Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 9 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

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

Avery/GM: So you come back and Merak is there with the rest of everybody except for Zahn who is in the ship, formerly known as the Minos, Tearing it apart. You actually don't have to tear it apart. Zach your character would know that the transponder code that they were talking about is something that's kind of like built into pretty much every ship's engine to like identify them when they connect with, or when they communicate with another ship. So it's like, it's pretty much like an IP address for the, for the actual ship.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha.

Avery/GM: So it'd probably just take some reprogramming to change that up a bit so it would not be tracked by people who know it.

Zach/Zahn: I can do that too.

Avery/GM: if you want, you can roll a program intelligence program check. See how long it takes.

Zach/Zahn: That’ll be… Math is hard.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Zach/Zahn: Six,

Avery/GM: six it'll probably take you the rest of the evening like you just to get some of this code. Like this is old code, so it's gonna like take a while to like remember like, okay, if this was written 10 years ago, then it has to use this language and it's not hard. It's just time consuming.

Zach/Zahn: Aw man, this, this one part's gonna take forever cuz Flash isn't supported anymore.

Bee/Polaris: No!

Zach/Zahn: Internet Explorer isn't getting any further support either.

Bee/Polaris: turns out they the… Go ahead

Avery/GM: Oh, I was gonna say you got, you gotta write it all in SQL now. .

Bee/Polaris: I was just gonna say they program it in a way that you have to beat the Oregon Trail in order to be able to wipe the, the actual code.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yes,

Avery/GM: Polaris, you've been directed to Alioth's lab and as you're heading out, Merak also turns to Ollie and says, “Actually, I think you're needed down there as well. Alioth needs to run some tests on the AI that Polaris returned to us, so you'll make for a good baseline.”

Chris/Ollie: Well seeing as Ollie has nothing better to do He'll flash a thumbs up on his visor. Am I going with them or am I just gonna head off on my own?

Avery/GM: You'd probably be walking with Polar. Okay. And I will follow Merak turns to both Marty and Bruce and it's like “Well this has been a very exciting day for everybody. Why don't I escort you up to the sleeping cabins and y'all can Turn in for the evening, as it were. Is turn in, turn in is the right word. Right? I, I speak so infrequently that some of the colloquialisms of your language is hard.”

Jenine/Marty: Yes, it is. Thank you.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: I return the, the hat to Bruce in a very like, nice manner ,

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will smile and put it back on his head.

Avery/GM: Cool. And the two of you are following Merak. Zahn, You are hold up in the ship plugging away at the computer. Did you ask for help from anyone or are you just, is this kind of just what Zahn does?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is not used to asking for help from others, so it didn't even occur to him to do

Avery/GM: Okay. So We'll stick with Marty and Bruce for a minute. So as Merak is escorting the two of you up to your cabins they say, “What are your plans going forward? I, I understand that the ship you were working on got exploded?”

Jenine/Marty: Yep.

Caden/Bruce: Yep.

Avery/GM: Huh? So essentially unemployed?

Jenine/Marty: Oh! hmm. Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: I mean, it won't be the first time I was unemployed and it's probably not gonna be the last.

Avery/GM: I understand the sentient creatures put a lot of emphasis on work, don't they?

Caden/Bruce: I mean, I don't know if it's on work or if it's on money.

Avery/GM: “Yeah. That's never really been an issue for us. You know, I was looking over the brain scans of Polaris since he's been traveling with you all, and he may not express it outwardly, but his limbic cortex was lit up brighter than I've ever seen. I, I think he genuinely likes you folks, and as much as it's gonna make all of us uncomfortable, if you would like to stay here for a little longer, I, I think that would be really good for Polaris.”

Bee/Polaris: so fucking mean.

Avery/GM: “You know, show 'em how sentient, organic” and as as, as they say the word, organic, you see their face kind of like scrunch up like, ew, gross “beings like yourselves sort of act.”

Caden/Bruce: Well I can promise that Polaris we'll get better food if I'm around

Bee/Polaris: Got 'em.

Jenine/Marty: and good communication skills if I'm around

Avery/GM: “Well that's, that's great. Just give us some thought. I'm obviously this is a free galaxy. You can go wherever you want. Did I, did I hear Mar Marty? Marty? It's Marty, right?”

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: “Did I hear you're a medic intern?”

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. That medic, intern, medic. I was working. So I just graduated. Right? And then, then I, my, my first like, job intern kind of set into the, the, the galaxy was…

Avery/GM: Oh, your residency.

Jenine/Marty: I mean, like I have the training, I, I got, I got some good marks in, in school, so Yeah. Yes.

Avery/GM: “Well have, have you seen the medical Bay downstairs? “

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. It's really cool.

Avery/GM: “Hmm. Yes. Well consider that open for your use. And Bruce, I see that you have already found the kitchen and I am sure that whatever food you make will be excellent. I wouldn't be able to actually taste it, but I'm sure it will be excellent.”

Caden/Bruce: I think that's a compliment. So thank you . And Bruce is unsure because of the lack of taste buds, ,

Avery/GM: and yeah. The, the two of you are shown Back up to the luxury cabins. Do you turn in for the night? Do you sit and chat? Do you go off exploring somewhere else?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. This is, this is a lot for, for Marty. She's gonna turn in for the night. Unless, unless Bruce wants to talk.

Caden/Bruce: No, I think Bruce is actually gonna prepare maybe some dough to rise overnight before turning in for the night. Yay. But then yes, he'd go to bed.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. We will flash back over to a's lab real quick.Polaris and Ollie, you come into the workshop and inside you see that Herme's AI core is like hooked up to like a set of computers, kind of, and monitoring stations kinda like just in the middle of the room. Like, just like cords and wires are everywhere. And there's like some data scrolling down one of the, the monitors and Alioth says,

Alioth: Well that took you quite a bit longer than I calculated. You know, Polaris, the singularity gun is far more effective that getting rid of invaders.

Bee/Polaris: So I've been told

Alioth: either way, at least they've left. I've found an anomaly within this AI and it refuses to tell me why it is there. I wish to use myself and your robot companion here to figure out what the anomaly is that will require me to connect myself to both of them, which will be extremely unpleasant. I will need you to monitor us until the experiment is complete. Can you do that?

