Welcome back to my Starfinder posts! Sorry it's been a while, but as I've mentioned before, I'm doing these writeups more on progression than session-by-session, to cut down on write-ups where I'm trying to flesh it out by going over every room the group investigates. This covers the last two sessions of the game.
So where we left off, my group had just reached the Acreon, the quarantined ghost ship (not a literal ghost ship, I realize I have to specify that in a fantasy setting) that brought an equally-quarantined asteroid out of the Drift and to Absolom Station. And on the way there, they survived an ambush from an Eoxian fighter ship before hitting it hard enough to send it crashing on the Drift Rock.
They run a scan on the ship as they approach. They can't find any life signs, and the transponder is still broadcasting the quarantine notice. It's an older ship, beat up and repatched several times over, that in theory holds a crew complement of six. Also, of its three airlocks, one of them (the aft one, between the thrusters) is open. Like, completely open. The ship is lacking in air, but they can tell before going in that the artificial gravity is on and the ship has power so if they can get into the computer they should be able to repressurize it.
It's a tight fit, especially for Malesinder (as he's large-sized), but they manage to get into what's apparently the engineering section of the ship... where they're immediately set upon by two akatas, which manage to take bites out of both Zar and Virxidor before they bring them down. They plan an investigation of the ship, sending Virxidor's drone ahead clinging to the ceiling to scout out the place. With it in the lead they begin to slowly move through the ship, finding pieces of this green crystal called noqual that makes up akata cocoons (and, conveniently, is quite valuable). There are definite signs of struggle throughout the ship -- bullet holes, scorch marks from lasers, blood splatters, a couple of discarded weapons. Oddly enough, no corpses, aside from a goblin found torn up in a hallway. It's mangled enough that Zar has to examine it to confirm the species, and they have reason to suspect that it's their missing once-ally Scrap.
Because they think it would be hilarious to do so, Zar and Virxidor try to convince Malesinder to eat the body, insisting that's what Scrap would want. And for reasons that are such a mystery that grasping them would lower my maximum sanity rating, Malesinder actually seems to give these near-strangers' obviously-trollish suggestion as much weight as the protests of his psychically-bonded soulmate, N1-C0.[0]
As they investigate the ship, taking out another akata on the way, the party finds the cargo holds. One of them contains a sealed 8 feet square shipping container labeled as a diplomatic package for the Eoxian embassy. It has no manifest listed, just the address for the embassy. Obviously, this is Gevalarsk Nor's package. The group decides against opening it right now, and Malesinder insists on hauling it back to the shuttle now before something happens to it.
The other cargo hold contains a couple more akatas and their cocoon-shards, but thanks to N1-C0 being quick enough to slam the door on them the group has enough time to set up a trap to slow them down with a sticky grenade. But even then, they manage to get their parasite-injecting fangs into Malesinder.[1]
They move onto the section of the ship with the crew quarters, galley, and crew storage. Virxidor's drone manages to get taken out by a nasty trap in the crew storage area, but they find a small science lab and some gear in there. The crew quarters are empty, except for one where the door has apparently been barricaded from the inside. Zar, who found the door in question, forces it open enough that someone inside begins freaking out and blasting out the hole with lasers. They quickly stop however, and Zar spots a pair of goblins hiding out in the room. One of the goblins is, in fact, Scrap. Apparently he'd taken off to finance his own run at the ship and got overwhelmed by the akatas because he only brought a couple of underequipped flunkies (not that they could have forseen that the ship would be infested with creatures that are nigh-immune to lower-level laser weapons).[2] They hitched a ride on the outside of a ship that was passing by and got to the Acreon, and now they're stuck. Scrap, being slightly smarter than most goblins, is quick to offer the group what equipment they've been able to scrounge from the ship (grenades, mostly, but also a key card for the computer an a couple of credsticks) to buy them a trip back to the station when all this is over.
And because there's no way in hell anyone trusts the goblins out of their sight, they volunteer the goblins to back them up as they go to see whatever horrible thing is likely waiting for them on the bridge. Scrap agrees, and the other goblin goes with it for the moment.
