?

*The crew investigates a terraforming colony in the outer rim after contact is lost...*

## Agents

### Session 1

* Fai Mei
* Jokan Benn
* Kii'Vera
* Rogesh Vai
* Saber Scintel
* Yyrgahk

### Session 2

* Balken Oppen
* D4-RT
* Doxel Ovo
* Hank
* Nin'pei
* Rogesh Vai

## Mission Report

### Session 1

*Summary by Kyle*

Dear son,

Well this mission today was another fast paced and interesting one. We received a signal from someone identifying themselves as Rogesh Vai, the lone surviving member of the cell based on Naboo. Jokan checked the encryption and it was certainly a Broker agent. Well after some initial hemming and hawing we headed out to LV-426 to rescue the poor blighter. Apparently he had had his cover blown when the Imperials sacked our base as they were able to get that information since it was the most recent addition to our files.

He was unconscious when we arrived at this escape pod on the planet and I quickly worked to heal up the wound he suffered. My ministrations may not have been the gentlest and my work awoke the agent. Naturally, he was frightened and a bit concerned about us but we worked it out rather quickly. Luckily enough there was a colony close by known as Hadley’s Hope which the Broker had a financial interest in close by. The colony had unfortunately gone dark and so we decided to pop in and find out what the trouble could be.

Trouble was certainly abound, but luckily our pilot Jokan was able to easily land us close to the colony even though it was hell on wheels thanks to the terraforming going on the planet with the horrid winds and general crappy terrain. It was quite the triumphant feet honestly. He is quite dashing for a rebellion officer but I learned from being with your father not to date men in the military services.

The power was on and the airlock was closed. So I decided to let the men fumble about and just work on the keypad. It wasn’t designed with security in mind and I made short work of it. On the other side of the door we found the second airlock door was thoroughly trashed. It had been forced off it’s hinges and the track looked like it had been on the wrong end of a fight.

Saber used hand wavy magic force ability to move the busted door out of the way. The hallway it opened up on was badly damaged and there was evidence of blaster fire. As we walked forward we found a nice hole in the ground that had been melted away by something. Rogesh, Yyrgahk, Jokan, and I went into the medical room. It was rather wrecked. Bits of everything tossed about. I searched the computer while Rogesh checked the files on the floor. I wasn’t able to find anything of interest but Jokan found some stimpacks and Rogesh looted some Anesthetic that he put in some sort of wrist launcher thing. Rogesh did manage to find something about eggs being implanted and removed from people among the files.

Exploring another part of the medical room we find a room filled with specimen jars. Inside were spider-like creatures with large tails. I pulled in close to inspect them closely and it turned out that wanker was alive and attempted to attack me through the glass. Luckily enough it was unable to actually reach me. But, I had remembered hearing about a parasitic creature from ancient lore but that was about all. At this point, I took one of the dead ones out and dissected it so I could learn as much as possible.

During our search of the medbay Kii’vera and Saber started to search the room across from the medical bay and found themselves inside of a barracks. They didn’t find anything of too much interest. Then they entered into the next room and found an office like area that had a half-eaten birthday cake just molding away. Saber watched from the door as Kii’vera searched the room and found a lot of documents. They were worthless bureaucratic nonsense for the most part but they all had the same header on them. NT Materials was apparently heavily involved in this colony.

The rest of the team moved forward and it found itself inside of a command center of sorts. The room looked derelict with the servers and computers off. Kii attempted to get it started with a little percussive maintenance but all the lad accomplished was bruising his hand and ego. Jokan smacked it himself and it then decided to start up.

### Session 2

*Summary by Ben*

From the desk of Dox,

Well, we followed that signal to LV-426. Turns out the source was a wounded man. Out cold, from the looks of it. Hank and I dragged him onboard and had Balken stitch him up. He woke up after a little rest time, but Balken didn’t seem interested in questioning him. No Durin to be found, either, so I stepped up. I mentioned the Broker and that seemed to catch his interest. Mention of Moenia had the same effect. He came forward pretty soon and rattled off his ID number, which Balken confirmed for us. Turns out, he’s an agent from the Moenia cell named Rogesh Vai. Hank told him what happened to us, and he didn’t take it too well, but hearing that Foro and Jaan are still alive seemed to lift his spirits. Sounds like he suffered his injury during his escape from Naboo.

Now, down to business. Looks like this is some sort of terraforming colony, from what Balken says. They usually drop off colonists with enough supplies to get started, and this one seems in the earlier stages of the terraforming process. We had Chimchim take us down and drop us off, since we couldn’t find a proper landing spot nearby. The air there reminded me of some other colonies I’d been to. The air was dry and from the looks of the clouds, a dust storm was on the way within the hour. Luckily, Balken was able to get us inside without too much difficulty. There was a second set of doors inside, and it looks like something big knocked them off of their track. The code panel was smashed, too. D4, Rogesh and I managed to pry the thing open again, and Balken seemed adamant in shutting it behind us, just in case we found something we didn’t want getting loose.

The place seems like it was beat up pretty badly. Wires and junk hanging everywhere. Balken identified some scattered blaster marks on the walls, and I noticed some holes in the grating that seemed to go down several floors, like something had melted through. Balken identified them as the result of some type of corrosion. At the end of the hallway, we found a barricade. Definitely a good sign, right? The first room on the left looked like some kind of living quarters. Pretty bare stuff, and it looked like whoever was there didn’t have much time to pack up. Balken decided to fuse it up before we moved onto the next, which looked like an office of some kind. Mugs still half-filled and even a moldy birthday cake. We all had a look through some of the documents, and I don’t even know why I was surprised. NT Materials documentation everywhere. We had Balken seal that one, too. The next one was already welded for us, and Hank didn’t sense anything behind it. We cut open a small hole to look in, and it looked like an abandoned mess hall. Balken volunteered to cut it open the rest of the way, and it looked like some sort of fight went down in there. Another one of those melted holes, but nothing else of note. We sealed it up and headed to the other side of the hallway.

