So let's get on with a write-up of my last couple of Starfinder sessions. (usual disclaimers apply about multiple sessions being stitched together meaning that individual characters may suddenly seem to appear or disappear from the narrative)
Where we left off, the group was investigating the House of Renewal, some sort of clinic reinterpreted and repurposed by the local kish tribe as a place where the ancestors judge you and either heal or destroy you based on your worthiness. They'd just killed a couple of individuals apparently found wanting and subsequently turned into monsters.
The group ventures a little deeper where they find another large room like the one they left, but this one has a chamber hooked up to a computer console and a lot of equipment. A few members of the group recognize it as some sort of gene-therapy chamber, using radiation to heal with a chance of things going really horribly wrong if there's a malfunction. Virxidor tries his best to convince N1-C0 that it'll 'turn him into a real boy' and he should try it out. N1-C0, obviously, doesn't believe this.
He does, however, manage to get the computer up and running -- whomever's responsible for this tech knew how to build things to last. It's a little glitchy, but still functional enough. He manages to figure out enough of the language to get an idea of what he's looking at, with Zar's help to translate the medical concepts into lay speech. They figure out that what's wrong with the chamber is that it's trying to heal people based on a physiological template of a species called the 'kishalee.' But over untold millennia and harsh conditions, the modern 'kish' have diverged just enough to confuse the equipment. Thanks to Zar happening to have some DNA samples of modern kish with him, they're able to reconfigure the chamber to work correctly.
Rummaging around the room, the group also finds a functioning datapad. N1-C0 manages to get it working, but most of the data's been corrupted by time and entropy. He does, however, find a mostly-intact audio message. It's hard to understand, because the language is similar to the kish language they've been learning but not exact, suggesting some linguistic drift. But, when translated, they get:
"Greetings. This is..." <static> "...head of security at the Foundry. We recently had a few pieces of classified..." <static> "...and we are investigating the possible compromise of all methods of entry and exit in our facility. As far as I can tell, the series XLT-88 digital lock on our security entrance hasn't been tampered with, but the manual I have here states that the lock can be placed in standby mode and accessed with an admin keycode. Of course..." <static> "...but the director and I would like to know how many of your employees have access to this keycode. We are not accusing you of any misdoings, but we do need to leave no stone unturned. Please respond at your earliest convenience."
It's possible, they consider, that the 'Foundry' is the 'Temple Found' that Tzayl was talking about, where the group needs to go. Which suggests there's a way to bypass one of the locks. There's a partial router address attached to the file, and N1-C0 is pretty sure if he had more messages like this they could pinpoint the location of the server, which could help them find the password to get into the place.
They immediately start combing the rest of the building for more recorded messages, but the only thing they can find is a room where someone has very recently drawn a kish face in the dust. Kech suggests that the face is supposed to be sad, like maybe this was drawn as an apology... or a farewell message from someone who wasn't expecting to make it home. There's a brief moment of solemn quiet as they consider the individuals that came here to be healed and were turned into mindless beasts.
The group gathers up what little stuff they've collected and hoof it over to the Maze of Ghosts. The front of the building has been destroyed, but there's a path through the rubble. They make their way in, N1-C0 and Malesinder leading the way, when a big-ass snake drops down from the ceiling at the dragonkin. It's easily 8-10 feet long and a foot across, but Zar sees it coming quickly enough to lunge at it and get a solid hit on it. The group's able to quickly take it down before anyone gets too severely hurt, but they're more cautious now as they head into the front room.
The room has a door with a translucent crystal shutter closed over it, some more of the charcoal and paint murals -- these depicting humanoid figures looming over the city -- and a sign on a small booth off to the side.
N1-C0 guesses that the mural is depicting the ancestors looking benevolently down at the city's inhabitants, watching over them, but as he looks closer he can also see that the mural is drawn in such a way as to subtly indicate a hidden panel with a circuit breaker behind it. He also finds a secret door in the back of the booth. Meanwhile, Kech manages to piece together a translation of the sign on the booth: It reads "Istamak Historical Museum," and underneath are prices of admission and hours of operation.
