Greetings, folks. Because of various scheduling difficulties, things have been a little off the rails gaming-wise. But hopefully it should even out soon, various events (like late spring and summer conventions) permitting. This is the first of two posts I have set up, because I had some delays on this one and then a Chronicles session happened. The second will follow shortly.
But now, we begin Temple of the Twelve, the second volume of the Dead Suns Adventure Path!
(Quick note before we get started: John, Malesinder's player, was unable to make it for this session, so the character is just quietly off to the side while events go on. In these cases, we treat the character as 'there' for the purpose of contributing to spaceship combat, but leave them out of any combat where their character could individually die.)
So where we left off, the group was leaving the Drift Rock in the Void-Crowned Queen[0], only to find that they had someone waiting for them -- an Eoxian ship with markings consistent with the Corpse Fleet, the rogue Eoxian navy that split away after the signing of the Absalom Pact formally created the 'Pact Worlds' alliance.
Unlike the last time they got into it on a spaceship, this was against a fully-crewed light freighter with a variety of weapons. Virxidor does a scan of it to determine the model -- a Thaumatech Cairncarver, and this one doesn't have aft guns. Rather than serve as a tactician, Kech takes up a gunner's seat alongside Zar while N1-C0 zips around behind it so they can open fire. N1-C0's superior piloting skills keep them ahead of the ship's movements as shots are traded back and forth, and eventually the characters punch through the attacker's port side shields and damage the power core and sensors. The other ship spends a lot of time playing catch up, both in trying to compensate for the damage and trying to outfly N1-C0 (which, for the most part, they simply can't) until the Void-Crowned Queen disables it. The ship's computer informs the crew that there's a system powering up on the other ship... moments before it self-destructs, going down with all hands rather than risk capture.
The party returns to Absalom Station, where Traffic Control is more than happy to welcome them back and ask if they're okay after that battle. They seem to know something's been going on, and they direct the ship to a decent docking bay and even waive the usual docking fees. It turns out, the ambassador has been broadcasting the footage of the group's explorations across the station. Everyone's faces are mosaic'd out, but that doesn't change the fact that a ship left the Drift Rock and arrived at the station and everyone knows where it is.
The group is swarmed by journalists and the like, various locals wanting to hear the story. They just push past (Zar in particular saying 'No comment' and venting pineapple-scented vape at them from his helmet.), and find a messenger from the ambassador saying he's made arrangements to get the party treated for the parasites they got from the akatas and other stuff, then he wants to have a word back at the embassy when they get the chance.
So they get healed up and head to Ambassador Nor's office, where he sends them the 500 credits he promised for retrieving his package from the Acreon. Zar kinda wants to have a talk about what's in there, which the Ambassador says he's willing to do for 500 credits, so he decides to let it drop for the moment and maybe revisit it at a later date. Even though he's seen (and streamed) the video, he asks them to give him a first-hand accounting of what it was like there. He's fascinated by the technological stuff they found, though, especially since he can't recognize the language they found on the Drift Rock's computers. He also asks their opinion regarding the arbitration. He saw everything, he has his own thoughts, but he wanted to get the group's take before he makes a formal ruling. The group shares the thoughts they had before -- Astral Excavations gets the surveying data they contracted for, but the Drift Rock goes to the Hardscrabble Collective (or, more specifically, the next of kin for the Acreon's crew) since it's obviously not a mining resource. Ambassador Nor states his agreement and that he'll make his formal ruling as soon as he can.
So after this, the group goes to check in with Chiskisk back at the Starfinder Society. They[1] begin running the language samples the group found through the Society's database to see if it's turned up anywhere. They are quite excited about the group's findings on the Drift Rock, and the implications that there's a larger related discovery ahead of them. And the database returns good news and bad news.
The good news? The Society has seen traces of this language before, originating in some ancient ruins on the continent of Ukulam on the planet Castrovel[2]. The bad news? The source is an explorer named Halkueem Zan, who went on an expedition three centuries ago and wrote a tawdry travelogue called "Pyramid People of Ukulam," that reads like a pulp novel. Ukulam is normally heavily restricted, and Zan gave the authorities the finger and went ahead anyways (cutting off the continent from all exploration for a decade). His notes were all donated to the Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology on Castrovel, and there haven't been any published studies.
Fortunately, the Society has contacts among the alumni of the university and Chiskisk offers to get in touch with a postdoctoral student named Whaloss who can show them around. Zar needs a little bit of encouragement to follow up on this -- he's not sure it's going to be entirely worth the effort to look into this any further, but Chiskisk and the others assure him that from what they found on just the Drift Rock, there has to be something worth bringing back from whatever this larger structure is. So he decides to go along on the coming adventure.
The group spends a few days selling stuff they retrieved from the Drift Rock, resupplying, and so forth.[3] Zar also goes through the paperwork to get the ship transferred into his name, renames it, repaints it[4], etc. And then, after that, they head for Castrovel, firing up the Drift Engine for the first time to get there in just a couple of days.
When they arrive at the spaceport, Whaloss is waiting for them. Whaloss is a damaya lashunta[5], tall and willowy and with a pair of antennae. He's excited to meet the group, having heard about their adventures on the Drift Rock and generally very friendly overall. He gets a taxi and, at the request of one of the party, takes the scenic route to the university to give them the tour.