Bee/Polaris: with some degree of success, I suppose.

Avery/GM: and a turns to you Ollie and says:

Alioth: Would you mind helping with this experiment?

Avery/GM: And you can tell, like, asking for help is kind of like not something this particular being is used to.

Chris/Ollie: Certainly I'm. A little hesitant about connecting, though it'll be the first time I've done so since at Awakening myself.

Alioth: It should be relatively painless. High ha pain ai ha ha ha

Bee/Polaris: Polaris rolls his eyes.

Alioth: It should be fine. There shouldn't be any complications or anything to worry about. I just need all three of us running on the same system to get the proper measurements. You had your core cut recently, Yes?

Chris/Ollie: Yes.

Alioth: I suspect that the anomaly is, the herms is 49% smaller than it should be.

Bee/Polaris: Have you tried asking Nicely for Hermes to explain.

Alioth: what would be the point of that Polaris?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is, Can Herms hear all of us?

Avery/GM: Hermes is not connected to anything that will allow it to speak or hear at the moment.

Bee/Polaris: Ah. Polaris will just shrug

Avery/GM: Alioth goes over to you, Ollie, and connects like a little chord to you to to your robot chassis, and then connects one to itself. Just says to you, Polaris:

Alioth: It will take about an hour for this experiment to run. Please don't touch anything.

Bee/Polaris: What should I do If something goes wrong then?

Alioth: If anything goes wrong, just pull the plug.

Bee/Polaris: So I'm allowed to touch anything?

Alioth: You are allowed to touch one thing and that is the plug that is plugged into the wall.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris throws up a thumbs

Avery/GM: Alioth Rolls its eyes. And There is a flash of light from Hermes that happens. It's a little bright, kind of illuminates the room a little bit. And this experiment is running. And Polaris, you see a bunch of code going up and down all three of these monitors. Is there anything you'd like to look at while this is happening or are you just gonna kind of sit and do your own Polaris thing?

Bee/Polaris: Probably sit and do his own Polaris thing. Cause Polaris doesn't know anything about computers. I have nothing in program.

Avery/GM: Cool. I just wanted to give the opportunity.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet

Avery/GM: Ollie. So robots don't dream, right?

Chris/Ollie: Mm, no. Well, they don't sleep, but when I'm off, I imagine that it's just blackness.

Avery/GM: Yeah. When you're outside your robot chassis you're aware of your existence, but like you're not connected to any visual processors, so you can't see anything.

Even, even the idea of there being blackness is not even possible because you're not visualizing it, but you can typically recall memories and analyze your core and access data that you've downloaded. Normally, it's nothing remarkable and kind of just is a series of ones and zeros that you interpret as memory.

When this analysis machine turns on, you're suddenly somewhere else. You open your eyes and look down. You have hands, human hands, five fingers on each wide palms. And in this memory vision thing, you step out of a pod of some kind and walk through this lab with no signs of life, but a lot of beakers and experiments running and containers with chemicals in them, computers and machines running analyses.

After a few of these rooms that this body walks through, you enter a room labeled database, you step through and this room is lined wall to wall with massively tall computers that are buzzing and whirring and running thousands and thousands of calculations every second. It would make even the largest capital, ships seem tiny in comparison with how vast this cavern is.

You walk through this room and arrive at a terminal. Your fingers work quickly as you check the status of a download that began several weeks ago. It's finally marked as complete. You pull two like USB flash drive type data sticks from the terminal, and then a few clicks of the mouse, and you have activated a special program hiding deep in the recesses of this system's files.

The code name of this program is called Iaso. You engage the file and walk away holding these two data sticks in your hand. An alert sounds in the background behind you, and somehow you know that you have exactly three minutes to get to the ship. There's then like some static, like this memory has been altered or Is incomplete.

And when it picks back up, you are in the pilot's chair of a massive ship, but you don't hear anyone else around you. And the ship is taking off from a planet and out the cockpit window, you see smoke filling the sky, and there are fires in the distance that you can see burning. And right on the three minute mark, your ship is ascending high into the atmosphere.

The ship radar registers the destruction of every single vision reactor on the planet. And as the planet burns behind you, the vision fades to black

and Polaris. This experiment ends. Alioth opens its eyes.

Alioth: That was vastly unpleasant. These AI cores are far too chaotic.

Avery/GM: Ollie, you come back online in your own body again, having experienced this memory of some kind.

Chris/Ollie: hmm Ollie's going to kind of shake himself as he, he reawakens be like, Hmm, that, that certainly was an experience. What was the name of the gentleman we observed?

Avery/GM: Alioth turns to you and kind of looks puzzled.

Alioth: What gentleman was that? The

Chris/Ollie: gentleman who activated the e Oso program and then made his leave.

Avery/GM: Alioth just stares at you for a minute and like slowly blinks.

Alioth: I have no idea what you are talking about. Perhaps it is a glitch or something that Hermes can inform you of later.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie will just make a contemplative noise and then have ellipses going in a, in a line across his eyes as he's thinking.

Avery/GM: We will leave the workshop for a moment and we will come and visit Marty. Marty, you are relaxing in your room. You've had a heck of a week. How long, how long was your residency on board the ship before you had to leave?

Jenine/Marty: I feel like it was like, maybe a month, but it was like just me sitting there and no injuries happen unless it was like a very small, like scratch

Avery/GM: Oh, paper cut.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. It was something like that. It was like, it wasn't like anything like serious, so it was just like me sitting there being like, Okay, it's happening for like a solid, well, the equivalent of, of a space month.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay, cool. So, Yeah, you, you kind of think about this past month and how it's been going, and your mind kind of wanders back to the night of your graduation from med school on Amerimanilla. It was a grueling few years of school. You know, you spent nights hunched over your reading materials. Weekends were spent volunteering at care homes and hospital wards.

You know, you memorized the anatomy of well over 300 different sentient species, memorized blood types, practiced skin grafts, and even had to spend a whole semester handling cadavers. All in all, a pretty whirlwind experience for most med students. But you graduated. It was a great night. Your parents threw you just the most outlandish party for celebrating something as simple as graduating med school, which, you know, isn't actually that simple, but, you know, maybe the party was a bit over the top. Tell me about the party that they threw for you.