The first door there looked like some sort of command center. Consoles everywhere, but nothing turned on. Balken managed to get one of the computers to boot up while we searched the room. Nin’pei found a safe and tried to keep it quiet, but Balken let his little secret out. Rogesh worked some magic with the lock and got the thing open. A good stash of credits were inside, and a single document dated about two weeks ago, still with the NT Materials watermark. Seems like they wanted the colonists to search a specific location on the planet, and the two-week date seems to match up with when the colony started going to shit.

With the computers on, we started going through some files. A group of claimers, two weeks ago, sent out a distress signal stating that someone had been attacked by a strange creature. Another message requested that claimers ‘bring back eggs for research.’ Also, it was apparent that the colonists were all implanted with tracking devices, and their signals all showed them gathered on one of the sublevels of the nearby processing station, very close together. The colony blueprints also showed an access shaft running from the colony to the processing facility itself. Balken managed to slice into the tracking system and find that the colonists had been gradually moving from the colony building to the processing station.

The last room was a medical bay. Some outdated medical equipment and operating tables. I found a few old stimpacks and bandages, but nothing too interesting. Nin’pei and Balken started reviewing some of the medical reports and found one dated two weeks prior, describing some kind of implantation and removal, during which he died. There was an attached room with no windows, and we found a series of specimen tanks inside. Balken tapped the glass and the spider-like creature jumped against the glass. While Balken studied it, I heard somthing moving nearby, and one of the things jumped up onto D4’s face, wrapping its tail around his neck. D4 managed to prod it with his staff, causing it to fall back off onto the floor. Its legs started curling up and it stopped moving. D4 finished it off by stomping down on it, splashing some green goo all over the floor. Seemed like that was the source of the corrosion.

Balken found a console nearby and sliced in to get whatever research data the former occupants had gathered. The things were apparently bred to impregnate living hosts, or something. Hank cut off and cauterized one of the tails with his lightsaber for Balken to keep. In an effort to get some more information, we left D4 alone in the room with a vial of poison and had him open one of the containers. Apparently, the creature inside came to the top and leapt at him like the other. There was some struggling, but D4 injected the poison as designed. The creature squirmed and died in his hand, and Balken took the corpse to safely extract the egg inside.

After scouring the colony, we decided to head out across open ground to the processing facility. The dust storm had set in by then, but we made it without too many issues. We gained access pretty easily, and decided to head to the upper levels once we got there, knowing that those tracking signals were down below. On the upper floors, there were some control stations with temperature gauges and other such equipment. Balken managed to gain access to the full readouts of the station and shed some light on the building’s purpose. Looked like some sort of fusion reactor. He also found a way to put the reactor into meltdown. Linking a pair of datapads to the system, he managed to rig a way to trigger the meltdown remotely.

The lower levels were below the heat exchanger and seemed pretty hot and dry, clocking in at around a hundred degrees. Balken and Nin’pei stayed up at the control station while D4, Rogesh, Hank and I made the trek down into the sublevels to search for the tracking signals and their sources. We started seeing some strange organic material coating the walls. It felt like resin. Hard, but with some give to it. Further in, we started seeing bodies encased in the resin with some opened eggs nearby. They all had some sort of chest wound, too. While I was inspecting one of the humans, his eyes opened and he begged me to kill him. Seeing the state of the others, I obliged him, sparing him the fate of the others. Nearby, Rogesh found a duros nearby as well, and he seemed in a better state than the human. As it turns out, he was none other than Cad Bane himself. Bane seemed willing to help Hank with his bounty problem in exchange for help removing the embryo implanted within him. D4, Hank, Rogesh and I started moving to get him back up to Balken, but we could hear some movement further down the corridors. Crowds and crowds of these black creatures started crawling toward us, squealing and screaming. Rogesh and I fired some shots to keep them held off while we started a retreat toward the stairs. On the upper levels, one of the things managed to sneak into the room with Nin’pei and Balken. They managed to take care of it in short order, but a second oen had slithered in as well, which they managed to hit with anesthetic and knock unconscious.

Down below, we finished our retreat to the stairs with Bane in tow and met Balken and Nin’pei on the ground level. We had to head back out through the storm and the things from the sublevel stopped chasing us, but Balken passed out during the storm before we arrived at the medical bay with Bane. We did all we could to wake him back up. Smelling salts, some slaps on the face, but all it took was the false promise of a research grant to get him back on his feet. He immediately set to work on Bane, performing the extraction without anesthetic, but ultimately succeeding. We tried to raise Chimchim on the comlink, but the storm was interfering too much. Rogesh ended up finding a beacon revealing Bane’s ship nearby, so we headed that way. We could hear some of the creatures in the access tunnel from the processing center. Another trip across open ground led us to the landing bay, where we found Bane’s ship and Balken was able to slice in. The fit was a bit tight, but we managed to squeeze everyone in. The load seemed a bit much, though, and we weren’t able to lift off. Hank took the controls, though, and got us back into orbit alongside the Sunflare. Below, we could see the colony flash and explode as the meltdown finally reached its peak.