(we roll up characters here!)
GMSG: The space station that houses the VR resort has remained dark and silent during your slow approach over the last four days. Not only has the captain remained sequestered in his quarters most of the time, but he's been absolutely tight-lipped about why there would have been a bomb aboard and why the two spouses of the ship's owner have been in extended cryosleep since before takeoff. This is if anyone tried to question him about those subjects, which I assume you did, given four days without much else to do and your lives having been placed in mortal jeopardy by the bomb.
Claire: Pandora would for sure have asked him, and when he didn't answer, she'd suggest the android try to access ... I'm looking at my notes here ... Besson's financial records on the computer.
Elle: Pol considers the idea an important one, but lower priority than finishing his assigned tasks fixing the ship's buggy apps.
Claire: Seriously?
Elle: Humans. You're so easily taken off-task by distractions. Clearly, the combination of Besson's spouses on board, the alteration of computer records I found, and a bomb in the jump drive suggests a high likelihood that we have indeed been the victims of an attempt at insurance fraud. Confirming or disconfirming that has no immediate bearing on our situation, whereas Pol has been given a directive to fix these app bugs promptly --
Claire: Pandora would definitely interrupt that to say, "Yeah, because Kellerman thinks they're annoying, not because they almost got us killed!"
Elle: The bomb has ceased to threaten our lives. The software flaws continue to be an annoyance. I can do nothing about whether the owner of the ship tried to blow us all up; I can do something about this shoddy programming. How much more obvious could the rational prioritization of these tasks be?
GMSG: There are a lot of software issues on Pol's list, Elle, so if you maintain that attitude, you'll be busy with it all the way to the station.
Akane: Yamaguchi has Computers skill! If informed this situation exists, she could try at the mystery, yes?
GMSG: Getting into the ship's ledgers would be easy enough for someone with Computers skill. Looking deeper into the owner's finances would be a Hacking task, so you'd roll at disadvantage.
Claire: Since it's just me and the doctor eating in the galley at mealtimes, I'd probably mention it to her.
Akane: Good! One evening after frustration of no-progress therapy session for Spanky, I try. Intellect 44 plus Computers for 10% equals 54. My disadvantaged rolls are: 47 and 49.
GMSG: Obviously, you don't have an active link to access current bank records. But the ship's ledgers show that The Inner Peace is pretty deep in the red, and the most recent financials you can find for Besson have a lot of debt and not many assets.
Ariel: So he put his brand-new wives or wife and husband or husbands on a ship to blow them up just to pay off his debts? That's terrible! People are so bad sometimes!
Elle: If you want to retain your faith in humanity, dear, you could always imagine that the spouses came up with the idea to valiantly sacrifice themselves, and Besson is innocently unaware.
Ariel: But they'd still be killing all of us if it worked, so they're still awful!
Harriet: The inhumanity of humanity appears an inexorable conclusion from the wafts of circumstance we possess.
Sasha: Are we awake yet? Are you telling us passengers all this? Because if you are, Narcy Danger's like, "I'm gonna put my fist so far up this guy's ass I can purée his insides with my spiked bracelet!"
GMSG: Procedure would be to wake up the passengers a few hours before stationfall.
Claire: If we do that, I don't really see much point in keeping the insurance con secret when we've got to explain the bomb part and the time-jump part anyway.
GMSG: Then let's say Stickshift McDiggitt and Narcy Danger are revived about four hours out from the station, and someone clues them in on the details of what's happened as you get closer.
Claire: Probably Yamaguchi or our android, because Party Panda would be in "Work Hard" mode getting everything as close to ready to drop in the spare parts as possible.
Ariel: What about the extra passengers?
GMSG: The passenger manifest lists them as bound for The Inner Peace's next destination, not Holograndeur. It's up to you whether to consult Captain Kellerman on waking them up or make the decision yourselves.
Claire: Do we know anything about them? Maybe they have useful skills.
Elle: They're human, so ... doubtful.
Akane: Some rich people have attitudes of kindness and helping. But ... some don't. And these ones ... Yamaguchi is uncertain about rousing someone to say, "Good morning! Your husband sent you on our ship, plus a bomb to blow it up. How are you?"
Ariel: Plus what if Elle's idea was right and they're the ones behind the bomb? But I guess my character can't point that out because she wasn't awake then and also she's dumb.
Elle: Pol considers their known close association with Besson to speak poorly of either their character or their ability to make sound personal choices.
GMSG: I'm not getting the sense anyone's advocating for waking them up. That being the case, at the one-hour mark before arrival, you realize there's been no sign of the captain today at all.
Ariel: Wait!
GMSG: Yes?
Ariel: We STILL don't know what Claire's character looks like! She introduced herself to her crew mates after us passengers were put in cryosleep, but neither of them asked for a description and she didn't say!
Akane: Apologies that I let this evade me.
Elle: Pol was entirely disinterested in Panda's appearance at the time. He's only vaguely more interested now.