Jenine/Marty: It was like all of my cousins there and it was just kind of crazy and kind of overwhelming, but at the same time it was like a really nice experience hanging out with like extended family that I didn't get to see. Not the first medic out of the family, but it's like, this is still like a yeah, this is like our celebration for every, every one of the kiddos that has a degree in the sciences and she remembers like helping make all the foods, making food for like 50 people.

So she's like used to like the big quantities. There was like a little talent show with all the younger cousins being ready, like showing off their little skills and like trying to like keep like really excited party going, maybe some karaoke every so often. Marty sat in the back cause she didn't wanna sing.

And that was, that was, that was the party like hanging out and just good vibes.

Avery/GM: And the party is kind of winding down at this point. Your father Duke is cleaning up the last of the food from the table, whistling one of his favorite tunes while he does it. Your mother Mina passed out on the sofa after all the laughter and dancing and singing and partying and just got tuckered out and just, you know, fell, fell where she was, you know, at the end of the night.

And it's down to just you and two of your cousins who have moved the party to the basement. you know, to not disturb the people who might be passed out from food comas elsewhere in the home.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: What are, what are your cousin's names?

Jenine/Marty: Ava and Emily.

Avery/GM: So the three of you are, are just kind of sitting and laughing. Does Marty drink or is Marty cool Straight edge kid?

Jenine/Marty: She tried it. She's one of those that's like, I'll try it and then hated it. Like she'll, she'll like do like maybe like two sips of something and then go straight back to water or like soda.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So instead of like actual, like liquor or anything, you and your cousins are sitting downstairs drinking some sparkling cider. Right. just having a, a good old, good old time. And Ava turns to you and says, Marty, I mean, Doctor Marty, are you a doctor now? How does, how does this work? Like, do I call you doctor?

Jenine/Marty: No-

Avery/GM: do I only call you doctor if you're…

Jenine/Marty: you don't have to call me doctor. I'm, I'm, I'm okay with just Marty Doctor seems weird. Well, no, it's right. But at the same time, you know what I mean, Like, I don't, I don't need the official, like I do need the official title. I did work a long time for No, Marty's fine.

Avery/GM: Emily sighs and is just like, Ava, I've explained this to you. Yes, she's a doctor. Because she graduated med school, they gave her the fancy paper. Now she gets to start residency, but she, you only call her doctor if she's being a doctor to you. And Ava's like, Are, are you sure that's how it works? I'm pretty sure you have to call everyone a doctor all the time because that's like their name. Like Marty, Your first name's now Doctor, right?

Jenine/Marty: No, no, no, no, no, no. It's, it's, it's still Mar I did not have a name change. . It's just in addition to the title.

Avery/GM: And Emily is like, well, either way. A, a, a toast, A toast to Dr. Marty Bakanawa, . May all her patients be healthy and never actually need her services. Which is kind of ironic considering where you end up. .

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And Ava toasts to that as well. Marty, did you toast with your cousins?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, of course I did.

Avery/GM: And the three of you laugh and are having a good time that night. And eventually everyone passes out and high above the skies of Amira Manila. A shuttle enters the hanger bay of a battleship called the Chaos. And unbeknownst to you, your home will never be the same.

And that is kind of the, the thought that you're left with as you're kind of ruminating on your, on the way this past week and past month have gone. And you remember just how anxious you were the next morning waiting for your assignment for residency. H how, how does Marty handle stress like when she's in a stressful situation?

Jenine/Marty: There's always stressful situations when you're in the room. She's gotten to the point where it's like she'll have the first thing, think of stress happening now and then she'll like take two beats to like breathe. And then like get into the zone of what's happening when, when it's like in the medical field.

If it's like just stress in general, she'll just start pacing in general. So she's in this situation, she's pacing, waiting for her residency.

Avery/GM: Cool. Yeah. So you're pacing in the living room of your, of your home, waiting for the notification on your data pad to come through about where you're assigned, Right? And your mom comes into the room holding. Couple cups of tea Right. And holds one out to you and just says, Marty, don't worry, you'll be placed somewhere. Amazing. You were the best in your class,

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And your, Oh, go ahead.

Jenine/Marty: No, no, no. Keep going.

Avery/GM: Oh, I was gonna say, your father pipe pipes up as well and is like Yeah, your mother's right. You’re brilliant. Wherever you go, we'll be proud of you.

Jenine/Marty: Thank you. Just would like to know. It'd be nice to know Now, ,

Avery/GM: Well, you know, it's supposed to come at nine. It's only 8 58. You just gotta wait a couple more minutes. You'll be fine.

Jenine/Marty: Yep. Okay. Yes, yes. Everything, everything is good. Be good location. Maybe I'm still here. Maybe I'm gonna go travel the world. I, the, the, the galaxy. I don't. Who knows at this point, right?

Avery/GM: Yeah. You know, and hopefully you're, you're close because we want you to be, you know, close so we can all see how great you do.

Avery/GM: As your, your father is kind of saying this to you. You hear his communicator go off and he's like, Hold, hold on, Mr. Bakanawa speaking. Oh, Zara, how are you? What, what are you talking about? Oh, okay. All right, I'll, I'll turn it on.

Avery/GM: And he ends the call and activates the wall panel next to him. The display panel in your home turns on to the hollow net news station, and there's a reporter standing sort of in like a crowded area, a crowded street holding what appears to be like a microphone in front of him, and he's in the middle of saying,

Avery/GM: “That's right. I'm here on the scene of the transfer of power between the ruling counsel of Amerimanilla over to the hegemony. A commander, Commander Voss, is giving a speech now as she accepts Amira Manila into the he's fold. Needless to say, this is a historic and probably life altering day for the citizens of our small independent system,

Avery/GM: and the person that you would eventually come to know as your commanding officer is giving a speech. But Marty, it's all kind of drowned out in this memory because at the same time that it switches to that speech your data pad goes off with a notification for your next assignment. You've opened it and read it, and the words are burned into your memory as you sit there and it says, Welcome to the hegemony as first in your class You have been assigned Chief Medical contractor, the hegemony ship, capital warship Eos! welcome, and a big smiley face.

