Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 13 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!
(Intro Music plays, then fades out, ambience fades in)
Avery/GM: Okay. Everyone who is not participating in the race, what do you do as the race is about to start? I think that's just Bruce and Ollie, technically.
Chris/Ollie: Yeah.
Bruce/Caden: Well, you said betting is illegal
Bee/Polaris: But everything's illegal here.
Zach/Zahn: Only technically, which means you can.
Bruce/Caden: I feel like Bruce would have gone back to the ship, removed the apron and the chef hat because according to Bruce, that's how you go incognito.
Jenine/Marty: Oh my heart.
Bruce/Caden: Gone back to like the racetrack and like tries to find somewhere to sit down so that he can watch what's gonna happen.
Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. We’ll say that you find a nice viewing spot that. Close to the front row. Not that it really matters because it's all gonna be displayed on like these big screens, but it's close to the front row near the starting line of the race. So you'll be able to see the initial launch of the shuttles with your friends on it.
Zach/Zahn: So you can watch us die , not even a hundred meters in.
Bruce/Caden: I think Bruce, he, he Bruce nervously like puts his tail on his lap and is like, kind of like squeezing it nervously. Kind of like you would like a fidget toy, just like, watching the ship intently and just like, not even blinking, just watching .
Zach/Zahn: I wish we had more time. I actually, I did come up with a list of mods I wanted to make.
Avery/GM: Well, like I said, you could pick three, so.
Zach/Zahn: Oh, there's more than three here. .
Jenine/Marty: Oh man.
Avery/GM: So Ollie, what are you doing while…Oh
Chris/Ollie: yeah, just uh oh, he's going to be making his way as Pseudo participant making his way back to, uh, the, the private booths. He's gonna have cleaned himself, like stepped through the robot, pressure washer , where, wherever the closest one is because, uh, he's absolutely filthy. He hasn't washed himself since his last maintenance. So on the hegemony,
Avery/GM: Sure
Chris/Ollie: he's gonna clean himself up, get all pretty head back to the. Where he left Avi and, uh, knock on the door. (knocking sound)
Avery/GM: Sure. The door opens (door opening sound) and there's this big burly humanoid person standing there looking all intimidating. And it's just like, no robots. And it goes to shut the door. And you hear behind him, oh, no, no, Charlie. That, that one's fine. That one's fine. Come in dear Ollie. Come in, come meet my cousins.
Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna step through the. And, uh, uh, greet Avi and say, my apologies. The work of a walking wrench is never done and I simply couldn't present myself to your esteemed family in that state. Referring to his dirty chassis, he's in a motion to himself.
Bee/Polaris: Did he get like a dry erase marker and put like a little draw, bow tie on
Chris/Ollie: a monocle and a and a handlebar mustache.
Bee/Polaris: That'd be so cute.
Avery/GM: She motions to two other finely dressed tiger people and motions to one and says, this is lapis. They actually live with my aunt and uncle back on Olympia, but they decided to drop in today for today's race. Isn't that just so sweet? And she gestures to the other one and is like, and this is Violet.
She just graduated from the officer's academy back in the republic. She's going to, she's, she's already jumped ranks. She's going to be a general already. Isn't that amazing? Like who becomes a general right after graduating? It's so cool.
Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Who I wonder people?
Bee/Polaris: Rich people.
Avery/GM: Mm.
Bee/Polaris: Haha.
Jenine/Marty: What is that like well… What?
Avery/GM: Corruption Never. And Ollie Violet just gives you kind of this Kurt nod, not as, she's not as welcoming or friendly as Avi seems to be.
Chris/Ollie: Do I notice any signs of them recognizing me?
Avery/GM: You do not.
Chris/Ollie: Then I'll, uh, read them politely and. You know, give the usual banter like, oh yes, Avi has told me so much!
Bee/Polaris: Has she?
Chris/Ollie: Well, she, she's been talking to me for two hours straight about her family, so
Bee/Polaris: Oh, true!
Avery/GM: And then we pan down to the docking bay of the race track, So Polaris, you are put on a quick little vessel and shuttled across to asteroid number one, (shuttle flying noise) which I will move the map. There we go. Yeah. So this is a very rough drawing, but the start is the main asteroid that you are on for Bragos. You are shuttled across to asteroid two or to asteroid one where your fighter ship has been brought as well from The docking bay over here to, uh, the race and you are sitting there waiting for the race to start and you see that there are other bays with other fighter ships waiting for the signal to start as well.
Avery/GM: Marty and Zahn you are placed on the shuttle for Big Fred and big Fred points to a big red button on the control panel and says, Now if you, if you find that someone decides to play dirty and shoot at your shuttle, just push this button. It'll engage a really powerful deflector shield that should fire the weapons back at the shuttle that's firing at you. So use it carefully though. It's only got like three charges. So essentially this has an experimental shield that can double as basically a way to deflect attacks back at the attacker.
Jenine/Marty: It's like a mirror, right? Like if someone tried to laser us. That's just lasers back.
Avery/GM: Yeah.
Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool.
Bee/Polaris: Sweet!
Zach/Zahn: its like rubber and they’re glue.
Avery/GM: Yeah, exactly.
Jenine/Marty: and we get three charges. Got it. Everyone had an experimental thing. Someone was just promoting it. Oh my goodness
Avery/GM: yep!
Chris/Ollie: Well, someone's experimental thing is, seems a lot more practical and a bit less hazardous. . .
Jenine/Marty: Yeah.
Zach/Zahn: Does it have any, uh, other weapons on it?
