Greetings, programs. So here I am with some more Starfinder goodness for you.
Nothing more really to add there. It's a short one because it's from a single session, but long enough to be worth posting. So let's get on with the show.
So we pick up with the group about to go after the last of the Devourer cultists in the Gate 1 facility. They know it's an ysoki (ratfolk) tinkering with a bunch of ancient tech, and they consider just welding the door shut and leaving her in there. In the end, though, they figure there might be something interesting in the room so they go with their tried and true...
They open the door and Virxidor chucks in a shock grenade and one of the weird kishalee tech grenades that he found a while back... which he discovers is a temporal disruption grenade. It slows down the ysoki, her drone companion, and a couple of robots she's reprogrammed. Malesinder moves into the room afterwards to follow up with his fire breath.
They take advantage of the effects of the temporal disruption grenade to move in, Virxidor and Malesinder destroying the drone while Zar closes the distance with starts attacking her. She starts off the battle with manic glee, but once the slowing effect wears off and she comes to terms with her situation, Zar can see she's on the verge of surrendering. So he gives her the opportunity, telling her that "Those who do not kneel will die."
So she decides she's willing to kneel, and they interrogate her. They ask her where the others are, what they're doing, and who all is over there. She explains that they're getting some stuff they need to make the Gate system work on the other controller moon, and that over there are her brother Zaz, a dwarf named Deldreg the Butcher, and Null-9. They ask if Null-9 is the android they know is probably running the show, and she confirms it, lamenting the fact that Null-9 won't just let her detonate all of the suns in the Gate.
Zar's not actually sure what to do now, because he doesn't normally take prisoners and it just doesn't seem sporting to just kill her. He comments that he was once the high priest of a god who wanted to devour the sanity of mortals and bring chaos to their realm, but he's not sure what to do if you don't just kill a prisoner. She says she's willing to stay put if they leave her behind, because it's not like she's going to go anywhere. So they take all of her gear and weld her shut in the chamber they completely destroyed earlier.
On the way back to their ship, Osteth speaks up over the comms. She says she's been thinking about the situation during her time in confinement, but she's decided that the Stellar Degenerator needs to be destroyed. That nobody can be trusted with the weapon. She says she wasn't born yet when it happened, but the stories of the one time the Stellar Degenerator were used are just too horrifying...
She shows them a display of an unknown star system.
"Some were killed instantly, caught in the energy transference beam when the Stellar Degenerator turned their sun into a black dwarf," she says as the display shows a ray of light streaking in from outside of the system and hitting the sun. This tether pulses with energy, tearing apart starships and even moons in its general vicinity.
"Those were the lucky ones. Within a week, temperatures across the system dropped to below freezing, and with no sun to sustain it, plant life began to die shortly thereafter."
The sun at the center of system shrinks and grows dark. Digital displays appear near each of the system's ten planets, showing the decrease in temperature and light levels.
"Hundreds of millions eventually starved to death or were killed in skirmishes over food." Another numerical display shows a rising death count.
"The mass of the black dwarf wasn't enough to keep its planets in orbit, and eventually, they started to drift outward, spinning erratically into the inky depths."
On the monitor, the orbits of the system's frozen planets wobble, and the farthest world disappears off the map.
"A terrible way for a people to go extinct."
(Zar tastelessly asks if he can keep a copy of that footage for himself for later.)
The others ask if they have schematics on the Stellar Degenerator on how to destroy it (or, Zar hopes, recreate it), and Osteth doesn't have anything like that at easy access but will figure out something.
But having sorted that out, they head back to the ship. The jungle is weirdly quiet as they hike back, like the moon is holding its breath in anticipation. It takes them a few hours to fly to the other moon, constantly having to course-correct because of the gravitational forces present in the system. But soon enough (in the grand scheme of things), they approach the moon. Unlike the Gate 1's moon, this one is a lifeless rock with no atmosphere -- but there is a metal hatch that opens as the ship approaches. The hatch reveals a long, illuminated tunnel that leads to a trio of hangar bays. The one in the middle has a red light over it, and the other two have green lights. They pilot the ship over to one of the green-lit ones, and the bay opens up.
The party, as the hangar repressurizes and they get out to head to the elevator, talks about what they're going to do about the ysoki mechanic's brother. (They didn't get the mechanic's name, though she did mention her brother's name is Zaz.) They can't necessarily expect him to be... agreeable as his sister, and while they don't say so, it's easy to guess that they'd rather not have to kill him and explain that to the sister. Virxidor says that as long as they give him the chance to surrender, then that's enough.
The inside of the hangar bay is made of this smooth, seamless metal that they can't quite identify. They take a hoverlift down about 200 feet to a lower level, opening out into a chamber with a thirty-foot high ceiling with a couple of other hover lifts that match up with the locations of the other hangar bays, and those smooth metal walls again.
The chamber, however, is also home to a small guard of Devourer cultists -- four living cultists, a couple behind a makeshift barrier of tables and desks, and one of the oblivion shade spawn.
Virxidor immediately tries to control the undead, but it manages to hold off some of his influence and attacks Malesinder. It reaches into the dragonkin's chest and squeezes, infusing him with the chill of oblivion. Zar starts in on one of the cultists, quickly taking out one of them with Malesinder's help and then unleashing his supernova power to take out the spawn. One of the cultists behind the barrier throws a kishalee grenade to see what it does... his throw misses, but it lands between Malesinder and Virxidor, where it goes off and throws them off-balance as it disrupts their subatomic structure.
Malesinder goes to chase after the ones behind the barricade and takes him out with a critical hit, and as he starts in on the last one Zar lifts up off the ground and dive-bombs the last to finish him off.
And we left off there, with the party ready to venture further into the facility.
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