The party stops to rest and prepare for a few minutes[3] before sending the goblins ahead to open the door to the bridge, where they find three more of the akatas and their noqual cocoons. The party moves into the bridge a couple of people at a time over the course of the fight with the akatas (the akatas are helped by the fact that the nameless NPC goblin is completely worthless in combat), and towards the end of the battle Virxidor gets to the computer console to start repressurizing the ship and chucks a couple of grenades to wear them down. N1-C0 helps him hack the computer and get the Acreon up and running.
They find the Acreon's logs, where they read the crew's initial report on exploring the surface of the asteroid and bringing a number of strange geodes onto the ship... and then the later logs where they're being assaulted by creatures that hatched out of the geodes. (The descriptions match the akatas and their cocoons, in case it's not an obvious guess.) But then comes the next entry, where there's combat going on in the background and the captain reports in a panic that "There's something else—it came from the rock! We're getting overwhelmed! I'm going to open the ship to vacuum -- maybe that'll slow them down!"
The final log was recorded in engineering, with the captain in his space suit: "Purging the air didn't work. I've set the autopilot to continue on to Absalom Station, but we're abandoning ship. We'll fall back to the rock and try to regroup there. Acreon out."
Virxidor tries to scan the Drift Rock, but he can't find any life signs. He can only find traces of rock and metal, but nothing else. Conspicuously little else, like something is jamming their scanners. He also notices that the asteroid looks like it's been cleanly sliced off of something larger, and that there aren't any of the typical meteorite craters you'd find on something like that. He suspects that the Drift Rock is in fact some sort of spaceship disguised as an asteroid.
Zar is more than a little concerned. There's just little details and such that in his mind are adding up to a picture that has him extremely worried about what's going on over there. He tells the group that he thinks that the asteroid might contain an entity known as a color out of space, and that if that's the case he really doesn't want to go over there. (He's a little dodgy on exactly why he knows what a color out of space is, however.)
With this in mind, the group gets on the comms and contacts Ambassador Nor, who's been observing their adventure through the floating drone that's with them. They share their concerns about the rock and how little they can find about it, and he snarkily comments that maybe he should hire a team to go check it out. "Oh, wait, I happen to have an exploratory group in the area already, maybe I should task them with it," he adds. They point out their worries about a possible color out of space, and he points out that they don't necessarily need to kill whatever's over there if it's too much for them. He just needs them to get a good enough look at the Drift Rock that he can make his assessment for the arbitration. (During all this, Kech is being extraordinarily polite to the ambassador, moreso than she generally is with the rest of the group, and Virxidor calls her out on brown-nosing with him)
They ask what to do about the goblins, and the ambassador says they aren't his problem. He says to either bring them along or maybe lock them up on the shuttle and out of the way. Virxidor suggests just aiming them out an airlock towards the station, kicking them out into space so they drift in its direction, and letting momentum sort out the rest. Someone thinks to ask the goblins what they think should be done, and Scrap and the other goblin go off into a room to discuss it. There's a scuffle and a single blaster shot, and Scrap just comes out alone, shaking his head.
(And at this point, either Zar or -- more likely -- Virxidor asks Scrap "aren't you gonna eat him?" to call back to the whole thing from earlier, and Scrap is like 'what is wrong with you, of course I wouldn't eat him, we don't do that' and such)
In the end, rather than risk getting ganked (and because Bryan still has another player character present), Scrap agrees to be locked up on the shuttle out of the way with lockouts on the controls so he can't do anything stupid. Virxidor takes a bit of time to repair his drone and they take the shuttle over to an opening found in the side of the Drift Rock. There's no atmosphere or gravity inside, so they float over to the cave entrance and send Virxidor's drone in to scout out some. The initial tunnel -- which was definitely excavated -- forks and it goes down one way to find an empty chamber, before going back to scout out the other way. The party slowly moves into the tunnel (which is a bit of a squeeze for Malesinder), and N1-C0 checks out the empty room where he spots someone or something hiding behind a boulder. He psychically warns Malesinder, who informs the rest, and then N1-C0 calls out to whomever it is on an open comm channel. An android with a sniper rifle then leans out and takes a couple of shots at him, and he shoots back, and Virxidor manages to toss a shock grenade behind her. It blasts her against a wall, and she surrenders. Meanwhile, the drone finds a human corpse in a spacesuit floating in a chamber down the other path.