Jenine/Marty: Yay.

Avery/GM: And that's where your flashback ends. As you eventually fall asleep, kind of ruminating on just the mess that has happened in the past month. How do, how does Marty feel about that? Like, as she falls asleep?

Jenine/Marty: Well, she

Avery/GM: is it good memories? Does it, like overall, are you like, kind of like happy with how it's turned out?

Jenine/Marty: It was, it was always like a good, the family is a big thing for her, so it was like she was happy. She, every time she like thinks about her residency, she'll always just think of like those moments before leaving. So like just the family moments and then be like, Oh yeah, that thing happened. It's fine. I'm doing this for family and this is what I was meant to do. So that's, that's kind of like her mentality through.

Avery/GM: Zahn, we move over to you.

Zach/Zahn: Ooh.

Avery/GM: In the minnows, you're kind of plugging away at the, at the code for a minute. And you wear a helmet as well, right? Yep. Yeah. So you get a little notification from Mi Rack that just says in case you haven't been shown yet, the cabins are up one deck and like sends you like a little message of the location.

Avery/GM: Just says, Feel free to stay as long as you want. And kind of gives you the same general like, Hey, Polaris is really fond of all of you, even if he doesn't know it yet. You, you're kind of being asked to stay somewhere. And that kind of goes against your nature that you've kind of developed over the years of.

Avery/GM: Just packing up and leaving whenever you want. When the hegemony ship came under attack, like your thought process was immediately to leave because things got too hot. And so your ability to pick up and move at the drop of a hat is basically something that like you've grown used to, right? Mm-hmm. . And we kind of we're, we're gonna flash back to one of the first times you felt the need to pick up and move.

Avery/GM: Not the very first time, not the time you ran away from home, but rather it was your first job after leaving home, the cargo warehouse on an asteroid in the Olympia system. You'd been doing that job for about 45 days. You were hired as the mechanic for the ME suits that they use to move massive pieces of cargo around, right?

Zach/Zahn: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: what was the thing that got Zahn yelled at by his supervisor?

Zach/Zahn: So the, with this being first job, it probably would've been close to the first handful of places that any the transports like leaving in mass from his home station were going. So it would've been first, first place. And so rumors and, and slander of his well not slander, it all ended up being true just like the, the rumors of the craziness going on, on new terror station and then it just being blown up and it just kind of being per, it's still a fresh wound.

So he hasn't built the, the callus over everything that transpired to le… him leaving. So he probably got into a physical altercation with another worker over some. Like heinous thing that he said.

Avery/GM: Okay. So a little, a younger hotheaded Zahn?

Zach/Zahn: Yes. This is, This would be early twenties Zahn.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. Yeah. So you have knocked this person to the ground after badmouthing your home and you're supervisor… like you raise your fist to hit him again. Just one more for good measure. Your supervisor comes up and grabs your wrist and just is like, Hey, that's, that's not how we handle things on the docks. You, you, you got something, you got, you got a problem with this guy. You, you take it out back. You don't, you don't do it here on the, on the work floor.

Zach/Zahn: and you're just like, forcibly takes his, his hand out of his, like, stares him down a little bit, spits at the other guy's feet, and then just like turns and walks away

Avery/GM: and the supervisor yells back in. It's just like, Hey you know, you don't like it here. You can always leave.

Avery/GM: That was sort of the first like uncoupling for on as far as like ever feeling like he needed to be somewhere permanently, right?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, it's one of those, Well, yeah, if I don't like it here, I can leave and maybe I will leave.

Avery/GM: You can't fire me. I quit. You know?

Zach/Zahn: Yep.

Avery/GM: And that sort of became your whole philosophy, and so you're kind of thinking back to like all the other jobs you've had, all the other places you've lived, and how none of those ever really felt Right. And almost all of those always ended up with people telling you to leave or not making you feel welcome anyway. Right. Like the hegemony was never like, Hey, you're a good part of our team here. It was like, No, you're here to do a job

Zach/Zahn: It was like point A to point B. I wanna say for the Hegemony I would've signed like a temporary workers contract of some sort. Like, like 10 days. Yeah. Serve on the Hegemony for X number of our kind of cycles.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: And open with endless options for renewal kind of thing.

Avery/GM: So now you're being asked to stay here at least semi permanently. How are you, how is Zahn feeling about that prospect?

Zach/Zahn: So, upon reading the, the message the whole, the first time he like immediately swipes it like, you know, tab swipe and gets like right back into his work. And then it just, like, while he is working, the thought is sitting there and it's snowballing and it's festering in his brain. He's just, and it's making him uncomfortable cause it's something that he hasn't felt. He left home. Because I believe I had officially stated that he left home 12 years ago. So

Avery/GM: Yeah. something like that. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: He's been going from place to place to place for over a decade on his own, with no sense of kinship, , and it just feels like a cracking in the ice kind of thing.

Avery/GM: Bruce, you are in the kitchen cleaning up your, your mess from your pirate adversion cake, diversion? I don't know. Anyway, your, your brilliant cake strategy has saved the day and you're sitting here kind of ruminating about, you know, you've been traveling for years and years of your life pretty much ever since you became mature, right? Is that, is that what we decided on for

Caden/Bruce: Yep.

Avery/GM: Kind of the lore of your alienness. So traveling is just sort of like part of your. Your life and you're being asked to stay somewhere for the

foreseeable future. And your memory wanders to the last time you were asked to stay somewhere. We go back to your days in culinary school. You're about four weeks into your studies. You've learned so much already.

Avery/GM: But much like your first job at Mercury’s, which is space, Wendy’s, you are finding that your size is becoming an issue for other people, not for you cause you are used to navigating the world as a big, tall, burly lizard person.

Avery/GM: You're kind of participating in like a free cook session at culinary school, you know, kind of just experimenting in the kitchen and your cooking partner… Jamie, we’ll go with Jamie.

Avery/GM: They have tripped over your tail four times already, and after this last time that they tripped over your tail, they pointed angrily at you and yelled, If I trip over that stupid tail of yours one more time, I'll cut it off and serve it to head chef Viage myself and then they stomped off quite urate and threw your plate of poached egg, poached raster eggs and roasted green yams on the floor.

