Arc 1: The Marnello Corporation

## Synopsis

### Drones in the Asteroid Belt

Having salvaged Rip's ship and freed the victims of human trafficking, the crew made their way towards the Garmantos system. Passing through the system's asteroid belt, the crew found themselves being attacked by old automated attack drones. These drones made an intercept course towards the Starship Christine and the ship of Rip Thorne (which they were going to scrap for credits).

Taking their battle positions, the crew managed to deftly destroy four of the automated drones that had attacked before making their getaway with minimal losses to their rewards. Making to the planet Propis, the crew lands on the dock to upgrade the Starship Christine and to make their way and explore a whole new world.

### Separate Leads

Landing planetside, the crew split up to pursue their own ends while the repairs were being done at the Docks district of Propis. Initially sticking together to gain information at a local hot spot called the Cloud Pub. The first thing the party had noticed was that in the Lower City of Propis, the gang wars have been steadily getting worse as certain drugs have been proliferating throughout. As the party went their different ways, they came across their own sort of individual adventures.

* Drake went looking for Violet Reva who was an old arms-dealing contact that he was looking for to re-establish mercantile connections with. Violet has been making a killing (figuratively and literally) by selling weapons to the local gangs. Having made purchases and been reworking a lot of his old mercantile deals, Drake was looking to make a serious profit, and maybe leads to find the people who betrayed him.
* Mielikki went to reconnect with Phera Lora. Phera had informed Mielikki that her stepdaughter Danelle Lora has gone missing. Phera had mentioned that her adopted daughter is known to have some sort of latent psionic abilities, though the specifics are not yet known. Mielikki promised Phera that she would do everything she could to find Phera's lost daughter.
* Penelope, after taking on a shift at a local clinic, was hired by a representative from the Marnello Corporation named Bob Nevada. Penelope, hired because of her abilities as a biopsion and as a clinical researcher. Being a consultant, Penelope learned and consulted on two major maltech projects: Operation CHOIR and research into the Galtzborn Feral Feedback Effect.
* Erin had found after winning a gambling match at the Cloud Pub that there was pre-tech stashes rumored to be located in the Lonar Convection Mines at the bottom of Propis after analyzing data and also rooting out ship sabotage aboard the Christine.

### Enter: Jane Jameson Jesse (a.k.a The Alcipel Outbreak)

Meanwhile, an outbreak of genetically engineered beasts occured on Alcipel. Jane was able to survive the onslaught on her farm and escape from varying mutant beasts. When she escaped, Jane had been directed to go towards the Alcipel Agricultural Combine's office to find her fiancé Dirk Dixon. Unbeknownst to her, Dirk died in the gengineered mutant outbreak, but she is trying to find her loved one.

After a riot broke out after the inhumane indifference of the Propis bureaucracy, Jane currently has a 5000 Credit bounty on her head and is accused on bogus news sites for being responsible for the Outbreak.

### Maltech Revelations

As Penelope worked more and more with the Marnello Corporation, she uncovered plots by Marnello Corporation for two major projects: Operation CHOIR and research into the Galtzborn Feral Feedback Effect. Operation Choir involved the extraction of psionic brains in an attempt to link them into some sort of psionic gestalt. While the purpose of these things are unknown, such an entity would have untold amounts of psionic powers at their beck and call, though chances are very high that such things would end catastrophically.

Meanwhile, Mielikki procrastinated on looking for Phera Lora's daughter. She really shouldn't have, but she totally did. Somehow, this didn't bite her in the ass.

Drake and Erin went topside to gather more ways of looking into Marnello Corporation, specifically finding ways that they could hack the systems and find Phera Lora's daughter Danelle. However, despite Penelope's infiltration and much of the set-up being planned, the crew found that plans don't survive first contact with the enemy.