As he throws the circuit breaker and switches on the power, N1-C0 asks "How ironic is it that the museum belongs in a museum?"
The translucent crystal shutter on the nearby door retracts, and the lights come on, and a hologram showing a sweeping panorama (albeit glitching out a bit) of how the city looked in its prime begins playing, with the following message:
"Welcome to..." <garbled> "...Istamak, shining city of progress! Come..." <static> "...to witness... living history..." <background music drowns out voice> "Don't hesitate to ask questions... and come again soon!"
This repeats a couple of times and then completely shuts down.
N1-C0 and Virxidor open the secret door and discover that it opens up into a maintenance corridor behind the walls. They start poking around and discover this museum seems to mostly use holographic exhibits.
Meanwhile, the others decide to split the party and go through the now-open doors. They realize they've found themselves in a ransacked gift shop and through there venture into the museum proper.
Before them lies a hallway full of holograms depicting the construction of a city among the clouds -- presumably Istamak, where they are. There's architects manipulating three-dimensional blueprints, a guy on a cloud barge throwing a lever that starts construction equipment, that sort of thing. While N1-C0 and Virxidor poke around in the maintenance tunnels and find a cache of gear someone appeared to have stashed to help ride out an impending disaster, Kech starts poking at interface screens to try and activate the holograms' artificial personalities that allow for asking questions. All she gets is glitching and incomprehensible gibberish before it resets. She goes down the line, testing the screens, and without warning one of the holograms takes a swing at her -- and connects, blinding her temporarily with a flash of light!
The hologram attacks them, and upon hearing what's going on over the comms Virxidor explains that they're dealing with a 'living hologram,' usually the result of a malfunctioning projector, and that they operate a lot like ghosts. They can be hurt by energy weapons but even if you take one out it'll restore itself in a few hours unless you find the projector and either destroy or fix it. They're also tethered to that projector, so the source of this living hologram must be somewhere nearby.
N1-C0 rushes out of the maintenance tunnels and into the museum proper while Zar wraps himself in the corruptive energies he draws upon and goes to engage it. They chase it around the corner where it tries to hide among the other holograms (including a projected image of itself), but N1-C0 sees through the ruse and blasts it with a sonic pistol.
Then the lights go out, taking the hologram with it. Virxidor, over the comms, asks "Did I kill it?" He had gone back to the circuit breaker and shut everything off, killing the power to the projector as well. So they explore the darkened museum and find a couple of things towards the back. One, they find part of a display that flickers with the image of the hologram, either running off of some backup battery or another circuit. Virxidor finds and repairs the projector and they turn the power back on.
The hologram in question is a depiction of the mayor of Istamak (or at least the last mayor of Istamak) alongside other government figures. Zar asks if they can cause it pain now, but it's pointed out that by repairing the projector it's been reduced to the level of the simple AI of the other holograms in the museum. Depending one one's point of view, they've either lobotomized it or put it to rest.
The other end of that particular hallway has a small shrine with assorted offerings placed on it, as well as one of those triangular datapads. Like the datapad in the House of Renewal, the only surviving data on this one is a corrupted voicemail:
<static> "...chief technology officer here at SecuriTech. Our customer service representatives received your message regarding your..." <static> "...and I want to assure you that we take your security issues with the utmost seriousness. After all, you are our biggest client." <laugh distorted by glitching> "A copy of the admin keycode for your lock -- for all the locks we install -- resides on a server within the Foundry. This server cannot be accessed except from its physical terminal, and only SecuriTech's chief executive officer, a few key members of our team, and I have access to that terminal. In addition, I checked the logs this morning, and no one has accessed your file in almost a year. And that was for normal..." <static>
Between the metadata and routing addresses on the datapad and the first one they found, N1-C0 has an easy enough time pinpointing the location of the computers they passed through, which must be connected in some fashion to the servers holding the key code they need.
Slight problem, though. When they go to investigate it, they find out that the trail leads to a series of floating islands that have broken off of the structure supporting the rest of the city. The only (or at least simplest) way to get to the building they're after is to have N1-C0 use his jump jets to move to one of the floating islands with a cable, secure it so the group can climb across, move to the next one, and so on.