Claire: Okay, well, Panda is ... a little heavy, and let's say a little goth. Like, when she bothers, she puts on bone-white makeup and black lipstick with heavy eyeshadow around her eyes. But maybe she's not great at doing it and someone made a crack once about her looking like a panda bear and it stuck. Even when she's not wearing makeup, she usually has dark circles under her eyes from being out partying so much. Her hair's kinda shoulder length, um, lavender with hot-pink highlights and tips. She wears it up in a topknot when she's working.
Ariel: Thanks, Claire! Now I can relax about it.
Akane: As medic, I should investigate our captain for his condition.
GMSG: You'll have to go to his quarters, because he's not answering his comm. Once there, you find that neither the buzzer nor banging on the door brings a response.
Akane: I call to our engineer. "This Captain Kellerman is unresponsible," I say. "Can you open the door?"
Claire: Panda assumes she means "unresponsive" and says she'll be right there with some tools.
Elle: If Pol hears this from the adjacent computer room, he assumes she means "irresponsible" and volunteers the use of his bioscanner to detect life signs without rousing our useless shipmaster.
Claire: Panda likes that better. If it turns out the captain is out of it, I need to head up to the bridge and get ready to take over from the autopilot.
Elle: Pol tells Yamaguchi where to find his bioscanner in his gear, then goes back to his programming tasks.
Claire: Panda calls Spanky and asks him to keep an eye on Engineering while she's flying the ship.
Akane: Yamaguchi retrieves the bioscanner. She can work it with Biology skill, I think?
GMSG: Easily. The scanner indicates a life-form in the captain's quarters. Biometric readings are low enough you think they indicate sleep or unconsciousness, but they're stable.
Akane: I will knock politely at this door a few more times. But if it keeps being no answer, time to return the bioscanner.
GMSG: Here's where everything stands as you make your approach to the station, then. Pandora Fatale is on the flight deck piloting the ship. Spanky Spannerman is in Engineering; Pol is in the computer room. All of you have access to viewscreens you could use to watch the external view, as does Doctor Yamaguchi if she returns to the medbay. Stickshift McDiggitt and Narcy Danger would need to be in the galley, since life support was turned off in the bunk area. There's a wall panel there too, although it can be disabled from the bridge if the captain doesn't want the passengers to see what's going on outside. Anyone have anything to add before I go on?
Elle: Just that Pol does not bother with the external view on his own monitors. It's irrelevant to the current task, and if action is needed on his part, everyone knows how to contact him.
GMSG: Okay. If we're all set, then --
Ariel: This is me making a thumbs-up sign. I know you can see, I just want to be sure you put it in the notes.
GMSG: Sure.
Ariel: Now Sasha is making one too.
Harriet: MSG, I feel the way you keep opening your mouth suggests you're about to provide us with a mood-setting description of our approach to the derelict space station where the mortal fates of our characters may well be determined.
Ariel: Sorry, oops. I'll be quiet!
GMSG: The station grows from an invisible speck to a tiny glint shining against the cold, quiet orb of a planet wrapped in storm-stirred clouds. With each minute, the metallic disc of the station swells on the viewscreen in ever greater detail, backgrounded by the inhospitable, almost fungal green of the host planet's mottled atmosphere. The readouts indicate that the world is a small one, but as it slowly overtakes the edges of the viewscreen, it looms, as if with ominous intent, its shrouded surface boglike and sluggishly evolving, like a time-lapsed crust of algae blanketing some brackish pool.
Sasha: Let's go there if the station doesn't work out. Looks like a great time!
GMSG: The station itself consists of a series of broad rings, rotating at a glacial pace around a central hub. Solar panels and a communications array extend downward from one end of the hub; a docking facility stands like a crown at the other end, its uneven and irregularly spaced spikes the bodies of a half-dozen or more ships.
Claire: Wait, there are still ships there? If it's abandoned, why wouldn't the people have left in the ships?
Elle: Plague. Probably very fast acting one. It's the kind of thing you humans are tragically susceptible to.
Akane: Apologies for my interrupt, but are these Claire and Elle or Pandora and Pol conversations?
Claire: Panda would probably be talking everyone through what's onscreen. It's a mystery, most likely a dangerous one, so she'd want the whole crew trying to work out what's up.
Elle: I was giving Pol's reaction.
Akane: Thank you!
GMSG: As you get closer still, everyone with significant starship experience can see that the docked ships appear to be a surprisingly motley and utilitarian collection. They aren't small passenger liners or the sleek shuttles that would move people to and from a really big liner, and they're not corporate shipping vessels with the logos of big supply companies on them. Instead, a couple look like the same sort of low-end tramp freighter as The Inner Peace, while others have the definite appearance of salvage vessels. The sensors show them all to be completely powered-down.
Harriet: I'm a little slow with this question, but if there are solar arrays, shouldn't there be power?
Ariel: Ooh! That's such a good point!
