Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 8 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro music plays, then starts to fade out, background ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: Where last we left off, y'all got a tour of Polaris's Home Spaceship with his three robot caretakers that are ish friendly kind of maybe. And then y'all got an alert about pirates invading this system that you're in because they tracked your ship that used to belong to one of their buddies, Captain Byrum, and you've been given five minutes to comply with their order of returning both their shipmate and their ship to them.

You've had a couple weeks to think about how you want to handle this. So yeah, y'all are pretty much on like the bridge of The Ursa Major right now when this alert comes in.

Zach/Zahn: Hey, didn't somebody say something about a singularity cannon last time?

Bee/Polars: Did Polar say that out loud or was that that just me talking? I think that was just me talking.

Avery/GM: No, I, I think when, when you came into the system, I think

Bee/Polars: Oh yeah. Polaris said did, did mention the black hole gun. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polars: So we are all aware of the black hole gun

Avery/GM: Yeah, cuz Zach had that, that thing, that little like, wait, there's a singularity gun?

Bee/Polars: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: I remember

Bee/Polars: When this alert like, comes in or whatever, Polaris is just like, not at all bothered, like no anxiety or anything.

Avery/GM: just like, oh, another day in space.

Bee/Polars: Yup. This is the first time pirate's been brave enough to step to the, the custodians, but,

Chris/Ollie: yeah, like about that. Ollie's gonna add. Look up quizzically at the alarm and ask, “Is this a common occurrence around here? You seem unconcerned.”

Bee/Polars: Polaris, just shrugs and shakes his head no.

Chris/Ollie: Are the, the custodians in here with us?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Bee/Polars: Think all of 'em except Alioth, right? Cuz Alioth was with Hermes?

Avery/GM: Yeah, I think, I think, Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Merak and Bear both showed up and were kind of just like, Oh, you've shown them around. And that's when the alert came in. So

Bee/Polars: Yeah, Polaris is looking at Bear to see what he's doing. cuz he's security.

Avery/GM: Bear had just pulled up a gun from like nowhere and it was just holding this big, like rifle, like let 'em come.

Zach/Zahn: All right,

Bee/Polars: Yeah. I mean, we don't have the, the, the pilot dude, and we took the ship from the Hegemony. So like,

Zach/Zahn: He's a, he's a dead.

Bee/Polars: yeah. Should we tell ‘em that though?

Zach/Zahn: They're probably gonna want the ship back anyway.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polars: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: I don't know. Hey, sometimes pirates can be bluffed into anything, right?

Bee/Polars: Indeed.

Avery/GM: I've seen Pirates of the Caribbean.

Bee/Polars: I mean, I don't know if, I mean I'm fine with, cuz Polaris has his own little ship, so I could go out there and start blasting if we wanna fight them.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. But you've got, you've got possessions on our ship,

Bee/Polars: Indeed. Yeah. What I'm saying is like if we don't want to give them the ship at all, Polaris will take his ship and go out while they're blasting with the singularity gun and start blasting from outside.

Zach/Zahn: Man the giant turrets!

Bee/Polars: Yeah. I think the only weapon on the ship is the singularity gun though, right?

Avery/GM: I think that is how you set it up, yes.

Chris/Ollie: Hopefully this doesn't blow up.

Bee/Polars: Yeah. By the way,

Chris/Ollie: If it even can.

Bee/Polars: This ship has no defenses. It just has a singularity gun.

Jenine/Marty: I thought we had defenses. Dont, we have stealthy?

Bee/Polars: No, no, no. On on, yeah, on our ship. But on the Ursa Major, there's no defenses. It's just the singularity gun.

Jenine/Marty: Mm. Yeah.

Bee/Polars: I don't think I had the mass to add defenses. who's our comms person? Do we have a comms person?

Chris/Ollie: I think mine is the highest comms skill.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, thank goodness cuz I took it last time on accident.

Bee/Polars: Yeah. I, I have zero in talk now, so I don't have a, a a minus. I can, I could get on comms and say something.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I have I zero in connect as well.

Jenine/Marty: I, I can roll. I have a one in connect, but I can also roll three D sixes for connect and drop the lowest one.

Bee/Polars: Okay. Do we want, Do we wanna get on comms and

Chris/Ollie: that sounds like like the way to go.

Bee/Polars: tell them that we have the ship but not the dude? Because we just escaped the Hegemony ship and we just grabbed the first one we saw.

Jenine/Marty: It always goes well when Marty talks. Let's do it.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, we, we, we can attempt that.

Bee/Polars: What are the odds of pirate murders a child?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. What are, What are the odds?

Zach/Zahn: Hi,

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is all pro, just shooting them and running away.

Jenine/Marty: That's fair.

Chris/Ollie: But what better time to shoot them than when they're busy talking.

Bee/Polars: Okay, so do some of us wanna sneak out onto like a ship? Cuz we have two ships technically available. Actually,

Avery/GM: you have two ships available.

Bee/Polars: Is, can Polaris ship carry more than one person on the inside?

Avery/GM: That's a good question. It's a

Zach/Zahn: thought it was just a Sky Fighter.

Bee/Polars: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then I mean there are some vacc suits in the, in the hanger that people could suit up on, and then you just hold on, get onto the ship.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn just hops onto the outside of their ship, Starts taking out, Oh, this looks important.

Bee/Polars: Yeah. Yeah. You could just like fuck up their ships while we're, while they're talking

Chris/Ollie: Or I could like hack one and just be like, casually, start shooting the, the next ship over.