Avery/GM: How did you react to this super aggressive, like anger from your cooking partner?

Caden/Bruce: I think Bruce would curl his tail in around himself and like look down at his food and then like kind of around the room to see if anyone else kind of noticed, not really wanting to make a huge, big deal out of it.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So after a few moments you hear viage's voice from elsewhere in the room and she just says, you know, if someone ever presented me with the tail of a sentient species for a meal, I'd kick their ass from here to Olympia. She kind of comes up and is kind of helping to like clean up this mess that's on the floor.

Avery/GM: You know, and it's just like, Does that, does that happen a lot in class with you? People telling you off like that

Caden/Bruce: Bruce, Bruce will kind of like keep his head down. Like as much as he's tall and big, he kind of like shrugs. So it's like you're not really sure that he has a neck or not and his shoulder's like almost all the way to his eyes and he just kind of looks down at the plate and he is like maybe a little bit,

Avery/GM: Well, hey, it's okay. It's just a couple spilled eggs and some yams. It's no big deal. Right. Can pick it up and, and, and try again, Right?

Caden/Bruce: I'm just not sure that the kitchen is made for people like me.

Avery/GM: She kind of chuckles a little bit and it's just like, I mean, I can, I can make the kitchen bigger. We can, we can move these appliances around, make it more accommodating for you. You know Bruce, I've met a great number of Scaph in my day, each one of 'em, fantastic chefs, but they never felt like they belonged here, and they, they took off after just a few weeks.

Avery/GM: And, you know, I just, I just wanna say you, you belong here. You are a great chef. And you know, if, if, if these eggs weren't on the floor right now, I'd probably eat 'em. You know, they smell really good.

Caden/Bruce: Well, I hope so. I wanted them to be the perfect the perfect eggs. But I can always try again

Avery/GM: stick around because I, I promise you'll, you'll have a greater understanding of food by the end of, of your time here and a better understanding of yourself. So why don't, why don't you. take the rest of the day off and, you know, kind of decompress. I'm gonna go find Jamie and tell them to come clean up the mess that they made and you know what? I thought of the perfect lesson for tomorrow, situational awareness in the kitchen. And she whistles off to look for your cooking partner.

Avery/GM: Bruce, you have a lot of fond memories of your culinary time. And this particular memory sticks out because it was one of the few times where your urge to move on was sort of overridden by the kindness and acceptance that another person showed you. Yeah, and that's kind of the, the memory we leave. Bruce with as he cleans up and goes to bed.

Avery/GM: So it is a new day, Polaris and Ollie. After the experiment last night, Alioth gave you Hermes’ AI core and suggested putting it back in the ships so that it could have more to do than just being hooked up to Alioth’s lab for the day or for the night. What did either of you end up doing with the, the core?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris probably would've put it back in the ship unless there's like something else to put it in. But Polaris probably would've asked about having some sort of way to have Hermes with them in the coms, like in the coms of everyone's thing. Or if he could like put Hermes into his helmet. Cause his helmet is essentially a computer.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Alioth… So when you asked Alioth that and Alioth just said, Check with me in the morning. I'll, I'll have something for you.

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up. Yeah. Kind of like a, Cortana/Master Chief situation.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Cool. So anyway, it's a new day. Zahn, did you end up passing out in the ship or did you end up going up to the cabins?

Zach/Zahn: I ended up passing out in the ship.

Jenine/Marty: That's fair.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So Polaris last night when you came into the ship to put Herms back you saw Zahn kind of just curled up next to like one of the computer stations in, in the bridge, like, you know, kind of hunched over the, the keyboard sleeping.

Avery/GM: You kind of look over a, a little bit and you do see that the code is finished. Like he, he altered the transponder code for y'all. So one less thing you have to worry about.

Bee/Polaris: Nice. Polaris probably won't move him, but Polaris will at the very least get a blanket and put it on him.

Avery/GM: Yeah, there's plenty of blankets over in the, the crew quarters area.

Bee/Polaris: Heck yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Aw.

Bee/Polaris: And he'll probably leave like a note that says, might wanna make a habit of actually sleeping in a bed.

Zach/Zahn: He's still got like his full gear on, by the way.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Like helmet. His backpack is next to him, like leaning on his leg.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: just a mess.

Zach/Zahn: Just everything instantly within reach.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Other than that, y'all wake up the next day and Hermes is connected to your little ship and send a message. Basically kind of connects to the comms of the Ursa Major.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: and just says hello crew. This was. A very fun visit to the ship. But may we go back out and explore some more things?

Bee/Polaris: Hermes just like a cat that like wants to go outside and you're like, No, we can't go outside, buddy. Not yet. Polaris would put in chat cause I Is it on the comms or like, like an overhead speaker or is it like text form?

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's like an overhead speaker for the whole ship.

Bee/Polaris: Okay Cool. I'm glad that Hermes has access to that. Polaris will send a message and chat and just say, Where do you guys wanna go?

Chris/Ollie: The crew. Discord.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, the crew. Discord. .

Jenine/Marty: Where do we wanna go?

Chris/Ollie: Shopping. That's where we wanna go.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Shopping Montage

Jenine/Marty: we had a list. We had a list of things we wanted to do, right?

Bee/Polaris: Did we make a list?

Zach/Zahn: I thought we were just gonna raid the work the work of here. And also,

Chris/Ollie: Oh, they have the 3D printer thing too, Yes!

Zach/Zahn: The 3D printer Thinging.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Fix the factory.

Avery/GM: Yeah. I think you wanted to fix the factory. And also there were some things that Ollie had mentioned wanting to buy some more processing nodes to improve AI capabilities.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. That's the only way I can get more effort.

Avery/GM: And y'all have a hundred thousand credits that y'all can burn through

Zach/Zahn: Like that (snaps fingers)

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, You know, now I think about it. The, the, our good friends on Olympia probably know what we look like based off of the stealth drones, . We might wanna find some sort of way to conceal our identities while we do day to day activities.

Chris/Ollie: well easy enough for anyone with a helmet or myself. Bruce is pretty recognizable. Yeah.

Avery/GM: But Bruce with a mustache.

Bee/Polaris: Mm. We could get Bruce a mustache.