Avery/GM: It has. Oh gosh, I wrote that down
Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Did we do anything with Hermes?
Jenine/Marty: We were supposed to
Bee/Polaris: Where’s that guy?
Avery/GM: Oh yeah. Actually,
Jenine/Marty: isn't he piloting the ship?
Avery/GM: You can totally put him in the shuttle if you want.
Jenine/Marty: Could, could we? I feel like that might be a little helpful.
Zach/Zahn: that was more than, uh, our combined minus one’s in piloting.
Jenine/Marty: Yeah yeah yeah.
Zach/Zahn: We’ll not get through this.
Bee/Polaris: does Hermes have the same, same capability of like where we can split his chaos emerald and put it in the shuttle and leave part of it in the ship? Or is that just an ollie thing?
Avery/GM: No, he does.
Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool. We should do that
Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Just in case the shuttle blows up.
Jenine/Marty: just in case-ies!
Zach/Zahn: Is there a split consciousness thing that Ollie… like Ollie can do that, we can do that.
Chris/Ollie: Well this is just in case he dies.
Jenine/Marty: Can Ollie die?
Chris/Ollie: Like the ship explodes.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah.
Chris/Ollie: Because if the chaos emerald's gone and there's no, there's no back up, he dead.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah. There's, there's no Hermes.
Zach/Zahn: Gotcha.
Avery/GM: I will also, well, you guys okay. It's weird. I, I gave you the information, but you wouldn't technically know that about Hermes.
Bee/Polaris: know what?
Jenine/Marty: About Hermes?
Avery/GM: And you might not have even caught it, so I'll just shut up.
Bee/Polaris: Oh, about the, about him.Like splitting. Splitting the Hermes.
Avery/GM: Yeah. So that little flashback I did with the hegemony, one of them mentioned a backup reloading if the AI had been destroyed.
Bee/Polaris: Oh
Chris/Ollie: oh yeah, that's right!
Bee/Polaris: So there's already another Hermes.
Chris/Ollie: Well, I've been, meaning I keep forgetting, but I'm meaning been meaning to have Ollie examine his chaos emerald to see if it's actually whole. Because like I, I tried to cut mine, so if, if the Winston’s tried to look at it, they're like, oh yeah, this is whole, we can just kill him kind of thing.
Avery/GM: Yeah, I could say that you could totally roll for that and say that you did that earlier.
Chris/Ollie: Sure.
Think it'd be an intelligence notice check.
Bee/Polaris: Cutting your emerald could have reminded Ollie.
Chris/Ollie: where did my stats go? Notice you say?
Avery/GM: yes, please.
Chris/Ollie: Okay. That is a. Where is it? 10.
Avery/GM: So the thing you notice about Hermes is Emerald, is that it's about 49% smaller than yours.
Bee/Polaris: Hmm.
Chris/Ollie: Okay. But it looks normal. It's just smaller.
Avery/GM: It's smaller. It looks well. The fact that it's smaller means that it's probably been cut.
Chris/Ollie: Okay. Well, I, I would've relayed this information at the time.
Bee/Polaris: does that mean we can't cut it again?
Chris/Ollie: Yes.
Avery/GM: you could. It's just, you can cut it multiple times, right Chris?
Chris/Ollie: I don't think so
Zach/Zahn: so. You can cut it multiple times, but it would, hypothetically, you could cut it multiple times, but it would still go to the biggest piece, right?
Chris/Ollie: well, because I was thinking about like having, like whore cruxes pretty much all around the galaxy, wherever we go, but it's, I can't find it right now, but I think it says you can only have one cut.
Avery/GM: I think you might be right. I was trying to find it in the book
Chris/Ollie: because I would literally like break off pieces and just like throw 'em into evac pods and yeah. Be like, I am immortal , I spam the galaxy. I will never die!
Bee/Polaris: We are Ollie, we are many. Okay. Um, I mean, I do have the, the, the Hermes communication thing in Polaris's helmet would. is, would that allow Hermes to take control of the shuttle? But I wouldn't be able to talk to Hermes. Yeah.
Avery/GM: Yeah. So I'd say yes, you could do that, but yeah, you'd lose your communication with Hermes during the race.
Jenine/Marty: Okay. So hear me out. Hear
me out.
Bee/Polaris: Yep.
Jenine/Marty: You put Hermes helmet on Marty. Marty will telepathically link with you and we will do this fun little game of telephone.
Bee/Polaris: Uh, it's like a, it's like a u s. and not the whole helmet.
Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Nevermind!
Bee/Polaris: Nevermind. . . I mean presumably Hermes is like in the shuttle can talk to you guys, right?
Avery/GM: Yeah.
Jenine/Marty: Yeah. That could boo, that could get, that can negate our negative ones, possibly.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So if Hermes is in the shuttle, Hermes can pilot the shuttle and then you can just, you know, chit chat with me.
Jenine/Marty: Okay, Wait, so are we taking Hermes with us?
Bee/Polaris: Well, you guys need to so that Hermes can fly the shuttle. Yeah.
Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool, cool. Great. Good. Everything's fine.
Bee/Polaris: It's, it's more like
Zach/Zahn: or Hermes sadly ends up in the hands of the enemy again and half of us have to re-roll characters. It's all good.
Jenine/Marty: No, it's fine. Yeah Yeah Yeah yeah!
Bee/Polaris: Well, is still in the ship ship, but the, the little USB that Polaris has allows Hermes to like be in his helmet, right? Is that how that works?
Avery/GM: It basically acts as like a relay between your ship's chaos Emerald and wherever this little plugin is plugged in at.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah. So then could, so hers could then use the like pilot shuttle?