Bee/Polars: Oh, we could also get hermis into the ship that we took and then Hermis could, He likes guns,

Chris/Ollie: How many, how many ships are we talking about here?

Bee/Polars: Oh yeah. How many ships are there?

Avery/GM: Yeah, there you go. There's some, there's some questions to be answered. There we go. You've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ships.

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Bee/Polars: hm. ok.

Avery/GM: You look at the radar and you see that the little armada here consists of a patrol boat type ship, two free merchant ships and four strike fighters.

Bee/Polars: Oh shit. Okay. Are they all within close distance of each other? Like are they all within black hole range or radius?

Avery/GM: I mean, this is not too scale, obviously.

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

Avery/GM: The strike fighters are kind of in like their own, like little, Oh wait, I did have, Sorry, I copied the wrong thing. There we go. Now you should be able to see it.

Zach/Zahn: Heyyy!

Jenine/Marty: Oh, look at that. Wow. That's, that's great. It's terrifying.

Bee/Polars: Oh, sweet. Okay.

Zach/Zahn: so if we just fire specific singularity spots right here, here, and then here, like multiple times we should be.

Bee/Polars: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking if they're in a cluster, we can singularity them and then take care of the smaller ones later. But we should probably do we have, like, do we know how much time is left?

Avery/GM: It's been about two minutes.

Bee/Polars: Okay. Okay.

Avery/GM: since they, So you've got. About three minutes left.

Bee/Polars: Okay. So.

Avery/GM: not exactly five minutes in real time, cuz obviously,

Bee/Polars: Ok, so then should we, should someone talk to them? And then if things start looking down, go going downhill, we just, you know, suit up and get ready to fight.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Can we, Is parlay a thing in space?

Avery/GM: Yeah, I, I think I specifically mentioned parlay in the session prompt

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polars: I believe you did.

Jenine/Marty: do

Avery/GM: you know, kind of like how we talked in Session Zero. I am always open to non-violent solutions being a possibility.

Bee/Polars: Ok sweet.

Avery/GM: You could, you theoretically you could go through this whole first season and never fire a shot. I mean, except for the one that Zahn fired.

Zach/Zahn: I fired two, actually.

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cuz I'm not good at at shoot.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, so in order to attempt to hack one of these guys, would I need to be close to them or could I like, remote hack from the Ursa?

Avery/GM: I believe remote hacking is a specific fitting that you could get for a ship,

Chris/Ollie: Oh Okay.

Avery/GM: but it might also be a ship action. So let me check. Comms crash system. Yeah, so you could hack 'em by trying to crash their systems or. Defeat would be like if they were trying to crash your system, you know, hack into your ship kind of a thing. So,

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. . Okay. So Marty just kind of like, looks at everyone. “Okay. So I can talk to them over comms or we can like pick a ship in and like go on like. Equal ground with each other and I can talk to them and I can also get a feeling off of how they feel about us.” This is my level zero technique core technique for tele telepathic contact.

That's me saying that as a skill that I've got, I can observe an emotional state in a target. Intense emotions provide a single word or an image related to the focus of the feelings. “That seems easier to do if I'm in the same room. So how do we feel about that? Or do we just wanna like do this? Like I could talk to them like in a distance if we want to.

I don't know if you wanna get like a vibe check off of them or not.”

Avery/GM: Vibe check!

Chris/Ollie: I, I would recommend keeping as much distance as possible at that he’s gonna eye the screen.

Jenine/Marty: That's fair, That's fair.

Bee/Polars: “We should at least inform them that their friends is not with us. We just got the ship from the Hegemony when we were leaving.”

Jenine/Marty: Ok, Cool. Okay. Where, And like Marty just kinda stands there and like goes, “Where should I go to? Unless someone else wants to talk. I don't have to talk. We don’t. Last time I talked to the, the people outside, it kind of went weird.”

Bee/Polars: Well, Polaris just points to where the comms are.

Jenine/Marty: “Okay. Cool. Any, anyone else? Not, I'm not in like..” and then there’s like this slow little, like, you know, this slow little like shuffle.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie's just gonna say, “I will be busy preparing a little gift in case things go south.”

Bee/Polars: Oh yeah, we should probably make a bomb or something.

Jenine/Marty: okay. I like walk up to the comms

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: and then Marty just like pushes a button and goes (computer button) “Hello there, I'm Marty. I am a medical intern. I was a medical intern for the Hegemony. Maybe still I we'll put a pin in, in that. Anyways, so current, so we, when. How do I explain this? What is the best way to explain this? Hmm. So, hi, is anyone there? I should have checked. Hello?”

Avery/GM: “aye, Yeah, I'm here.”

Jenine/Marty: “Oh, hello.”

Avery/GM: “Why are, why'd they put an intern on the comms? Don't you have like a ship full of people?”

Jenine/Marty: “we do, well-”

Avery/GM: “and you pick an intern?”

Zach/Zahn: You hear in the background, “It's the best we got!”

Jenine/Marty: “I, Well, because I have like really good connections with people in the medical sphere. They thought it would be a good idea and I'm, Yeah. So they sent me here. I kinda volunteered. Hello. So we, so you're the member of your ship is not, here. We got the ship from when we were escaping from the Hegemony, that was kind of going bad. So, ah!”

Avery/GM: “let, let me get this straight. You stole Captain Byron's ship and just left him there?”

