Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 23 of Beyond the Furthest Stars

(Intro music plays, fades out, Ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: Where we left off, Alioth basically tried to sleep gas Polaris. Rho figured out that Alioth is one of the, the three rogue AI that her shipmates wanted her to find or wanted, wanted to find, I should say and she went all teleport over there and start trying to tear stuff up. Marty tried to do the helpful thing and calm her down, didn't work. Marty got blasted mentally and it caused a fight. Rho lost consciousness and Alioth is ready to just say, let's take care of this problem once and for all.

Bee/Polaris: Did the sleep, gas not get her?

Avery/GM: The sleep gas has dissipated.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Cool, cool, cool. Sweet.

Avery/GM: Like as soon as the fighting started all off kind of started like venting it cuz it's like, oh, this is a different situation.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: So it is floating harmlessly out in space. Oh, and Zahn is racing to the teleport pad on the Cassiopeia

Zach/Zahn: after having deactivated it.

Avery/GM: Yes, exactly.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Avery/GM: So, yeah. Uh, Alioth is kind of just looking at everyone and it's pistol is raised at… at Rho.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris would like to use his laser blade to cut the barrel of the pistol off.

Avery/GM: Let's see. That's a good, that's, that's a good move. Dexterity stab. I think that's what that would be.

Bee/Polaris: I'm real good at stab. Holy shit. I rolled a 10. Okay. What is my stab actually?

Jenine/Marty: Yes. Go.

Bee/Polaris: It's dexterity, stab. Okay. So 12.

Avery/GM: Holy crap. That's the most beautiful stab I've ever seen.

Bee/Polaris: I'm so good at it.

Chris/Ollie: It's like you don't even cut it in half. You just stab the gun, put a hole in it.

Bee/Polaris: Can I actually use, can I actually use my armsman focus to throw the laser blade at the gun and pick it to the wall? It would require the same thing.

Avery/GM: Uh, I mean, sure. Yeah. We can make it Cool. Let's make it cool. Okay. What, describe what this looks like!

Bee/Polaris: Okay, so after allot says that Polaris, Polaris presses the button to shorten the laser blade to a knife and throws it and pins the pistol against a wall and then I guess because it's a laser blade, it melts off the laser blade and drops to the floor, then with like a, a new cut out of it.

Avery/GM: And now there is a hole in the wall of the ship

Zach/Zahn: and then slowly…

Chris/Ollie: and we are explosively decompressed.

Bee/Polaris: It's not the outside wall of the ship.

Avery/GM: No, no, no. It's not, it's not, it's not long enough to penetrate the… the hull, but there is now a hole in Alioth’s lab. And it and, and Alioth is now annoyed.

Bee/Polaris: Well, Alioth can stay annoyed

Avery/GM: Alioth looks at its empty hand, Looks at you Polaris and is just like, that was completely unnecessary. I was just going to end this problem.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris. There's an angry face on Polaris's visor.

Avery/GM: Oh, I see you are still angry. Shall I reinitiate the nerve gas?

Bee/Polaris: What the Polaris just like the angry face gets. Okay, so you know how like, uh, the, how people do like the less than sign or the greater than sign or whatever to do the angry face, he adds another one to be extra mad and also points to his helmet, which was the reason it didn't work the last time.

Avery/GM: Alioth is just like, Oh yes, the helmet filtration. I will need to figure out how to bypass that next time.

Bee/Polaris: What the fuck?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Note to self: bypass Polaris's helmet.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris takes out his notepad and writes, get helmet underneath. Helmet.

Chris/Ollie: Get double helmet.

Avery/GM: Alioth is just like Polaris. What would you have me do?

Bee/Polaris: Rho stays alive. We're getting her back home.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie, we will chime in with that. Like holding her defensively, hugging him to her like we have grown very fond of this one and would not wish to see her harmed.

Bee/Polaris: Agreed. I gave her a salmon.

Zach/Zahn: That's right.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. What happened to the salmon when Rho went berserk?

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God. What happened to the salmon?

Avery/GM: The salmon's back on the Cassiopeia.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet. Okay. Sick.

Avery/GM: Polaris, You get a message on your helmet from. Someone Oh, named Son Bot. And it's a little, it's a little emoji of a taser and then a picture of Alioth with a question mark.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris just sends, no, not yet.

Chris/Ollie: Not yet.

Bee/Polaris: He like pats his bag reassuringly.

Avery/GM: Oh no, it's evolving.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris kind of turns to Ollie and says we're going to the Cassiopeia.

Chris/Ollie: you mean like we're taking Rho there right now?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we're, yes. We're Skedaddling.

Chris/Ollie: absolutely.

Zach/Zahn: so you see: dot dot dot. Cassiopeia is deactivated. Hermes is on his way to the hangar.

Bee/Polaris: Colon back slash face just like a slanted mouth.

Chris/Ollie: That is truly unfortunate.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will put in chat so that the custodians can't see. Probably best to stay on the Cassiopeia til we sort this out because they control this whole ship remotely.