Avery/GM: Yes.
Bee/Polaris: Okay. Cool.
Jenine/Marty: Okay. Okay. Okay. So what we have, okay. Long story short, we have Hermes, Hermes is with us in big Freds… In Big Fred’s shuttle. Got it. Great. And big floods. Um, shuttle. Got it. Great.
Bee/Polaris: Yes
Jenine/Marty: Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool!
Avery/GM: Zahn, You asked about
Zach/Zahn: other weaponry.
Avery/GM: Yeah. Your other weapons. This is the weapon that comes on the
Zach/Zahn: shuttle.
Avery/GM: The shuttle, yes. Thank you. Sorry about that. I'm trying to format it a little bit better because it pasted weird.
Zach/Zahn: Oh, gotcha. I mean, part of my plan was already to use the, uh, grappling hook to like pull debris into ships around.
Bee/Polaris: Sick, cool.
Zach/Zahn: Or pull other ships into each other or vice versa and shit like that.
Chris/Ollie: Yes. There are many plans.
Bee/Polaris: I was gonna ask if spotters can only fight other spotters, they can't attack shuttles, yeah?
Avery/GM: One of the few rules is don't attack the shuttle with your spotter ship.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. Sick. Cool.
Zach/Zahn: yeah. Our, who is our spotter? Is it the drones?
Avery/GM: No.
Bee/Polaris: Hi, me.
Chris/Ollie: yeah.
Jenine/Marty: No, it's
Bee/Polaris: me. Hi. Yeah.
Chris/Ollie: Spotter is the fighter.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'm, I'm flying. Yeah. You guys are in the shuttle and I'm gonna be in little bear flying around and shooting obstacles and stuff.
Zach/Zahn: Gotcha. So the race is for the shuttle to get to the thing first?
Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah.
Avery/GM: Yes.
Zach/Zahn: Got it. Now I'm on board.
Bee/Polaris: Sweet, sick.
Zach/Zahn: See, I thought this whole time that Polaris was actually the one racing and we were the support.
Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that's, that's what I also thought!
Avery/GM: Sorry I did not explain that very well.
Chris/Ollie: No, it's all good.
Bee/Polaris: You're fine.
Zach/Zahn: No, no, no. You're totally fine. It was my misinterpretation. .
Jenine/Marty: No, cause my brain was like, oh yeah, big shit mean support and little shit means zoom, zoom, not the other way around. That's how my brain translated it and did not wanna translate anything else.
Avery/GM: Bruce, before we get started, please roll a percentage dice.
Jenine/Marty: What? is this weather? You throwing Weather at us?
Chris/Ollie: No, this is his… Yeah
Bee/Polaris: No, it's whether or not the other people shit their pants.
Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Or their per... or the amount of shit in everyone's pants.
Avery/GM: Oh my God.
Zach/Zahn: How many of the crew are okay with there being shit in their pants
Avery/GM: big shit
Bee/Polaris: Hundred percent shit in the pants.
Zach/Zahn: Wait, hold on.
Avery/GM: Bruce? What's that percentage roll?
Bruce/Caden: It's uh, 92.
Avery/GM: 92. Oh my God.
Bee/Polaris: that's a lot of shit in the pants. ,
Zach/Zahn: that's a lot of pants…
Bruce/Caden: I, I assumed by percentage roll. You wanted me to roll two D 10, so that's what I did.
Avery/GM: Yes, yes. That's totally fine. Okay, so let me see here. 92. Okay, that is really high.
Bruce/Caden: Yeah.
Avery/GM: So originally you saw teams of three For each of these, each of these teams, the shuttles start lining up and you see that each shuttle only has one person, not including the pilot.
Bee/Polaris: let's go.
Zach/Zahn: Sucks to suck, bro.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I hope they have enough bathrooms to accommodate.
Avery/GM: So Bruce, you have effectively given your team the leg up that it needs. . .
Bruce/Caden: That's that. That was the hope.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Operation Jamie shit pants!
Bruce/Caden: I feel like from the stands, this just looks like. You know, Bruce is sitting down and just every so often someone like stands up and is like, excuse me, excuse me. Just don't mind me. Don't mind me. And just like rushing to the bathroom, like there's just a huge long line and Bruce is sitting there and just feeling sorry.
Zach/Zahn: reveling in it?
Bruce/Caden: No, Bruce feels bad,
Avery/GM: And you hear the announcer come on and they're like, welcome everybody to today's pendulum of Doom Death Race, sponsored by assembles singles. We are here to bring you an exciting race. Hopefully that will not result in any deaths or dismemberments. Remember, it's been 36 days since our last fatal crash!
Zach/Zahn: That's actually pretty good.
Jenine/Marty: That’s not bad!
Bee/Polaris: That’s not bad! How often do they have races?
Jenine/Marty: Yeah?
Bruce/Caden: is there like often clock that tells you that like, you know, 31 days since last crash?
Avery/GM: they totally have like a little leaderboard. Yep.
Bruce/Caden: Good. Good. Good, good, good.
Jenine/Marty: What are they running like three races a day or something like that? Maybe. I don't know.
Avery/GM: Yeah,
Jenine/Marty: Wow! Look at them go!
Bee/Polaris: that's… that's pretty good.
Jenine/Marty: That's pretty good.
Avery/GM: 36 days since the last time someone fatally crashed because like as a reminder, if you are about to crash, they do have a team of teleportation, psychics standing by to teleport you out of danger before you blow up. And they have a pretty high success rate.
Zach/Zahn: Okay.