Jenine/Marty: “Oh! we what? No…”

Bee/Polars: Okay. Polaris walks over to the comms. Polaris walks over to the comms and stands next to Marty and says into the mic. “We, the ship was there when we got to the hangar. It was the only ship available. We had no idea where your friend was.”

Avery/GM: Marty, go ahead and roll. A charisma connect check and add plus one for Polaris's, help

Jenine/Marty: Okay, so if I already have a plus one add

Avery/GM: add. Add another plus one,

Bee/Polars: Yeah, I just wanted to help.

Zach/Zahn: All the more plus ones.

Jenine/Marty: (dice rolling) Oh, that's, that's helpful. Okay. That was kind of a scary role. That's a, that's an, that's an 11.

Avery/GM: Oh, that's great.

Bee/Polars: It's pretty good.

Avery/GM: That's perfect. You hear like some sniffles come back

Bee/Polars: Aw.

Avery/GM: and he's like, “Are you, are, are you saying that the Captain Byram did, didn't make it? Is that what you're saying? Is he still out there? My, my good friend Byram,”

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna lean over to the mic and say “The ship exploded immediately after our departure.”

Bee/Polars: The ship exploded immediately!?

Jenine/Marty: Marty just like, face palms.

Bee/Polars: Polaris like Oh my gosh. How do you even react to that? Polaris just says, “We didn't see him on the ship. We're unsure if the ship-”

Avery/GM: You just hear weeping.

Bee/Polars: Oh my gosh. “-We're unsure if this ship was even part of the Hegemony. It, It could have been. We don't know if he was even on the ship.”

Avery/GM: “Oh, oh Byram my good friend. Oh, growing up together,”

Bee/Polars: Oh my God…

Avery/GM: “-becoming pirates and now, Now you're gone.”

Jenine/Marty: Can I vibe check if this is fruity?

Avery/GM: fruit?

Jenine/Marty: Can I vibe check if this is a fruity relationship?

Avery/GM: Oh, sure. Yeah. fine. It's, it's more like they're, I wasn't going for fruity. They, they're just best friends that grew up on the streets together and became pirates.

Bee/Polars: Oh my God. Why do everywhere we go, we ruin lives?

Avery/GM: Hey, that was, that was their own fault, right?

Bee/Polars: Okay.

Avery/GM: Y'all, y'all didn't make the Hegemony start acting up.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah!

Bee/Polars: True.

Jenine/Marty: we were just, J chilling. I was on my internship. I was J chilling. Okay.

Avery/GM: “Well, can, can I at least have his ship back? I mean, he loved that ship so much.”

Zach/Zahn: Zahn in the background’s like, shaking his head no, that's ours now.

Bee/Polars: How many credits do we have in the secret wallet?

Zach/Zahn: hundred k.

Chris/Ollie: yeah a hundred.

Bee/Polars: do you think he'll let us pay for the ship?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I don't, I don't, I don't think so. This, this sounds like an emotional thing.

Bee/Polars: Yeah. Hmm. Well, we know that, what's her name was the one that had the ship to begin with. What was her name? It wasn't Vos, was it? No.

Avery/GM: Celia.

Bee/Polars: Yeah, Celia. Okay, so we know that Celia-

Avery/GM: Celia had the keys.

Bee/Polars: Yeah. Celia had the keys and Polar stowed away on the ship with Celia . So

Avery/GM: no, no. Sorry. Sorry. That was, That might have been bad storytelling on my part. Celia was the captain of the Aos. She got relieved of command, but still had the key in her quarters from when they intercepted the ship that you stowed away on.

Bee/Polars: Oh, okay. So wait, so was he actually on the ship or,

Jenine/Marty: Oh no. Was he?

Avery/GM: Yeah

Bee/Polars: Oh, he was

Avery/GM: Yeah. Polaris, you, Polaris, you would've met Captain Byram,

Bee/Polars: Oh,

Avery/GM: Or at least have seen him.

Bee/Polars: okay. yup.

Avery/GM: Sorry.

Bee/Polars: Ooooo.

Jenine/Marty: Rip

Avery/GM: Sorry. That's a hole in my, in my writing. My bad.

Bee/Polars: Okay. Well then Polaris probably wouldn't have said, We didn't know if he was on the ship because he was definitely on the ship and probably, definitely got exploded.

Avery/GM: He, he, he might have gotten vacced when the lower decks got vaporized

Zach/Zahn: The first three seconds

Bee/Polars: oooh. Yeah. Would Polaris have known if he had a vacc skin or vacc suit?

Avery/GM: You would probably not have known what his state of dress was when he got taken off of his ship.

Chris/Ollie: He's a hardy, rough and tumble space pirate, though, you know.

Bee/Polars: He, I, he could still be alive. If he got vacced, he wouldn't have been exploded.

Zach/Zahn: Give them the, give the pirates the coordinates of the last location.

Bee/Polars: He wants the ship back tho.

Zach/Zahn: like, Well, he, his body might be there somewhere.

Bee/Polars: Polaris will say into the mic, “Here's the, here's the problem. We don't have a ship to maneuver around and this is the only ship that we were able to escape with. We're willing to give you this ship if you are able to supply a ship as a trade.”

Avery/GM: “You'd, you, you, you'd hold a captain's sentimental feelings hostage just to get your own ship. That-”

Bee/Polars: “Yes.”

Avery/GM: “that's mighty pirate of ya.”

Bee/Polars: “I've been told I have very morally gray motives.”