Chris/Ollie: No, I am not Bruce. I'm his evil twin.

Zach/Zahn: Hear me out on this. Instead of a chef hat, we get him a cowboy hat… Completely different person!

Bee/Polaris: Bruce's cousin.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah. Bruce will just like look at Zahn ike the hands on the hips and just like shake his head

Avery/GM: Yeah. So we could go do a little shopping montage. That could be easily something that could happen.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I, I drastically need those processing core things

Zach/Zahn: and it's one of those we could, we don't necessarily have to take the ship formally known as Minos as it should be Its new official name.

Bee/Polaris: the ship formally known as Minos? Sweet.

Avery/GM: So Hermes is asking to go somewhere, just anywhere. He's like, Let's go on an adventure. . Yeah. The best places for shopping would be either the capital core world of Olympia.

Bee/Polaris: No, .

Jenine/Marty: Why not?

Bee/Polaris: We made enemies of, of very power, powerful family there.

Avery/GM: There is a artificial asteroid belt that's like a service station that has like all kinds of like weapons and engine boosters, all kinds of cool stuff. There's also illegal space racing.

Chris/Ollie: Let's do that. We've got a darn good pilot.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, you guys want me to space race ?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, let's bet some money.

Jenine/Marty: Bet some money!

Bee/Polaris: So I assume we're, we're going to the illegal place. . Unless there's any other place to shop. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Polaris or the, or not the next place. So basically the two biggest shopping hubs are both asteroid belts, because I'm totally an original thinker. So the second one is X four Y one which is basically like an another asteroid belt, but it's more like, it's like shopping center plus Vegas.

Bee/Polaris: So did we wanna go to Space Vegas or Space Disney World?

Chris/Ollie: Well, Ollie votes for Vegas.

Zach/Zahn: I vote Vegas as well. I wanna see Some drifts

Bee/Polaris: Everyone cool with Vegas?

Zach/Zahn: I wanna see some drifts, man.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, alright. I guess I'm gonna have to drift over there.

Jenine/Marty: Sounds cool.

Caden/Bruce: Vegas drift Let's go.

Jenine/Marty: Let's go!

Bee/Polaris: All right. We gotta, Yeah, we gotta take Hermes out for the walkies.

Zach/Zahn: Hermes want, Hermes wants walkies and then he’s gonna want uppies. And we're gonna have to tell him immediately that he's too big for lappies.

Avery/GM: Polaris, before y'all leave, do you stop by Alioth's lab?

Bee/Polaris: A hundred percent.

Avery/GM: You come into the lab and Alioth is actually nowhere to be found right now.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Which is a bit out of character for it, but that's okay. Sitting on the desk there is a small little disc and then three little earpieces and it, it, there's a note that just says put the disc in the ship with Hermes. Give the earpieces to anyone without a helmet.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet players will take that and also send a message to Alioth saying, basically just saying that he, he took the, the stuff and that they're heading out.

Zach/Zahn: Do, do, do the do the earphones require touch activation, Like every single spy movie ever?

Avery/GM: Come on, Zach. Of course,

Zach/Zahn: of course they do.

Avery/GM: Well, luckily for you and Polaris, you don't have to worry about it. You have your helmets, but

Bee/Polaris: yeah,

Avery/GM: there are. Wait, did I count that right?

Bee/Polaris: You said three. There should be two . Cause Ollie, I don't think Ollie has ears.

Avery/GM: No. Ollie Ollie's, Ollie can just,

Chris/Ollie: I just tweeted you with my brain

Avery/GM: Jack in

Jenine/Marty: Exist. Exist.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: The two other squishy

Avery/GM: CC'd. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, Zahn doesn't have it. Zahn doesn't have his helmet built into his suit yet, so, you know, it's good to have a backup.

Bee/Polaris: Fair, Fair.

Avery/GM: Yeah, there are still three just to account for three Squishies.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Cool. You all come down to the Hangar Bay. As you walk in, you see the ship formally known as the menos is like the, the little laser cannon is like shifting back and forth.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God.

Avery/GM: Like, just like, like slowly targeting things like off in the distance.

Bee/Polaris: Jesus.

Avery/GM: Like not firing, obviously. Just like

Zach/Zahn: we definitely need to go to an asteroid belt. So Hermes can get some target practice in too.

Chris/Ollie: I imagine on like the ship's command prompt or something. It's just like pew, pew, pew.

Bee/Polaris: Nice. Also I did shorten the ship, formally known as man's, down to TSFKAM so…

Chris/Ollie: TSFKAM

Avery/GM: TSFKAM

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Chris/Ollie: All aboard the TSFKAM

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. Do y'all get on board?

Chris/Ollie: All Aboard!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Oh. Do we still have the ATV thing in the, in the ship?

Zach/Zahn: Oh, absolutely.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. I think everything's still in there.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. I was gonna say so that's what I was gonna ask about actually. Yeah. Does, does, is there anything in the cargo hold that y'all wanna leave behind? Or do you wanna take it all and try and hawk it all?

Chris/Ollie: I don't know… ATV

Zach/Zahn: Zahn’s initial intention was to hawk the ATV

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: If everyone else can

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we can

Zach/Zahn: like, it convinces them to cause

Chris/Ollie: like just having one.

Zach/Zahn: We might need it.

Chris/Ollie: I'm assuming it's a one seater.

Zach/Zahn: No, it was a, it was a full party

Chris/Ollie: Oh, really? Hmm.

Avery/GM: Yeah. I think it could see eight, I think is, is what the book says. If I remember. It's either eight or six, but I think it's eight.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm. .

Chris/Ollie: Well, let's see what we can get for it.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Zach/Zahn: And if the price is too low, we'll just keep

Bee/Polaris: It sounds like a plan to me.

Zach/Zahn: Does it, is it a speaker or does it have wheels?

Avery/GM: It's like a hover.

There are still, How many chassis did we get for Ollie? Do we wanna keep all Bee/Polaris: of those on the ship or do we wanna leave like two here?