After a few of these hops they end up in front of the largest of the little floating islands, this one with a single-story building on it with walls covered in some sort of fine white filaments. The grass around the building smells sweet, and on a whim Virxidor chews on some of it and tries very hard to pretend that it doesn't mostly just taste like grass. As they approach, a couple of floating creatures vaguely reminiscient of jellyfish appear, something very much like a species called the barathu they can find back in their home system. They approach and start spitting rocks at the group as Zar insists that they're called 'roof pixies' in stories told to Drow children. (Yeah, I got nothing) But the group fights back and takes them out without a lot of issue.
Zar and Kech take a closer look at the filaments on the walls, as they appear to be biological, and identify it as some sort of mold, probably a single colony infused with the building. The spores are probably poisonous, but nothing that the standard armor environmental filters can't handle. But it's probably big and complex enough that if sufficiently threatened it might attack. Virxidor takes a close look as well and determines that between the mold embedded in the walls and the natural degradation of the building over untold millennia, there's a very good chance that the mold is mostly what's holding the building together.
The group is more than a little concerned about exploring the building and aggravating the mold to the point where it starts bringing the building down on them. Especially if there's any other hostile lifeforms in there since any fighting might damage the building and the mold enough to provoke a response. N1-C0 and Virxidor propose that they try to sneak through the building and scout out the place so as to avoid picking a fight with anything. Between N1-C0's stealth and speed and the fact that Virxidor can turn into starlight[0], they should be safe to get in and out.
First problem is getting the front door open, as the filaments are holding it shut. Rather than just try to blast through, Zar uses his medicinal skills to carefully slice it open so N1-C0 and Virxidor can go in. Once they're inside, though, they realize that all of the doors are similarly-sealed so rather than risking anyone else the two just start carefully cutting open doors as best they can.
They explore what turns out to be a pretty basic office building -- meeting rooms, cubicle farms, break room (with a kitchen where it looks like the mold originated), the whole nine yards. Despite being on an alien world, from an alien culture, and literally everything under a layer of white mold, some concepts are universally recognizable (which isn't even really any sort of pun).
Well, almost everything. They do find one bald patch in some sort of engineering lab, surrounding a roughly-square device made up of metal, plastic, and crystal. N1-C0 takes a closer look and determines that this thing is probably pretty dangerous to mess with... and then on a whim tells Virxidor it should be safe to touch. He then changes his mind and tries to stop Virxidor from grabbing it, but he's not fast enough. Virxidor takes a massive electrical charge, enough to thoroughly knock him on his ass, and he's left staggering and stuttering for a bit afterwards.
The device does seem to be safe now that it's discharged the energy it had stored -- it seems to have been some sort of unfinished prototype generator. So they decide to hang onto it for the moment.
The next/final room in the building is the server room. While Virxidor stumbles around, N1-C0 takes a look at the two large servers in there. He's able to quickly identify one as being the recipient of one of those voicemails and the sender of the other. The other one, however, is airgapped[1], which means that's probably where the sweet security stuff is.
There's no power, but they manage to tinker with the device they found and use that to power up the computer long enough that N1-C0 can hack it directly. But he gets the system up and running, and bypasses the security, and finds what they need to get into the Temple Found: a combination of button presses for the XLT-88 digital lock that they know is on the 'temple' somewhere. The combo will put the lock into maintenance mode and let them disable it without needing the password. Success!
So with the override code in hand, they turn to leave... only to find that the mold around them is quivering, and a bunch of it is collecting in a mass in front of the door to the server room. Somebody doesn't want them to go.
And we left off there.
[0]-- Of course, Kevin discovers immediately after saying this that Virxidor is still physical and can be crushed by a collapsing building no matter what form he's in. But he figures, screw it, it's funnier if the character makes the mistake and goes with it.
[1]-- For those of you who don't know, airgapping refers to having a computer system with no connections to the outside world, whether hardline or wireless. It's a security feature -- you can't hack a computer from the outside if it's not connected to anything.
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