Jenine/Marty: We all see that.

Bee/Polaris: Jenine, you have, you have a watch, right?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So that you see it. Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Sick.

Avery/GM: Oh, and in fact, Marty, your watch is like blowing up with messages. Not just from this chat, but from other chats as well.

Jenine/Marty: Other chats!?

Bee/Polaris: Other chats?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: You have secret chats?

Jenine/Marty: I have other chats?

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh.

Avery/GM: Just one. Well, okay, one other chat.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: But it's popping off

Avery/GM: a chat you've been expecting.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, okay

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. From the, the pompous dude.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Well, Marty's not looking at any of that. She's in the corner right now. Kind of just doing a med pack real quick.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Probably for the best.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You have like a nosebleed, right?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that's right. Marty got the brain punch.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: yeah, go ahead and roll. Um, intelligence Heal, if you'd like to heal up and Polaris, go ahead and roll your D6 for healing as well.

Bee/Polaris: Yay. No!

Avery/GM: as things have kinda… what'd you roll?

Bee/Polaris: One!

Avery/GM: Oh, no!

Bee/Polaris: indeed.

Jenine/Marty: That's pretty.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris isn't used to this pain. This is, this is a new type of pain. This is a different pain. This pain hits different.

Jenine/Marty: I rolled a 12.

Avery/GM: You rolled a 12. Dang.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, cuz I can, I do heel three, I do, I roll 3D six, drop the lowest and I rolled a six, a five and a four. So I dropped the four and then I got a plus one in intelligence.

Avery/GM: Uh, you're using the med kit, you rolled a 12. You know, it doesn't really specify how much, like healing points. Well wait, how much, so how much does your Biopsionic heal skill do?

Jenine/Marty: So I currently, because I'm at level two, I get 2D6 plus two hit points for healing.

Avery/GM: Okay. Then that's what we'll consider. So, uh, you rolled a 12, so you get 14 hit points back.

Jenine/Marty: Oh wonderful, we’re back at double digits.

Avery/GM: Cool, cool.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, and that, that'll, that's one of the continue to heal over time ones. So you're gonna be like A-Ok If we have to fight this, uh, this robot trio again, right?

Bee/Polaris: I mean singular robot cause I don't think Merak or Bear did anything.

Avery/GM: No Bear, like has a weapon kind of like in his hands but isn't pointing it anywhere. And it's just kind of like, uh, what, what do we do? And it's kind of looking for, for direction from, from Merak and uh, Merak just uh, kind of chimes in and is just like, Alioth, I think, I think it would be best to give Polaris some space right now. Everyone is, has very heightened emotions and I think it's, well not us, but everyone else does and I think it might be a good idea to let those emotions simmer. Don't you agree? And Merak is kind of. Trying to indicate like with like facial features, like just say yes, like, you know,

Bee/Polaris: like the wide eyes looking at them nodding yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: The mouthing like obviously like yes.

Avery/GM: Alioth is just like, fine. Get out of my lab. I have work to do and a wall to repair.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris walks over, takes his sword out of the wall and Oops! Accidentally drags it down the wall and then walks out of the lab making sure Ollie with Rho gets out of the lab safely.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I'm gonna hurry up very quickly behind you.

Avery/GM: Polaris, you do get a message, a private message from Merak that just says, when you're ready to talk, I'll tell you everything.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will leave it on read.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: Visor has a sad face as he's walking with the crew to the dock.

Avery/GM: Sure. Are you all retreating to the hangar Bay then?

Bee/Polaris: yeah. We gotta, we gotta get the fuck up outta here.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Yeah. We at least gotta get Rho outta here.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Out of the three custodians, bear looks the most confused cuz he's just like, what just happened? I thought we were shooting and now we're not shooting.

Chris/Ollie: Finally got to shoot something.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Well I'm sure Alioth will explain.

Avery/GM: Allel will explain. Uh, well you all arrive in the Hangar Bay as Hermes is pulling in. Zahn. Let's find out what you're doing over there.

Bee/Polaris: We did say we're coming to the Cassia.

Avery/GM: You're jet, you're jet packing through the halls.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Again, as you're like walking to the hangar and you're like, yeah, we're going to the Cassiopeia, it's like dot, dot, dot. Cassiopeia Sabotaged. No air, no life support.

Avery/GM: No gravity

Zach/Zahn: No gravity.

Bee/Polaris: angry face emote in chat. onto the Minos onto the ship formally known as the Minos then! Polaris, types, all of that out.

Zach/Zahn: Hence why I sent hers to you for immediate evac. Be there momentarily. Just as I'm getting to the, uh, teleporter and I whip out a, uh, A Cell Battery.

Avery/GM: Okay. Uh, how are you gonna determine where it teleports you to?

Bee/Polaris: You don't coordinates for Hermes.

Zach/Zahn: Well, I happen to be proficient in programming so I can use, uh, ace to power the teleporter and one to power the terminal that tells you where to go, I guess? I don’t know.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. So to get the A Cells to work, I'm gonna need a repair check. Intelligence repair twice.