Chris/Ollie: okay. That makes everything I'm about to do feel a lot better. . Yeah.
Jenine/Marty: I, I almost took teleportation
Zach/Zahn: Marty over here. I almost have teleportation.
Jenine/Marty: I al I really did almost take it. I won't lie. And then I was like, mm. But telepathy,
Zach/Zahn: telepathy is better.
Avery/GM: Telepathy fits the build better though.
Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. A hundred percent fits the build better.
Avery/GM: And yeah, you see red light and it flashes (engines revving) and it flashes, and then it flashes yellow and then green (engage sound) and. Oh, I guess Hermes has to roll the pilot check.
Jenine/Marty: Can we assist in some way?
Avery/GM: If you wanna grab the controls and help Hermes Yeah, go for it.
Chris/Ollie: With a minus one?
Bee/Polaris: Hermes was a ship.
Jenine/Marty: Could I like do like, can I give like go Hermes go, woo!?
Bee/Polaris: Aw .
Avery/GM: You wanna give Hermes some moral support?
Jenine/Marty: Yeah.
Avery/GM: Uh, sure. Go ahead and roll a charisma connect.
Jenine/Marty: Yay.
Zach/Zahn: How are we Doing this? I pulled up the Ship Combat Actions page cause I didn't know how we were roleplaying this.
Avery/GM: So I'm rolling. Pilot checks for each one of the racers and that'll determine turn order. And then based on your role play and kind of your actions that you take in response to the other racers that will determine how this goes.
Bruce/Caden: I find it very hard to believe that no pilot would've had a pie. Just sayin!
Avery/GM: I will say this, there were four teams that you interacted with. There are currently only three teams here.
Chris/Ollie: Pilots are already sitting down anyway
Zach/Zahn: Also, it's also entirely possible that the person in the pilot's chair is not the designated pilot.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah. . They're improvising.
Avery/GM: This is also true.
Jenine/Marty: The bench player.
Zach/Zahn: It's one of those, like they're sponsored. They have to be out there. The poor gunner guy who's never been behind the pilot seat is probably the guy in the pilot seat.
Jenine/Marty: I rolled a 10, so that's a, that's a plus one.
Avery/GM: Yep. Okay. That bumps Hermes up to a nine.
Jenine/Marty: Hey!
Bee/Polaris: Let's go.
Jenine/Marty: Let's go.
Avery/GM: Okay, so the initiative order is Professor Infiniti's race.
Jenine/Marty: We need to stay away from that.
Bee/Polaris: Rip
Avery/GM: Hermes.
Bee/Polaris: Yay, Hermes!
Jenine/Marty: Yay Hermes!
Avery/GM: The Assembles sponsored Racer
Bruce/Caden: Boo.
Avery/GM: and the lucky tentacle’s racer. You knocked out Fred's team. Little Fred's team.
Bee/Polaris: Fuck yeah, Fuck that guy.
Zach/Zahn: Oh man. I was kind of hoping that we would accidentally blow up the hoverbike we just traded him.
Bee/Polaris: Oh, true.
Jenine/Marty: Oh Rip!
Avery/GM: I let the dice decide which one you took out, so.
Zach/Zahn: Got it.
Bee/Polaris: Well…
Zach/Zahn: That's fair.but the mystery continues cause you said that nobody knew who his,
Bee/Polaris: Oh True!
Zach/Zahn: Who his pilot was.
Avery/GM: Yep.
Bee/Polaris: The only thing we know about them now is that they have, nevermind, sorry.
(Ambience fades out, race music fades in)
Avery/GM: So you are off to the races. Uhhuh, , Polaris. The spotters go after the shuttles clear. The first asteroid. Okay, so
Zach/Zahn: because the fighters are far faster.
Bee/Polaris: indeed.
Avery/GM: You all take off and see Professor Infinity is actually on his shuttle.
Bee/Polaris: Oh.
Jenine/Marty: Oh.
Avery/GM: It's very weird for a sponsor to join their racers in the race. But you see Professor Infinity, two electrodes in hand, electrified, (electricity sounds) like holding them together, laughing maniacally as his Pilotless shuttle takes off ahead of you and pulls ahead, followed closely by Hermes, Marty and Zahn.
Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.
Avery/GM: And then the lucky tentacle shuttle, which actually looks like a floating squid, like the octopus. Uh
Zach/Zahn: oh nice!
Avery/GM: With a bunch of tentacles. And it's closing in behind you. (Engine sounds) but it's still lagging behind a bit. And then behind them all is what looks like a large, just like flatbed that's pulling some kind of heavy weight behind it. (Ship noises)
Bee/Polaris: Interesting.
Avery/GM: It's a very weird looking, uh, shuttle compared to all these other ones that are out here. And so you're approaching the first obstacle, which is this junk cloud. It's a cluttered mess of busted up ships, rocks, and other debris. Clearly, this has been where a lot of other ships have fallen a foul early in the race. So there's a couple of ways you could approach this. You could try and shoot some of the debris. You could trust Hermes to pilot through it by himself, or you could try and take controls to do a better job pilot. So we'll start with Professor Infinity.
Zach/Zahn: Yeah. I wanna see what Professor Infinity Ship does since we're behind it.
Jenine/Marty: Yeah.
Avery/GM: Yeah. Laurel rolled a 14 for its pilot check.
Bee/Polaris: Jesus Christ
Jenine/Marty: Superstar!
Chris/Ollie: Laurel’s a beast!