GMSG: Those with any kind of relevant technical expertise know that a station like this would get most of its energy from a hydrogen fusion power core -- or for a really high-tech installation, matter/antimatter. The solar panels would provide backup power in an emergency, but couldn't produce enough energy on a constant basis to run the entire station.
Claire: What about the ships? When you say powered-down, does that mean deliberately shut off? Or is it more like, "Oops, I left the headlights on overnight and now my car battery is dead"?
GMSG: A ship with its systems left on full power might carry enough fuel to keep everything going for several weeks on the low end, several months on the high end, or several years or even decades for a long-range vehicle. Once fuel ran out, the ship's computer would shut down systems that weren't being actively used and run the rest on battery power. If the only thing left running on the ship is the cryochamber, those batteries would be reliable for a couple of years on all but the lowest of low-end ships. The last couple of things to turn off would be the low-power telemetry beacon, and finally the running lights on the part of the hull where ship's registry information is painted. If your calculation of three and a half years in hyperspace is correct, all of those beacons and registry lights would still be on, and most likely at least a couple of ships would still have some level of life support active.
Elle: Unless the only survivors are androids.
Claire: So either we were gone one of those whole 300-year cycles, or all the ships were deliberately turned off.
GMSG: That seems likely. However, having gotten closer to the station, you can now detect that there are a few of its systems on in low-power mode.
Claire: Can we pin down which ones?
GMSG: Make an Engineering + Intellect roll, and roll twice instead of just once. The better result will apply to systems you have familiarity with; the worse result will be for any systems you don't have skill in.
Claire: Okay, 33 + 15 is 48, and my rolls are ... 78 and 68.
GMSG: Nope. Apparently you're lucky just to be able to see that there's some kind of power on over there.
Claire: Foo.
Harriet: Spanky still has 7 stress, so he's going to pipe up and say that maybe we shouldn't mess with the station at all. Maybe we should manually disconnect one of those ships and scavenge the parts we need from it.
Ariel: I have Scavenging skill!
Harriet: I make an Intellect roll and get a 92, so Spanky is pleasantly surprised to hear that, even though he probably should have remembered it from the conversation we had earlier about your archaeological background.
Akane: Yamaguchi will vote for this plan.
Claire: How hard would it be to manually disconnect a ship that way? What do I roll to figure it out?
GMSG: No roll needed. You're aware that the docking collars of both ships and space stations are incredibly tough. They're built to withstand the stress of a half-botched docking attempt where a ship weighing hundreds of tons smashes into the connector at low speed. Detaching a ship from the docking collar without internal power can be done, but you'd have to manually crank the airlock doors shut, then activate a special set of explosive bolts designed to break the ship loose quickly in a disaster. The bolts have to be blown simultaneously or they'll do more harm than good, which means you'll need to hook some form of external power up to the circuitry that connects and synchronizes the explosives.
Claire: Can we do all that from outside?
GMSG: Theoretically, yes. Practically? You won't know until you try.
Claire: And is this a one-person job, or is it going to take several of us?
GMSG: It would go faster with two, and regulations strongly caution against solo spacewalks unless absolutely necessary. But the mechanisms we're talking about were specifically designed for worst-case scenarios, so a single person could manage it.
Elle: Pol isn't keen on sending our only person with both engineering and piloting abilities. He recommends sending Spanky. "He performed adequately guiding me through the jump drive and stayed on task even when the situation with the outer seal became critical."
Harriet: Intellect check 27 means Spanky is pleased with the compliments and fails to immediately recall that Pol left him to die at the outer seal.
Akane: Yamaguchi points out that there is Kellerman also. If we send two and it's the worst outcome, our captain remains for last resort.
Claire: Pandora doesn't like sitting around on her ass while someone else is doing the work, and she really doesn't like the sound of hanging around this place twice as long as necessary. I say we both go.
Sasha: I vote we put the ballsy chick in charge, not the squirmy blue dude.
Claire: I'll fly a little closer to the space dock and see if any of the ships look more likely as candidates for us to cannibalize parts from. Or models that have easier explosive bolts to deal with.
Ariel: Ooh, can I help with my Scavenging?
GMSG: Aers, roll Scavenging + Intellect with advantage to give Panda a boost on her Engineering + Intellect roll.
Ariel: Boo! 33 and I needed a 23. No! The scavenging is +10, so I needed a 33!
GMSG: And you rolled doubles, which makes that a Critical Success.
Ariel: Woohoo!
GMSG: Claire, Stickshift is able to point you away from several otherwise promising candidates -- a ship that's about the same size as yours, but that she happens to have heard uses a nonstandard hyperdrive configuration; another ship that has warping and scoring around a couple of the explosive bolts, indicating that someone attempted to use them but failed to get proper synchrony. There's also a ship that uses a standard light freighter hull type, but that looks like it's been modified for in-system use only by removing the hyperdrive module and replacing it with a towing clamp. That leaves four other ships. You can make an Intellect + Engineering roll with advantage to see which one looks most promising.