Zach/Zahn: You mean fix?

Avery/GM: Yes. Thank you.

Zach/Zahn: I have a three to that.

Avery/GM: Well, damn.

Chris/Ollie: He is, uh, he's not Bob the builder, but he is Fred the fixer.

Zach/Zahn: 11 for the first roll.

Avery/GM: Okay. The teleportation pad powers on. It's glowing a nice, beautiful blue color.

Zach/Zahn: And 10 for the second one.

Avery/GM: All right. Uh, the terminal turns on and there is a map of the area around the ship. You see something indicating the Ursa major, but now that the ship formally known as the Minos is inside the Ursa major, you do not see it. Register on the… On the map.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, that's fine. If I don't see Hermes on the map, I can assume that he is on the major, which means I'll teleport to the Major.

Bee/Polaris: I was just gonna ask, how do you determine like how deep you teleport into the ship? Because what if you teleport halfway into the ship?

Zach/Zahn: Like into a wall?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: I'm, I'm assuming there's like a, uh, okay. You pick this point and then you zoom in and then you pick a point relative within that area.

Avery/GM: There's definitely some fail safes in there to make sure you don't materialize halfway into a bulkhead.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, hypothetically, I could pull it up just as I see the, the icon that is the ship form known as the Minos pull into the, uh, the Ursa major, which would give me a general idea of where to teleport, I guess. Though hypothetically teleporting onto a moving object would be harder than…

Avery/GM: this is true. I've seen Star Trek.

Zach/Zahn: That was, that was my thought.

Avery/GM: It'll be fine. You'll just, you'll teleport into the spike drive.

Zach/Zahn: Oh God. Zahn becomes the new Zahn literally materializes into the spike drive, transforming into an ai, and then he and Hermes are together in harmony forever on the ship.

Bee/Polaris: That sounds horrible. For Zahn.

Zach/Zahn: For Zahn, yes.

Bee/Polaris: Hermes will just be like, hello Zahn. Hello Zahn, Zahn, We are one.

Chris/Ollie: We can now become more intimate than ever before.

Avery/GM: So what's the plan for teleporting over?

Zach/Zahn: I would like to teleport into the hangar of the major.

Avery/GM: Roll high or low… or call high or low.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, always high.

Avery/GM: that is a 97.

Zach/Zahn: Haha.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Y'all are walking up the ramp when suddenly you hear the sound of like a, a bolt of lightning behind you as you see Zahn Materialize right behind where, where y'all were just at moments ago.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris was like zoning out as we were walking to the docking bay. So when he hears that, he immediately swings his sword in that direction.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn does like the cool entrance. As soon as like the, he materializes the lightning bolt, like flash stops. He like taps the side of his helmet and it deco… and it deconstructs into his suit.

Bee/Polaris: How far away is… is Zahn out of sword distance?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, I mean, the sword is adjustable.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say the sword is like a few inches from his face. Like Zahn, you, you open your eyes and like there is a blade in your face and Polaris is holding it.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris lowers the blade. Once he realizes it's Zahn.

Zach/Zahn: You just get: s’up.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris walks onto the ship.

Chris/Ollie: Currently very much is s’up. This place is not as safe as we once thought it was.

Zach/Zahn: So he, he follows and he is like, is uh, is Rho okay seeing, you know, Ollie kind of picking her up and dragging her slash carrying her?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. We haven't done any diagnostics, so Ollie's gonna be like unknown current priority is attaining party safety.

Zach/Zahn: Good. Uh, good call Buddy gives you…

Avery/GM: as you come on, you see Hermes materialized with a party hat on the hologram and it's like, I heard someone say, party, is it time to dance? And, and then it starts dancing.

Zach/Zahn: Inappropriate timing Hermes

Chris/Ollie: is the, the ship formally known as the Minos, like in the hangar and landed.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Y'all are walking up. Y'all were walking like up… up the landing, the, the loading ramp when, uh, when Zahn appeared.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will make his way to the medical… Wait, we don't actually have a medical bay.

Bee/Polaris: no.

Jenine/Marty: No we don't.

Avery/GM: No.

Chris/Ollie: Oh.

Bee/Polaris: Which is why I was thinking we could go to the Cassia and have that be our air quotes Ursa major for the, for the moment.

Avery/GM: because yeah, y'all, y'all have like basic medical like capabilities like any ship would, but it's basically just in your, in the quarters here. Like

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Avery/GM: there's not a specific Med Bay area, but y'all have plenty of room in this cargo hold. Y'all could remodel.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I mean if the stuff is unpowered on the Cassio, but we could just

Bee/Polaris: fix it,

Chris/Ollie: take a bunch of stuff from

Jenine/Marty: yeah

Chris/Ollie: their, uh, medical Bay and put it on our ship.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we could also just fix the wire.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. What if we just take the little pod that she was in before onto the ship, our ship?

Bee/Polaris: I mean, yeah. But that's gonna take some time.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: That's more of a, a long, a long journey sort of, sort of deal.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I mean, it did also get partially cut out of the floor, so it's like, it it won't take that one. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Oops.