Avery/GM: You see this AI pilot ship, it weaves smoothly through every single piece of big debris here, almost as if it were able to scan the entire debris field and find the perfect route through it. Professor Infinity, just cackles as he clears through the debris field, just mwa ha ha ha ha. but you can't hear that because he's in a space suit.
Jenine/Marty: Now I have a question. I can see Professor Infinity. Yes.
Avery/GM: Yep.
Jenine/Marty: Would I be able to transmit thought and make it look like an asteroid is about to hit him? Like, like transmit that thought into (magic sound effect) professor Infiniti's head, making it think that the AI has failed and is about to crash them into an asteroid of making him, uh, have to, uh, take control.
Bee/Polaris: Hmm. Hijacking the eyeballs.
Avery/GM: yeah, you could. I believe Professor Infiniti gets to make a mental save for that.
Jenine/Marty: Yeah, he does. And, uh, I believe he has to go against my thing.
Avery/GM: Yeah,
Jenine/Marty: right? Do I roll something?
Avery/GM: No, no, no, no. It's just whatever your mental save would be.
Chris/Ollie: A battle of the minds.
Avery/GM: He rolled a four, so he fails
Bee/Polaris: sick.
Jenine/Marty: Let's go.
Avery/GM: So Professor Infinity is enjoying the moment real quick of this initial victory. Then all of a sudden you see him throw his electrodes down onto the deck of the shuttle. and they go quiet and still, (electricity discharge) and he runs up to the front of the shuttle and he grabs the controls and you see it kind of start to swerve and swerve and swerve back and forth. (ship swerving sounds) And he basically starts slowing down. The AI slows the shuttle down because, uh, he's putting them both in danger. And you have pulled ahead of Professor Infinity. It is your turn. Marty, since you did transmit thought, I'm gonna say that was your main action.
Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. I didn't think that was gonna work. Ha ha.
Avery/GM: Brilliant Thinking that was really good. Okay, so it is your turn. Next, let's see. How is your team wanting to approach this asteroid field or this junk field?
Chris/Ollie: Also real quick, uh, about this time, Ollie will is going to, uh, commit a cognition and use split focus and insert himself, uh, digitally into the helmets of both Polaris and, uh, Zahn.
Avery/GM: Okay. You're there.
Bee/Polaris: Sick.
Chris/Ollie: So I reread this real quick. and I didn't realize that it, the amount of minds that I can split my focus into triples with every level.
Jenine/Marty: Oh?
Zach/Zahn: Triples!?
Chris/Ollie: So there's theoretically 81 Ollies right now. I, uh, I had misread that before. So that is, um, uh, so there's 81 of my, of me in the internet out there somewhere right now.
Bee/Polaris: Oh, Jesus Christ. They're learning.
Chris/Ollie: Oh, it is only begun.
Avery/GM: Okay, Ultron!
Chris/Ollie: I mean… oh, next level will be 23.
Bee/Polaris: Let's go .
Chris/Ollie: And that's only for one focus, cause each, each additional, uh, focus I put on it times it by 10.or 10 for the first 100 for the third.
Bee/Polaris: Oh wow. We don't need that many Ollies.
Chris/Ollie: Oh, eventually we might. the Legion is here.
Bee/Polaris: True. I mean, I guess when we get like, uh, what is it, a capital cruiser or some of the space station
Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we're gonna need a whole crew.
Bee/Polaris: We are gonna need a lot of Ollies
Chris/Ollie: I could just be the crew.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah.
Chris/Ollie: So yeah, I'm inserting myself into the, uh, into the scene, uh, wherever do you want me to roll initiative?
Avery/GM: No, the only initiatives is the Ship initiative. Oh. So if you wanna take an action, go for it.
Chris/Ollie: Uh, while I'm gonna wait on that, I'm just gonna say hello everyone. I have arrived.
Avery/GM: Okay.
Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris Types. Uh, capital a a a a a a a h h h h h h h h h. Exclamation point.
Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Oh, and also like visually on your helmet, my eyes are just like in the bottom.Just doing their usual thing. Looking around
Bee/Polaris: Ollie… Nice.
Zach/Zahn: Nice. Zahn is going to take hold of the, the laser and start trying to shoot out some of the, the stuff too to clear path to make it easier for, uh, to her for Hermes to get through.
Avery/GM: Sure. Go ahead and. Three shoot checks, dexterity, shoot checks.
Zach/Zahn: I'm good at shoot. 10, eight and four.
Avery/GM: Woo-hoo. The four was just barely enough. I put it as a low number, so.
Zach/Zahn: I, I had hoped that the first two would be good enough to to make it better.
Avery/GM: Yeah, you blast three good size chunks of space debris into little tiny dust particles and create a nice, easy path through the field. And that actually what helps you pull ahead of Professor Infinity as you clear this debris field, it's gonna roll two more pilot checks for…
Okay, so you see the lucky tentacle shuttle swirl through this debris cloud and get hit a couple of times by some pretty big, sizable pieces of debris. And you see two little flash points on the, on the tentacles, uh, on the ends of the tentacles. Indicating that something has been destroyed on those, but it has cleared through the cheese whizz or not cheese whizz… The assembles vehicle actually just cuts a path through the same hole that you made as it brings up the rear.
Bee/Polaris: Am I also, is Polaris also moving on the same turn as the other ship?
Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. Once you're introduced, your turn will be on the same turn as the rest of the crew.
Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. My second question was gonna be if spotters were introduced.
Avery/GM: I was just getting to that
Bee/Polaris: sick.
Avery/GM: Yeah, so you have cleared the first obstacle and you're coming up to the little gate that you have to clear to get. Basically, you have to clear all five checkpoints. You're coming up to the first checkpoint, and because Professor Infinity was delayed, you passed through the ship first and Polaris. You see your docking bay. Open and you are ready to go.
