Greetings, folks, I know it's been a while but we've had a little bit of Starfinder this past month and thus there's been some action to write up for the blog. Not sure really what else to add to this, commentary-wise, so let's just get into it.
So where we left off, the group had spoken to Osteth, a kishalee scientist who, untold millennia ago, uploaded her consciousness into the computer systems managing the Gate of Twelve Suns. Her fellow scientist, Eltreth, did the same, but something about the eons (and possible influence from the Devourer) drove Eltreth mad. Osteth trapped him in a digital prison while she tried to figure out what to do with him, and then a cell of Devourer cultists called the Desperate Hunger showed up, took control of the systems, and swapped her for Eltreth. And then shortly afterwards, the player characters showed up.
So having heard about the situation, they start moving through the small facility towards the control room where they can trap Eltreth and retake control of the system. They pick a side of the hall to check first, and Virxidor peeks in the next door down with his x-ray specs. He can make out a hologram -- presumably Eltreth -- doing something in a room full of computers. After their encounter with the hologram in the museum back on Nejeor VI they decide to take no chances and Virxidor just opens the door and chucks some sonic grenades. Before the door closes, they hear the hologram inside blurt out "What the--?!" in Common, before the grenades go off and wreck everything in there.
Zar suggests they go in to get a look at what they broke (and who they might have killed, if anyone), and Virxidor comments that N1-C0 would be proud of him. But they go in and try to get a look at the computers to see if anything useful was on them, but the systems are all wrecked up and non-operational. Rummaging through, though, Malesinder does find some old batteries and some weird helmet with glowy bits. Virxidor puts it on, and after it glows for about a minute it clamps onto his head and drills into his skull. He doesn't quite know this (though the player does), but the helmet has just begun a 24-hour process of rewriting his neural pathways in an interesting fashion to be addressed later. But he happens to be really into modding himself, so this isn't particularly alarming to him.
(Actually, what do you call it when you've got an elf or an alien or something engaging in what we'd call 'transhumanist' philosophies and modifications?)
They move further down the hall to the control center, and Malesinder opens the door to get shot by a couple of cultists who've been waiting with guns trained on the door. The room also has a number of the oblivion shades, including one who seems a little more coherent than the rest - presumably the 'mother' to the shade spawn, whom the group have heard referred to as 'Malice.' The shade spawn move through the walls to swarm over Malesinder while Virxidor uses his magic to partially control Malice -- he can get her to leave him alone, but can't turn her against the others -- while Zar flies through the room wreathed in stellar energies and engages.
There's some swinging and shooting back and forth until Virxidor's limited control over Malice fails and he launches a force disk to bounce off of the attackers. He then steps into the room and freezes some of the cultists with an implant that lets him fascinate people, and that lets Zar line up an energy burst to take a couple of them out. Malice actually chucks a force disk back at Virxidor while Malesinder finishes off the spawn. Virxidor eventually says 'screw this,' charges up his plasma blaster, and finishes Malice off.
With the cultists, both alive and dead, taken care of Virxidor moves to start hacking the computer. But he notices, quickly, that the computer is hacking back -- someone, presumably Eltreth, is rewriting the code on the fly, trying to blow up the terminals to deliver shocks to the group. There's a brief digital showoff but Virxidor gets the upper hand and takes control of the systems, and puts Osteth back in control.
She reestablishes control over the gate's sensor suite and reports there's still some more cultists in the Gate 1 facility -- a handful in one room, and another in a workshop. There's a bunch of them (including what might be more of the shade spawn) in an underground facility within Gate 2's controller moon, probably still looking for the control boards they need operate the gate. Also, she alerts them that the Desperate Hunger have managed to reprogram some of the maintenance bots to work for them, and she's locked out of their programming. (She also mentions the one destroyed room, which they try to pawn off on Eltreth's interference.)
But before the group can deal with the rest of the cultists at Gate 2, they still have some folks to deal with at Gate 1. They decide to go after the room that sounds like the worse fight, and Virxidor peeks through the door with his x-ray goggles to try and get a handle on what's in there. He spots some blurry silhouettes, but he can't quite identify one of them, so he comments that it's probably an elf as a means of getting back into his 'fake elf facts' bit with Malesinder.
But they go into their standard tactic of chucking grenades into the room first thing, and the cultists -- who've been bored and looking for a fight -- charge at them while the leader, a half-orc, calls dibs on Virxidor and shoots at him with a rifle. Virxidor casts slow on them, immediately undoing the slight numbers advantage the cultists had, and he shoots back at the half-orc with a plasma rifle. They take the cultists out, and Malesinder and Zar both go after the half-orc. Malesinder gets there first where she blasts him with a plasma pistol and sets him on fire. Virxidor pulls out a fire extinguisher to put him out while Zar charges up and dives at her, wearing her down before Malesinder finishes her off.
And we left off there.
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