Avery/GM: “Aye, you know, I think. I think Byram would've really, really appreciated that about you.” And I'd like you Polaris to roll a charisma connect check.

Bee/Polars: Sweet! I have nothing in that!

Chris/Ollie: Better than negative.

Bee/Polars: Let’s see how it goes. Oh.

Avery/GM: You spoke up.

Bee/Polars: Yeah, that's true. Not bad. Not bad. Charisma was my dump stat. But I rolled very well on the dice, so that's gonna be a 10.

Avery/GM: It's, that's pretty, I gave it an eight,

Bee/Polars: Oh, sweet. Oh my gosh. Okay.

Avery/GM: I was like, you know, I was like, a little more than halfway. Cap Captain Blitz just says, “I, I think. You know what? Just, just keep it. I, I, I, I think Byram would've wanted, wanted his ship to go to someone

as, as ruthless as you. Sorry for bothering you have just been a, a wreck the past few days”

Jenine/Marty: What?

Avery/GM: “for him and everything.”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce Bruce will come over to the mic and like put his hand on Marty's shoulder, just like lean down and be like, “You sound like you need a cake.”

Bee/Polars: I was about to say

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I was about to ask.

Bee/Polars: “Yes. If you'd like, we can send over cake.”

Avery/GM: “Oh, a cake. That , that would be lovely, that that would probably really set the men here at ease. And probably, a few of the other folks on the other ships at ease, you know we're all just really broken up about him. Byram was a, was a good, a good pirate. Few, too many tentacles, but definitely a good pirate.”

Caden/Bruce: “What was captain Byram’s favorite cake flavor?”

Avery/GM: “Lemon, just lemon cake.”

Bee/Polars: There's probably some lemons.

Caden/Bruce: And Bruce will like nod and like shuffle over into the kitchen and just like start getting ingredients out. Start zesting some lemons.

Bee/Polars: Polaris will say “We do have the coordinates of the ship that we were on last. We could give those to you just in case you wanted to search around, because before the ship was exploded, a few of the decks were vacuumed.”

Is that the term depressurized? Is that a better term?

Avery/GM: Yeah, vacced? Yeah, it works

Bee/Polars: “If you know, if your friend had appropriate equipment, he could very well still be alive.”

Avery/GM: And he's kind of regained his composure a little bit on the other side, and you hear him just go, “Aye. And you know what? Even if

we can't find him, we'll find out which Scallywags decided to, to take him out and we'll give ‘em what for. Right?” And you hear a bunch of pirates in the background cheer.

Bee/Polars: Was it the Hege- It wasn't the Hegemony that was it the Hegemony that captured him right.

Avery/GM: The Hegemony took him prisoner

Bee/Polars: Okay.

Avery/GM: and there was an armada of independent systems. That gathered a bunch of ships and blasted the hegemony. So

Bee/Polars: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: There's some blame to go around.

Bee/Polars: For sure! Yeah, I'll pass over that information to them. Polar will say “The Hegemony took him captive, but we were intercepted by an armatta of independent systems that were defending against the Hegemony.”

what was the planet that they, they were trying to take us to?

Avery/GM: Pania.

Bee/Polars: Pania, Okay. “They, they have a station on the planet of Pania. That is where, that is near where the ship the Aios was destroyed.”

Avery/GM: “Aye, Well then that's where we'll go. We'll await your, your cake and then we'll, we'll leave you in peace. Sorry for, for bothering yuh.”

Jenine/Marty: “How, how big of a cake are you looking for?”

Avery/GM: “Well, let's see. We got one, two. He's, he, he's going to eat two pieces and they like, okay. Probably at least enough for about 25 people,”

Jenine/Marty: Cool. And then Marty runs to the kitchen. That's a sheet cake right there. Yeah.

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: I'll, I'll relay that message to Bruce

Zach/Zahn: That's a cake, that something went from a cake to a case of brownies.

Bee/Polars: Yeah, Yeah. Polaris will be like

Avery/GM: Instead of cake, they get lemon bars.

Bee/Polars: Yeah. Polaris will be like “Very well. It may be a moment we’re, Probably going to have to help out our chef.”

Zach/Zahn: This is require, going to require at least 45 minutes.

Bee/Polars: “We'll contact you in about an hour about the cake. Please remain a good distance away from our ship.”

Avery/GM: “Aye, I can respect that. Need your personal space cap Captain blitz out.” and he ends communications and the ships have not moved any closer.

Bee/Polars: Sweet! Polaris will turn immediately to Merack and Bear and say, “Ready the singularity gun just in case.”

Avery/GM: You see that, that Bear like, kind of like his arms had kind of like slumped a little with the gun in his, in his hand. And you say, Ready the singularity gun and it and perks up real quick and it's like, all right. And goes to the gunnery station.

Bee/Polars: Sweet Polaris is gonna go help Bruce with the cake.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Does anyone else go to the, So Marty, you ran to the kitchen. What, what, what does this scene look like when, when Marty bursts in, like, Bruce, what are you in the middle of?

Caden/Bruce: I think Bruce is with his hands. Zesting some lemons, and then his tail is like somehow holding the whisk as he's like whisking batter over on another countertop as he's just working away.

Avery/GM: Excellent.

Caden/Bruce: And he'll look up as he sees Marty run in and just be like, “Is there problems? Do they no longer want cake?”