Bee/Polaris: yeah. Polaris will wait until the Hermes shuttle passes by and (Shuttle flying sound) he'll, he'll linger around the shuttle.
Avery/GM: Sure. You're piloting kind of close to your shuttle. A females pass by and Professor Infinity's sail through and their spotter comes out. Their spotter is a, a similarly weird looking ship that's basically just like, It's basically shaped like a giant gun.
Bee/Polaris: Oh, cool. Oh, good.
Zach/Zahn: So it's a season, season one optimist prime, right where he is. Just walk a giant walking cannon.
Avery/GM: Basically, yeah.
Bee/Polaris: Oh, I was thinking just like a big floating nine millimeter.
Avery/GM: That works too. Sure. And then the lucky tentacle passes through and the spotter for their ship comes out and it's just like a tiny two tentacle little squid looking fighter.
Bee/Polaris: Aww. A baby squid.
Avery/GM: And then as the shuttle with assembles passes through, A pretty bulky sized fighter comes out and it is also hauling a container behind it.
Bee/Polaris: Interesting.
Zach/Zahn: Uh-oh.
Bee/Polaris: maybe when they pass by the audience, it releases cheese.
Jenine/Marty: positive thinking, very positive thinking. ,
Avery/GM: and yeah. You are approaching the second asteroid, Polaris. Actually Ollie, you would notice it first on the, on the little layout screen that you see a little, you see a little flashing symbol on the radar that seems to indicate that there was a magnetic minefield ahead.
Jenine/Marty: Hmm?
Chris/Ollie: Ooh. Yeah. Same, same reaction.
Bee/Polaris: Are we.
Avery/GM: Mines of magnets!
Jenine/Marty: mines, not mind. Got it.
Chris/Ollie: Mind field.
Avery/GM: So Yeah. Sorry.
Zach/Zahn: Mind Magnets!
Jenine/Marty: I got real scared. I got real scared there for a second. I'm like uh oh!
Bee/Polaris: psychic Magnets.
Jenine/Marty: Uh oh. They're gonna see that I'm doing telepathy right now. Oops!
Bee/Polaris: question are is aha in first place?
Avery/GM: Yes.
Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. when Polaris, uh, well, does Ollie inform Polaris since he's the one that, okay, cool.
Chris/Ollie: Ollie's not gonna say anything, but he's just gonna ping all of the mines that he scanned on the heads up display.
Bee/Polaris: Okay. Sick.
Avery/GM: yeah, you noticed it shortly after, Polaris.
Bee/Polaris: Okay.
Avery/GM: Just robots are a little faster than humans.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. Now I have several questions. . Um, first question, is there someone like in close second, or are we pretty decently ahead?
Zach/Zahn: Dr. Infinity’s right behind us.
Avery/GM: Professor Infiniti is a good distance behind you, but yeah, if. That's second place.
Bee/Polaris: Okay.Second question. Spotters are not allowed to attack shuttles, correct?
Avery/GM: Correct. But you may attack other spotters.
Bee/Polaris: Okay. It is specifically written that spotters cannot attack shuttles. Correct?
Avery/GM: (exasperated sigh) You're clever. Yes. That is the explicit way the rule is written.
Bee/Polaris: Excellent. Polaris is gonna say to, uh, Hermes and whoever else is on the shuttle get into second place.
Jenine/Marty: Oh? Ohhh okay.
Bee/Polaris: and he's gonna wait.
Jenine/Marty: I see, I see what's happening.
Avery/GM: Okay.
Jenine/Marty: Okay.
Chris/Ollie: Get in a second place. Blue Shell incoming.
Jenine/Marty: Rip to the professor!
Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna wait until Professor’s shuttle is in front.
Zach/Zahn: That's frankly kind of funny cause my, my plan was to like use the, use the gun to shoot like, . And then with the third one, use the Grapnel launcher to like latch onto a grenade and whip it at something else.
Bee/Polaris: Hey, I gotta, I got you. I got you. That's it. you can still do that to whoever is in third.
Jenine/Marty: but Oh yeah, we can, we still got that. Okay. So yeah, we'll back...
Zach/Zahn: I still wanna do that.
Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. We'll back up. , you gotta, you gotta act, you gotta, um, action economy.
Bee/Polaris: so just gonna wait until professors, you know, getting, getting to the field.
Avery/GM: Okay. Does someone communicate that to Ollie or not To Ollie, to Hermes, because Hermes is under the impression that y'all wanna win.
Bee/Polaris: Oh I thought
Jenine/Marty: he’s in chat Hermes can… I’m the only one that’s out of chat.
Avery/GM: Oh, Hermes is, oh, okay.
Bee/Polaris: No, you still have chat. You have a watch.
Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah.
Avery/GM: Oh, okay. That's fine then. Yeah. Hermes says affirmative. I will slow down. And do you feel the shuttle like, just kind of almost come to a stop?
Bee/Polaris: No… Okay.
Jenine/Marty: make it look, make it look like we're still, um, in the competition a little bit. 2, 2, 2 notches. You know, like how in the Incredibles they go like second place, second place at the end of the movie. That's, that's, that's, that's how Marty’s trying to communicate this right now.
Zach/Zahn: oh, right. Where they're trying to make, have dash, slow down.
Chris/Ollie: dash run slower.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah
Jenine/Marty: That's what I'm doing. Second place, second place.
Bee/Polaris: don't give up!
Avery/GM: Hermes says, oh, I see we are playing a ruse?