Claire: First roll 66, second roll 50, so it's good I had advantage or that 66 would have steered us to the wrong one for sure, I'm guessing.
GMSG: That's a good guess. The 50 doesn't make it, though?
Claire: I needed 48 or less.
GMSG: Just on fundamentals, you can rule out one ship as being too large for its parts to be easily reconfigured to The Inner Peace.
Claire: So three basically equal choices? Any of them an interesting color?
GMSG: One is a deep, brick-red color with grey on several of the functional modules. One is just a solid, utilitarian light grey. And the last one is ... let's say hot pink.
Claire: Panda is tempted by the hot pink one, but she's in all-business mode so she takes us over to the grey one.
GMSG: As you approach, the rotation of the station is slowly carrying your target into the shadow of that one really large ship. You see viewing ports here and there, and the window of a side airlock, all of them with utter black beyond.
Claire: I'll set the autopilot to hold the ship a fixed distance from the one I picked. Whatever's reasonably close but not dangerously close. I don't know if that's five meters or ten or twenty. It can do that, right?
GMSG: Yes, it can manage a circular course that tracks the grey ship's berth as the station rotates. As long as there's no malfunction or human error, it can do so pretty closely -- maybe even less than five meters.
Claire: Let's do that, then. Once I'm confident it's set right, I'll go put on my vacc suit. I have my own. Does Spanky?
Harriet: No, I took that Examination loadout. It's got a hazard suit, but I'm guessing that will just turn into a beachball if I try wearing it in a vacuum, and then blow up.
GMSG: The ship should have at least one spare vacc suit. There's also a rigging gun with a magnetic harpoon attachment that you can use to shoot a line to the derelict ship and pull yourself across.
Claire: No jetpacks or shuttle bikes or anything?
GMSG: I'm afraid not.
Claire: Do I need to make a to-hit roll?
GMSG: Not under the present circumstances.
Harriet: That sounds like foreshadowing to me.
GMSG: No comment. Any special preparations you two want to make before leaving the ship?
Claire: Triple-check my suit and the tether line, and make sure I have a couple of spare spools of tether line to hook onto the other ship with.
Harriet: Spanky will follow Pandora's lead.
GMSG: In that case, you soon find yourselves in the cargo airlock of The Inner Peace. It's the one best located for transferring parts to Engineering, and it has the largest outer door. You hear the hiss of gas being siphoned from the chamber. The noise fades quickly as the atmosphere thins and the transfer of sound diminishes. Then you're alone in the soundproof confinement of your helmet, hearing only your own breath. If you follow good safety protocols, once the outer door opens, you tether yourselves to attachment points on the hull before lining up the sights of the rigging gun to fire.
Claire: Safety protocols are my friends.
Harriet: Seconded.
GMSG: Pandora pulls the trigger, and the harpoon flashes noiselessly away, its cable unspooling from the gun behind it. You hear nothing, but see the harpoon strike and see the gun's indicator light turn green. The magnetic clamp is secure. Those still inside the ship can only watch the view from your shoulder cams as you hook yourselves together with a short tether and each take hold of the handles provided on the rigging gun -- an extra pair folds out for use in a "buddy" mode.
Ariel: This feels really dangerous to me!
GMSG: If your character were out there, you'd probably need to make a Fear save during a maneuver like that. But Spanky and Pandora both have Zero-G skill, so they're not spooked. It's only a few seconds before the two teamsters are across, and at this point, you do need to make a Zero-G + Speed check to successfully land and attach the mag-clamps in your boots. It's a novice task, so roll with advantage and just don't Critically Fail.
Harriet: 64 and 87. I needed a 51.
Claire: 26 and 22! Critical Success!
GMSG: Spanky lands awkwardly and his boot skids sideways instead of locking to the metal of the hull. Normally you'd take an embarrassing but harmless sprawl against the bulkhead, but Pandora's Critical Success lets her grab your arm and steady you so you keep to your feet. Your suit transmits the dull ring of the hull against the mag-clamps, the first sound besides your breathing since you left the airlock.
Claire: Panda will ask if Mr. Spannerman is okay, if only to give us something to hear!
Harriet: Fine, thanks.
GMSG: Your next step should be to find a tether point on the abandoned ship, clip onto it, and release the tethers holding you to The Inner Peace. You'll want to do it quickly, because even though there's a fair amount of slack in those tethers, if something happens to suddenly shift the IP, it could pull you loose from the hull. Make a Speed + Zero-G check.
Claire: I'm over 70, so I fail.
Harriet: I get another set of doubles ... 33.
GMSG: Spanky Spannerman scampers adroitly over to a connection point and clicks on. You feel like you're getting your footing. I'll give you advantage on your next Fear save if it has to do with technical issues that are at least somewhat under your control. Claire, your failure means Panda has a moment of nerves looking for a tether point and not immediately seeing one. Make a Fear save, but with advantage; the stakes aren't that high.