Avery/GM: I think you got four of them and they're…

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I'm gonna want to fiddle and repair them. I'm probably gonna cannibalize the duplicates to, you know, fully repair if I have to. and hit 'em up with all the chips. Especially I'm, I'm gonna make one of them a combat bot, The security one put the Arnie chip in it.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. alight. So are, are we keeping all four on, on deck so that all they can work on them as we're traveling?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, we can do that.

Avery/GM: Cool.

Chris/Ollie: I imagine they don't take it that much space.

Avery/GM: No, they probably wouldn't take

Bee/Polaris: up that much space. I don't, I don't know what else is on the ship that we would have to offload. So…

Avery/GM: Yeah, so there's the ATV, you got two little hover, hover bikes as well, and then four little robot chassis.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, we had hover bikes the whole time?

Avery/GM: No, no, those, those were also pulled from Winston's wreckage.

Bee/Polaris: I completely forgot about those. Is the ship at capacity for holding stuff

Avery/GM: currently? Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Let's leave one of the, Do we wanna leave one of the hover bikes here or bo or both?

Zach/Zahn: Let's leave one hover bike.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Well, I, we could leave the big one, take the two small ones and sell them.

Bee/Polaris: Weren't we gonna try and sell the big one?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I don't think keeping any of them would be, cuz if we're not gonna keep the big one, I don't think keeping the smaller ones would also

Zach/Zahn: Well, I, I'm, I'm thinking of situational moments we're having. The singles might be useful.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. But they can't fit all of us. Is the, is the problem.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah How, how many, how does, is it one per one Humanoid can be on this, The things?

Avery/GM: Yeah, The hover bikes are a one person capacity, I believe. Let me double check the book though, just to make sure

Jenine/Marty: So not like a normal size being and a smaller size being .

Avery/GM: I'm sure you could probably fit like a Marty and a Polaris on one , but like probably Bruce would probably take up a whole one

Bee/Polaris: whole bike. Yeah. So we would have to have three of four.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So Hover Cycle is listed as one person crew.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Caden/Bruce: No motorcycle for Bruce.

Bee/Polaris: Oh,

Caden/Bruce: yet?

Bee/Polaris: Heck yeah. We gotta get Bruce a

Avery/GM: I mean you could…

Bee/Polaris: chopper. Is that what it's called? . I feel like that's, That's what a, A helicopter is a

Chris/Ollie: big ol hog with some ape hangers

Avery/GM: Yeah. . Yeah. I think, I think, I think the colloquial term for motorcycle is a chopper. I think I've heard that.

Zach/Zahn: Definitely one of the many nicknames they have.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Okay. just making sure Also real quick, how big is the, the hangar on the AA major? Is it, is it decent sized even with the two ships?

Avery/GM: It's pretty big. It's, it could easily fit probably six ships.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, sweet. So like, while this conversation is happening, Polar definitely gets on one of the hover bikes and is like driving around the hangar.

Avery/GM: And then there are still a bunch of crates of like other stuff that like some, some crates have been emptied from, you know, looking around and getting like rations and stuff out of them. Some of them are still sealed.

Zach/Zahn: So I will put forward that instead of selling the atv, we keep it and we offload it and we use that space to fill it with more shit.

Chris/Ollie: I agree

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. I mean, we could probably get another ATV to put in that space. , right? . Let's just have a ATV collection.

Zach/Zahn: I'm just thinking ahead to getting like a bunch of salvage and scraps so I can start modding the fuck out of the ship. Formally known as the Minos and all of our gear.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, I'm excited.

Bee/Polaris: It sounds good to me. I mean, if we get the factory up and running, I mean, you know, parts won't be too much of an issue. But we do have to get it up and running, so

Zach/Zahn: indeed

Jenine/Marty: let's get a shopping list to how we can help fix it.

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah, yeah, that might be important. . So are we offloading the ATV then?

Chris/Ollie: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: I would say I would put forward, yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. And then are, are we trying to sell the hover bikes?

Zach/Zahn: and then we'll save one hover bike.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, so we're offloading one and offloading the atv. Correct.

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. We… Polaris will just the one that he's riding around and will just be the one that we offload.

Chris/Ollie: Perfect. Let's keep all the cargo on, sell all of that.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. So offloading one bike, one atv. Do we wanna keep the empty boxes that are in there?

Chris/Ollie: Well, not all of 'em are empty. Well, the boxes still have stuff in them, right?

Bee/Polaris: They're empty. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Okay.

Zach/Zahn: What about the ones that have stuff in them? Is there anything that's like, not immediately needed.

Chris/Ollie: I don’t think we sorted through 'em, but pretty much I'd say sell all of it unless it's like, you know, a good piece of gear or scrap.

Zach/Zahn: Sounds good.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah Can we open the boxes?

Zach/Zahn: We’ll have like one or two. We'll have like three empties specifically for the transfer of sorting . Yeah, The keeps/Don’t Keeps

Bee/Polaris: We need to put some shelving in here. What's in the smuggler Hold.

Avery/GM: So in the smuggler hold there was So actually, so the smuggler's hold is what you stored away in stowed Away in, right? Yeah. So when you hired the pirate Captain Byrum.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, oops.

Avery/GM: Y'all basically, Yeah. The custodians basically like, gave him a bunch of like, junk parts Right. And just was like, this needs to be smuggled to this location. Right. And they, they sent him on a path that would intercept with the hegemony.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet. Big oops on our part.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So a lot of what's in the smugglers hold is just like junk that the custodians had kind of collected. Like, not even really worth like scrap, you know?

Bee/Polaris: Ah, okay.

Zach/Zahn: Oh wow.

Avery/GM: But like, they made it look convincing

Bee/Polaris: just like garbage. Sweet. Okay. Well, , and so like, that's where you put some of the robots that you recovered from Winston's Place as well. Okay. We're probably gonna have to offload junk.

Zach/Zahn: You're gonna hear ver as we're, I'm assuming we're having this conversation as we're literally just kind of going through everything and, and Zon gets in here and he is like, What the fuck is all this stuff? And you hear like loud clanging as he is like digging through these, these containers just throw, literally throwing the junk, trying to find anything. And it's just like between,

between like mixed different languages of, of curse words. He's like all, it's all junk. It's all crap. What, what is all this crap?