When they get to the Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology, he takes them to meet Professor Muhali, who heads up the linguistic anthropology department. They head into the building where she works to find the lobby swarmed with journalists trying to hassle their way past the korasha lashunta receptionist. Zar grabs one of the journalists and asks what's going on, and with Kech's help gets out of them that one of the professors gave a hate speech-filled lecture the night before and it's a big scandal. The journalists are trying to get quotes and comments from university staff and such regarding the incident. They release the journalist and Zar asks the rest of the group if he can kill one of them to make an example out of them and drive the rest off.
Obviously, they say no.
Kech, however, uses a holoskin to disguise herself as a lashunta professor and pretends to be one of the university faculty to lure away the journalists with promises of soundbites.
The receptionist, Ikimsi, is so grateful he quickly finds some free time in the very near future to schedule the group to meet with Professor Muhali rather than have them walk in without an appointment. Whaloss takes the rest of the group up to her office, and Kech catches up from distracting the journalists just when they're about to begin introductions.
Professor Muhali, also a damaya lashunta, is stressed with the problem related to the journalists down below. A member of her department has just caused a scandal, after all, and she's trying to unravel it. She's not in any position to help them directly or scare up anyone else to help them. There's another professor, Dr. Solstarni, who's an expert in the Ukulam ruins, but she seems to have just taken some personal leave -- which, while apparently officially authorized by Muhali, the group get out of her that she doesn't remember authorizing it.
But that's an issue for another day. In a development that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows these sorts of adventures, she mentions that if they can help clear up her problem she could free up some time and energy to help them.
The situation is that during a lecture the night before, a professor named Ailabiens 21:2 gave an analysis of a war from a thousand years ago and used elements of it to rationalize the hypothetical genocide of the formian race, with whom the lashuntas were at war as of a few decades ago. It drifted right into the realm of hate speech and saying that it doesn't count as 'hate speech' because it's a 'logical,' anthropologist argument. It's reflecting badly on the university and as a result he's currently on academic suspension, and Ailabiens 21:2 won't listen to Muhali when she tries to convince him to issue a public apology. She's willing to let the group take a crack at it, though.
So she directs them to his office. They go in and the office is filthy, because Dr. Ailabiens 21:2 is a contemplative, another kinda-psychic race that telekinetically float around (thus, no need to clean the floor). He's just killing time, because he's on academic suspension, so he has plenty of time to talk to the group. N1-C0 recognizes that like many contemplatives, this one has taken his name from a scholar who once made an argument encouraging the challenging of traditions, and makes a note of that.
And Ailabiens 21:2 is arrogant enough for it to matter. When asked about his lecture, he insists that he was just arguing that the lashuntas could have won their conflict with the formians if they hadn't been so sentimental. If they'd just wiped out the formians as a whole, then they could have resolved the conflict much quicker and brought peace sooner. Zar, naturally, agrees with him, but that allows him to engage with the professor on his own level. N1-C0 argues against, but he gets the doctor's respect by obviously recognizing the source of his name -- and also because he's an android and -- according to the contemplative -- they're naturally inclined towards logic. Kech, however, gets much less respect because she's a half-orc, and this guy is kind of a racist asshole. Zar also gets some sympathy from the professor by insisting that the drow are an oppressed minority, which the others disagree with.
But without going in meaning to, they manage to sort of good cop-bad cop him into believing that whether or not he really means it, he should make a public statement just to make things look good. They play him like a fiddle once they get into the rhythm of it. In the end, he decides it surely has to be more dignified than taking the punishment. So he agrees that he is willing to offer a public retraction of his statements if they can cancel his suspension, restore his access to the restricted collections, and to get this incident wiped from his file because he's supposed to make tenure in a few years. And he is quick to insist that it's going to take him twice as a long as it would with a lashunta, to help assuage their need to feel superior. And, according to him, Professor Muhali is 'too emotional' to take his arguments seriously.
But now that he's in a better mood, he asks why they're at the university at all, and they give him the basics, and he says that if they can clear up things with his access and suspension, he should be able to help them.
So the group heads back to Professor Muhali's office, bickering about whether drow really are an oppressed minority -- which Zar argues they are, outside of Apostae. Also, Kech and N1-C0 take some issue with how eagerly Zar agreed with the professor's logic, but we just sort of leave off on the relatively-mild bickering on their way back to the office.
[0]-- Kevin's approved the name, so we're good there.
[1]-- In case anyone needs the reminder, shirren have three genders (male/female/host), and Chiskisk is the third, and thus uses they/them pronouns.
[2]-- The solar system in which Starfinder is based is largely modeled after our own. Absalom Station (and the planet Golarion before it) is in roughly the same position Earth is in our solar system. Castrovel is their equivalent of Venus.
[3]-- Kevin had to head out early, so his character's gonna be on the sidelines for the rest of this session.
[4]-- We have a mini for the ship, and at some point Sean is going to paint it in the new color scheme. When he does, I'll post a picture here.
[5]-- Lashuntas are one of the core Starfinder races. Originally from Castrovel and mildly psychic, they come in two subraces: damaya (pictured in the link above) and korasha. Damaya tend to be taller, thinner, and more intellectual whereas korasha are shorter, stockier, and stronger (I tend to think of them as a race that can become either elves or dwarves). In the time period represented in Pathfinder, cultural tradition pushes the males to be korasha and the females to be damaya, but in the 'modern' era of Starfinder the choice comes down to the individual.
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