Claire: 37 and ... 00! Whew, we're getting a ton of those this session, aren't we?
GMSG: The dice do what they're going to do. I'll say that 00 means the next time I call for a Fear save, Panda can skip it entirely. The two of you make your way forward to the docking collar. You're now fully in the shadow of that large ship. There's still enough light to see by because of sunlight reflecting off the distant atmosphere. But it's tinted a sickly green and gives an eerie cast to everything shadowed from the local star.
Claire: So what's our first step?
GMSG: There are two main tasks: manually cranking the airlock doors closed, and connecting the explosive bolt system to the portable power unit you brought. You can do them in any order -- each of you could take a door, then both work on the bolts, or one could do the doors while the other wires power to the bolts.
Harriet: We could save a little effort by only cranking the ship's door closed, right? We don't really care about the station because it's dead anyway.
GMSG: Spanky knows that's not a good idea. If you blow the bolts with the station's door still open, the structure will explosively decompress through the gap and could easily knock you loose, rip a tether, or cause any number of other disastrous mishaps. Imagine you took the lid off a two-liter soda bottle and the gas that escaped was coming out with the windspeed of a hurricane.
Elle: Except the soda foam will be the plague-ridden corpses that the station is full of.
Ariel: Ew! Definitely don't do that!
Harriet: Got it. No skipping either airlock door. Claire, I remember you rolled worse on your Strength than I did on my Intellect, so I'm guessing Spanky thinks you're pretty flimsy looking. You also seem to be better at technical and thinky stuff than I am, so how about I volunteer to crank the doors while you take care of powering up the explosive stuff.
Claire: That works for me. MSG, what do I need to roll to hot-wire these bolts?
GMSG: You can use Engineering + Intellect. It's not a challenging task and nothing is rushing you, so you can roll with advantage.
Claire: Whoosh. 95 and 89.
GMSG: Failures but not Critical Failures, so you don't set off any of the charges, but you're having trouble getting it. That should mean Spanky will have plenty of time to get the doors cranked shut --
Harriet: Don't I even have to roll a Strength check?
GMSG: Hang on, I wasn't finished. The manual mechanism is designed so that it doesn't take a lot of brute strength to operate -- lots of gearing and use of the lever principle. But shortly after getting the first crank open and configured for use, you find that it won't crank all the way. The instructional plaque says eight full turns will completely open or close the door. But when you get to about seven you start feeling resistance, and you don't seem able to get past seven and a half. You can use Strength + Athletics to try to force it, or Strength + Mechanical Repair to crank and uncrank it in a way that might let you get a feel for what might be causing the problem.
Harriet: The #1 Worker doesn't risk breaking machinery by trying to force it. I'll roll Strength + Mechanical Repair.
Elle: Or we can save ourselves the time, because we all know a plague corpse is jammed in the door.
Ariel: Yuck! No we don't!
Harriet: I roll a 02. Does it feel like something squishy is blocking the door, something hard and solid, or maybe a spring jammed in the mechanism?
GMSG: You don't think its the mechanism. But there's some kind of tension that steadily increases as you crank past seven turns, and by seven and a half, you can't get it any further.
Harriet: I'll tell Pandora and ask what she thinks.
Claire: Maybe we should switch to the pink one after all. The bolts on this one are giving me trouble, the doors are giving you trouble ...
Elle: You're gonna catch plague no matter which ship you go to. I don't know why we need to switch to a new ship when we all know that's what's going to happen.
Harriet: Elle, darling, if Pol is really saying all this, you need to make that clear by telling us, "Pol says ...." Conversely, if it's not Pol, you don't need to say anything.
Elle: It's not Pol. That's why I didn't say anything.
Harriet: Mm ... possibly I was unclear what I meant by "anything."
Sasha: Ouch, zing! Busted, Elle.
Elle: Fine. I'll retreat to the background with my character.
Harriet: Spanky is unenthusiastic about the prospect of leaping across the void again just to try a different ship. Did we bring a bioscanner with us? If there aren't any life-signs in the area, maybe we should just board this ship and try to clear away whatever is blocking the door.
Claire: Panda has a bioscanner. I'm assuming I brought my whole loadout bag; everything in there is potentially useful for a salvage operation. I'll scan the area for lifesigns.
GMSG: A bioscanner is good out to 100 meters. You and Spanky and the people back on The Inner Peace are the only life signs within that range.
Harriet: Sounds pretty safe to Spanky. Even if there's something on the station, it must be a fair way off.
Claire: Panda won't bring up the current record times in the 100-meter dash. MSG, did we see any secondary airlocks while scoping this ship out?
GMSG: Yes. There's one not too far off.
Claire: Great. We'll head for that.
Akane: Is this in all of our hearings? Yamaguchi has no input, but possibly there is some from Pol d'Eurothein.
Claire: I'm assuming this is all open-comms chatter if we don't specifically say otherwise.
Elle: Pol will just tell them not to take their helmets off inside the ship. You know, because of plague.
