Moon's Haunted/Session 8

About a day passed between the fateful incidents of de Vranne’s confrontation with the party as everyone physically and emotionally rested. De vranne/his hunters and the rest of the party isolated themselves in their respective freighters and prepared for de Vranne’s trial. Kesdis radioed McCabe to inform him of the situation; apparently earning his explicit support, she then took a number of countermeasures to ensure that she would be the only word on the subject, hoping to keep de Vranne from influencing McCabe. In the meantime, a group of de Vranne’s hunters emerged to start harvesting the supplies from McCabe’s rocket, untouched since the spider attack. The hunters seemed to take almost all the guns and ammunition inside for themselves, and tore out a big chunk of the rocket’s radio guidance systems; they left half the rations, as well as the remainder of the ammo, for the rest of the party and dragged their own spoils to de Vranne’s ship.

Hours before de Vranne was set to appear for trial, McCabe called Kesdis back: he wanted to speak to both her and de Vranne together, privately. On the call, McCabe revealed that de Vranne had indeed contacted him after speaking to Kesdis—Kesdis could not be sure how, as she had tried to deny him any access to secure comms, but suspected that he had reverse-engineered a way to reach McCabe from the harvested telemetry of McCabe’s supply rocket. McCabe explained that on the call, de Vranne had been quite open about his growing insanity and culpability for his actions, and McCabe had no illusions about the potential risk that de Vranne posed to the party. However, de Vranne had briefed McCabe more thoroughly on the trapdoor spider god and on Gant’s research than any in the party had before, and had apparently made him aware that only those who had been heavily exposed to the spider god’s influence were able to perceive it. De Vranne made the case—which McCabe had bought, and parroted now—that this meant that only someone who was losing their sanity to the planet’s phenomena would be able to perceive the spider god to fight it. Someone who was wholly sane couldn’t fight what they couldn’t see.

This, McCabe explained, made de Vranne an important resource that the party ought not dismiss out of turn. McCabe knew the danger of keeping him on BECAUSE of his insanity, but admitted that because of the spider god’s increase in strength for each person that knew it existed, he was loathe to retire the party just to send in another large force to take care of the threat—and anyway, the more time that passed without the ATC restarting work, the more chance the Fialta would also discover Kamens before the ATC had a security footprint to resist them. This meant that McCabe if at all possible wanted the original party to complete the mission, whose importance was now bigger than the party (and its survivability) and urged the party to take any advantage it could get. McCabe assured Kesdis that he would not overrule her, and the choice to execute de Vranne would remain hers alone to make autonomously now or in the future—but for the mission’s sake, he hoped that she would not.

The revelation from de Vranne that Gant’s research and batteries hinged on the spider god’s holy symbols, which could stop working if the spider god was killed, also led McCabe to issue a new order: the party was to give preference to weakening and capturing or containing the spider god over killing it. This would allow sustainability of Gant’s work with a future black site on Kamens, and possibly offer reams of other eldritch knowledge. That said, if killing the spider god was the only option, McCabe would not consider it a failure.

Finally, McCabe ordered Kesdis to immediately send anything that remained of Gant’s notes and research on the extra freighter to a drop point in Celestial space, so that the ATC could collect it before the party progressed any further. Any who disagreed with the decision to carry on the mission despite its reduced survivability, or the new focus on capture over kill, could rejoin ATC main without any negative consequences by getting on that ship too and leaving. But everyone who stayed would get an exponentially higher payout at the end of the mission, with a preference for spider god alive over dead.

Kesdis struggled to accept any of McCabe’s new missives and felt certainly she was missing some extra piece that put McCabe on de Vranne’s side when he had been on hers hours ago. However, loyal to her employer (and the promise of impossible riches in exchange for wild heroism), she gritted her teeth and came to an uneasy truce with de Vranne. She solemnly returned to the party and communicated McCabe’s news. The party, unexpectedly, was split on what de Vranne’s fate should be. Some certainly considered killing him anyway, and most, including Kesdis, wanted to nerf de Vranne by making him cede control over his hunters. But Gaston spoke in favor of de Vranne and admitted that he was the best person to command the hunters, while Eleanor (though not trusting him or necessarily wanting him in the party) forgave him and agreed to have a conciliatory therapy session with him. After arguing at length, the party agreed to split control of the hunters: one team led by de Vranne, one team led by Kesdis with Gaston as translator, and one team led by Abbey with Lockheart as translator. De Vranne accepted this, but testing the limits of the new peace, would not commit to never use his hunters against the party.

The issue of Gant’s research was more hotly contested. Lockheart had locked up all Gant’s research and probes with a runic mechanism only she could unlock, and in a turn of insubordination abjectly refused to let it off the planet. Kesdis and de Vranne were confident, however, that this would certainly be a harshly punished failure, as would be any effort to try to lie or alter the work. After some cajoling by Kesdis, Lockheart realized that the ATC probably already knew the majority of what was in Gant’s research, and was only missing model probes and the science behind the holy symbol’s absorption of null space—in essence, work that could probably be reproduced, and therefore not worth her life. She agreed to send it.

However, Lockheart informed the party that the best way then to prevent the ATC from using the research for evil was to push back on McCabe’s capture order and kill the spider god instead, as this would hopefully deactivate the holy symbols and make Gant’s probes unusable. This, along with the objectively more challenging proposition of capturing it instead of killing it, made her highly recommend that the party not try to. She added pointedly that her opinion and willingness on this mattered, as she was probably the only person in the party who wielded enough power to capture or kill the spider god. Kesdis, growing tired of the party resisting her orders, asked Lockheart to at least TRY to capture it; Lockheart agreed, if not a bit halfheartedly and unconvincingly, and started to draw up plans.

The five in the party who now led hunters went with de Vranne’s hunter deputy Irakli back to Bata’s village to recruit more fighters, while Dozir flew a ship with the remaining miners, the shamblers, and Gant’s research to the ATC drop point. Along the way, de Vranne and Gaston had a heart-to-heart about de Vranne’s hasty order to Gaston during the other day’s standoff to kill Lockheart and Abbey; de Vranne assured Gaston that it was only because he trusted Gaston above anyone else, which Gaston accepted—though reminding him that he was perhaps not the best fighter to execute those kind of orders in the future. At the village, Irakli gave a rousing speech urging more Vakhtangians to join the expedition, and added five to their number, who de Vranne immediately armed with advanced weapons and began to train.

Once Dozir returned, the party gathered its hunters and piled onto the two freighters. Setting a course for the other side of the planet to find the entrance to the feral Nocturnals’ city, they took off...