Jenine/Marty: Yes. I cannot believe we're doing this to this small little child.
Avery/GM: Hermes speeds Back up a little bit and you see Professor Infinity who has recovered from his sudden fear of asteroids is just cackling again, just as he passes by you.
Bee/Polaris: Excellent. So when he passes by, I, can I take my action now or are we, are there other things that need to happen?
Avery/GM: go for it. Unless someone else needs to do something before you do what you are gonna do.
Jenine/Marty: I will happily do it again. Do the whole. Scary, scary things to, to the, can I do it to the cheese one? The Krafts… Krafts one, not the Krafts. The assembles.
Avery/GM: Sure.
Zach/Zahn: The assembles cheese is all the way in fourth place. Like
Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Well, I'm scared of, I'm scared of What's up with that?
Bee/Polaris: the, the weird thing.
Zach/Zahn: The hauler?
Jenine/Marty: Yeah. I'm a little scared of that. So could I, could I like
Bruce/Caden: you just wanna grate them a little bit?
Jenine/Marty: Could I in the brains of whoever's piloting the, the assembles one? Just make it look like an explosion happened in front of them? (magic sound)
Avery/GM: Yeah, they'll roll their save. How much effort have you committed already today?
Jenine/Marty: so this is, I'm currently committing only on my, uh, I can commit all day with
Avery/GM: Oh, that's right,
Jenine/Marty: telepathy. And I'm just keeping it on telepathy for today cause there's, Things. So I'm only, I've only been doing one, have I? I, and this one is just a thing that I…
Avery/GM: Oh, okay. You're fine.
Jenine/Marty: Two-way communication with a willing target as an instant action when desired. So, yeah.
Avery/GM: And unwilling to just have to make us save.
Jenine/Marty: Yeah.
Avery/GM: Okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Well, they rolled a 15.
Jenine/Marty: Dang it.
Bee/Polaris: Well,
Jenine/Marty: oops.
Chris/Ollie: the fortress of the mind.
Jenine/Marty: You just hear Marty go oopsies. And then just like dips back down into the , into the pit.
Bee/Polaris: Excellent.
Jenine/Marty: That's it.
Bee/Polaris: Does anyone else need to do something?
Zach/Zahn: so for Zahn, I actually have a different idea. I wanna do Two things. One is the, the whipping, the mine, and the other is waiting for Polaris to do their thing and then boost the engine. So we go zooming past, uh, professor Infinity.
Bee/Polaris: My thing is to clear a path for you guys.
Zach/Zahn: Perfect.
Bee/Polaris: Okay. So have any of you ever been like in a, a thunderstorm where it's like basically raining side?
Jenine/Marty: I'm sorry, what? It does that?
Bee/Polaris: what? Oh yeah, you're from Cal. Wait, are you from Cali?
Jenine/Marty: Yes. We're eternally in a drought.
Bee/Polaris: Okay, right, right. Okay. So sometimes the thunderstorms and it rains so hard that it rains sideways and the wind is like, the wind's just like super strong and so the rain is like just coming at you. So usually what
Zach/Zahn: I used to live in Kentucky for a little bit, so yeah, I've seen that.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah.
Jenine/Marty: Sounds terrifying.
Bee/Polaris: My plan is kind of what you do when you put the umbrella in front of you. So what Polaris wants to do is win. Doc is going past, he's going to fly a little bear underneath the shuttle and then angle his boosters so that he's like going like, Straight through like making a clearing a path.
Avery/GM: Oh my god.
Bee/Polaris: He's pushing him.
Chris/Ollie: You're gonna use him as a battering ram?
Bee/Polaris: Yeah, he's pushing him through the mines.
Avery/GM: You're not attacking the shuttle.
Jenine/Marty: Oh my god.
Avery/GM: Okay. This is gonna take the fanciest freaking flying check I've ever seen.
Bee/Polaris: That's fine. I'm a specialist.
Avery/GM: Yeah.
Bee/Polaris: So what is it piloting plus?
Avery/GM: Dexterity and pilot. Yeah.
Bee/Polaris: Okay.
Chris/Ollie: Also, can I assist being, uh, get a little AI assist?
Bee/Polaris: I mean, sure. If you wanna just make it cooler cause I rolled really well.
Chris/Ollie: Oh well if you've got it, then go.
Bee/Polaris: No, no, no. Make it cool. do you wanna assist?
Avery/GM: You can roll Chris. That's fine.
Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. Yeah. I, I didn't hear whether it was a,
Avery/GM: Oh sorry, I…
Chris/Ollie: what kind of roll is that?
Avery/GM: Yeah, it'll be a dexterity pilot check
Chris/Ollie: pilot Dex. Okay, well I got a, uh, comes out to a three
Bee/Polaris: Ah.
Chris/Ollie: So my, my skill pales in comparison to the True Master. I’m like trying to help And you're just, Polaris is just like Shut up.
Avery/GM: Yeah. You get the idea of helping and like you're about to be like, according to my calculations, and then Polaris just does it. Polaris Describe this really cool maneuver.
Bee/Polaris: Okay. so first off, I did, uh, because I'm a specialist, I can roll three D-6 and drop the lowest. I rolled two sixes and a four . So that's a total of plus dex 13… oh wait, sorry. No, no, no. Uh, it's actually 15
Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say… oh right.
Avery/GM: Oh yeah. 15. Yeah, that's right.
Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I forgot to add pilot.
Jenine/Marty: Oh my gosh.