Claire: Panda wasn't planning to. She just wants to clear the door and get back outside. The sooner we have some distance from this station, the better.
GMSG: You get to the secondary airlock and cycle it manually. When the inner door opens, air from the ship rushes in, and the silence of vacuum is replaced by an unnerving stillness. You can hear the material of each other's vacc suits when anyone moves, and the echoes of your footsteps linger in the darkness beyond the open door. Your suit lights throw a bare circle of illumination a few feet around you -- enough to dimly light the airlock around you and let you see that a corridor runs in either direction beyond the door.
Claire: I assume there's a helmet light of some kind built in so you can get a reasonable view when working in the dark of space. I'll turn mine on.
Harriet: Spanky will do the same.
GMSG: Based on the orientation of the airlock you just came in through, you know the main lock connecting the ship to the station is to your left as you look into the hallway.
Claire: I'll look very carefully both ways before heading left. I have my laser cutter out, by the way.
Harriet: When I see that, I take out my stun baton.
GMSG: The corridor runs deeper into the ship to your right. It looks like it takes a bend after a couple dozen feet. No sign of any doors that direction. To the left, the corridor extends slightly farther, ending in a door, with another door in the wall to the right of it. The slow rotation of the station provides about a quarter G -- the docking hub and berths are arranged deliberately so that the floor of the ship will still be "down" in the event artificial gravity is lost.
Claire: That was good thinking on their part.
Elle: Human thinking, you mean. The expectation of disastrous technical failure is a hallmark of habitually poor designers.
Akane: Hmm! Pol expects humans to disastrously fail with technicalities ... also Pol was designed by humans ... does this prove his own theory?
Harriet: At the very least, it evokes an ironic symmetry. Nicely observed, Akane.
Akane: Thank you!
Claire: I'll head in the direction of the station.
GMSG: The door at the end of the hall is unpowered. How will you get through?
Claire: I have a crowbar. I'll get it out and tap it to the door to see if it sounds like there's air or vacuum on the other side.
GMSG: It gives a clunk sound more like there's air.
Claire: I'll try to pry it open, then. Do I roll for that?
GMSG: You're not under a time constraint or immediate threat, so no. You just manage to get the door open after a bit of effort. Beyond it you find an EVA prep room. Several vacc suits hang in their niches, lockers line the walls for equipment, and the ship's main airlock takes up much of the wall opposite you. The inner door of the lock is open, and the outer one is about seven-eighths of the way shut. You can see that it's hung up on a collection of heavy power cables and what looks like a fuel line. The cables and tubing run across the floor and exit the room through another door in the right-hand bulkhead.
Harriet: Spanky says, "Well, there's our problem."
Ariel: Thank goodness it's not a plague body!
Elle: I'm a bit disappointed.
Claire: So we need to find a way to disconnect all this stuff ... but first Panda wonders out loud why they would have hooked the ship up to the station like this in the first place. Shouldn't there be dedicated power couplings and refueling lines built into both the station and the ship?
GMSG: That's a rhetorical question from Panda, because her Engineering skill allows her to know that she's correct about that.
Harriet: "Uh ... maybe the people on this ship got here after the station was all shut down and they were scavenging fuel and power?"
Ariel: Ooh! Would my Scavenging skill let me figure out if Hettie is right about that?
GMSG: Roll Scavenging + Intellect.
Ariel: All these rolls keep being + Intellect, and I'm so dumb! When's something going to happen that I have a good chance at? Oh, wait -- I roll 08!
GMSG: You know scavengers might want to top their tanks off if they have a chance to during a salvage operation, but it seems like it would be a lot of work to do it this way and would make it really hard for them to bug out quickly if something went wrong with the salvage op.
Ariel: I'll tell them that.
Claire: Panda thanks Ms. McDiggitt and then has an unsettling thought that she doesn't share immediately. What if someone on the station was scavenging the ship instead of the other way round?
GMSG: From an Engineering perspective, a nonworking station trying to scavenge a working ship does make more sense for this setup than the reverse does.
Claire: I'll grip my laser cutter a little tighter.
GMSG: Right at that moment, you think maybe you hear something ... some faint noise through the dark gap of the outer airlock door.
Harriet: Spanky asks if Panda heard that.
Claire: "Yeah."
Harriet: Do you think maybe we should leave, and come back with those marines?" Actually, can I assume Spanky knows two of our conscious passengers are marines?
GMSG: Unless Stickshift or Narcy Danger wants to keep it secret, it seems like you'd have inventoried the available skills of everyone on board while on approach to the station.
Ariel: Stickshift isn't a big secret-keeper, I don't think.
Sasha: Narcy's totally up-front about having killing skills.
Claire: I'm going to tell Mr. Spannerman I'd like to get this ship cut loose quickly if we can. We don't know there's any immediate need to panic. I'll check the bioscanner again.
Harriet: Spanky's Stress is still at 7, so he's not as sure as you are about whether there's a need to panic.