Jenine/Marty: But once we are safely on the ship, Marty does read whatever the other messages are.

Avery/GM: So Marty, you're gonna pull up the message from Oswald.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. It's not bad. I mean, it's, it's Oswald, so it's not great.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: but, uh, you do receive, you, you see that it's a little Holo-mail from Oswald. and it is a little audio, uh, ho Or not audio hologram recording. Um, do you push play or do you wait until you have more privacy or what?

Jenine/Marty: I'm gonna wait for privacy. So it was him… So they sent it to me, not their, not as, not their assistant.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Oh,interesting, cause they said that it was gonna be from their assistant.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Yeah, Marty's just gonna be like, sees that it's from, like directly from Oswald Scoffs a little bit and then just like continues to sit in the room and see what's happening before like going off into the corner. We'll check on Rho first. Actually, We'll check on Rho.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.Yeah. While this is going on, Ollie had made his way to the medical Bay or the, the crew quarters.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: And placed Rho down on the bed. And we will look up at Marty and say, unfortunately my expertise is not in this area as a kind of like a leading question.

Jenine/Marty: I got this.

Avery/GM: Sure. Go ahead and roll a wisdom. In, uh, heel to kind of diagnose this.

Jenine/Marty: oh, that was bad. It's okay. It's fine. It's a 10.

Avery/GM: Oh, that's, that's perfectly fine. You realize that like physically, like, so you, you, you take out the, like a bios scanner from one of the med kits and you're kind of scanning her and you realize that physically her body is fine. Like the damage that she took from, like the laser swords have already started to heal completely. No physical injuries are present, but you do notice that her brainwave patterns are not nonexistent, but they are very, like, there's very little activity going on.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. From that, am I able to just like, would I know safely from my knowledge from school what I know safely that I could. Like go, like do tele… telepathy with, with Rho in this instant, or like, I know personally, like I should not go in there myself and like, wait a little longer.

Avery/GM: You know that there have been experiments with people who ha with psionics who have torched and like people trying to telepathically help.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And you know that usually those attempts end in the instability that torching causes spreading to the other individual

Jenine/Marty: sick.

Avery/GM: And so there's, so there's something, there's something missing in that process that people haven't quite figured out yet.

Chris/Ollie: Oh. So the torching side effects are contagious

Avery/GM: to other Psionics

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Who, who mentally try to connect with them? Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. That's spooky.

Bee/Polaris: You need something to ground you kind of like how you do with jumper cables.

Avery/GM: That is actually a very good analogy.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, seriously. I was just thinking about my coworkers and we were talking about like grounding and if you could cook a hot dog by like grounding it with the hot dog, instead of like a piece of metal.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Cool. Cool, cool. Great. Great, great, great.

Bee/Polaris: That was unintentional. Sweet. So we just gotta find something to ground you.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Okay, cool. we're not gonna do that

Bee/Polaris: would a non-psionic be good?

Avery/GM: If a non-psionic has telepathic powers, um, yeah, totally. Probably fine.

Bee/Polaris: You know what? Yeah, you got me there.

Zach/Zahn: What, what about a, a non-organic?

Bee/Polaris: I was thinking like,

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, a non-organic that could interface with psychic abilities.

Bee/Polaris: Hmmm.

Jenine/Marty: Hmmm.

Avery/GM: I don't know. Yeah, that might be an option.

Jenine/Marty: Ollie you just like watch, like Marty's shoulders just droop a little bit and just goes. Okay. Um, so I'm gonna play a message on here from like, one of my co colleagues. They're not really a friend, he's kind of, okay. Anyways, I'm gonna play a message here. Might be easier to have like a second person to like view it. Um, warning in Advanced Ollie, uh, they're an interesting person, so like, take anything they say with a grain of salt and like anything that's like not. Intellectual properties anyways. And then she just presses the like play on the hologram.

Avery/GM: You hit play and like a little hologram pops up on your watch. It looks very cool and it's Oswald and he's standing there, you know, trying to like look kind of like relaxed and cool, you know, and is just like, greetings Marty. So you've burned your torch a little too brightly, have you? I understand not everyone is as lucky enough to have had the best Psionic trainers in the galaxy hone their skills.

Avery/GM: But I am always happy to help an old friend get a handle on their powers. As you know, there is no cure for torching once it reaches a certain point, but my colleagues and I have been making leaps and bounds in Psionic torching prevention. And as a favor to an old friend, let me send you my most recent breakthrough that we've had in our medical research.

Avery/GM: You'll find everything you need in the attached file. Essentially, you'll need one bio psion to help whomever the torched psion is. Um, and then the hologram like winks at you, and it says, uh, we, we call it mind melding, and you'll need to pattern your sci energies. In a particular pattern as described in the document, once you've done that, simply apply a dose of brainwave to the psionic that's incapacitated or has been torched.