Jenine/Marty: “No, they do want cake. There's 25 people on. Well, they, they are, If you're, it's for serving size wise, 25 members of their 25 servings is what they might want, are kind of looking for.”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will chuckle a little bit and he'll just look around and. “Okay. So I'll make like a three layered cake. You know, I was thinking we have some extra white chocolate. I could try and melt it and sculpt like a boat. Do you think they would like that? Pirates used to like ships, right?”

Zach/Zahn: Aw.

Bee/Polars: Thats cute.

Jenine/Marty: “Yes. Do you. Would you like assistance?”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will eye up Marty and be like, “Do you know how to bake a cake?”

Jenine/Marty: “Yeah, I, I helped out a lot in the kitchen back home.”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will smile and be like, “O okay. Sure. I need at least probably two other batches I can. Tell you the measurements if you want to wash your hands and help out.”

Jenine/Marty: Yep. She gonna wash her hands.

Avery/GM: Okay, and we've. Little cake montage going on in the kitchen. Is anyone else doing anything while we await the delivery of the cake?

Bee/Polars: Polaris was gonna go help with the cake as well. He's looking up how to make a cake on his, on his head on his helmet as he's walking there.

Zach/Zahn: Oh gosh. Watch the, the recipe. You come up with vastly differ

Bee/Polars: Oh, a hundred percent. Right now he's, He looked up lemon cake, but he's looking at a recipe for lemon bars

Zach/Zahn: Oh, no.

Avery/GM: And currently there's like a 10 page blog about this. One time they went on vacation and only had.

Bee/Polars: They remember the hairstyle their grandma had as she was telling them a story around the campfire before she went into the cabin to make lemon bars.

Chris/Ollie: While you're scrolling down, like where's the recipe?!

Bee/Polars: And you scroll too fast so you get to the comments section instead.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Zach/Zahn: So Zahn is going to approach the the weapons guy custodian, cuz he's supposed to be in the room, right?

Bee/Polars: Yeah, Bear.

Zach/Zahn: I don't have their names written down, so I don't know them.

Avery/GM: Bear is the weapons person. So you walk up to him “Can I help you?”

Zach/Zahn: “Yeah. So if this whole cake thing that the rest of the guys doesn't really work out Polaris mentioned something about a singularity gun.” He's gonna like put his hands together and like do that whole like half, like pray, like put the points of his fingers under his chin and then point the whole hand at at Bear, be like, “Gimme the deeds on that.”

Avery/GM: “It's pretty simple physics. It fires a concentrated stream of gravity at the target and creates a small black hole that rips the enemy ship apart.”

Zach/Zahn: “Cool, Cool, cool. You guys should potentially either power that up or have it already powered up, right?”

Avery/GM: “We have that covered.” And you see like the little panel like is glowing like that, It's like charging up, like it's a little like green progress bar going up the, the panel.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn gives him the like, okay, symbol, hands, gesture. And he is like, “perfect.”

Avery/GM: Sure. He, he starts kind of talking more about exactly what the weapon can do and, you know, kind of showing you on the weapons panel like where he's gonna fire it. “Yes. When you arrived in the system, we were originally going to fire the weapon at your engines and rip them off and leave you vulnerable. I think that is the approach we will take with this group of organics as well.”

Zach/Zahn: “Not bad,” and he is like actually engaging and he is like, “Oh, that's not a bad idea.”

Avery/GM: So, we've got three people in the kitchen cooking. Ollie, what are you doing in this kind of lull between possibly having to fight pirates and give them cake?

Chris/Ollie: He's just been like preparing the, you know, hack virus we talked about. He's just still doing that. So, and that's not like an actual skill or anything. He's just like, Oh, BRB I'm gonna fix something up. And then, you know, if I go through the hacking thing later, do all my roles then, But he's, he's pretty much just standing there spaced out with code running down his eyes. Like, matrix style.

Bee/Polars: Nice.

Jenine/Marty: Fair.

Avery/GM: So for the cake, Bruce, I would like you to roll a work check. Bruce, your work check will be, Probably intelligence, I'm guessing or wisdom especially if you have to thwart Polaris like accidentally making lemon bars.

Bee/Polars: Oh, I imagine Polaris is like on prep duty where he's just, he's just getting the flour and giving them like the cups and stuff like that. Like handing them things. Cuz I don't think Bruce would, Would Bruce let Polaris attempt to cook?

Caden/Bruce: I think having had tasted one of the protein bars, Bruce is like definitely just letting Polaris like measure flour, but like every so often, just like. Making sure that there's only, like the measuring cups that they need is the kind of thing where it's like, No, that's baking powder, not flour. We dont need that.

Bee/Polars: Yeah, Polaris is measuring out like three cups from sugar or sugar, but it's actually salt,

Chris/Ollie: So it's, it's also a cooking class as well.

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Hello Home ec with Bruce.

Avery/GM: So I'll have Bruce roll wisdom work. Marty and Polaris can both roll just straight two D sixes to try and help.

Bee/Polars: Okay.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce's role was a 10 by the way.

Bee/Polars: I got an 11

Jenine/Marty: I rolled in. Go ahead.

Bee/Polars: Oh, I just said 11.

Jenine/Marty: I also rolled in 11.

Bee/Polars: Let's go.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh, that's great. This is the most phenomenal lemon cake ever baked in space.

Bee/Polars: Yay

Chris/Ollie: We may end up killing these pirates with flavor alone,

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

Bee/Polars: Hey, that's seven free ships! Actually, can we poison the cake? Im kidding.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, we can.

Caden/Bruce: We're curing their scurvy with Lemon cake.

Bee/Polars: my gosh. It's true.