GMSG: Bioscanner is still negative.
Claire: Does Panda think she could use her hand welder to cut through these cables and things? I assume there's a manual door crank in here too that we could then use to finish shutting the airlock.
GMSG: Several dangers with that idea. If there's any residual fuel in that fuel line, the welder might set it off. And if there's any juice left in the ship's batteries, cutting the power cables would leave some live wires with pretty serious voltage just lying there.
Claire: Well, everything we saw from outside seemed like these ships are dead as doornails, so I think Panda's willing to risk it. I'll get my hand welder out and tell Spannerman to get to work on the airlock crank. Then I'm going to see if I can use the welder to just weaken the material of the fuel line enough that I could break it open with my crowbar. That way maybe I can see if there's any fuel left in there without exposing it to the direct heat of the welder.
GMSG: That will be a Mechanical Repair + Speed check. I'll call this a Crisis Check with a level of 1. That means if you fail, you can reroll if you want, but you'll take 1d10 Stress if you do.
Claire: Yerch. I roll 98.
GMSG: So you can accept the failure, take a point of Stress, and experience the consequence, or take 1d10 Stress to reroll.
Claire: This is just a player choice, right? My character isn't making a decision?
GMSG: Right. In real terms, you're picking whether she slips and breaches the line, or if she is tensely, nervously concentrating, worrying over the difference a single millimeter could make either way.
Claire: Panda's a pretty cool cucumber. I'm going to say she's not all tensed up about this, so I'll take the failure.
GMSG: Since that wasn't a Critical Failure, the line doesn't explode, but you do slice right into the tubing and realize it would have blown you sky high if it wasn't empty. Mark the point of Stress.
Claire: Okay. Now that I know the line's empty, I just cut through the rest of the tube as quickly as I can.
GMSG: You sever it easily. But as you release the trigger on the welder, you definitely hear a sound from inside the station. It's not loud, but it's distinct -- a kind of a skittering noise moving rapidly your direction.
Claire: I tell Spannerman to grab the laser cutter and be ready to shoot anything that puts its head through the gap. Then I'm cutting through the power cables as fast as I can.
GMSG: Both of you make a Speed check.
Claire: 67. I fail.
Harriet: Spanky makes it with a 25.
GMSG: Spanky hears the scrabbling sound of metal on metal from beyond the airlock door. What do you do?
Harriet: I grab up the laser cutter like Pandora said and aim for the opening in the door.
GMSG: As soon as you do, something appears in the gap. It's about the most gruesome and shocking thing you've ever seen -- a spiderlike metallic body the size of two fists put together, with long, wicked, multi-jointed legs and a spike jutting up from the top of it. Impaled on the spike is a dead and clearly rotting human head.
Ariel: Ew!
Harriet: The same, but with weightier overtones of terror.
GMSG: I haven't gotten to the worst part yet. The head may be dead and rotting, but the eyes turn wildly this way and that, independently of one another for just an instant before both track together and lock onto ... I'm rolling randomly ... Spanky. Both Spanky and Panda need to make a Sanity save.
Harriet: 80. I fail.
Claire: Me too, with a 51.
GMSG: You both take 7 points of Stress. Spanky needs to make a Fear save or lose the initiative.
Harriet: Ugh. 84. More Stress?
GMSG: No, you just don't get to take a shot before the grotesque fusion of machinery and corpse-flesh acts. It leaps at you, Spanky, straight for your helmet. Make an Athletics + Speed check to dodge, opposed by its to-hit roll.
Harriet: *sigh* 73.
GMSG: I rolled 27. It hits you dead in the faceplate, scrambles up to latch its central body to the crown of your helmet, and begins drilling through. Panda, it's your turn to act.
Claire: I'm going to try to hand welder the damned thing.
GMSG: That's a Combat Check + Close-Quarters Combat if you have it.
Claire: I do not. Switching to another set of dice in case it makes any difference ... 82.
GMSG: You miss, but manage to avoid torching Spanky with your welder. Spanky, your turn.
Harriet: Any chance I can bring the laser cutter to bear on it while it's on my head?
GMSG: You can roll Firearms + Combat with disadvantage.
Harriet: Is there a way to quick-release my helmet?
GMSG: Sure, that would be Zero-G + Speed.
Harriet: We've already proven I'm abysmal with probabilities, but I think I'm pretty confident that I have a better shot rolling once and getting under 51 than rolling twice and having the higher roll be under 48. I try the quick-release thing.
GMSG: You'll have to drop the laser cutter to use both hands. Then it's a level 1 Crisis Check to get the helmet off.
Harriet: 70. I fail. But I'm taking that extra stress to roll again.
GMSG: Ouch. I roll a 10.
Harriet: Holy crap, I'd better not have to roll a Panic check anytime soon. My reroll is ... oh shit. 77, Critical Failure.
GMSG: There's no real way to fail this task and make things worse, so make a Panic Check.