Avery/GM: And it should link the two minds together in a way that doesn't cause the spillover of torching that we typically see in most clinical settings. So hopefully whatever great medical facility you're at has another bio psion on hand to help you. If not, let me know. And the hologram like looks at like a watch on its wrist and it's like I might be able to get out to you in probably about three months, When I get some vacation time, I'm always happy to help an old friend… tootles! and the hologram clicks off Ollie. You just

Jenine/Marty: Ollie, you just see… you've never seen Marty angry or annoyed, but she's so angry and annoyed right now. She looks ready to punch the wall.

Chris/Ollie: Is it just me and Marty in here?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn followed.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, Marty looks pissed. Marty looks ready to punch something. It's fine. This is cool. This is cool. Okay. Anyways, you know what? Okay. And then she just starts reading the document.

Zach/Zahn: wow. What a lard ass.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, he's great.

Avery/GM: And you, and you realize, you realize this document could have been sent without all that fluff. Like,

Zach/Zahn: oh, clearly

Avery/GM: you're perfectly capable of, of understanding this level of research.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And like you, you did not need his mansplain.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Basically.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And yeah, and, and basically it just, it goes over, there's a bunch of diagrams of like, I guess I should explain the way Psionics work is that, you know, they manipulate the psychic energy around them, right?

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And so, like, it's almost like a, a second sort of sight, like you're able to kind of see that energy around you when you activate your powers. And so these diagrams basically show you, okay, this is how you want to manipulate that energy in this way before you psychically connect with this individual.

Avery/GM: And so there are some diagrams of that. There's a picture of like two people laying, you know, heads touching, you know, but laying flat on their backs. And there's like diagrams of like the energy exchange going back and forth. And then there's like a little patch of like the brainwave medicine. Like on the knocked out person's arm, that kind of thing. It's all, it's all very self-explanatory and very clear.

Jenine/Marty: And it has been done before or it's like, this is all theory?

Avery/GM: This is theory.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: and that's actually the part that Oswald left out, that you see at the end of the document, a warning that says, this research is based on conjecture, mathematics and limited clinical trial. Caution is advised.

Jenine/Marty: So Marty starts typing. Um, thank you for the offer, but I think I'll find someone that is a little bit more qualified to conduct your research then deletes it, and then just goes, thank you. I will let you know if I need any assistance.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Okay. Okay This is, this is cool. This is. We have information on what we can do to help Rho. This is great. What's next on the plan? And then she just starts like, walking out of the room.

Avery/GM: Polaris have you begun piloting the ship out of the Ursa or…?

Bee/Polaris: uh, yeah. I mean, yeah. Ships out of there, so for sure. For sure, for sure.

Avery/GM: Okay. Okay, cool. No one had said anything about that yet, so I just wanted to make sure.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we're just kind of floating outside.

Avery/GM: Cool. Um, there has been no activity or communications from the Ursa since, since you left Alioth’s lab, so

Bee/Polaris: that is cool.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, no news is good news

Bee/Polaris: indeed.

Chris/Ollie: Considering we're sitting right in front of a singularity gun.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris is like, Polaris has the ship like above, like on the opposite side of the Ursa, where the singularity gun is.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, I'm assuming the singularity gun is on a turret of some kind.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but

Avery/GM: it's, it's on a swivel on the bottom, so if you’re on top,

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we’re on the top

Avery/GM: the ship would have to rotate.

Zach/Zahn: Oh Okay

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Yeah. Also

Avery/GM: you’ll see it coming.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly. Also, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't singularity gun the ship while Polaris is on it.

Zach/Zahn: You’re pretty sure. But that doesn't mean you're a hundred percent sure.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, no, I'm a hundred percent sure.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Alioth’s gas was just knockout gas. It wasn't deadly neurotoxin.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly.

Chris/Ollie: Which it totally could have been.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Cool. Okay. So the ship is kind of floating out. Are you going towards the Cassiopeia or just floating there for now?

Bee/Polaris: I mean, Zahn said that he'd incapacitated the Cassiopeia. So Polaris is just waiting for ex… for instruction from someone else. Currently he's just like sitting, uh, in the pilot's chair, like with his knees up on the chair and his head like resting on his knees and just like pressing the buttons to fly the ship.

Avery/GM: Sure. As you're kind of pressing buttons, you do see a outta the corner of your eye, a little flashing icon on the coms station across the cockpit from you.

Bee/Polaris: Cool. Sorry, Polaris isn't, Polaris isn't doing anything cuz he's sad right now. So he's gonna leave them for someone else.

Chris/Ollie: Man, the crew crews all infected with the feels.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Marty comes like slightly storming out and then sees the communication thing and then just goes, okay, clicks the button.

Avery/GM: Okay. And you hear this message.

Caden/Bruce: Hello, it's Bruce from The Blunder again, good news I found out who Lazuli works for. They work for an organization known as the Oracles. The Oracles seem to be an independent league that seeks to keep balance and order within the Republic, Independent Systems and even the hegemony. You may laugh and ask how that's even possible. Well, it seems that the organization

works outside legal structures. Anything outside of legal structures must be up to something. And I thought the same thing, but it appears that the Oracles try to keep the peace and try to avert catastrophes. I completed my first mission for Lazuli. They asked me to infiltrate an executive meeting at Calydon, so I snuck in as a lunch caterer.