Chris/Ollie: true.

Bee/Polars: At at some point during the process, oh,

Avery/GM: Okay, if space pirates are foolish enough to get scurvy in space, that's their problem.

Bee/Polars: Oh true. Well, I mean, how many, how many citrus plants are floating around in space? You know?

Avery/GM: That's why you gotta take Tang. Right? Wasn't that invented for space travel or something?

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

Bee/Polars: Just space tang

Zach/Zahn: Was it really?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Yeah. Tang was invented by NASA for vitamin C for Astronaughts

Bee/Polars: Oh, that’s awesome.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God. That's wonderful.

Caden/Bruce: Can I describe my beautiful cake?

Avery/GM: Yes, please.

Caden/Bruce: Okay. So with the help of Marty and Polaris, Bruce has created this three layer. Lemon cake, which kind of looks like a wedding cake exception for instead of topped with like your traditional figures, it's topped with like, not necessarily a pirate ship as like we would imagine it, but like a galactic pirate ship.

So it's somewhat spacey, but like has the body of a boat ship. But like instead of like sails, it has like a little. Cannon of where the fuel comes out of and such like that. And it's just has a little icing of, again, white sugar down the sides and it looks absolutely delicious. And he's sugarized, Some lemon slices like on the top as well to look like waves.

Avery/GM: Oh, that's cool.

Zach/Zahn: Aw.

Avery/GM: Do you write anything on it? Like, sorry for your loss or anything?

Caden/Bruce: I don't think Bruce does. I don't think penmanship is like the top quality. But he'll look at Marty and Polaris and be like, “I think you two have done such a good job that one of you two should deliver it.” And he'll like, take off his chef hat and like haphazardly put it on Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Ha!

Caden/Bruce: And just smile.

Bee/Polars: Oh,

Jenine/Marty: does it like fall?

Caden/Bruce: No, cuz the chef hat is too small for Bruce. It probably fits Marty perfectly.

Bee/Polars: Yeah, it's like a tiny chef hat

Jenine/Marty: Im a chef!

Bee/Polars: yay.

Avery/GM: Constantly giving away his chef hat

Bee/Polars: Yeah. Polar is just gonna make Bruce's supply of chef hats.

Jenine/Marty: This is the Monday hat. This is the Tuesday hat

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: This is the party hat. They all look the same, but they all have different meanings.

Caden/Bruce: it's like the Socks have the days of the week. Each hat has like a little letter embroidered on them.

Bee/Polars: Can be done. Polaris will put on his helmet and like take a picture of the cake, but it'll very audibly have like a, like a Polaroid camera sound, and he'll just send it to everyone's. Comms and then he's, he will say “I, I think I'm the only one that can fly a ship to give it to them anyway.”

Jenine/Marty: I take the chef hat on and I tried to reach your head to put it on your head.

Bee/Polars: How tall is Marty again?

Jenine/Marty: four 10

Bee/Polars: Okay. Polaris is five 10. So,

Avery/GM: Polaris. You also know that you do have like a little like small two person shuttle available on this ship as well.

Bee/Polars: Oh ok cool! “Marty, you can come if you'd like. You, you don't have to try and put the chef hat on me. You can. You can,” He’ll just like,

Jenine/Marty: She puts the chef back on hat, back on and is like, “Ready? Let's go!”

Bee/Polars: Polaris salute to Bruce. And I imagine we put it on some sort of cart. Is it safe to, would, would there be like little hover like carts or something that we use?

Avery/GM: I'm sure, yeah. Most ships would probably have some sort of utility stuff. Yeah.

Bee/Polars: Sweet. Polaris will just like pull it behind him like it's a wagon. To the hanger!

(Space transition noise)

Avery/GM: Sure. Yeah. You hop in this little shuttle, do you notify them that you're coming out with the cake or are you gonna surprise them?

Bee/Polars: Oh no, we're definitely telling ‘em so we don't get blasted.

Jenine/Marty: yeah,

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: we come in peace! with cake!

Bee/Polars: Polaris will just send a, a group text saying whoever's in comms let them know we're on our way with a cake, smiley face.

Zach/Zahn: Oh gosh. The two people that were doing the talking are now on their way with the cake.

Avery/GM: yeah, I think that's, Well, I think that's Ollie and Zahn.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I'm still standing right in front of the comms thing anyway, so Ollie will see that and snap out of his, his trance and relay the message. I don't know. If I have to hail them or anything, but he'll just send ‘em a message.

Avery/GM: You could send it as a text if you want.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Yeah. He'll just send a text through the comms thing to the pirates and be like your, your present is presently on its way.

Avery/GM: Okay. I didn't actually create maps for the pirate ships, so.

Bee/Polars: That's fine. I don't imagine we're gonna get into any fights. I don't think Marty and Polaris could take down 25 pirates.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, we're the least threatening out of the group. It's fine for the least. What would, what are they gonna do?

Chris/Ollie: Exactly walking on alone into a pirate infested den.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So at this time you see the four strike fighters. Basically pull back and go into the docking bay of the patrol boat.

Bee/Polars: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Of the ship, the, the, basically the, the capital ship of this little fleet. (Ships docking noise) And yeah, you, you dock inside the, the bay of the Pirates main ship and the little ramp (Air pressure release hiss and space ramp lowering) on the shuttle lowers and the two of you come walking out holding this or pulling this cake behind you.

And you see. Captain Blitz is a big burly humanoid with bunny ears.

Jenine/Marty: Oo!