They take her gear and interrogate her, where she says her name is Clara-247 and that she was the pilot who made an attempt on them on the way to the Acreon, having survived the crash and gotten into the asteroid for a second shot at killing them. She was hired by an anonymous client through a shell company, and having failed at taking them out a couple of times by now she's willing to give up and live and let live. She turns over her equipment with the expectation of eventually being taken alive back to Absalom Station. Kech knocks her out with a stun blaster. Zar suggests just executing her so she won't become a problem in the future, but Kech just ties her up with the intent to leave her on the shuttle with Scrap. As he goes to take her back to the shuttle, it seemingly flies away on its own, with Scrap pounding on the windows in a panic (suggesting this isn't his doing).
They immediately call Ambassador Nor, who insists this isn't his doing either, and that he's already been on the comm with the people from whom he rented the shuttle. Apparently because of the quarantine the plan was always to pull the shuttle back when the group entered the Drift Rock, and as soon as it looked like there wasn't anything horrible coming back with them they could send it back to pick them up. The rest of the group is pissed, particularly Virxidor, and there's some discussion about dragging themselves back to the Acreon via the tow cables and just taking over the ship and flying it back to the station. They talk over their options as they go to look at the corpse in the other chamber, which is wearing a space suit with an Acreon patch. Zar investigates the body, and determines that this is someone who simply died of his wounds and was not infected with the 'void death' inflicted by the akatas, which means he's not going to rise as a zombie.
While they're going over this, Virxidor suggests removing the jump jets that the android assassin has installed[4], because then maybe in a pinch they can install them on N1-C0 and basically have him fly them back to the station. Kech hates the idea of taking the jump jets, though, and the group falls into bickering and arguing until N1-C0 raises his voice to try and stop it, and makes kind of a speech about how they need to work together to get through this, and they need to stop antagonizing each other, and that he knows that Malesinder can't possibly be as stupid as he acts. He gets on Kech's case about being shitty to Zar, and Kech says she's owed it because of what Zar's people did to her, and Zar counters with the fact that he's not his people, and N1-C0 suggests that maybe Zar needs to stop acting like it, then. They talk about how Zar is usually pretty quick to suggest killing people who are a problem, and he points out that he's just trying to be efficient and that he's never pushed the issue if the group hasn't wanted to kill someone -- the one time anyone did push the issue, that was Scrap, outside the nightclub.
I mean, there's more to it all, but in the end there's enough talking out their issues that they're at a point where they've got things out in the open and can at least work together for the moment.
And it was hitting that point in the night, and we left off there.[5]
Which means that next time, we properly delve into the Drift Rock proper.
[0]-- I normally try very hard not to make a habit of editorializing, regarding my players' antics, but I feel it warranted in this case.
[1]-- And, because the universe is funny like that at times, none of my players can roll above a 5 (after modifiers) on Fortitude saves, apparently.
[2]-- The goblins are in fact part of the module. Deciding to make one of them Scrap seemed like a good way to better explain the character's disappearance before properly writing him out of the story, and added a bit of flavor to the encounter.
[3]-- And for those of you worried about mechanics and such, the party also hit level 2 at this point.
[4]-- They're modular and removable, so this isn't painful though it is a particularly thorough sort of looting a captive.
[5]-- Originally I'd planned to finish this write-up as they finished investigating the Acreon and left the rest for next time, but between the big emotional moment at the end of the second session and the fact that they weren't too far into investigating the Drift Rock, it seemed like a good spot to leave off.
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