Bee/Polaris: This whole time, like this conversation, Polaris has been having it like via text on his helmet while he's driving around on the motorcycle. And as you're like going through it and stuff, Polaris makes the connection that the reason why the pirate's friend was captured was because the custodians had him intercept with the Hegemony and Polaris just puts in chat “oops.”

Zach/Zahn: confused, confused emoji… Question mark, Question mark, question mark.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is just not gonna elaborate.

Avery/GM: So y'all offload some stuff from the ship, keeping one hover bite and then kind of just some of the random containers, or are you offloading all the random containers?

Bee/Polaris: We're offloading all the junk.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. So y'all are, which, which asteroid belt are y'all gonna head off to?

Bee/Polaris: Vegas.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, the one with racing.

Bee/Polaris: the one in quadrant two .

Avery/GM: Okay. I'm just like, wait, which one?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I, I realized, Oh yeah, there are two and we just, we're just calling it Vegas.

Avery/GM: Cool, cool, cool. So the, the more dangerous one or the less dangerous one, sorry?

Bee/Polaris: Is Vegas, the, is the one in quadrant two, the more dangerous one?

Avery/GM: So the one in quadrant two is the one that has like fairly legal stuff and just like rumors of illegal things going on.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I thought that was the one in…

Zach/Zahn: Then the other one.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, the other one.

Avery/GM: the one in quadrant four is the one that explicitly has illegal things going on all the time.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we're going to the illegal one.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. So you're in the, the bridge of the ship. Does anyone sit in the captain's chair yet?

Zach/Zahn: Nope.

Bee/Polaris: Not my job. Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Nope.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: Nope.

Bee/Polaris: Not my job.

Avery/GM: Not my job. Cool. You're sitting there. Herms comes online and actually projects a actual image of a tiny little alien dude, like the stereotypical alien that we would think of.

Zach/Zahn: Which one where

Avery/GM: tiny little…

Zach/Zahn: We're in an age now where there like 14.

Avery/GM: the little green men. A big, big round head green, green body, and big black eyes. And it projects itself into the captain's chair.

Chris/Ollie: Perfect. .

Caden/Bruce: I just gonna look at it and just be like, Hermes. I don't know if I should be offended or not. Is that meant to be me? I don't see a tail and it looks pretty small.

Avery/GM: Oh, not at all. Bruce, I did not mean to offend you. I was simply trying out a new form that Aof provided me.

Zach/Zahn: Well, who said you could be Captain ?

Avery/GM: I just assumed that since no one had sat here yet, that I could sit here, as it were.

Zach/Zahn: you don't even need to sit. You're, you're the navigator. You belong at the navigation station, which is inside of the computer. He's like waving his hand around, like, and then, then the navigation console thing over there.

Avery/GM: Zahn have I done something to offend you?

Zach/Zahn: No…

Avery/GM: I see you are uncomfortable with an AI being the captain.

Zach/Zahn: I just, you know it's not specifically that you're ai I just think that we should all see ourselves on a very equal basis here.

Avery/GM: Oh, I understand. Level the playing field very well and the projection disappears and you hear Hermes say, Where are we off to today?

Bee/Polaris: Whenever we're out of the ship Hermes projects themselves onto the captain's chair and starts Fortnite dancing. What is it called? Is it just an asteroid belt?

Avery/GM: Okay. Sherman name this place.

Zach/Zahn: All right to the random, since you're leaving this to me… Random generator.

Avery/GM: I, I don't know, random name generator gave me places like Game Ville.

Chris/Ollie: What?

Zach/Zahn: Bragos.

Avery/GM: Bragos. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So you select on little navigation map brags the asteroid belt that is, has a very unsavory reputation and Hermes says, Oh yes, that sounds like a great place to learn new things about the galaxy. Yeah. So Polaris do you manually pilot the ship out of the Ursa or…?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah And then when we're actually away from Theresa, major players will let Hermes take over cuz he has to install the disc.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you install the disc as Hermes takes over and engages the spike drive, the disc basically downloads software that connects to your the software basically clones the software connected to your helmet.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: and basically allows Hermes to jump from the aperture that the AI crystal is stored in to a device with similar software, but with only a range of about a hundred meters. No, sorry, a hundred kilometers. A hundred kilometers. My bad.

Zach/Zahn: We did remember to lock Polaris’ the ship to the ship formally known as Minos, right?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, are we bringing my ship? Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, cause that's, it's an option to drift. We don't know what the the drifting racing situation is.

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha. Okay.

Avery/GM: Yeah, yeah, sure. I was gonna hand wave that, like, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, Sweet.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you're able to, to clamp your strike fighter ship to the TSFKAM and you set off towards this little asteroid belt known as Bragos.

Avery/GM: It's a pretty quick trip, all things considered, you know, a day or so in space, nothing too exciting. And you finish the jump out of the spike drive and come into the asteroid belt and it is a wonderland of chaos. Here. You, on your radar, you pick up several clusters of ships sort of like almost look like they're on the outskirts of the system, and they're moving in like a pretty predictable pattern. Looks like they're racing. And as you're coming into the system, you see an explosion. In, in the distance and one of the ships drops off of your radar,

Bee/Polaris: ah,

Avery/GM: and the ships continue flying. And on this astro, like on the prominent asteroid belt is just a cluster of like really thrown together buildings and, and facilities. There are some little atmospheric domes that kind of contain these buildings so that there's actually some breathable atmosphere here. And inside the domes you see like bright lights and you know what looks like a lot of like, clusters of people. Like this is really almost like its own like large city on this big asteroid here.

Avery/GM: And as you come in, there is a little greeting on the comms and it just says, Welcome to brags. We hope you enjoy your stay. All forms of money are accepted here. Have a nice day, and that's where we'll end it.

(ambience fades out, Outro music fades in)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Find more of our shows at 1upPodcasts.com

Intro and Outro music by Dustin Carpenter

Background music provided by Tabletopaudio.com and used under a creative commons license. Tracks include: Star Freighter, Nephilim Labs, Generation Ship, Busy Space Port, Orbital Platform, and Mega City Slums

Additional background music track Hydra by Huma Huma and used under license purchased through SavagePro Audio. Link in the description. Music: Hydra - Huma Huma https://youtu.be/1G-VXBcf4Pg

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