### A Deal with the Convection Miners

The party is currently heading down to the Convection Mines in search of Pre-tech artifacts and for more information. They had recently taken out another horrifying gengineered murder beast that had been ravaging the Lower City. After a tense situation, the party had been able to kill off the beast but currently need the proper equipment to navigate the mines.

After finding the Convection Miners, the party found out that while Marnello Corporation is one of the major players in the politics of the flying city, the Convection Miners themselves have a vault of Pre-Tech that allows them leverage against the megacorporation despite seeming like simple blue-collar workers.

Politically, the Miners were NOT happy with the Marnello Corporation kidnapping one of their own (Phera Lora's daughter), and offered the party a deal. If the Party were to rescue Danelle Lora and deal some hefty damage to the megacorporation, they would allow the party access to the lower level pre-tech vault and take some spoils for themselves. The party agreed to this, and set off to plan their heist.

### Matron of the Coir

During Penelope's workday at Marnello Corporation, going and reviewing through papers, Bob Nevada invited her to a meeting with the Matron of the Choir, the head of the psionics academy at Hypsila where both Erin and Penelope trained. Due to sheer curiosity, Penelope agreed to this. Though she remembered not really liking the Matron, it had been more than a few years after all.

When the Matron arrived with her coterie of similarly garbed psionic escorts, Bob Nevada invited the Matron to his private office, and they had a brief 12-minute meeting where nothing was said. Afterwards, it had turned out the not only had the Matron successfully probed Penelope's deception, but also revealed to Bob Nevada that his trusted contractor who enjoyed brain extractions was a traitor. Right after the meeting, Bob Nevada pulled out his pistol and fired upon Penelope. Penelope ended up running out and escaping with her life. The initial plan failed as the party was found out.

Meanwhile, the Matron's arrival activated the Gengi-Pod, causing internal damage to the ship and even more chaos. Meanwhile, Poorus Gaius left a note saying that he was leaving because of systemic abuse, and Drake put out the bounty on his head.

As a safety measure, Drake parked the Starship Christine in the clouds away from the Flying City to lay low despite repairs and upgrades not being complete.

### The Heist

The party made plans to infiltrate and find Danelle Lora. Coordinating with the Convection Miners, who organized a riot at the Sky District, the crew of the Starship Christine would approach from the air while Jane and the convection miners distracted the Marnello Corporation on the ground.

While the Christine ended up having to fend off the Marnello Corporation jets, after a decisive dogfight, the crew managed to infiltrate the Marnello Corporation building. While infiltrating the building, they were able to take down armored strike teams in the building and find other children who were being held hostage. The children had poison capsules wired into their bodies that triggered under certain conditions. Briefly traumatizing them, and then setting them free, the party then went on to find Danelle Lora in the beginning stages of a brain extraction.

After fighting off another strike team led by Asari Chen, a furious warrior who seemed to have a specific hatred of Mielikki, Erin was able to teleport the crew out of the hotspot, rescue Danelle Lora, and get away.

Unfortunately, Danelle also had the poison capsule installed into her systems, and it was activated due to the proximity trigger. Penelope was able to use her biopsionic powers to subdue the poison, but healing and recovery would take many days despite the advances in medicine and Penelope's prodigious biopsionic skill.

The team decided to rendez-vous with Phera Lora after this, with Propis fading into the rearview.

## Aftermath

* Penelope got a Ghost Mantle so she can wear a labcoat that never gets dirty, and she can also go invisible.
* Erin got a Neurointruder Alert because she's been paranoid about brain intrusions lately. She also found out someone was tampering with her brain.
* Mielikki got an Optical Sling in her attempts to become more like the Man of Bats.
* Drake got an Antigravitic Mantle because it wasn't enough to just have a sweet cape, but he wanted to become more like Magneto.
* Jane found out her husband is dead for sure, and probably needs to leave the system.
* Phera Lora owes the crew a debt for saving her daughter
* The Christine got some plasma beams instead of the previous weaponry that was installed. It is a shiny purple.