Bee/Polaris: So Polaris is gonna wait like when the shuttle slows down cuz Polaris has been hovering by the shuttle. the, the his team's shuttle. When Doc goes past Polaris is going to speed up and get right underneath his shuttle and then angle it upward so it's at a 90 degree angle and he's going to change the direction of his boosters to fly as fast as he can through the minefield to clear a path.
Avery/GM: Yeah, so Professor Infinity rolled a nine for his evasion save. He did not save . So as you do this, you see this vac suited helmeted figure bounce off the shuttle (metal ping) and go flying past you into space (swoosh).
Zach/Zahn: This is why you get mag boots!
Bee/Polaris: He'll be all right.
Chris/Ollie: Should’ve bought the grappling hook.
Avery/GM: And you do see a little flash of light as Professor Infinity is teleported safely, and you do see a little flash of light as professor infinity is teleported to safety. And yeah, you pilot this now Person-less shuttle craft through the minefield. Are you staying with the ship this whole time or do you just back off after you send it into the minefield?
Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris is going to give it enough speed to where if he does detach, uh, it'll still sail in the same direction with difficulty to correct itself, assuming it's not covered in magnetic mines.
Avery/GM: Well, that's why I asked because as soon as you kind of back off of it, it goes into this minefield and you just see mine after mine start to get attracted (lock on sound) to it and start blowing it up. (explosions)
Bee/Polaris: Polaris will say on Comms “Follow Me!” to the rest of the crew.
Jenine/Marty: All right!
Avery/GM: so now Professor Infinity has been knocked out of the race.
Bee/Polaris: Yay
Bruce/Caden: Bruce in the audience is clapping .
Bee/Polaris: Aw.
Jenine/Marty: Golf Clap!
Avery/GM: Zahn, You were going to do something after Polaris did that, right?
Zach/Zahn: Yes, if there were any, I wanted to do the two things, the, if there were any, Like remaining mines. I want to grappling hook one, uh, and fling it into, uh, whoever's behind us.
Chris/Ollie: Oh, they are magnetic.
Avery/GM: This is a huge minefield, so it'll, yeah. Yeah. But I will say that, yeah, it's magnetic, so it will get attracted to the nearest metal object.
Jenine/Marty: That's terrifying.
Chris/Ollie: including your grappling hook
Zach/Zahn: My, my grappling hook is also magnetic.
Chris/Ollie: Yeah.
Avery/GM: So it'll,
Chris/Ollie: so you'll you'll try and let it go and it's just, it'll be like Nope!
Zach/Zahn: Oh, I, I, I, I've modified it so I'm able to detach when I want to.
Bee/Polaris: But will it, will that?
Chris/Ollie: Yeah, but will, the mine would detach.
Bee/Polaris: Well, if, if you, the mine attaches the grappling hook and the grappling hook is magnetic. Can you change the polarity of your grappling hook so it's the, the same as the magnet and it'll propel it away from your grappling hook.
Zach/Zahn: I wanna say yes?
Chris/Ollie: That sounds pretty smart. Yes. This is, this is the future, I would say, yeah,
Avery/GM: reverse The polarity is totally a Dr. Who thing. You can reverse the polarity, that's fine.
Bee/Polaris: Sick .
Avery/GM: But if you wanna do this cool thing, I want to see a dexterity shoot check since you're firing this grappling hook
Zach/Zahn: that I can do, buddy. That is… an eight.
Avery/GM: Ooh, you fling the. It doesn't hit the shuttle behind you. It actually flings upwards and hits the little squid fighter. (explosion)
Jenine/Marty: Oh!
Avery/GM: For the lucky tentacle.
Bee/Polaris: The Squid.
Avery/GM: And it's just one, so it just says one D eight damage. Seven damage takes a big chunk out of the Squid fighter, but it's still flying.
Bee/Polaris: Sick.
Avery/GM: And then flashback, oh, go ahead.
Zach/Zahn: Oh, I was gonna say, and then I wanted to do an int. Intelligence fixed check to boost our engines for one wrap so we could like,
Avery/GM: yeah, go ahead.
Zach/Zahn: Zoom into the lead.
Avery/GM: Go ahead.
Zach/Zahn: 11.
Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah, we were able to boost the engines and you get a sizable lead in front of the Lucky tentacle.
Bee/Polaris: Oh RIP Laurel.
Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah.
Avery/GM: Oh yeah.
Jenine/Marty: Oops.
Bee/Polaris: Oops.
Zach/Zahn: I was trying to remember its name This whole time.
(Race music fades out, ambience fades in)
Avery/GM: we flash back to the private booth of the Winston’s Ollie you are splitting your focus, but you are still able to hear the conversation going on
around you. And you hear Avi speak up and she says, so Violet, you were saying something about one of our cousins? What happened? You said something dreadful happened.
Avery/GM: And Violet says yes. We received disturbing footage of his hunting grounds being blown up by a random band of strangers. And actually the reason I came here is I heard that a ship matching the description of the ship in that footage had docked here.
Avery/GM: And I have some of my men poking around the docking bay, uh, trying to find it.
Avery/GM: And Bruce, you see two big, burly looking republic soldiers walking kind of through the crowd and you overhear them saying, yeah, we found the ship. It's in docking Bay 12. We're trying to do a trace on who exactly is on that ship
Avery/GM: and that's where we're gonna end it.
(Ambience fades out, Outro music plays then fades down)
Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Intro and Outro produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks include: Cyberpunk Bar, Cyberpunk City, Car Chase, Starbase Omega, and Orbital promenade.
Be sure to check us out @FurthestPod on Twitter and Tumblr. We’ll be back on the 15th with our next episode!
See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!