Harriet: How do I do that?
GMSG: Good question. Our first Panic Check ... the rulebook says ... roll 2d10. You're trying to get higher than your current Stress.
Harriet: That's mathematically impossible. I'm at 24.
GMSG: Then you panic. Roll 2d10 and add your current Stress to see what the Panic Effect is.
Harriet: I roll 17. That takes me to 41, which I assume is not good.
GMSG: Heart attack. Instant death.
Sasha: Holy shit.
Harriet: You're joking.
GMSG: Do you want to see the table?
Harriet: And find out what other ghastly possibilities are on it? I think not.
Ariel: So she's just ... dead? Just like that? omg.
Elle: Is the computer monitoring their lifesigns and showing them on our end?
GMSG: Pol would see them on his console, and Dr. Yamaguchi would see them on the medbay readouts. It would be up to you whether you put them on the video screen of the galley where Stickshift and Narcy are watching.
Elle: Pol believes in informational transparency and isn't particularly empathetic to the emotional responses of humans, so I think I would have included the lifesigns feed.
GMSG: Everyone on the ship make a speed check.
Elle: Pol easily makes it with a 29.
Akane: For Yamaguchi, 88, a critical failure.
GMSG: She's so stunned by the sudden flatline that it paralyzes her for this round and the next.
Ariel: Stickshift gets a 15!
Sasha: Narcy rolls 36, which fails.
GMSG: Does Stickshift want to do anything?
Ariel: I don't know if I'm even smart enough to figure out what I could do, so ...
GMSG: Make a Military Training + Intellect roll.
Ariel: 20!
GMSG: You know that being well-informed during combat is critical to success, and you don't know that Pandora has any way to realize Spanky is dead.
Ariel: Can I push the intercom button and tell her?
GMSG: Yes.
Ariel: Hey! Engineer lady! The other engineer lady just totally died! Wait ... Spanky's a guy, I guess. "The other engineer guy just totally died! Get out of there!"
GMSG: Does Pol have anything to add to that?
Elle: I'll just say, "Affirming that notification, Ms. Fatale."
GMSG: Claire, Pandora hears what they said and also hears the high-pitched whine of the monstrosity continuing to drill through Spanky's helmet as he collapses motionless to the deck. Seeing another crewmember die forces you to make a Panic Check of your own.
Claire: My Stress is 10, so I need to roll 2d10 above that, right?
GMSG: Yes.
Claire: 16. I make it. As soon as it's my turn, I run for the other airlock.
GMSG: As you shoot down the corridor as fast as you can, you continue to hear the drilling behind you ... but you also hear more of the skittering sounds, as though another of those things is coming after you. Make a Crisis Check at level 1 to stay ahead of it as you race to the other airlock. Speed + Athletics.
Claire: My Speed is 38, and I don't have Athletics. My roll is ... whew! 34.
GMSG: You make it into the airlock with the skittering noises still a ways behind you. You can try to crank the inner door shut to manually cycle the airlock, or you can blow the emergency explosive bolts on the outer airlock door to get it open faster.
Claire: Oh, no you don't. I remember that thing about the hurricane force winds.
GMSG: Then make another Speed check as a Crisis Check level 1 to crank the inner door shut.
Claire: Yuck. 65 ... I'll take the d10 of Stress to reroll.
GMSG: Six points of Stress.
Claire: I Critically Fail the second roll with a 44.
GMSG: You can reroll a Crisis Check more than once. When you get to a third failure, you're done.
Claire: Okay, give me the next d10 of Stress.
GMSG: It's a 7.
Claire: Nice. We're in Hettie's mathematically impossible territory for avoiding panic now. My third roll is 34, which makes it.
GMSG: You turn the crank the final turn just as something metallic lurches against the other side of the door.
Claire: Let me guess, I hear it drilling at the door and have to do another Crisis Check.
GMSG: No, its sharp metal limbs are scratching around out there, but you don't hear drilling.
Claire: I cycle the lock and head back to The Inner Peace as fast as I can.
GMSG: We didn't cover this before, but I'm assuming you left your rigging gun and the power cell clamped to the hull by the docking ring rather than lug them on board in the ship's tight quarters. So you can either go and try to make an untethered jump for the other ship, or double back to retrieve the rigging gun first.
Claire: The way I'm rolling, there's no way I want to try a jump like that, so I'll go get the rigging gun.
GMSG: No sign of any corpse-headed spiders as you do so. Do you fetch the power cell too?
Claire: Nope.
GMSG: Then you make it back to your ship without further incident ... which is probably a good place to end this session.
Sasha: What? I wanted to shoot corpse spiders!
Claire: I'm pretty wiped out, so I'm fine ending here.
GMSG: The good news is, the rules say everyone who survives their first session gets to level up, so your characters will be at least a little better next time. And we'll figure out a way to bring in another character for Hettie.
Harriet: Thanks. It will make mourning Spanky Spannerman a little easier.