Caden/Bruce: No one ever pays attention to the service staff at these types of functions, and I must thank you Polaris for my new chef hat as I don't think I could have done so without it. After food was served, I left the recorder in the room and set it to broadcast to Hermes. You should hopefully have a copy of that recording now as I left the meeting room and hoped that my recorder would remain undiscovered, the first part of the operation had thus far been successful, and Lazuli had asked me to download some files on a project… project Epidrome.

Caden/Bruce: So I snuck into a database room. I thought all database rooms may be like Zahn's workshop, but I was wrong. This one seemed to be clean and organized, a little bit like a kitchen where every appliance was in its designated space. It made it easy. Project Epidrome: It appeared that looking at these files, it looks like someone or something has been funneling credits through Calydon for defense purposes.

Caden/Bruce: Some notes in these files reference a Milky Way and a Terra, which just sounds like a dessert to me anyway. Um, leaving the room was a little bit trickier than entering as there was a commotion going on outside, so I switched from my chef hat into a baseball cap and Uh, grabbed a computer and put on some fake glasses and thought what would Zahn do?

Caden/Bruce: And, um, just said a bunch of tech words until people moved out of the way. Um, you'd be surprised how many people look at you funny when you mentioned quantum cores. Maybe I am actually good at this disguise thing. Oh, and, uh, before I let you go, the luncheon that I served, it was, um, excellent. It was an excellent snack tray of fresh vegetables, followed by handcrafted sandwiches with the freshest bread ham sourced most delicious swine from the Ozyius farms, and of course, real cheese not assembled singles. Served with some fresh water with a generous inclusion of honey cucumber and mint. So, um, I hope you are also keeping well fed and I will report back as soon as I can. Again, it is Bruce.

Bee/Polaris: Bruce.

Jenine/Marty: Bruce.

Bee/Polaris: No, I can't wait for Bruce to come back.

Chris/Ollie: Our boy.

Bee/Polaris: Interesting. After Bruce roasted Zahn a little bit.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Bruce did mention Terra and the Milky Way Galaxy. They were funneling money or…?

Avery/GM: money to, to a project involving those words.

Bee/Polaris: Got it. Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, got it.

Avery/GM: And Hermes says, I did receive a second follow up transmission from Bruce as well, if you would like, but we can play that later if… if we need to address whatever is going on in the crew quarters.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, yeah. There's a way to fix Rho.

Zach/Zahn: Nobody's gonna like it though.

Jenine/Marty: We, I mean, okay. There are, there are, there are significantly better people than Oswald to actually do biopsionics so we can find someone else to do it. Um, sorry, I, getting a little bit over myself. It's research that has not been done yet, so there is that risk in a way… Cool. Yeah, that's what's up.

Chris/Ollie: Wait, did you share the entire document with the crew or

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, nd like I try to like sparks note it a little bit for the other half of the room that does not understand the medical mumbo jumbo.

Zach/Zahn: So like all of us?

Avery/GM:

Jenine/Marty: Well, no, Ollie can, Ollie can interpret kind of

Chris/Ollie:Yeah. Yeah. Ollie… Ollie knows the meanings of those words, but he doesn't understand them.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah Polaris…

Avery/GM: the application might be… difficult.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will just Google the words, but he is also fairly intelligent, so

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. But yeah, Marty hands out at the document, does not show the…

Avery/GM: airdrops it to everybody.

Jenine/Marty: does not deal with the video again.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Leaves out all the, the Smarminess

Jenine/Marty: Uhhuh.

Chris/Ollie: So Ollie is going to, uh, come out of the, the crew quarters where he was setting up Rho with, uh, you know, all the medical mumbo jumbo that you need when you're sick.

Avery/GM: Sure. you found like a, a very crude, like heart monitor, um, stashed away from the previous owner stuff like that.

Bee/Polaris: A warm bowl of soup.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. ya know, Ollie's unfamiliar with the concept of Comfort. Comfort. So he's been like piling up a bunch of blankets on her and, and a ton of pillows and be like, I hope this suffices.

Zach/Zahn: I hope this suffices…

Bee/Polaris: Polaris probably has a couple of plushies in there.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, just a pile of plushies too. Oh yes. We absolutely have to get that salmon.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Chris/Ollie: That is the primary objective. Ollie's gonna come out and say while the risks may be great, What exactly are the negatives of leaving her in her current state?

Jenine/Marty: There's a lot…. it's gonna be like a big, like, it affects everybody around. Not only just the being, cause we saw like the first bit of what happens right when we were facing off with her.

Avery/GM: yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Cool.

Avery/GM: Yeah. The sort of uncontrolled, uh, unbridled, uh, power. Yeah. That kind of thing.

