Session 7

Session 7 Notes (Audio Recording available here)

4:50: call starts

4:55: game starts. Recap.

Thursday, January 5, 2020.

Aquila, Rowan, and Lorelai together, Jedidiah watching over Oliver in the med bay, Janick going to the cockpit. Rowan proposes that they look for incriminating paperwork to try to get a bounty. Rowan wants 3000 credits, and to pick apart their ship if needed, and suggests telling Zooey on Pharusa where the ship is to raid it. Sending a message to Zooey isn’t viable due to needing a mail drone, according to the DM. Aquila is against it, and Lorelai is definitely against it because she wants to lie low and is also an outlaw. Lorelai wants to be a good person, but not might not be a good person: Lorelai cares about good intentions, although she might have a price.

Aquila was going to snoop around, but now that Norah is looking around, there will be very little chance to look around the ship. Lorelai suggests looking around while Norah is checking on her brother, although Aquila is worried that Norah will be suspicious that they’re not pulling away. Aquila says he’s only curious and doesn’t want to risk bad blood. Lorelai and Aquila wait for Norah, and Rowan goes to check on Oliver.

5:10

Janick scans for other ships and doesn’t find anything, although there is a nearby asteroid belt, several gas giants, and a star in the system. Each gas giant probably has 2 to 3 moons (which probably haven’t been identified as being rich in anything valuable): there are probably also several comets or barren rocks. No sign of activity anywhere, although there are abandoned outposts.

5:20

Med bay conversation. Oliver seems amused by Rowan’s greed, unlike Norah’s off-put-ness. Oliver calls Norah and says that they have a mineral for strike fighter hulls and that they should give it to the party. Oliver gets permission to leave the med bay with Jedidiah. Oliver offers to start moving the rocks over into our ship, although he shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery. Oliver seems pretty lucid. Lorelai asks Oliver if Rowan asked for the rocks.

5:30

Rowan and Janick are having a conversation, and Lorelai joins them and slaps Rowan. Janick is clearly against Rowan as well. Janick says the party has already decided, and that the ship isn’t designed for cargo like this (especially during combat maneuvers). Rowan starts to acquiesce, and Janick says he wants to hide one of their ships on a nearby moon.

5:40-5:50: break

5:50

Oliver observes that the crew argues a lot, to which Aquila says they are new together and “working out group dynamics”. Oliver says they used to be with a bigger crew, but that Oliver and Norah split off after they realized they were the only people that worked well together. “Gotta look at the silver lining, even if it’s a little tarnished”. Norah shows up. They’re all at the airlock to the cargo bay, for which Aquila has the code. There’s a long hallway with several offshoot rooms. The first two rooms are probably their rooms, but the other 4 rooms look mostly empty with mattresses in them (they look dusty). There’s a ramp at the end of the hall that goes up to the cockpit, by a ladder that goes down to engineering.

Aquila asks to look at engineering, to which Norah says that the eleven probably isn’t going to wow Aquila, but he’s welcome to look. Oliver goes to get a couple more things, but Norah takes Aquila down. Engineering looks pretty bad (Oliver isn’t a trained mechanic), with buildup on important parts and engine sealant caked onto plasma from the engine to the spike drive. Trying to jump into drill space would be much more difficult in this ship, and certain sealed pipes could spew out extremely hot energy to cause a burn like the one on Oliver. Aquila tells Norah and starts telling her about a few of the critical systems (particularly the spike drive) to be fixed on Katla. The life support looks pretty good, though.

Norah starts shutting down non-essential systems, and then Aquila calls Janick. Lorelai sees Oliver loading luggage, and goes to talk to Norah and Aquila. Lorelai mentions Janick wants to protect the ship, and tells Norah to talk to Janick. Aquila takes Norah over to Janick, leaving Lorelai with Oliver.

6:10

Jedidiah and Rowan are on the second deck of the ship, by the comms, when Aquila and Norah walk by. Janick tells Norah that they plan on moving the ship into the orbit of a gas giant, to which Norah expresses surprise based on an assumed time constraint, but agrees. Janick wants to go onto the ship with Norah to check out the mining rig (he grew up on a mining colony). Jedidiah decides to join, and sends Lorelai a message saying that Rowan is unattended.

Goes to Eleven is a reference to turning up a dial past 10. Norah takes Janick and Jedidiah into the cargo bay, by Oliver, to a heavily armored door with a biometric scanner. Inside, there are two deep space Chhayan marine mech suits. The movement is totally motorized (if it lost energy, no movement would be possible), and the gatling gun on one hand has been replaced with a drill. These suits can be used in orbital combat and even launched at enemy ships, or survive orbital entry with slight modifications.

Janick mentions that they’re Chhayan, to which Norah arches an eyebrow. Janick mentions that his ship used to be Chhayan as well, and that they’re well made. The suits have had additional armor welded onto them in a couple of places, but it’s hard to tell from the outside if they need fixing. They look like an older model, by several years: it’s believable that they wouldn’t have known, especially if she wasn’t the one to acquire them. The military doesn’t sell these, though, so someone probably either bought them for a ton of money on the black market, or stole them. Janick mentions to not say anything to Rowan, to which Norah agrees. Janick and Jedidiah leave the ship, Norah and Oliver park the ship (the party ship follows) in a stable orbit and power off the ship, and re-board the ship. The ship is left dormant, with no pressurization, and they picked a smaller moon on a further gas giant: the ship would be very hard to find, except if you knew where the ship was.

6:30

The ship prepares to depart, as Norah and Oliver take over Aquila’s room. It’s probably late lunch time, and Lorelai says food will be ready in 30 minutes. At the start of the campaign, the party got a fresh map of the sector, but drill space changes over time (maybe a nontrivial amount every month) and drills get harder over time. Expensive maps cost maybe 250-300 credits, and traveling a route updates your map. The drill space jump happens successfully. The ship can be set up to route warning messages to anyway, including the on-deck officer. Lorelai makes blood sausages for dinner.

6:40

6 days in drill space feels like 6 days in real space (no time dilation), but being able to “trim” a drill route might be a practical application of time dilation. At dinner, Lorelai is making small talk with Norah, asking where she grew up and how she got into this work. Banog in Zainab system, grew up there, got off planet after they didn’t like it there. Banog is very ordered and regimented, and children are only allowed to be out during certain times of day. She briefly references her parents, and then trails off. Oliver is quiet the entire time. Rowan does some psychic stuff, and determines that both felt resentment about Banog (that they felt that there was something wrong, not just that they didn’t belong): Oliver in particular seems unhappy about this topic, and seems unreasonably unhappy. About her parents, Norah thinks about not thinking about her sadness.

About the Goes to Eleven, there used to be 6 people, but they didn’t jive with them all. Norah thinks about a guy named Regis that she got into a physical altercation with. After a couple of months, Norah and Oliver decided to part ways with the crew: Oliver has fondness, but Norah seems to cringe at certain memories. The rest of the crew probably realizes that Rowan is up to something, although Norah and Oliver probably just think that Rowan is asking random questions. Rowan asks about who their crew was, and says ruffians from Pusti (and thinks the same: no names besides the first name “Regis”).

Norah observes that the crew is pretty green, and that the crew disagrees a lot. Janick responds “one jump”, and Norah laughs. Janick explains how the crew came together, and that everyone wants to head north. Janick explains that he hopes to still have friends in Katla, where he trained to be a pilot, and Norah asks for help getting refueled.

Oliver asks about Jedidiah being a preacher, to which Jedidiah says he’s a missionary in training out to explore God’s creation. Norah mentions that she can take co-pilot, if needed.