Bee/Polars: A rabbit folk!

Avery/GM: Yeah. Like the viera from final fantasy 12 or whatever.

Bee/Polars: Wow.

Avery/GM: Yeah. But big musclely and burly and his eyes are still kind of red from crying. You know. For for a big, scary pirate. He is actually in touch with his feelings.

Bee/Polars: Wow, that's really

Jenine/Marty: Snaps! (jenine snaps a few times)

Avery/GM: knows how to process them somewhat appropriately. , maybe a little publicly, but appropriately

He says, “Wow, that, that looks real special. Are, are, are you the, the chef that made it” and he, he gestures it at you, Marty.

Bee/Polars: Oh yeah. You have the hat on!

Jenine/Marty: I do. “No that was, that was Bruce. We are here. We, we were the assistant and he wanted us to send it over.”

Avery/GM: “Well, that's mighty, mighty kind of you. Wow. This is great. Well, thank you. We're, we're gonna, we're gonna go get vengeance now. Have some cake while we do it. Y'all have been great.” Marty. Is your telepathy skill something you have to roll for or is it just

Jenine/Marty: So basic form the depth. I can use this as, Okay, I was just reading this now, now I gotta, I'm gonna read the whole thing. The

Avery/GM: Oh, commit. Commit effort.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. I have to commit an effort for it. You know, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna commit the effort for the day for, for my telepathy things, just cuz this is like a check-in day and I'm like, I need to, I need to under, I need to make sure everyone's okay.

We're okay. No one injured on board. Just, just a basic thing. So what, what I think there is, so for level zero observe an emotion state in a target intense emotions provide a single word or an image related to the focus of the feelings. I think I do ha, I think there is a mental saving throw you get?

Avery/GM: Yeah. That person has to make a mental save. Yeah.

Bee/Polars: Will they be aware of it?

Jenine/Marty: You know, that's an excellent question. I feel like it should, but I'm not seeing that on here unless I'm just not reading it.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it doesn't actually seem to specify.

Bee/Polars: Okay!

Jenine/Marty: Cause I, I also, based off of it being like the level zero one, I feel like this is just like an observance.

Avery/GM: No, it's, it's, it's actually, it's earlier in, in the paragraph it says, telepathy is a subtle ability. Targets of its technique will not normally be aware of it.

Bee/Polars: Oh, sweet. Okay cool.

Avery/GM: Only those with meta scionic expertise, which this person does not have.

Bee/Polars: Okay Sweet. Yeah. Do your, do your secret vibe check.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. How is he, how, how is he doing? Does he need a hug? What's, what's, what's going on up in that? What's, what's the emotional state happening here?

Bee/Polars: What are the vibes like?

Avery/GM: Well, he rolled a nat one, so he failed his mental save.

Bee/Polars: Let's go.

Avery/GM: So the, the feeling, the, the one word that would describe this feeling is anguish. And Marty, you also get like a sense of like the color red.

Avery/GM: like as happy as he is about this cake on the outside. Inside. He is only focused on avenging his friend at this point.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. With that, Marty like walks up to the captain and like, opens her arms for a hug and does like the eyes like a. Hmm? Hmm?

Bee/Polars: Aw

Avery/GM: And you see a couple of his pirate friends, like look at him and he kind of like waves. It like kind like brushes them off and they all kind of like. Turn around. So they can not see their big, burly pirate captain give a tiny person a hug, and then he, like, he just engulfs you. And Polaris, like Marty is like gone for a minute.Like visually.

Bee/Polars: Yeah, Polaris would have put his hand over his visor, to, to, I mean, he could still see, but just the courtesy of it to also not look.

Avery/GM: And you just hear Captain Blitz just whispered to you, Marty. “Thanks. I I needed that.”

Bee/Polars: Aww. Marty has great bedside manners.

Jenine/Marty: Good. I would hope so.

Avery/GM: look. Your, your, your connect role earlier was so good that like, Yeah, I had to give it to you.

Jenine/Marty: Sneezy

Avery/GM: Cause like I was like, I was pretty sure this was gonna go a different way, but,

Bee/Polars: Yeah, me too. I, I was-

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah, I was, I

Bee/Polars: Debating on whether or not Polaris was gonna hand Marty a knife before they got to the ship.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah, I was ready. I was like looking up like how can I do remote repairs to people if needed?

Avery/GM: and then a couple of the pirates come over and take the cake off of the cart and start carrying it elsewhere into their ship. And Captain Blitz stands up straight and is just like, “You ever, you ever need help, just you call on us, us Crimson Chaos pirates. We'll, we'll always be happy to help a friend.”

Bee/Polars: Crimsooon Chaaaos.

Jenine/Marty: I'm also writing it down.

Chris/Ollie: we made friends.

Avery/GM: you have an enemy faction and an alliance faction. Y'all are doing great.

Chris/Ollie: We actually made some friends! That's surprising.

Zach/Zahn: Holy crap.

Caden/Bruce: We have so many good IOUs.

Bee/Polars: Yeaaaah!

Jenine/Marty: look at us Go!

Chris/Ollie: I don't think in any of our sessions we’ve ever really made friends.

Bee/Polars: Polaris. Will, will I imagine, does he have some sort of comms system on him? Like on his person?

Avery/GM: The captain. Yeah,

Bee/Polars: Okay. Polaris will send over his, his comms info, so if they wanna exchange emails, they can.

Caden/Bruce: Facebook friends.

Avery/GM: yeah. So you've got a little pirate contact in case you ever need Pirate help.