Jenine/Marty: So I have a colleague that I don't even, yeah, someone that I went to school with that like specialized in understanding torching and he's in in research. He's not really like working in the field. Cause this is kind of a theory. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself again. Apologies. But yeah, that's we… he says he is offering his time in like three months, but I don't, I feel like that is a lie coming from them. But you know, whatever. We can maybe find another biopsionic. We can also just find another way,

Zach/Zahn: I mean… What about you, Marty?

Jenine/Marty: I mean, yeah, I could, yeah. Pretty good with, with… with it.

Chris/Ollie: Will that course of action be safe for you?

Jenine/Marty: So yes. In my state currently I'm still healing from when she kind of hurt me a little bit to take a little injury from that so I could do it. I just think. It'd be also nice to have another. We do it in a safer location. Not here maybe. I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. That's what I'm, you see that she's like nervous

Chris/Ollie: and Ollie will suggest: well, what scientist would not like to personally test his hypothesis? Why don't we make our way to this colleague of yours?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. That, that might be smart… Well…

Avery/GM: show up on his doorstep.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Kick the door down.

Chris/Ollie: Because he said

Jenine/Marty: you don't do it, I'm gonna win.

Chris/Ollie: No. Yeah. Cause he said he would come to us in three months or we could go to him and say, oh no. How about you, you do this for us and uh, we won't mess you up. We are kind of space pirates, you know, we're allied with them so

Jenine/Marty: Well what if we did bring the space pirates? Oh my gosh. Wait. That would be actually be a really good idea.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Can We get the space pirates to do to and like she starts getting excited.

Avery/GM: and Marty, you will remember that, that Captain Blitz did say, if you ever need his help to just reach out.

Zach/Zahn: Oh man!

Chris/Ollie: For an individual as full of his own skill as your colleague is, this is a prime opportunity.

Jenine/Marty: This is true. This is true. And like what scientist wouldn't wanna actually test their own theory and like be the first person to like succeed in torching. This is a good idea. Right.

Avery/GM: You gonna use his own smarminess against them.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. I was, see, I'm a little bit more petty than that. I was gonna, I was gonna say, it would be good, it, it would be cool if Marty successfully like, executed his theory and rubbed it in his face.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. That's, that's what's also going through Marty. But Marty's also like, okay, wait, but what if he's leading the wrong way? That's, that's where Marty's going. It's like that, fuck we fucked with each other way too much. That's the next step. That's another thing we need brainwave… Where?

Bee/Polaris: do you not have a whole bag of drugs?

Jenine/Marty: Well, wait do I have this drug?

Avery/GM: You do.

Chris/Ollie: You have many drugs.

Avery/GM: It was in the, it was in the stash that Winston had.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I thought you had like a ton of drugs.

I do

Bee/Polaris: we could also go back to, oh, I guess we can't go back to Drug City.

Avery/GM: You could go back to drug city.

Jenine/Marty: We could,

Bee/Polaris: I thought, I thought we were in trouble because they were like, get the security guards, go to bay 12. And Bruce was like, I'm just the janitor.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that was the Winstons.

Avery/GM: That was just Lazuli's cousin.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, cool.

Avery/GM: But they're probably gone by now.

Bee/Polaris: We can also just get big Fred to get us the drugs.

Avery/GM: Big Fred.

Zach/Zahn: Big Fred's does owe us one.

Bee/Polaris: He has our email.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah he does.

Avery/GM: You have quite a few allies already.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we got some good friends.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. We can call it Big Fred. We can call up the pirates. Call up Machamp

Bee/Polaris: for just for fun.

Jenine/Marty: let's, let's have like a nice, calm moment. How do we, how do we feel about like a tea or like cake or like, something nice.

Avery/GM: Hermes pipes up and says Bruce did leave quite a few bean based pastries in the makeshift kitchen, and there is some supposedly good smelling tea also nearby.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. We're gonna go grab those. She's, she goes and grabs all the little goodies.

Avery/GM: Okay, Marty, you're preparing some tea and some, some pastries for everybody.

Jenine/Marty: Yep.

Avery/GM: Still kind of thinking about what your plan is gonna be. Polaris, uh, me has pinged you a few more times asking if you're okay. That's cool.

Bee/Polaris: That's cool. Left on read.

Zach/Zahn: Aw.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is currently, like obviously there was, there's been conversation happening around him. He's been having his helmet transcribe what they're saying, but he's hidden having things around him muted while he's reading the document that he found.

Avery/GM: Oh, the document about you?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Avery/GM: yes. Okay. You ready for that gut punch

Bee/Polaris: oh, oh, oh. Is this a thing you're sending me or?

Avery/GM: Oh, no, no, no. I, I mean, I can, I just, I have some stuff

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

Avery/GM: For that.

Bee/Polaris: Interesting.

Avery/GM: But I wasn't sure when you were gonna read it, so.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet.

Avery/GM: I are you, do you want just the highlights for now? Like are you skimming through it or are you actually like, detailed reading it?

Bee/Polaris: He's detailed reading it to like, kind of keep his like brain away from everything else that has happened so far.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. So you read about, like the first few pages of this document are very like clinical notes of like, human specimen found floating nearby, attempted to shoot, but, but the others talked out of it, you know, things like that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Brought vessel aboard, examined medical data. Unremarkable. Will keep for further study. And then there are like, there are things that, there are like documents that are dated like a couple years later and they are like trajectory analyses of like trying to figure out where your vessel came from and pretty much all the trajectory paths converge on like a single point not far from where the custodians actually like typically dock above this dead planet.

Avery/GM: and then you do find information about your, about like medical, like some of your medical history that you didn't know about.

Cool.

You learn about your advanced healing factor. Alioth’s notes include things like, and, and there… there does come a point where they stop referring to you, to you as specimen and start referring to you by, by your name. This has not happened yet. Um, and it's like specimen, tumbled off of the table after feeding time and injured its head, but wound healed quickly. Things like that, you know?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So these are Alioth’s notes?

Avery/GM: Some, some of these are Alioth’s notes. Some of the notes, like the medical notes are also like notes about, like injections that you were given prior to arriving.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: You can tell that like the format is just different and like the, the, the, the stuff about like the injections and things, there's a lot more character to the writing. There's a lot more like, Not emotion necessarily, but you can tell that it was written by a person versus written by a machine.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And then there is like, there are like side like notes in like parentheses after like mentioning that you fell and like design a helmet for specimen, things like that. And yeah. Um, so you, you kind of start learning a bit and the, and you, you realize that you stopped being called specimen in the notes around the age of like five.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Well, yep. That's what Polaris is doing.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, he's internalizing this because like, he just got out of a fight with his custodians, but now he's reading about his custodians like taking care of him. And so now this is just like, oh, well this does not help.

Avery/GM: What's everyone else doing? Ollie? What are. What are you up to?

Chris/Ollie: if we are to help Rho return to her home, we will need the Cassiopeia. If the custodians do not present a threat, I suggest we take the time to repair and take it.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn lets out a long, exasperated sigh. It's like, God damn it. And he is gonna say, what of the former AI? you know, Navi? while Navi might be gone, it's been replaced by something else. I, I didn't trust Navi to begin with because, you know, Navi wanted to blow themselves up. So, uh, what do we wanna do with this, this replacement?

Chris/Ollie: do I know the specifics of the… what the Iaso program does?

Avery/GM: Yes. So, you know that the Iaso program is essentially a termination virus that in one way or another, eliminates whatever Artificial Intelligence it is broadcasted to,

Bee/Polaris: oh, it's an AI killer!

Avery/GM: Essentially.

Bee/Polaris: I don’t know how I feel about that.

Chris/Ollie: Navi has been more than change. She has been unmade. The AI that exists in there is nothing more than a subordinate AI to whatever AI would pilot the ship. i.e. Hermes, meaning there is no danger?

Zach/Zahn: Do we trust it working with Hermes?

Chris/Ollie: I still exist fortunately. But this is a valid concern and he'll activate his, uh, Void Hawk drone and start sending it over through space to the Cassiopeia to like hook into the computer systems and scan for any remnants of the Iaso virus program thing.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we could just pilot the ship formally known as the Minos, uh, over to it so that the Void Hawk doesn't have to fly for 50 minutes.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, no, let's, let's pilot the Minos over there and we'll, we'll jump the Cassiopeia.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Oh God.

Avery/GM: Jumpstart it.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we'll just jumpstart it.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we could literally just fix the wire.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, no, yeah, we can fix the wire at the same time. Ali just doesn't wanna plug back into the Cassiopeia unprotected.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Knowing that

Bee/Polaris: for sure.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. That, that might be in there. So yeah, while that's happening, uh, we can totally fix the wire.

Zach/Zahn: let's go ahead and do that.

Avery/GM: Okay, so is the plan to go over to the Cassiopeia then?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: So Ollie will look down and notice that, Polaris hasn't responded or said anything and will simply ask Polaris, is this course of action acceptable to you?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris has been reading this document and has like his environment on mute that is transcribing what you guys are saying, but he hasn't read the transcription yet, so he doesn't respond.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie will, uh, you know, gently and slowly reach out his hand for your shoulder and then kind of think twice and it down be like, is a big, this is a big moment. Well noticing the non-response. Ollie will look at Zahn and say, Hermes use, please pilot us to the Cassiopeia.

Avery/GM: You see a big holographic thumbs up and the ship starts moving.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn’s face looks concerned and dis… a mix of concern and disappointment, and he just nods looking down, activates his helmet and it builds around his head again. He's like, and he's just like, went like murmuring to himself as he goes to the Workshop to click some tools to fix the Cassiopeia again.

(ambience fades out, Outro plays, then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show.

Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Intro and Outro music produced by Dustin Carpenter

Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. The track used today was Star Freighter

This year, our show was honored as a selectee for the Rainbow Roll Fest, a 3 day festival during pride month to celebrate LGBTQIA+ led Actual Play Podcasts and Streams. Be sure to check out the entire Rainbow Roll Fest June 23rd through 26th at twitch.tv/rainbowrollfest.

We'll be back on June 15th with our Next Episode

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro fades in and plays out)