Bee/Polars: Sweet. Well, we have enemies, so

Chris/Ollie: rich enemies, so the pirates will be

Bee/Polars: Yes, rich rich enemies. Oh that actually-

Chris/Ollie: extra stoked about fightin’ ‘em

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. Huh.

Bee/Polars: True. Polaris, Polaris might, Well, I'm gonna talk to the crew about that before, before sending the info to the pirates, because if we have rich enemies, that might be a very interesting point of contact for those pirates. to, to steal from the rich enemies.

Avery/GM: So you're here in this, this bay. Are you gonna get back on your shuttle and head back, or you gonna stick around?

Bee/Polars: Yeah. Polaris is

Avery/GM: with the pirates?

Bee/Polars: Yeah, Polaris is gonna wait for Marty to get on the ship first.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm good to go. I give like a little wave goodbye. And then I head on the ship.

Bee/Polars: Yeah, Polaris will follow. Polaris just wants to make sure that Marty actually gets on the ship. and then we leave.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you depart from the bay and pretty much as soon as you depart, like the pirate ships all kind of just turn and start heading out of the, the desert system that y'all are in.

Bee/Polars: Sweet.

Avery/GM: And over the, the comms on the shuttle, Polaris Merak comes over and just says, “Good work, Polaris. I am surprised we did not have to kill them.”

Bee/Polars: “I am as well, although I did contemplate sending over a bomb.”

Avery/GM: “Humorous. That is our preferred option Most days, Polaris Alioth has need of you in it’s lab. Please proceed to the lab when you are back on the Ursa Major.”

Bee/Polars: Yeah. When we get back to the ship, that's where players will be.

Avery/GM: Okay. You land in the Bay (ship landing) and before leaving the bridge Merak turns to Ollie and Bruce and asks you to join them in the, in the bay to welcome back Polaris and Marty.

Chris/Ollie: Certainly.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce would do that.

Zach/Zahn: Yep.

Bee/Polars: Was Bruce in the bridge?

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah. Did, Yeah. Where was Bruce during this, like, were you anxiously waiting like on the bridge to like hear if they liked your cake?

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce would've first cleaned up the kitchen. To be back in its original, like spotless state, and then definitely gone, gone to the bridge just being just like nervously pacing, holding his tail, just like waiting in anticipation.

Bee/Polars: Oh, Polaris would've probably been live streaming. The, what was going on on the pirate ship to so everyone could see what was going on.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. And your cool like daft punk headset. Right?

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

Avery/GM: That's how I've been picturing Polaris.

Chris/Ollie: Yes, same.

Avery/GM: the Daft Punk,

Bee/Polars: Yeah, pretty much . Yeah, whenever we go into a situation where we're separated and you guys are near some sort of comms system or have some sort of comms system Polaris will probably be live streaming to you guys. So you guys know what's going on,

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. It turns out Polaris is actually like a super popular space, Twitch streamer just constantly like, like hanging out live streaming?

Bee/Polars: Polaris would be the the car guy equivalent of a space live streamer though, because, because he, he likes flying in ships and stuff, so he'd be one of those assholes,

Avery/GM: Oh my god.

Chris/Ollie: All right guys, we just picked up a hot new ride. Check it out

Avery/GM: Sci-fi would of course have car people. Oh my gosh.

Bee/Polars: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, it would.

Bee/Polars: Go to ship meets where like you race you like illegally space, race your ships.

Avery/GM: Oh my god.

Jenine/Marty: There's a new promo right there added to the fake commercials, sorry, in world commercials.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh. That's great. Bruce before they actually leave the system, you do notice on the comms station a little message flips, flips on, and it just says, Great cake, and a big thumbs up emoji.

Bee/Polars: I'm glad. Thumbs up. Emojis are universal.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. Cool. And you all arrive in the, the Hanger Bay to, to welcome back Marty and Polaris. Marty. Polaris. Do you, do y'all have any kind of conversation in the shuttle while the two of you are heading back or just sorta passing the time? Is there anything Marty or Polaris wanna ask each other or find out about each?

Bee/Polars: Polaris would say “You're very good with people.”

Jenine/Marty: “Oh, thank you. Working on it.”

Bee/Polars: “Hmm, I I have a hard time understanding people, so it's nice to know that there are people that are good at pe, people.”

Jenine/Marty: Marty is now sitting in buffering zone of like, Oh, a compliment. Oh, no. Words of affirmation. Ah!

Bee/Polars: “That being said, when we get back to the ship, I am sweeping you for any sort of tracking device.”

Jenine/Marty: “That's fair.”

Avery/GM: Never trust a pirate.

Bee/Polars: Yeah. Also, Polaris is sending a text message to Zahn and Ollie saying like, There's a track tracker on the ship that we have. We might wanna get rid of it.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. Huh?

Bee/Polars: And that's how they found this in the first place.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn gives the the, the like 100 emote or whatever.

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: And when you, by the time you're back on the ship, he's, he's not waiting for you. He's in the ship, like tearing it apart, looking for it.

Avery/GM: Cool. And that's where we're gonna end it.

(Ambience fades out, Outro music fades in then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Intro and Outro music by Dustin Carpenter. Check out his latest album, Wisteria Lodge, on Bandcamp.

Background music provided by Tabletopaudio.com and used under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Tracks include: Starfreighter and Generation Ship.

We’ll have our Halloween Special released on October 22nd.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro fades back up and then plays through)